Total pages in book: 148
Estimated words: 139178 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 139178 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
21
You’ve never seen Andreas lead, Elena-mine. He is very, very good. Never harsh for the sake of it and never wasteful of his people.
—Raphael to Elena (As the Mantle Fell)
Andreas landed in the courtyard where they’d had breakfast just as Elena and Raphael walked out of the trees. Folding back distinctive wings of a dark amber streaked with gray, he turned to them with grief stark in the pale green-kissed hazel of his eyes. “They did it, then?” he said with the informality of a long friendship.
Raphael nodded. “Knowing Marduk, I assume the territory will run as it should for the next two weeks?”
“More if needed.” Andreas put his hands on his hips, his jaw working. “I’m not sure his people will know what to do with another archangel. He was one of a kind.”
There was nothing Raphael could—or wanted to—say to refute that. “He told us that another is to waken soon.”
Andreas’s lips kicked up at the corners. “It’s the kind of thing he’d do—wait until he knew he had a successor.” He swallowed hard. “I’ll never again serve someone like him, and that’s a loss I’ll carry through eternity.”
Elena and Andreas hadn’t been friends when they’d first met, when she’d seen only pieces of him, and understood far less about immortals, but that had been a long time ago. Today, Raphael’s consort walked forward to grip the second’s forearm and say, “You’ll carry all you learned with him through time, too.” Her voice was gritty from her own sense of loss.
He returned her grip, inclining his head at the same time; he wore his hair short this season, the dark strands just long enough to move in the breeze. “The stories they told me, Ellie,” he said as they parted. “Perhaps tonight, after I’ve drunk enough mead, I’ll share a few.”
“A fitting tribute to two extraordinary angels,” Raphael said after exchanging an embrace with the angel who had fought beside him when he’d been an archangel new and untried. Andreas was older than him, but only by a matter of centuries; they’d been young warriors together, battle fury in their hearts.
In the end, however, Raphael and Elena didn’t stay the night, choosing instead to give Andreas and the rest of Marduk’s senior team privacy to celebrate the archangelic couple who had forever altered them.
That was as it should be, a gathering of comrades in arms.
It was how his Seven—present and past—and Elena’s Guard would want to celebrate—and grieve—them should the time come when Raphael and Elena chose to slip into Sleep.
* * *
* * *
It was exactly two weeks later that Raphael caught a strange scent on the breeze, and knew that the Cadre meeting scheduled for two hours hence would have to be postponed.
Andreas had just that morning notified the Cadre of Marduk’s decision to Sleep. The news had landed only a day after Jelena sent news of Caliane’s Sleep. To say that the Cadre was in a state of heightened tension was a vast understatement.
To rule with eight was…difficult.
Now we will not have to do it, he thought where he stood on the highest of the Tower’s balconies, the wind rising around him as he watched Elena coming in to land, the glory of her wings vivid against the dark blue sky. He was ready to intervene should she require assistance, but she handled the sudden wind gust behind her with the athletic ease of a hunter, running several feet before coming to a halt.
“Wow, that wind! I half thought I’d end up splattered on the side of the Tower!” she yelled out over the sound of its rising.
“An archangel is waking.” Raphael walked to stand by her side, his eyes on the horizon.
Even as Elena sucked in a breath, Dmitri’s voice filled Raphael’s mind.
Raphael, we’re getting alerts from the other courts. Aegaeon and Illium are both reporting skies streaked with bronze lightning, while Alexander’s people report multiple sightings of honeybees circling in huge swarms. Who’s waking?
Raphael wasn’t surprised by the question; his second had been around too long not to understand the signs. Unknown as yet.
He told Elena what Dmitri had shared…just as the wind dropped, and he caught a sudden burst of color in the distance.
“Are those orchids?” Elena whispered.
“Yes, thousands of them.” All surging to the surface from the lush green of the hover pathways in a cascade of vivid color—dramatic orange and vibrant red, saturated pink, and a yellow so rich it was gold.
“Forget about their weather requirements, the city’s never planted orchids on those pathways.” Elena stared. “They’d never survive, not at those heights.”
The scent of orchids was stronger now, even made sense where earlier it had come from both nowhere and everywhere at once. It held undertones of a sensual musk…along with something deadlier. Acid?
“Look at the hanging gardens on that high-rise, and that habitat to its side.” He nodded to the east and the rapid-fire explosion of tiny flowers in hues bright that erupted from every green surface on both—and they were far from the only structures affected.