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)
Pride unfurled inside Raphael and not for the first time, to see this archangel he’d known since the other man was a boy become a leader so empathic and intelligent. “Right now, it seems Michaela is still taking stock, is in an introspective frame of mind.”
Illium nodded. “I did suggest to him that he should pen a polite response as soon as possible, even if the response itself is that he needs more time. I want his first meeting with his mother to start off on the right foot.”
“Michaela loves him, that much is true. Never would she have abandoned him of her own volition.”
“Another big difference between her and the asshole.” Scowling, Illium put his hands on his hips. “I hope it works out for them. I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like for her, to leave her baby behind after she spent so many years waiting for him.”
Raphael’s entire being thrummed with a visceral understanding of Michaela’s pain. His child was yet to be born, and he felt as if that child held his heart in their tiny hands. Michaela had given birth to Gavriel, cradled him in her arms, and then was forced to let him go.
The Archangel of Budapest had her faults, but he hoped Gavriel understood that his mother had fallen not because she wanted to leave him, but because she’d stood against the voracious, devouring darkness that was the Archangel of Death.
23
I am to be a mother again, Raphael. At long last, my pain will end. He is my redemption.
—Michaela, Archangel of Budapest, to Raphael (Before the Birth of Gavriel, Son of Michaela, Grandson of Gavriel Past)
Michaela stood on the very edge of the rooftop of a stronghold built by Marduk, Archangel of the Forge and Keeper of Eon’s Flame. Though it was far more martial and less elegant than was her style, she had no quarrel with keeping it as her stronghold.
Before…before, it would have mattered.
Before, she’d have immediately ordered a new build to suit her high opinion of herself.
But before had been a long time ago…a death ago. Because she had died on the way to a healing rest so deep, it was beyond anshara. The wounds inflicted by Lijuan and what Michaela had done to counter them after the fall that had shattered her body had been so grievous that the thread holding her to this world had snapped…only she’d been with Cassandra, who it seemed had a drop of the healer within her. Just enough to pull Michaela back the mere breath that it had taken for her to slide into the endless nothingness of the state in which she’d spent century after century.
In that moment of death, she’d thought of only one thing: Gavriel.
Her son, lost to her forever.
Her eyes burned, her entire body stiff with an aching that was a new mother’s love. Because he had been but a babe when she’d left him, so small and fragile and so very, very loved.
“I have watched over him with all care,” Keir had told her when she’d spoken to him after her waking, his warm brown eyes gentle. “He has grown into an extraordinary man, a man of whom you can be intensely proud. Thank you for trusting me with him.”
She had been so hungry for stories of Gavriel’s childhood, and the healer had been kind enough to fly to her territory, spend several days with her. He had shared so much. She’d cried at hearing the stories, and Keir, who she’d chosen for Gavriel’s foster father for his kindness, had showed her that same kindness before he gave her a single piece of advice.
“He is a man now, Michaela. Treat him as a man, or you will lose him.” He’d followed that up with a precis of the war that simmered on the border between Aegaeon and Illium, father and son.
A war driven by pride and arrogance.
Never, Michaela vowed. Never would she do something as heinous as attack her child. Whatever she had been, whoever she had been, she had loved her babies. Both the one she had lost too soon, and the one who had survived.
Each lived in her heart and always would.
“I will be what you need and want me to be,” she said to the evening air as she waited for her son to arrive for his first visit three weeks after her waking.
She’d dressed with care for this first meeting, choosing not a skintight bodysuit as had been her wont, but formal new leathers of a deep bronze. Her son was a warrior and she wanted him to see that she, too, could be a warrior when such was needed.
“Sire.” Andreas came to stand next to her a short time later, even deadlier and far more honed as a leader than when she’d gone into Sleep. “He has been sighted. He should be here within the half hour.”