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)
“Are you sure, sire, Elena?” Sam asked, the black-tipped brown of his wings held with warrior attention even though he was seated.
Raphael knew why he was asking—the reason angelic children were nearly always raised primarily in the Refuge was because angelkind needed to be seen as all-powerful by the masses, even more so when it came to the strongest vampires. Any hint of vulnerability could lead to rebellion, which would end—inevitably—in streets drenched in red.
Mortals and vampires would never win a fight against angelkind, not with archangels in the mix. They’d die in their thousands. Better not to put temptation in their path.
Raphael didn’t disagree with that line of thought; it wasn’t an arbitrary one, but one learned through painful, bloody experience. However—“It can be done.”
He sat forward in the armchair he’d taken, Elena having perched on its wide arm. “It will require methodical but not intrusive security. As important will be dissemination of the warning that vengeance for any harm done would be so far off the scale that it would be beyond nightmare.” Raphael had no mercy in him when it came to those who harmed children. And his own babe? He’d burn down the world.
“The Legion would make this easier,” Ashwini murmured, still playing absently with the trailing end of the lime-green vine she’d used as cover earlier. “Especially if they arrived close to the birth—hard to miss the warning signal that’s seven hundred and seventy-seven unkillable warriors.”
Raphael’s temple didn’t pulse. He felt no sense of a large presence on the horizon awaiting to emerge…no sense that his Legion lived again. “Are you attempting to tell us something, Ashwini?” he asked on a withheld breath.
“No. I wish I was, but that was just me hoping.” She grinned. “I did, however, see a bassinet beside your bed a week ago.” A tap of her temple to show where she’d seen it, even as Janvier spun around to glare at her.
“Sugar,” he said, “you are keeping secrets from your Janvier now?”
Ashwini stroked her fingers through the thick chestnut of his hair, the glints of copper within brighter after weeks of summer sun. “No woman spills news like that.” She shot Sivya and Montgomery a grin. “Also, I wasn’t the only one in the know.”
“An archangel and his consort’s home is inviolate,” Montgomery said with perfect butler grace, while sweet, shy Sivya hid her laughing face in her hands.
As Raphael took in the people gathered around him and his consort, he knew that while his father was dead and his mother in Sleep, he sat with family. I hope to see you again, Mother, he said deep in his mind. I hope to introduce you to our child.
In going to Sleep when she had—at the realization of a hovering madness—Caliane had regained his trust in a way he’d have believed impossible. She’d not only stood by her word, but given up her reign itself to keep that word.
Elena’s hand sliding into his, the silver-edged gray of her gaze holding an understanding that needed no words.
Lifting her hand to his mouth, he pressed a kiss to her knuckles. Together, hbeebti. In this adventure and all that come.
Always, Archangel.
26
I am only half a being without my Cassandra.
—Qin’s Farewell (Before the Fall of the Mantle)
“Beloved.”
A deeper breath next to her, his hand tightening on hers where they held on to each other through eternity. “Do we wake, my heart?”
Their wakings were mere stirrings to the surface of consciousness. Enough to be together, to be one, but not enough to rise to the world, for in that rising would come her madness and his desolation. “One of our wounded fledglings flies free again. It has been a droplet in time yet, but her wings appear strong.”
“Ah.” His eyes looking into hers, the astonishing aurora-striated black awash with light. “What will she become, I wonder?”
“I do not know. I do not see.” The slipstreams of time didn’t always show themselves to her when she rested in this state, a small benediction, a quiet peace.
“She will be who she will be,” her Qin said with the absolute balance that was his nature.
He was so very beautiful in every way.
“I know a secret, my Qin.”
Laughter now, gentle and full of a love that made her whole. “Will you tell me, my curious Cassie?”
It had been such a long time since he’d called her his curious Cassie. Eons since they’d first met, since they’d become each other’s everything. In their eternal torment, they’d forgotten such small pieces of love.
Smiling, she turned toward him in her Sleep in this place that burned with her protective fire, and put her mouth to his ear, her hand cupped as if to hide her words from the world. “The child of mortals will soon be a mother herself.”
Qin’s smile creased his cheeks, for he well knew her partiality for this angel who had once been a mortal. “Should we send them a gift, my love? An owlet perhaps. Young Raphael so loves your owls.”