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)
She looked up, her eyes a luminous silver alive with wildfire as they became at times. “Hey, you.”
“Hey, you,” he murmured back before going into the kitchen.
He had staff aplenty. Any one of them would love to do all these tasks—but Raphael wanted to do them. He was going to hate being away from her for even the short periods they’d decided would be necessary in the aftermath of childbirth.
He simply couldn’t relocate to the Refuge for the full year they’d decided their infant would spend in the concealed angelic bastion, close to the Medica and all its specialist healers and equipment.
“I am going to miss you so, Elena,” he said as he sat down beside her after placing the glass of milk on the side table.
Her lips drooped. “Same.” She leaned her head against his shoulder. “But it’s only going to be two-week stretches, give or take. I keep telling myself it’ll go by fast, especially with the obsitru room they’ve set up at the Refuge stronghold.” Her lower lip quivered. “Shit. Emotion.”
He held her as she sniffled, well aware that she’d be mortified should anyone else see her right now. His own chest tight, he said, “Yes, it won’t be for long periods.”
They’d decided that his visits to both New York and the Refuge would be erratic, just in case someone did have evil intent. They’d never be able to predict when he’d be in either place. Having the Legion would also make life infinitely easier.
No army wanted to go up against fighters who were near impossible to kill.
“We’ll get through this,” Raphael said, talking to himself as much as Elena.
She drank the milk, then put aside the box and just snuggled into him. “Oh, I forgot to tell you—Majda called me while you were in the Cadre meeting.”
“How is she?”
“Excited. She offered to be with us at the birthing if I wanted it. Do you mind?”
“Of course I don’t mind.” He knew she missed her mother desperately at this time, and Majda was her mother’s mother, with whom she’d formed a bond so deep it transcended Majda’s ageless appearance. “I can think of no one better to join us on this journey.”
“Me neither. I’ll tell her yes. Eve’s going to be at the Refuge, too, of course, but I’m not sure I want to traumatize her with the reality of birth.”
Her laughter had him grinning. “Still the big sister, hmm?”
“I think this time she’ll agree with me. She can help babysit when we’re sleep-deprived.” Settling deeper against him as the sound of a car horn somehow whispered up all the way from ground level, she said, “Have you thought about what we should name our little spark?”
“I thought about looking into the past,” Raphael murmured, “into the people we’ve loved…but…”
“…but I don’t want to put that weight on our child,” Elena said softly.
“Exactly so.” Dmitri had chosen to pass his son’s name to one of Naasir’s cubs, and Raphael knew he’d done so in joy both for the wild boy he’d helped raise, and the cherished son he’d lost, but Raphael hadn’t lost a child. The names under consideration on his side were both adults who had done terrible things, his feelings for them complicated.
Nadiel, archangel gone mad.
Caliane, another insane archangel with a history of mass slaughter.
“I thought about Ari and Belle, Sara and Demarco, all of my family and friends,” Elena murmured. “But it just doesn’t feel right. I want to give our baby a name that’s new, all their own.”
“Agreed.” They sat in silence for a while before he said, “Perhaps while we are at the Refuge, we can borrow Jessamy’s name books and see if we can find one that speaks to us.”
“Yes. We can look at more modern sources, too.” A grin. “Our spark is, after all, going to be born of an archangel and a hunter. Kid’s going to have an edge to them.”
He chuckled. “Or perhaps you will birth us a scholar.”
“Then they’ll be one hell of a scholar—twin doses of determination and all.” A long exhale, echoes of the terrible darkness that had ended her childhood in her voice as she added, “I just want them to grow up happy and healthy. They can become whatever and whoever they want to be—scholar or warrior, playful or serious. Whatever path they choose, they’ll be our heart.”
“Yes. Forevermore, a piece of us that is external to us.”
“Terrifying.”
“Quite.”
40
“I’m hallucinating. Or that fish they fed me on the plane was laced with LSD.”
“Sara, if you don’t come and hug me, I’ll shoot you.”
—A Conversation Between Best Friends (Once, in the Refuge, after an Angel was Made)
They departed from New York without fanfare, choosing to leave in the depths of the night.
Now, hours later, they flew through the hazy gray of the coming dawn, high up in the atmosphere. Over three hundred members of the Legion had taken off earlier, and since they had a habit of taking off en masse, no one would’ve noted that as unusual.