Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 112287 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112287 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Her heart thundered as she put her hand to the cool hospital door . . . and pushed it open.
9
Raphael pushed his archangelic body to the limit in an effort to get his task over and done with so he could return home to Elena. He’d never before heard such a tone in her voice: the pain, the fear, the grief, all twined around her complicated emotions for Jeffrey Deveraux.
He’d been wrong to assume he understood all of what she felt toward her father. So many layers she had to her, his guild hunter. He’d be discovering her until they were Ancients ready to lie down in an endless Sleep. Today, however, all that mattered was that he was far from her at the moment when she needed him most.
Like most warriors, his Elena was rarely so openly vulnerable. That she trusted and loved him didn’t change the core of her nature, a nature formed on a foundation of fierce independence. Some of the biggest fights early on in their relationship had been a result of her need to be free coming up against his need to protect her.
For her to sound as broken as she had on the call . . .
His entire body fought his mind to turn, head homeward.
“You’re an archangel,” she’d said to him when he’d struggled against the harsh reality that he couldn’t change direction, go to her. “Millions of lives rest on what you find today and the consequences of that discovery. Your responsibility to uncover the truth about Qin comes first.”
He knew those hadn’t been just words; his consort had walked with him since they came together, understood the silent contract by which he’d been bound since the day of his ascension.
As a result of the urgency of his flight, he was drenched in sweat when he landed outside what had once been Astaad’s elegant home in the tropics. Built on a single level, it flowed with the landscape and was awash in tropical blooms. Palms waved against the sky across the estate while the cerulean blue ocean rolled to shore on gentle waves, separated from the house only by a short stretch of white sand beach.
Inside, Raphael knew it was cool tiled floors and huge windows that could be opened to the sea breezes. But where Astaad’s beloved harem had once filled its rooms with laughter and color, in Qin’s reign, it was a residence quiet and somehow . . . uninhabited.
It was Jason who’d said the latter, for Qin had never held a gathering of archangels in his territory. Neither had he invited any one of them to whom he was especially close. Because Qin wasn’t close to anyone in the Cadre. Raphael knew his mother had tried, but the Ancient had remained inexorably remote.
“He is always well-mannered, even gracious,” Caliane had said as she braided her hair while Raphael sat across from her in her private garden in Amanat.
They had come a long way since her waking that he could have such a familial moment with her, but that day, they had also been two archangels talking Cadre business.
“But,” she’d added, “I get the feeling it is because, at the heart of it, Qin doesn’t care about anything in this world. It doesn’t anger him or make him happy. All his emotions lie buried with Cassandra. He is akin to a ghost in our world.”
Raphael agreed with his mother, but any sympathy he’d had for the other man had died under the scalding burn of the tears in Elena’s voice. His hunter so strong, who’d fought at his side with the promise of near-certain death on the horizon and never flinched. His consort who’d never broken under any of the pressures that came with the position. His lover, who hated to cry.
Together.
That was their promise to each other. She’d upheld her end. It enraged him that Qin’s selfishness meant he couldn’t uphold his. Instead, he had to be here, dealing with a mess that needn’t exist.
“Archangel.” A familiar vampire, his skin the warm brown shade oft seen in this region and his face bearing a partial tattoo dissimilar to Jason’s in detail but similar in how it had been done, emerged from the house.
General Atu had the hardened visage of a warrior, and though he wore modern combat pants and a sleeveless tunic in a tough but breathable fabric suited to the humidity and heat of this region, his weapon of choice was a spear that he held point-down on the crushed white shells of the path.
An act of ceremony, to show he had no aggressive intent.
The vampire bowed. “I welcome you in my role as second to Archangel Qin.”
Atu had also been a senior member of Astaad’s court, was well respected in this territory. Per Jason, the vampire had done a lot of heavy lifting to ensure Qin didn’t become lost in his memories and that he did what was necessary of an archangel.