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)
It was Illium who answered. “That whatever is hiding the Refuge is beginning to disintegrate exactly as the Cadre suspected.” His cheekbones cut against the gold of his skin. “Right now, all anyone on the ground will see is rocks and mountain blooms, but the farther the Mantle withdraws, the higher the chance of a mortal or vampire spotting an element that could lead to dangerous curiosity.”
“Shit.” Elena put her hands on her hips. “Is there anything we or the Cadre can do?” If she’d learned one thing over the years, it was that archangels were a power. Raphael had once caught a freaking plane!
“The sire told me the Cadre has no idea of the origins of the Mantle.” Illium folded his arms, the arches of his wings vivid against the dark of the screens. “It’s so old it’s beyond any of their memories.”
Her mouth fell open. “But Caliane and Alexander and Zanaya are—”
“—old,” Vivek finished, rubbing at his temples. “My brain hurts at how old. How can they not know?”
Illium shrugged. “I’m barely past five hundred. I know nothing in comparison.” He tugged on a strand of Elena’s damp hair, playing with it as his pampered pet cat did her toys; Smoke might be getting on in years, but that hadn’t stopped her playfulness.
“Truth is,” he added, “the information probably just faded out of immortal consciousness bit by bit over millennia. Angelkind has a far longer history than any angel awake in the world at the current time.”
The idea of that span of time . . . Elena’s mind refused to give shape to it. “If they don’t know how it works, they can’t fix it.”
“I’ll start hunting,” Vivek said at once, and she could almost see the sparks as his mind fired up. She sometimes wondered what it was like inside Vivek’s complicated and brilliant brain—the man could handle more incoming data than anyone else she’d ever seen, without losing track of any of it.
“Jessamy reaches out to me every so often with the more esoteric research stuff she isn’t able to track down through other methods,” he told them. “Even old material ends up online, sometimes as an image or a reference in another object.”
Elena’d had no idea that Vivek was in touch with the angelic Librarian and Historian, but it made sense now that she considered it—both were in the business of information.
“I’ll hook up with her on this—I mean I’ve always assumed her security clearance is at the pointy end?” At Elena’s nod, he continued. “It’d help if angels digitized anything, but even Jessamy’s fighting me on that.”
“It’s hard to keep secrets when they become electronic,” Illium pointed out. “The Library and Lumia, in contrast, have stood for eons—and held our secrets safe.”
“But physical media fades.” The thin lines of Vivek’s face were flushed with passion. “At least this way, angelkind wouldn’t lose data.”
Illium considered that. “Maybe, V, we should lose information. In a race of immortals, history can become a crushing weight.” A slight glow around his wings.
Elena’s gut twisted. They all knew Illium would one day ascend—he was too strong at too young an age for it to be otherwise—but his growing power had flatlined after the tumult of the Cascade. That meant nothing except that he was back on a normal trajectory, the growth slow enough that ascension wouldn’t tear him apart . . . or so they were hoping. Because that glow to the wings? That was an act meant to be limited to the Cadre—except Illium had been doing it for a while.
As for the words that had fallen from his lips . . . yes, their Bluebell had depths most people who saw only the surface flash would never know. He was far more than beauty and a quicksilver wit, far more than wicked speed in flight and laughter untrammeled. He was exactly the kind of person who should be an archangel . . . but she worried the power of it would ruin him.
The Cadre was no place for an angel gentle enough to rescue a stray kitten, and bighearted enough to keep up a friendship with mortals who inevitably died and broke his heart.
“No philosophy today, Bluebell.” Vivek hunched over the keyboard, beginning to call up various data networks. “Not when the loss of this piece of information could doom the entire world.”
Doom was a strong word.
Unfortunately, it was also the right one.
20
Deep in the earth below the Refuge, a being of age incalculable stirred, their rest disturbed. But that rest was so profound and so long held that the disturbance was shrugged off after a moment. They settled again. But . . . they were no longer quite as asleep as they’d been before the disturbance . . . and neither were their brethren.
21
The situation with the Mantle and the quakes didn’t negate the immediate problem of Qin’s territory having no direct archangelic oversight. The Cadre had to deal with that or they’d find themselves having to handle vampiric unrest on top of the shakes that threatened the fall of the angelic homeland.