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)
“Does that work? To keep you together?”
“Not for all—but aeclari? Yes.” A meeting of eyes. “You will not lose her to the shift of Sleep when it is your time.”
Raphael’s chest expanded. “Will your consort know you’ve gone?”
“Yes. In a dreamlike way. But if I do not return to her within the millennia, she will wake—and I’m afraid she always wakes in a bad temper, my warrior consort. She is not one for wakings, whether to the dawn or from Sleep. Better I’m back with her sooner rather than later.”
Raphael understood now how Elena felt when angels talked about a hundred or so years as nothing. Because Marduk was talking in terms of millennia. “My consort would be most interested to hear about yours. Elena is also a warrior.”
“I will speak further with her.”
Raphael left it there. Elena wouldn’t thank him for fighting her battles—and she’d held her own with archangels long before she became an angel. She’d no doubt deal with Marduk, too. “Do all of the old ones of your time look like you?”
A faint smile. “You are impertinent.” He slapped Raphael on the shoulder. “It pleases me.”
Raphael wasn’t sure he liked being treated like a child—but at the same time, Marduk probably couldn’t help it. He decided to let it go for now. All would depend on how Marduk treated the rest of the Cadre—and how he treated Raphael in front of others. “That doesn’t answer my question.”
“Some questions are not meant to be answered.” No smile now, his deep, grating voice inflexible. “We Slept for a reason. Our time is past. This is your time. We should be, at most, faint shadows on an even fainter horizon.”
Raphael thought of the legends of the Ancestors, not a single true fact known about them. “You succeeded. But I will ask one more question—was it a conscious decision made across all of you of such an age?”
Marduk took his time to respond. “In a sense,” he said at last. “And no, son of my son, I will not tell you more. That history is of another time, another people.” He spread his arms wide. “This world didn’t exist then, not as it does now. The mortals were . . . I would not have expected from them what they are now.”
Putting down his glass, he walked to the very edge of the roof, spread those strange, silent wings. “Will you show me your world, Raphael? I would see more of it.”
Raphael put his own glass beside Marduk’s. “Let us fly.”
* * *
* * *
Having decided to have a cup of soothing tea before she tried to sleep, Elena was passing by their private balcony when Raphael and Marduk swept down from the roof to angle off deeper into the city.
Her thin robe of silvery silk was no proof at all against the night air, but she stepped outside anyway, unable to tear her eyes away from her archangel silhouetted against the electric starlight of their city.
“Magnificent,” she murmured, her breath lost as it always was when she saw Raphael in flight.
She almost didn’t notice Marduk, and that she could’ve never predicted. But in the night, Marduk’s wings made him all but invisible, his scales only shimmering when hit by light.
Though, she thought with a frown, scales wasn’t the right word.
When he’d touched her, his skin hadn’t been hard or jagged at all. Rather, it had felt like touching the skin of a beautiful snake—smooth, warm, enticing. She could understand why those who’d seen him were fascinated by him.
To her, however, he was a weight of age in her mind, so old that she couldn’t see him as a man, only as a being out of a whole different world.
Cassandra, she said, speaking to the place inside her mind where she’d once heard the Ancient. What have you done?
Helped you, child of mortals.
Every hair on Elena’s body stood right up. She hadn’t heard Cassandra’s voice for a long time. Not since she went into her Sleep after the war. Are you waking?
No, child. I am . . . in a twilight between Sleep and wakefulness. I am with my Qin.
Pain in Elena’s heart now. Are you all right? Is he?
Yes. We are together again. Age pressing into Elena’s mind, even more potent than Marduk’s—because his came from the outside, while Cassandra’s voice was deep inside Elena’s mind. She’d never heard Marduk’s mental voice, and quite frankly, didn’t want to; she could barely bear the heaviness of the years in Cassandra’s.
An immensity of sorrow in the seer’s next words. I will fade from the twilight soon, child of mortals.
Wait, Elena said. Marduk? Can we trust him?
Marduk is a great warrior, a berserker fighter—and the reason for the great peace that saved our kind from annihilation.
Then Cassandra was gone, her voice whispering from Elena’s mind with one last sigh, an Ancient settling into her Sleep once more.