Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 118699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 593(@200wpm)___ 475(@250wpm)___ 396(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 593(@200wpm)___ 475(@250wpm)___ 396(@300wpm)
No one ever talks about having to get a whole new wardrobe when you wake from Sleep, she said to Alexander. We literally wake up in the clothing in which we went to Sleep, and that’s all we have.
The silver-winged flyer beside her shot her an amused glance. “I was only asleep for a few hundred years—and I had a son as well as my Wing Brotherhood. They stood as guardians over what was mine and were active in preserving my belongings. Most of my personal property came through unscathed.”
She made a rude gesture at him.
His responding laughter melted the ice in her lungs. There he was—her Xander. The one with whom she’d fallen in love and stayed in love through forever. “At least I don’t have to deal with a crisis of conscience over Charisemnon’s belongings.”
Her breath puffed the air as she spoke aloud, and she was almost sure she saw the air turn to ice crystals. “Though, having caught up a little on what he did, I’m very certain it would’ve been no crisis at all. I’d have happily scorched all that he touched with his diseased filth.”
“That’s why the territory needs you,” Alexander said. “Titus has done an excellent job of regaining the trust of the people, so you won’t be starting from scratch. But they are wounded and need a leader who can focus wholly on them.”
“Nursing the wounded is not one of my winning traits.” An unfortunate truth.
“Your second or another can take that role. You’ll be the honorable warrior who they’ll soon learn will rule them with fairness and compassion.”
Zanaya snorted. “Don’t make me sound better than I am, lover.” She had her flaws—she could be short-tempered for one, liked to stir up small troubles for no reason, and found it greatly amusing when others of her kind acted with idiocy.
“You’ve never started a war, Zani,” was Alexander’s riposte. “Not many archangels can say that. Not even I.”
She parted her lips to argue, closed them on the realization that he was right. She might like to stir up small troubles, but that was about as far as it went. Oh, she’d fight like a lioness to defend her territory and her people, but leave her alone and she’d go about her business without releasing the hornets of war.
Chewing on that, she flew on in silence with Alexander. They’d never needed to fill their silences, as they’d never needed to ask permission from each other to speak. It was accepted between them that there would be long periods of quiet, and that interruptions were welcome when something had to be said.
She watched him when he gave in to the youth within and dove down in a steep drop, before spiraling back up. He was silver and gold against the white sprawl below, the ocean hidden by a sheet of ice that was getting thicker with each wingbeat.
The Cadre had chosen this as Antonicus’s place of rest because it was far from all settled places in the world. No one had said it, but she thought they’d also chosen it because it was so cold. To stop any further rot, to perhaps allow him to heal faster . . . if he was going to heal at all.
Her chest ached from the coldness of the air, but she dove down after Alexander, then raced with him to the sky. And for a moment, they were youths again, playing with each other, rather than two sensible and mature Ancients who should surely know better.
But the laughter and the delight faded in the next half hour, as they hit the halfway point in the no-fly zone, then moved beyond it. Until at last, they hovered over the cairn they’d built to mark the resting place of Antonicus, Archangel of the lost city of Elysium.
Buried in snow and ice, it had become a small and unremarkable hill in the midst of an ice-coated ocean. Her breath frost in the air, Zanaya landed in an area she remembered as being rocky. Her boots sunk in at once, the snow coming up to her thighs. “Ugh!”
Alexander did a terrible job of hiding his chuckle. Hovering above the snow, he said, “Not been in snow for a while, Zani?”
“I will deal with you later, General Alexander,” she muttered, and used archangelic power to melt away the snow so that she stood in a dry hollow.
When Alexander landed beside her, he didn’t bother. But he wasn’t playing anymore and neither was she, both of their gazes on the snowy hill that held an archangel caught between life and death.
She saw no signs of any disturbance, but still her tendons remained tense, her stomach clenched. Light flecks of snow began to fall, the scene peaceful and lovely, it was so silent and white.
“Do you still feel it?” Alexander asked. “The thread that pulls you here?”