Archangel's Prophecy (Guild Hunter #11)(14)

“Just having that many archangels awake . . .”

“Yes.” Too many archangels too close together led inevitably to war and death and destruction. Even Raphael’s parents had not been able to stay together always. Love, deep and perhaps a touch mad, had softened the edges of Caliane’s and Nadiel’s power against each other, but it hadn’t erased it.

“Catch.” Elena threw him a flower that had gone a spotted brown, its petals crumpled inward.

Plucking it out of the air, he closed his hand around it. When he opened it again, on his palm lay a blush-pink rose with edges of gold.

Elena’s smile made him feel a proud youth who had pleased his equally young lover. “I can’t get over how you do that.” Taking the bloom from his hand, she brought it to her nose and breathed deep, her eyelashes lowering, luxuriant fans far darker than her hair. Then, the scent in her lungs, she tucked the rose behind her ear.

“It is a parlor trick.” Raphael flexed his hand. “I’d be more pleased if my ability to heal had not stagnated since the previous Cascade surge. At times it seems as if it is becoming less potent.”

“What about the other archangels?” Elena bit off part of a homemade energy bar, and he thought her wrist looked too thin. “Do you know if any of them have developed stronger powers over the course of this pause?”

“As far as Jason has been able to confirm, the entire Cadre is stuck in time when it comes to our Cascade-born abilities.” His spymaster had a way of discovering secrets even about the apex predators of the world. “However, Favashi continues to concern.”

Elena carefully showered a newly planted seedling with water, her movements as strong as ever even if she’d lost weight under the force of an incredible and ongoing biological change. “She being difficult again?”

Raphael considered his recent interactions with the Archangel of China—and it felt novel yet to refer to Favashi as that, China a place that was so utterly Lijuan’s. “It’s gone beyond difficult at this point.”

“Delusions of grandeur because she got to take over such a massive territory?” Elena suggested. “Might be enough to go to a ‘new’ archangel’s head—she’s the newest member of the Cadre, right?”

“Yes.” Favashi had only been an archangel for a hundred years in comparison to Raphael’s five hundred, though their ages were not so distant in immortal terms. But his history was unlike that of any other member of the Cadre—the beloved and treasured child of two archangels, one of them an Ancient, his ascension had been written before he was born, his progress tracked by angels all across the world. Still, they had been startled and shocked when the sky shattered to rain gemstone blue when he was a bare thousand years of age.

“I worry your Bluebell will beat my record.”

Elena’s eyes were solemn when they met his. “He’s too young, isn’t he?”

“I barely survived my ascension and I was double his age.”

Swallowing hard, Elena said, “Has an ascension ever failed, an angel unable to handle the storm of archangelic power?”

“Yes.” A hard truth angelkind preferred to forget. “It isn’t simply a case of raw strength, either. Illium doesn’t have the life experience to handle the politics and power plays that come with being one of the Cadre—his heart is . . . vulnerable to bruising in a way it cannot be if he is to survive.”

Of all Raphael’s Seven, it was Illium who was the most human at heart. Raphael would do everything in his power to assist him should the blue-winged angel indeed ascend, but he couldn’t stuff hundreds of years of experience into Illium’s head . . . and he couldn’t protect Illium the archangel as he had once protected Illium the wild little boy who liked to follow him around.

“Raphael, can I fly with you? I brought an apple to share.”

“Raphael! Look, I can do air tumbles now!”

“Raphael, Raphael, Raphael, my wings are growing as big as yours!”

“Do you think it’s certain?” Elena’s voice merging with the remembered tones of a little boy who had not yet suffered the three great tragedies that would shape him. “That Illium will become Cadre one day?”

“Nothing is certain. But Illium, too, has an Ancient for a parent.” His father had been not much younger than Caliane. “And the Hummingbird . . . she is an old and rare being.”

After putting down the empty coffee mug, Raphael began to walk around Elena’s greenhouse; he hadn’t gone far when he reached up to touch a trailing vine that had leaves covered in what felt like fur. “As for Favashi, Elijah agrees with your theory about her being drunk on her newfound power.” The Archangel of South America was Raphael’s closest ally in the Cadre—if you didn’t count his mother.

Caliane had left him bloody and broken on a forgotten field far from civilization when he’d yet been a youth and she’d been a creature of madness. She’d come back from her long Sleep changed. Sane. And willing to take on any enemy for Raphael.

He remained uncertain how he felt about that—his mother had a way of seeing in him the child she’d left behind. She could not see that the cold loneliness of that grassy field bejeweled with blood rubies had forever ended the final tattered remnants of his childhood. Despite that, he accepted that her loyalty was limitless.