Archangel's Enigma (Guild Hunter)(78)

A hail of crossbow bolts was her answer. Pressing her back against the tree, her wings tightly curved in, she glanced at Naasir. “It was worth a try.”

His eyes gleamed as bright a silver as that on the bolts, but more liquid, more alive. Even as she admired the wild beauty of him, the part of Andromeda that made her a scholar was wondering at the color that marked Naasir. Silver was a distinctive shade in terms of angelic wings. Illium had fine silver filaments in his wings and so did some other angels, but Alexander alone had borne wings of pure silver.

There was a feather in the Archives that came from Alexander and it was a glittering shade she’d seen in such concentrated form on no other living creature but Naasir. Not even on Rohan. Alexander’s son’s wings were a paler silver at the top that flowed into a charcoal gray; he’d inherited his coloration from both parents.

Where had Naasir inherited his coloration? If someone had Made him, if there had even been an ordinary Making involved in his case, was it possible Alexander had something to do with it? But if that was true, why would Naasir have grown up in Raphael’s stronghold?

And how could he have grown up if he’d been Made? Only adults were Made, for not only did the transformation all but freeze a person in time, children went insane or died. None had ever survived an attempt—all of those attempts made by angels who were themselves insane, or believed they could flout angelic law without repercussions.

That repercussion was always death. None ever escaped it and so it wasn’t worth the risk. Alexander, however, was no ordinary angel. He could’ve done as he pleased and escaped execution, but had he Made a child, he would’ve still been uniformly shunned by their people. There was no record of any such shunning, and nothing Andromeda knew about Alexander indicated he’d break such a fundamental rule of behavior.

Alexander believed in laws, in rules, in a society with a foundation of discipline.

The thoughts tumbled though her head in the split seconds before Naasir reached up to grab hold of a branch and swung himself onto the tree. Realizing what he planned to do, she gave him enough time to get directly over Alexander’s sentinels, then grabbed some of the crossbow bolts that had fallen nearby and started to throw them at their attackers. As a distraction, it was a success.

Another hail of bolts.

Going to her knees to give the shooters less of a target, she used her sword to deflect a few bolts that came too close, and she hoped that Naasir was safe.


*



Naasir had climbed along the treetops soundlessly, heading toward the scents he could barely smell. The windless dawn had kept the sentinels’ secret, but the trajectory of their crossbow strikes had given him a direction.

He couldn’t have as effectively used the tree road had the oasis been surrounded only by the tall spires of date palms, but the villagers had planted and nurtured many kinds of trees, including those with spreading branches. While Andromeda was right about the planting being used as a front to stave off the curious, the true reason had likely been to create shadows below, where the sentinels could mount an ambush.

He couldn’t blame them for not worrying about a climbing foe.

Naasir was one of a kind after all.

He was on top of them now, but they were scattered far enough apart that no one could take them all at once. It also, however, meant he only needed to handle one at a time. Focusing on the desert camouflage–clad male directly below, his hair covered in a dusty brown scarf tied at the back of his head and dull brown and green stripes on his face from camo paint, Naasir didn’t hesitate.

He dropped down, taking the sentinel to the ground with an arm pushed up against his throat so he couldn’t cry out. “We are not the enemy,” he said in the male’s ear. “We are here to warn Alexander.”

The man attempted to break free. Gritting his teeth, Naasir did the only thing he could and knocked him out. He did the same to two others before the sentinels suddenly realized they had a predator in their midst.

“Up!”

The order was vocal. Naasir crouched flat on his current branch . . . then realized they were reacting not to him, but to the wings beating in the distance. Moving with stealth, he angled his head just enough to look up.

The wings that came into view less than three seconds later were not ones he wanted to see. Below him, Alexander’s sentinels crouched down, crossbows pointed up at the flyers clad in dark gray uniforms bearing red accents, but they didn’t shoot.

Good.

If Lijuan’s people were just doing a flyby—likely after someone spotted the swarm—then the best thing to do was to lie low and not give them a reason to believe the area was in any way interesting. The squadron did multiple passes, until well past the dawn. Naasir, Andromeda, and the sentinels remained silent and unmoving throughout.

Even when the squadron landed near the village, no one moved. The sentinels’ family members were no doubt trained to act innocent under questioning or the secret would’ve never held so long—and if Naasir judged these men and women right, even the noncombatants would’ve been taught to fight well enough to protect themselves until the sentinels could get back to them. It was over an hour later, the morning sun bright in the sky, that the squadron finally took off, their wingbeats disappearing into the distance.

It left Naasir, Andromeda, and the sentinels in the same position they’d been in before the squadron’s arrival.