Archangel's Enigma (Guild Hunter)(96)

Alexander hadn’t thought in such a way. He’d created orphanages in his land that still provided shelter and education for urchin children to this day. He’d been so proud of those homes and of the schools he’d founded. “Every child in my land,” he’d said to her once, his hands on the railings of the top balcony of this very palace, “will have the chance to become better than a lost piece of flotsam on the street.”

She’d laughed and shaken her head. “You are a fool, Alexander.” The amused, affectionate words of a friend. “Mortals are born and die in a mere glimmer of time. What use is it to waste your resources and your emotions on them?”

Alexander, his golden hair afire in the sunlight, had smiled. “Did you not admire the tapestry in the hall? It was designed and created by a mortal. The work of a lifetime and more beautiful than any such work I’ve seen completed by immortal hands.”

Laughing again at how neatly he’d trapped her, Lijuan had conceded the point that very occasionally a particular mortal had his or her value. Most, however, were nothing. Insects to step on.

She hadn’t put it that way then. Only a thousand years into being an archangel and she’d been . . . soft. And for all their disagreements, she’d still admired Alexander, hadn’t wanted to disappoint him. But that time was long gone. She now saw him for the weak creature he’d been, driven by emotion and heart rather than the cold pragmatism of a god. That would be his downfall.

“You know something,” she said to the son Alexander had shown her when Rohan was a mere day old.

Lijuan had congratulated him, but in that tiny, squirming bundle she’d seen only a chink in his armor, a living vulnerability. Lijuan had long ago killed the mortal who had made her heart stir, and who could’ve become her own living vulnerability had she not taken preemptive action. Chaoxiang had been as dark as Alexander was fair, and he’d laughed as much as Raphael’s blue-winged commander did now.

“Beloved” he’d called her, eyes dancing.

Those eyes had held hers as she stabbed a dagger into his heart. There had been no recrimination in their black depths, only piercing love and forgiveness. His last word had been a whisper. “Lijuan.”

That day marked her true ascension, when she became invulnerable.

Unlike Alexander.

“If you do not speak,” she said to Rohan, “I will annihilate what remains of this palace and of your squadrons, as well as the surrounding villages and towns. I will kill tens of thousands.”

Rohan’s eyes, a deep ebony rather than Alexander’s silver, glittered. “You are a monster.” The words were spat out, his pale brown skin hot with rage.

“I am evolution.” Gripping his neck while she hovered using her wings, she lifted him off his feet. She’d fed again in the inefficient fashion that nonetheless gave her a power boost, and now she burned with it.

Bound as he was, Rohan couldn’t fight her, but his eyes remained unyielding. “My people stand with me and my father,” he said. “All know that if you come to power, the world will drown in death.”

“The world will be purified.” All weakness burned away. “Speak, or die.”

“You would go to war with Favashi for this?”

“Favashi is young.” Now that she could feed again even in a limited fashion, Lijuan knew she could kill the much younger archangel should Favashi be so foolish as to get in her way. “Where is your father, Rohan?”

Alexander’s son, the babe she had once held, looked at her without flinching. “I am Rohan, proud son of the greatest archangel ever to live, and you are an abomination who will never break my will.”

“Insolent fool!” Crushing his neck until his head lolled forward, she dropped him to the floor. He’d live—he was a strong angel of enough age to heal those injuries.

“My men have sacked the palace but there is no sign of Alexander,” Xi told her. “If he is like Caliane and able to hide deep in the earth, we may not find him in time.”

Alexander loved his people. He loved his only son even more.

Lijuan’s eyes went to Rohan’s already healing form. Her lips curved. “Then we make Alexander come to us,” she whispered, and waited the minutes it took for Rohan to heal enough to open his eyes. “Your father will wake at reckless speed to avenge you.”

Her words made Rohan’s jaw go tight, but Alexander’s son didn’t beg, didn’t scream as her black knives plunged into him. He went to his death with the stoic and defiant pride of a true warrior.

Part of Lijuan could admire that, and had it been possible, she’d have ordered that Rohan be given a warrior’s burial. But it wasn’t possible—her black death had caused his body to disintegrate into ash of the same shade.

Rohan was gone.

The world screamed, lurching under Xi’s feet.





41


Naasir and Andromeda were out of bed and about to head out to speak to Tarek when the land bucked with violent fury. Struggling out of the small house, they went to their knees outside. The shaking seemed to go on forever.

“Naasir!”

Following her pointing finger, Naasir looked to the horizon.

Sand spouts burst out of the ground to spiral to the sky, burning a destructive path through the landscape, the lightning so electric and bright that it hurt the eye as it hit over and over and over again.