Archangel's Legion (Guild Hunter #6)(65)

Raphael had thought as much, the risk to his people one he had to find a way to negate. “The energy expended in that attempt would also explain why the disease maker is exhausted after creating only two carriers that we know of.” Seeing the healer sway slightly on his feet, he said, “Rest now, Keir.” Do not let the rage eat away at you.

Keir glanced up. Now you quote my own words back at me.

They were wise ones. Said to the angry, broken youth he’d been. “We’ll leave you in peace.”

The healer’s expression remained tense, but he was no longer pacing when they walked out the door. Leaving Elena getting changed in their suite, Isabel on watch outside, Raphael flew to his mother. He knew she wouldn’t be asleep—angels so old as Caliane slept but rarely and the two of them needed to talk; not only as mother and son, but as archangels who might soon be drawn into a global war.

“I’m not ready for war,” she said, as they walked through the quiet corridors of her home, her arm tucked through his, her wing a warm weight against his own. “My power has returned, my people are strong again, but my spirit? It wants only peace.” She smiled and it was a creation of sadness. “I’ve fought too many battles. Now I feel only the driving need to enshield Amanat and wait this out.”

Raphael couldn’t blame her for that choice. “You should protect your people. They are yet babes in this new world.”

Eyes so similar to his own, yet with such age, such pain, such loss in them, met his. “You are the babe of my body, Raphael. I will not abandon you as I once did.” Steel in the blue. “My resources are yours. I will not permit your city to fall.”

“Mother.” He held her against him, continually surprised at how small she was, for she had always loomed larger than life in his memories. “I’m no child, and if you divert your resources to New York, you know Lijuan will attack and destroy Amanat.”

Drawing back, she took his arm again and led him toward the wide stairs to the roof, her voice unyielding. “What use is my city if my son is dead?”

Realizing he wouldn’t win this battle if he spoke as a son to his mother, he spoke as one archangel to another. “Victory in New York will be meaningless if Lijuan gains a stronger foothold in this part of the world.” Amanat’s simple existence was a symbol that Lijuan was not as all-powerful as she would have the world believe.

“And if you move your people to protect them,” he added, “thus abandoning your city, it’ll be viewed as a capitulation.” In wars between immortals, perception could often be everything. “Those who might now be undecided on a side will begin to see her as the true power, once it becomes known she drove you from your city.”

The elegant lines of her face exposed by the way she’d pinned her hair into a loose knot, Caliane pulled away to walk to the edge of the roof. “I’ll be making a choice, not being driven anywhere by that repugnance who styles herself an archangel.”

“That isn’t the story she’ll tell, nor the one people will believe.” When there was only silence from Caliane, her feathers limned with power against the starlit night, he reminded her of the one fact against which she couldn’t argue. “We cannot know how long the coming wars will last, and we cannot coexist in the same territory, Mother, not for anything beyond a short term.” It was the reason the members of the Cadre were separated from one another by water and land, their powers too violent to permit long-term proximity.

There were two known exceptions to that rule. The first was pregnancy—had Michaela truly been with child, he could’ve offered her sanctuary, for the vulnerability that came with carrying a child would’ve dampened the effect. The second was love of the kind shared by Caliane and Nadiel, their deep emotional bond somehow ameliorating the effect. Michaela and Uram, by contrast, had never lived together, their love affair conducted over short periods of intense intimacy, followed by weeks of distance.

An adult child fell into neither exception. “I would end up viewing you as a threat, and you would feel the same about me, our instincts driving us mad as we fought the urge not to kill.” It was a prediction borne out by angelic history. “You need to maintain and hold this territory.”

“I could cross over and obliterate Lijuan’s stronghold while she is gone, take her territory.”

“Her stronghold is deep in the heart of her territory and you went into Sleep with two squadrons alone.” Strong and skilled men and women, but a tiny number nonetheless. “While you fly into her territory, her commanders will send squadrons to destroy Amanat. You must think of all the permutations of any action you take.”

Wings rustling, Caliane turned to face him, her expression softer . . . bleaker. “When did you stop being a boy and become a man so used to the ways of politics and power?”

“I was always going to end up here.” The child of two archangels, one an Ancient, could have little choice in the matter, power fused into every cell of his body.

Poignant emotion in her eyes, she flared out her wings and, stepping off the edge of the roof, made a silent descent to the street below. “Walk with me through my city,” she said to him when he followed, “and tell me of your foolish but brave consort.”

It was the first time she’d ever acknowledged Elena as his consort without his prompting. “You must first tell me your decision on matters of war.”