Archangel's Light (Guild Hunter #14)(92)

“There were periods when Lijuan disappeared from public view,” Raphael murmured, “but none of us saw anything unusual in that. Even Michaela did that a few times.” And the former Archangel of Budapest had loved attention and adored being the muse of artists as well as the fantasy of millions, mortal and immortal.

“My aunt’s people were also so loyal to her that they would help her hide many things.”

“But to hide an angelic child? To allow that child to grow up alone in the dark?” Were Lijuan not already dead, Raphael would’ve killed her then and there. “That isn’t loyalty, Suyin. It’s the same kind of blind faith that led to so many of her people supporting her goal to shroud the world in death.”

“I won’t argue with you there,” Suyin said. “But I ask your advice—should I share this with the rest of the Cadre?”

Raphael paused, gave the question serious thought. By every measure, this was a private family matter. And judgmental eyes were already looking Suyin’s way. On the flipside, it appeared the boy could be a treacherous threat. “Can you control him on your own?”

“I can cage him.” Bitter words. “But a jailer is not who I want to be. And when I think of what was done to him . . . Where is the moral line, Raphael? I want him in the care of healers of the mind, not locked up like an animal.”

“I agree with you.” Despite the terrible darkness of the child’s crimes, Raphael struggled against the idea of simply imprisoning or executing a being who’d never been given a chance to become anything better.

Jinhai had to be given a choice—and a foundation on which to make that choice. “I think,” he said at last, “so long as you take the necessary measures to keep him from harming others, this isn’t Cadre business.”

Truth was, some on the Cadre would kill the boy rather than allow any piece of Lijuan to exist. But the child should not be judged by the crimes of his mother. “I can assist you. My mother will also help.” Raphael knew Caliane well enough to be certain of that. “Three archangels being aware of the problem is enough for now.”

“He will need to be caged, even as we seek to help him,” Suyin said, the bitterness back in her tone. “Lijuan has won there. Made me like her.”

“No, Suyin. You won’t consign him to the cold dark. You’ll contain him in the light. And once he has the power of flight, you’ll ensure he has the opportunity to take to the sky.”

“I thought to put him in an old stronghold half a day’s direct flight from my new citadel, with a dedicated security and healing team,” Suyin said. “No vampires or mortals, only angels old enough to be immune to his strange abilities. I can fly to him often, speak to him.”

“Keir is currently in my city,” Raphael told her. “A short trip to check on a few of the war-injured who aren’t yet back to full health. Do you want me to alert him of this, and ask him to make plans to join you?” he said in an effort to take a little of the load off her shoulders. “You know he can be trusted.” The senior healer had worked with Suyin after her escape from Lijuan.

“Yes, I trust Keir.” Exhaustion in her voice as she said, “Do you think there is hope? Or am I just delaying the inevitable? Will I end up having to execute Jinhai when he transforms into a maddened adult with ever more deadly abilities?”

Raphael looked out over the lights of his city, thought of all he’d learned in his millennia and a half of life. “There are some that say a child damaged young will remain forever damaged.”

“I’ve heard the same.”

“But I’ve witnessed at least one child beat the odds and become far more than could be expected of them, did you only know the circumstances of their early childhood.”

Raphael’s spymaster had survived a childhood marred by his father’s obsessive jealousy—a jealousy that had ended in the viscous scarlet of his mother’s lifeblood, and the ashes of his father’s body. The murder-suicide on a lonely atoll had left behind a scared and grief-stricken child, the silence around him profound.

Jason had been thought mute when he first appeared in the Refuge.

But though the spymaster had plenty of scars, he was no monster and never would be. At times, Raphael thought that Jason’s deepest secret was that he felt too much, too strongly. That was why he strove to keep a certain distance between himself and the world.

Then there was Naasir, intelligent and unique and a favorite of all. He, too, had been born in a place cold and without love, a place teeming with the ghosts of the innocents who’d gone before him. Yet his heart was a thing magnificent, as wild and as ferociously protective of his people as the tiger that was his other half.

“And,” he added, “I’ve seen an archangel so lost in madness that she turned two thriving cities into silent graveyards.” In eliminating the adult populations of those cities, Raphael’s mother had also created thousands of orphans with broken hearts, many of whom had curled up and died of that heartbreak.

Raphael had helped dig their small graves, his tears lodged in his throat and his scream a keen in his head.

“I call that same archangel a friend now,” Suyin whispered, “and she is one of the calmest heads on the Cadre.”

“Exactly so.” Caliane made no effort to hide from or obscure her past. It was a silent shadow she carried with her always. All those deaths, all those souls, they haunted his mother, and in so doing, they made her a better ruler and a better archangel—while creating in her a weakness that could be exploited by the unscrupulous.