Archangel's Resurrection (Guild Hunter #15)(14)

Isane, a calm wind, her blind eyes seeing things he never would.

Alexander had been but a fleeting indulgence to all of them. Not a one had showed any signs of obsession—a significant threat when it came to relationships between mortals and angels and one that some immortals enjoyed.

But Alexander had chosen women who’d all been obsessed with other things: art, the desire to have children, expansion of the mind, and so much more. Against them, he’d felt the callow youth. Such wouldn’t be the case with Zanaya, no matter how much she might believe it to be.

“At a hundred and fifteen,” he said to Akhia-Solay, who’d seen his interest in Zanaya and seen him walk away, “I thought I knew it all when in truth, I was an untried boy. I won’t be the one to clip her wings or reshape them as I see fit.”

The general, who’d turned from mentor to friend, raised an eyebrow. “I think no one will shape that girl, Alex. She has a will that is a dazzling fire—but yes, even fires can be snuffed out by rough handling.” A curt nod. “This is the integrity I saw in the boy grown into the heart of the man. I’m proud to call you my friend and battlemate.”



* * *



*

On the journey home from their courier run, Zanaya told Aureline and their third squadron mate to go on without her. The three of them had been sent to different parts of Esphares’s territory, their job to deliver documents or small goods, and it had made sense to meet up to fly home. “I need some time alone. I’ll catch up.”

Auri’s expression said she saw far more than Zanaya wanted her to see, but she didn’t interrogate Zanaya. “We’ll fly at a steady pace, and watch for you at nightfall.”

After the two vanished over a distant ridge of mountains, Zanaya landed on a remote island in the middle of nowhere just so she could think, could find her balance again.

That single moment of unexpected eye contact with General Alexander had left her shaken, the foundations she’d thought as solid as rock suddenly nothing but crumbled stone. She’d caught his response, too. An awareness of the madness that could be. He wasn’t proof against her—but from the way he’d broken the eye contact, she knew he wasn’t going to do anything about it.

Breath harsh and fast, she kicked at the barnacle-covered rocks at her feet, releasing the scent of dead fish into the air. The stink seemed apt, seemed a fitting judgment on the insanity that threatened to take hold of her.

She knew what he’d tell himself, that she was too young, that she didn’t know her own mind—but Zanaya had never been one to flinch from a decision. She knew what she felt, and she knew it hovered on the brink of obsession.

“No.” A rigid promise to herself.

She had no desire for an obsessive romantic love. She’d witnessed far too much of it in her mother’s bitter, empty life and in her simultaneously pathetic and angry devotion to Camio—who truly couldn’t give a fuck. Just like Alexander didn’t give a fuck about Zanaya; she might’ve caught his eye in the moment, but the man was no abstemious monk.

As with her father, Alexander had plenty of lovers and none of them permanent.

Zanaya would not be another notch on the general’s bedpost.

Muscles tense enough to snap, she lifted off after her squadron mates, determined to follow the path she’d laid out for her life. But as seasons passed, she couldn’t stop her ears from listening for word of Alexander, even as she gritted her teeth and threw herself into becoming the best of the best.

“You’re beyond the rest of us,” Auri told her one day, her face damp with sweat and her chest heaving. “You’ve always been better but now you’re outpacing and out-strategizing everyone but me, and even I’m barely keeping up.”

“You can’t not keep up,” Zanaya declared. “I intend for you to be my lieutenant when I’m a general.”

Her friend shoved tendrils of hair off her face. “There’s that Zan confidence.” Words said with love, Aureline well aware of Zanaya’s ambitions. “What if I want to be the general?”

“You don’t.” Zanaya knew her friend as well as Auri knew her. “You’re too nice and hate the idea of disciplining anyone.”

Aureline winced. “Perhaps you have a point. But that would make me a terrible lieutenant too.”

“No, because then you’d just be following the rules laid down by your general—and you never have any issue with that.” Aureline’s tendencies didn’t make her weak, just different from Zanaya. That was a subtlety Zanaya had learned from her best friend. “Now, lift your sword so we can fix the error in your technique that allowed me to beat you.”

Their swords clashed, the vibration going straight to Zanaya’s teeth.

In truth, Zanaya didn’t have to do much to ensure Auri progressed through the ranks with her—her friend had the ability, just not Zanaya’s driving ambition. She was, however, loyal to the bone, and willing to tie her flag to her best friend’s.

“So you’ll never be alone,” Auri said to her one day, while Zanaya’s faithful hound, Balan—his smooth coat jet-black and his ears sharply pointed—walked alongside Zanaya. “So you’ll always have a lieutenant at your back who you can trust without hesitation.”

Zanaya’s chest ached. “I’m counting on that.”