Archangel's Resurrection (Guild Hunter #15)(17)

He shrugged. “What’s the point of worrying about a future we can’t see, can’t know? Live the now, and deal with the rest later. Cassandra wouldn’t have gone insane if she could do that.”

“You’re right,” Caliane said, but her eyes were soft, hazy. “Yet I sometimes have the strange sensation of fate bearing down on me, the knowledge that there exists a future I could avoid if only I knew of it. It’s too bad Ojewo has vanished—we have no living seers any longer.”

Sighing, she shook her head. “Or perhaps all archangels are a touch mad.” A slight smile as she glanced up at him. “Could be you’ll be the one making such pronouncements soon.”

Scowling, Alexander shook his head. “I’m not going to ascend. I’m strong but clearly not the right person to be an archangel or I would’ve become Cadre by now. I plan to be the best general the world has ever seen.”

Callie continued to watch him. “You’ll never be satisfied with that.”

“It is what it is.” All the talk of ascension had spoken to his pride. And a prideful fighter was a dead fighter if he didn’t have the skills to back himself up. “Perhaps I can be your second after all. You still haven’t found a permanent second?”

“No. Though there are possibilities. But you and I?” She shook her head. “You have too much arrogance in you, Alex. We’d be in constant battle over who was right and who was wrong.”

He couldn’t argue with her on the point. “Then I hope that I don’t ever have to lead an army against your troops in battle, Callie.” Quiet words, quieter than Alexander ever spoke. “It would scar my heart.”

A touch of her fingers to his arm, a quick wince from them both as a result of the repulsion effect that didn’t seem to be fading even as it became clear he wasn’t destined to ascend. “I think you’re safe enough for now,” she said, rubbing her fingers on the fabric of her gown. “Whatever you said to Esphares, he seems to be trying to set himself up as my guide on the Cadre.”

“Sorry about that.” Alexander shrugged. “My fault.”

“No. He is the archangel who well knows the unspoken rules of the Cadre.” A steely-eyed look. “He has forgotten that all the members are equals. But no matter. I can learn from the old while never forgetting who I am.”

She tightened her lips. “You know he should be Sleeping? I won’t ask for your opinion on the point, for it would be akin to treason for you to agree with me, but we both know I speak the truth. Our kind may be immortal, but we’re not meant to take up limitless time and space.”

“We’re young,” Alexander said, simply to rile up his friend. “I wonder if we’ll feel the same when we’re doddery old Ancients.”

Callie shot him a sharp look . . . and then they were both laughing at the idea of being as old as Esphares and refusing to Sleep. Alexander knew it was highly unlikely he’d ever make it to such a grand old age. As a general for an archangel prone to war, he went into battle far more than most of his compatriots.

There would come a time when he’d find himself fighting against someone who was faster, stronger, better trained, and that would be the end of Alexander, first general of Archangel Esphares. He wouldn’t rail against a death in battle—he’d been born for battle and it made sense to him that he would one day die on a battlefield.

So it was that he continued to fly into battle after battle in the years that followed, while Esphares became increasingly more maddened—to the point that Alexander began to see that the rest of the Cadre was starting to come together against him, Esphares considered such a threat that they were willing to set aside their petty grievances against each other.

And on this subject, Callie couldn’t talk to him, because that would be to lure him into treason, and whatever you might say about Alexander, no one had ever called him disloyal. However, neither was he one to follow blindly. So it was that as the dark clouds of a war to end all wars swirled on the horizon, he went to speak to Esphares deep in the cave-like court he kept in the mountains covered in the constant snow and ice that were part of his territory.

Esphares no longer had a second now that Akhia-Solay had gone into Sleep, had come to treat Alexander as if he held that position. Today, he ranted and raved as he paced around a stone table on which he’d placed markers to show how he wanted the troops positioned for the latest fight.

Alexander waited until his sire had worn himself out of his first anger, then he took his life into his hands. “If we put troops here,” he murmured, pointing out one section, “your enemies can collapse the cliff onto them, killing or badly injuring thousands in a single strike.”

When Esphares remained silent, his eyes glittering, Alexander continued to slowly and methodically decimate his archangel’s “plan.”

Esphares’s wings began to glow, never a welcome sight. “Are you calling me stupid, young pup?” Fury turned his features into a caricature of the handsome angel he’d once been.

“No, sire. I’ve looked up to you for thousands of years. General Akhia-Solay was brilliant, but he couldn’t have won all he did without working side by side with an archangel as brilliant.” He held Esphares’s eyes, though it was a painful thing to hold a gaze brimming with archangelic power. “You would’ve never made a single one of these mistakes then.”