Archangel's Resurrection (Guild Hunter #15)(2)

Fighting to get to her, he witnessed Zanaya’s wings droop, her body go limp.

But her mind, it was yet functional, yet held enough power for her to reach out to him along a pathway so old that it was part of his most elemental being: Xander . . . kill me. She must be sto—

Even had he the heart to follow her whispered plea, it was too late. Lijuan went noncorporeal again, dropping Zanaya from the sky. And his Zani’s wings were crumpled, her body dropping, akin to a broken bird’s. Zani! Zani!

Silence, nothing but silence from his quicksilver lover with her wicked tongue.

He caught her before she could hit the hard earth, his Zani, her spirit so bright and beautiful. Making a hard turn in midair, he arrowed his way toward the Tower infirmary. “Hold on, Zani. Hold on!” It was an order, but she was beyond hearing him.

Her body was a whisper, so light that it was as if she were made of air. Her skin had turned to paper, the flesh of her curves just gone and her skin cold, so cold. Cradling her as close as he could while not hurting her, he kept on talking to her, kept on trying to make her respond. But all he heard was a silence without end.

Then, and through all the hours that followed.

“You promised you’d speak to me after the battle,” he whispered to her after they’d vanquished the monster Lijuan had become, and he carried Zanaya’s broken body to Cassandra’s fire.

The seer of legend had promised to hold her safe.

Again, his Zani, who’d never hesitated to speak around him, said nothing. Her silence was a wound bigger than any other she could’ve inflicted on him.

He pressed a trembling kiss to her lips, and it tasted of the salt of his tears. “I can’t exist in a world where you do not.” He’d only lived this long because, no matter his anger at her, he knew that she Slept whole and unharmed. “Come back to me, my Zani.”

Silence.

Until the very moment when he forced himself to give her into Cassandra’s embrace. The seer’s lilac hair was licked by the gold and orange of the enormous, impossible fissure deep into the earth above which they hovered, and the seafoam auroras of her haunting—haunted—eyes were tender, her arms careful as she cradled Zanaya against the floating softness of her gown.

“You will care for her.” It came out an order.

Cassandra didn’t tell him he had no right to give her orders. Gaze lost in the terrible gift that drove her to a madness that had her clawing out her eyes when she could no longer stand it, she said, “Alexander, Archangel of Persia, Child of Gzrel and Cendrion, before you lie two paths.”

Her tone was eerie, echoing as if spoken in a great chamber.

Gut tight, Alexander clenched his fists. It took everything he had to keep his tone civil. “I don’t wish for blurry prophecies that could mean anything and need to be interpreted. I want to know if Zanaya will rise and when.”

Cassandra looked down at the body in her arms, a body she’d already wreathed in her flame. “This I do not know.” Her face was soft now, her voice softer. “But I know this, Alexander, this is an ending . . . but it isn’t the last ending. That, too, will come. Choose with care, for it will be the forever last.”

Then she was gone, taking with her his Zani with her brilliant spirit and warrior’s heart.

His own heart broke.

Always, no matter what, he’d known she would return. He’d been nursing a grudge against her for millennia, getting ready to have the fight that he was owed. He’d known she’d laugh at him for refusing to let it go, but then she’d have fought with him. After which, they’d have ended up in each other’s arms. That was how it was meant to have been; that was the future for which he had waited for so long.

This . . .

Pain a raw knot inside him, he didn’t know how he made it through the time that followed. He felt glued together by nothing but his own will when he finally returned to his territory. Once in his lands, he went not to his fort, but to an isolated ridge of mountains where no one could hear his heart splinter.

Wings flared out, he screamed out his grief and his rage till it brought him to his knees, but still the wound inside him continued to bleed. He’d survived the loss of Zanaya before, but then, it hadn’t been a true loss. He’d known that she would rise again, that her timeline would cross with his again.

He no longer had that surety.

His Zani might Sleep forevermore.

Alexander screamed again, and his pain turned the mountain molten, a river of gold and silver and rarer precious metals that crept down every crack and seam, where they’d freeze at some point, a sculpture of astonishing beauty carved out of Alexander’s grief.





3


Cassandra twisted and turned, unable to settle into rest.

The flames in which she slept were comfort, barriers against the slipstreams of time that showed her too much. But she could only fully escape those slipstreams when she was in a deep and true Sleep. And that she couldn’t fall into when she had within her care angels who were a sprawling weight of power and history.

Astaad, Michaela, Favashi, and Zanaya, they were all . . . caught in between.

But it wasn’t only these archangels that Cassandra watched. Another, too, Slept an unnatural Sleep far from her. Yet that being was connected to her by a thread tied to another, their blood bonded deep beneath the surface. Perhaps their pulses would beat in time . . . but not today.