Archangel's Resurrection (Guild Hunter #15)(28)

Now, she was dying in front of him.

Battle had stopped the moment the armies realized what was happening, and the world was silent when Sha-yi fell from the sky. They hadn’t been so high that she’d break apart . . . not that such a thing was an issue any longer.

Alexander fell with her, and the fighters below all pulled back to give both archangels space and privacy. She looked so fragile as she lay on the churned-up ground, her white wings now muddy and her limbs without power. And though Alexander had struck the heart blow that even now ate away at her, stealing the life of this Ancient who’d done so much good in her time, Sha-yi gripped the hand Alexander held out.

“Thank you, my young friend,” she whispered and though blood dripped out of her mouth, the rich brown of her eyes was clear for the first time since they’d begun to fight. “I waited too lo—” Releasing his hand, she arched her back, her mouth open in a silent scream.

The explosion of angelfire blinded him.

When he could finally see again, Archangel Sha-yi was gone, millennia of life, of memories, of wisdom obliterated. Nothing was left in the aftermath but a scar on the landscape that would take decades to fade.

Shaken and wounded in a way he couldn’t have predicted, Alexander went through the necessary motions . . . but he broke when Zanaya walked through the doors of his private suite halfway through the night.

Her hair was drenched in sweat, her face hot, bearing witness to the grueling pace she’d set herself. “Alexander, I heard.” She opened up her arms.

He went into them, into the only pair of arms in the world he’d allow to hold him as he mourned the loss of a magnificent life that shouldn’t have ended in pain and madness. It didn’t matter that Zanaya was so much smaller; she wrapped him up in her wings and in her fierceness, and he could just be.



* * *



*

Zanaya watched over her lover as he dozed restlessly. She’d known Sha-yi through Alexander’s words about her, could understand the depth of his grief. The other archangel had been a great help to Alexander when he first ascended, and in the end, he’d been forced to end her immortal existence. It would be akin to Zanaya having to kill Mivoniel.

That Sha-yi had thanked him for it might one day ameliorate his pain, but not today.

“Shh.” She brushed her fingers through his hair, soothing him as he frowned and turned. “Sleep, lover. Rest.”

While he did eventually fall into a deeper rest, she found herself wide awake and afraid in a way she’d never before been. Because Alexander was an archangel, too. As full to the brim with power as Sha-yi had been. Could it happen to him? A madness insidious and total?

Narrowing her eyes, she made a promise to herself that she wouldn’t permit him to ignore the need to Sleep. He’d told her that Sha-yi herself had been trying to say that she’d stayed awake too long. Zanaya would do everything in her power to ensure that Alexander never ended up losing himself to the insanity that had turned Sha-yi from archangel to maddened monster.

“Alexander-mine,” she murmured, brushing her lips over his. “You are the heart of my entire world.” Words she’d not say to him while he was conscious—perhaps she’d get to that point one day, but she couldn’t yet see that future.

Especially not when she was still stinging from the news that Rzia and Camio had reconciled. She’d never seen her mother so giddy and happy, a child who’d found her favorite toy after losing it for centuries upon centuries. Her father, meanwhile, was all grace and warmth, the smug candle flame around which her mother hovered.

No matter her feelings on her parents’ relationship, she hadn’t said a word. There were some mistakes you couldn’t stop people from making. But to Sleep or not? Yes, that was one mistake she’d ensure Alexander didn’t make. Her lover wouldn’t die because he’d been too arrogant to rest when it was his time.





16


“We are nine now,” Alexander said to Caliane when they met in the Refuge not long after Sha-yi’s death.

“I fear it may be eight,” she murmured. “Dragan has vanished as of the past half moon, and I’m certain he has gone into Sleep. Else he’d never be this quiet.”

She was proven right on the next full moon, when Archangel Dragan’s second informed the Cadre that his sire had chosen to Sleep.

So it was that the Cadre was eight for one thousand years until an ascension no one saw coming.

Zanaya was her archangel’s right hand by then, her most senior general in name, and her second in truth. Inj’ra’s long-serving second and cherished friend had perished in a personal fight that had gone too far.

And while Alexander’s Zani might be ruthless, she was also loyal; she’d liked and respected the lost second, so the fact she effectively held his position was a thing of circumstance rather than a conscious effort on her part. That she didn’t bear the title of second was a conscious action, a way to honor the lost friend who Inj’ra would mourn for eternity. For as Avelina had been by Alexander’s side since before his ascension, so had Inj’ra’s second.

Today, he stroked his hand over the sleek curve of Zanaya’s flank, the beauty of her skin unlike any other in angelkind. Even the most stunning vampire couldn’t compare to her; she was unique, a dark flame so hot it incinerated. She might be small in stature, but she made up for it in the violence of her will and the fury of her temper.