Archangel's Resurrection (Guild Hunter #15)(36)

It was a lie, of course. Had she woken then, he would’ve fought with her—then kissed her. Because Zanaya was as much a part of him as his own beating heart. But she didn’t wake. Not that century. Not that millennium. And not in the millennia that followed.

His Zani Slept through age after age after age.





Cascade





19


Zanaya knew there was something wrong with this waking. An archangel’s waking should be self-mandated, but this felt outside herself. As if a huge hand had come down through the earth and wrenched her out of her well-earned rest.

She hadn’t made her decision to Sleep in haste, had intended to stay in this suspended state for millennia upon millennia. But now here she was, being shaken awake by someone who clearly didn’t know that she was a most terrible beast in the mornings.

Perhaps it was Alexander. Impatient with her as he was often wont to be.

Another violent tug, that invisible hand viciously powerful. More powerful than any archangel.

Not Alexander then.

Not wanting to waste energy when she didn’t know anything of the enemy, she allowed the unknown power to wrench her from her rest. The sands of what had once been the territory of her beloved parted around her like golden water as she rose from the secret place she’d made beneath. A place only an archangel could make, and only an archangel could survive.

Her power stretched out as she woke, and she knew that the world was now a moonless night. That was how it’d been when she ascended, a lush ebony night filled with a thousand scents that mesmerized and haunted. It was said that mortals and immortals both had gone into eternity searching to once again scent the mysterious beauty of her ascension.

The finely woven and short length of cloth in which she’d gone to Sleep, the hues of it starlight and sparkle, hugged her with delicate grace as she rose. The fabric was as soft as a baby’s skin, and as fine. It covered her breasts and her torso, and only fell to her upper thighs, but what use did a Sleeping archangel have for anything more? She’d preferred to rest in beauty and softness—but for Firelight, of course.

Her beloved sword had lain beside her in her rest, but she slung it down the sheath along her spine as she rose. Her dress might be nothing but moonlight and stars, but beneath it was a softness of leather, a sheath and harness.

Her first breath of the desert air was colder than expected, the landscape around her glittering white rather than the golden sands through which she’d risen.

Her brow furrowed.

A stir in the air, a whisper of a familiar wingbeat.

Her heart sighed . . . and felt no surprise when he landed in front of her, an archangel of such classical beauty that the mortals had wanted to worship him as a god. Hair of gold and skin kissed by the sun, his eyes a startling silver and his wings the same, Alexander was the most beautiful man she’d ever known.

He was also as hard as stone, a honed warrior who’d shot down any attempts to worship him. “I am no god, Zani,” he’d said. “If such exalted beings exist, they are far more evolved than I.”

Arrogant the general might’ve been, but he’d also been earthy and honest.

“Xander,” she said, her voice lazy from Sleep and her language the one they’d spoken most often prior to her rest. “We meet again.” It felt inevitable that he should be here on her waking; their lifelines had been entwined for an eternity, had they not?

“That is my grandson’s name now.”

Delight in her breath, her eyes widening at the idea of such a thing. “You jest? You are a grandfather?” It was impossible to do anything but smile at the thought. “I have Slept long.”

“That is a matter of opinion.” A grumble.

Laughter bubbled out of her, his bad temper a familiar thing. “Oh, Alexander, do not say you are not happy to see me.” It was such temptation to play with him, to knock at that hard head. “I am crushed.”

Feeling stiff and in need of movement, she reached her arms toward the sky as the sun began to emerge from behind Zanaya’s endless night. Her bare toes dug into the snow, her wings stretching out to their maximum width before she closed them in and turned her eyes to the ground. “It did not snow in this desert when I went to Sleep.” Crouching down, she gathered a handful of the cold white. “Does my Nile yet flow, or is it ice?”

“It’s begun to ice over,” was the most unexpected response. “We are in a Cascade. You are the only Ancient I know who has woken with such suddenness, but there are signs Aegaeon is also stirring. Caliane woke before I did.”

Smile wiped away, all playfulness erased, Zanaya rose to her full height. Once, lifetimes ago, she’d been a girl who’d railed against her short stature, but she’d long left that child behind, was at home in her skin, in her curves. Curves this very man had stroked with a possessive hand so many times that his touch was embedded in her flesh.

But those were pleasures not for a Cascade, those unpredictable points in time where archangelic powers turned vicious in their strength—and madness was only a heartbeat away. The pressure of a Cascade was an intense vise that had fostered many a war. “I will Sleep,” she said at once, for too many archangels awake would equal catastrophe. At least this explained what had wrenched her from her Sleep. A Cascade respected no one, least of all the Cadre.