Archangel's Resurrection (Guild Hunter #15)(4)

A place fetid and of death.

A place so terrible that Cassandra had interfered. She’d laid breadcrumbs of foresight that led to actions that led to other actions. Lijuan had woken Alexander because she thought he would wake, but it was the Archangel of Death who’d set that chain of motion into action.

So many painstakingly laid breadcrumbs, so many butterfly wings in the ether.

Because while Cassandra couldn’t change the future, she’d learned that she could influence it dependent on which of her visions she shared. Share that Lijuan would rule all the world and it would be a weight on the shoulders of all those who battled, stealing their will and their strength. Share that she’d seen a scorched and devastated landscape and it became a horror whispering on the back of the neck.

So she’d shared other things. Dark truths . . . but not the darkest.

And today, in her madness, she understood that she had altered the future. But only to an extent. Because in the end, it had come down to a mortal’s will to live and the force of an archangel’s love. That she couldn’t change, couldn’t manipulate. That was where her power ended.

But . . . perhaps it was enough. Perhaps she could live with seeing the future if she could alter it even a fraction.

A fading thought as she slipped deeper into rest.

Yet as she did so, she saw one final image that turned into a silent prophecy: Lovers fall and lovers rise. The river stops flowing. This time will be the end.





The Beginning





4


The boy was born with a cry loud enough to startle the neighbors. They were unused to such disturbance from the home of two scholars known for their calm ways and steady bearing. The scene inside that scholarly home of stone and wood and a reverence of knowledge was one of even more astonishment—and of love.

Neither Gzrel nor Cendrion had thought to have another child after many thousands of years without such a blessing. Why, their son Osiris was already a man of some two thousand years! But now here he was, this boy so fierce and with such strong lungs, his wings nothing but a whisper of translucence on his back.

Gzrel cradled him close to her tender breasts, her tears overflowing as she pressed a kiss to the roundness of his cheek, while Cendrion took their son’s tiny, fisted hand. “Alexander,” he murmured, for they had already decided that their child would be named after Gzrel’s mother, Alexandre, who was the reason that she and Cendrion had come together.

So shy Gzrel and Cendrion had been; they would’ve never made a move that might threaten the quiet friendship that sustained them both. But Alexandre had seen their love for each other, arranged it so that they would be stuck together during a fierce winter storm—enough time for each to see the longing and devotion of the other. Now here they were, thousands of years of love later, with a second living symbol of that love in their arms.

Osiris they’d named for Cendrion’s father, he who had passed through the veil beyond which immortals so rarely traveled. He’d fallen in battle, obliterated in the fire of an archangel’s wrath. So it was that Gzrel and Cendrion’s children, Osiris and Alexander, would carry pieces of their family’s history on both sides.

“He is fierce,” Cendrion said, his voice deep and the gray of his eyes soft and warm against the pale gold of his skin and the burnished brown of his hair. “I’m quite sure I didn’t yell so when I was born.” A stunned joy in his tone. “Did Osiris do the same, or were we just younger then?”

That joy, that shock at becoming parents again was still with them when Ojewo, who was said to be distant blood kin to Cassandra herself, came to visit Alexander some few days later. Gzrel wanted to hug her precious babe close, protect him from the seer’s strange sight and yet at the same time, she wanted to thrust him into the seer’s arms so that Ojewo could tell them what dangers the future held for their boy.

Gzrel was no warrior and neither was Cendrion. They’d eschewed the path of violence eons past, but violence wasn’t the only choice when it came to the troubles of life. They both had minds clever of thought. Surely if they knew of danger, they could find a way to protect Alexander from it?

Ojewo, with his air of youth despite his years, smiled as he entered their home, and that smile was so full of light that Gzrel handed over her child with a smile of her own, certain that Alexander would be safe in the arms of this handsome angel. So many sighed after him, whispering of the smoky green of his eyes and the deep brown of his skin, the slenderness of his build and the mystery of his smile.

Gzrel, in contrast, always wanted to mother him, though she knew that Ojewo had been an adult before she’d ever been a spark in her mother’s eye. Perhaps because he reminded her of a young Osiris, slender and slow to smile, but with eyes that lit up when he did.

“You carry a youthful heart,” she’d said to him once, bemused enough at how that was possible that she’d forgotten her natural reticence. “I’d always heard that seers are haunted by what they see, that it causes them to age before their time. I’m so happy this isn’t the case for you.”

She’d blushed in the immediate aftermath of her words, her hands flying to her face. “Oh, what has come over me? Forgive me for stepping where I have no right to go.”

Ojewo would’ve been right to be insulted by the personal comment, but he’d laughed a laugh warm and bold that embraced her until she could do nothing but smile. “Ah, Gzrel, you need not fear to say such to me—you have earned the right after your many kindnesses to others.”