Archangel's Resurrection (Guild Hunter #15)(49)

Alexander hoped against hope that his son was right, but the closer they got to the icy heart of Osiris’s new home, the more his blood began to chill. His brother had chosen a place so remote that even angelkind rarely passed this way. It wasn’t on any of their usual flight paths, and even had it been, Osiris’s home was positioned in the shadow of a huge overhang. That overhang would protect it from the snow and any resulting avalanches, but it also provided a shield against flyers above.

For Raphael to find this . . . well, Caliane’s son had done her proud.

“The residence is smaller than I expected,” he said after the two of them landed silently in the falling snow.

Snowflakes catching on the midnight hue of his lashes, Raphael said, “To have room for a laboratory, it must continue underground. Makes sense in this environment.”

Alexander’s mind stirred, disgorging a long-forgotten conversation about Osiris’s need for a colder place to do his work. The stealth with which Osiris had abandoned just such a space in Alexander’s own territory was now fuel to the cold fire in his gut. Why set up in this desolate place when he’d already had safe access to an environment of constant ice and cold?

Alexander also didn’t like the idea of his brother hiding in the earth. That wasn’t the natural inclination of their kind. They belonged to the air and to the sky. But Osiris had chosen this remote and cold nothingness for a reason.

Dead things could be kept from rotting by such bitter cold.

Alexander’s stomach lurched, a chill nausea threatening to take hold. “Let’s go.” He strode ahead.

Raphael didn’t gainsay his right to be the one to confront Osiris.

Callie’s boy had manners at least.

When he went to push open the door, however, it proved locked. The nausea turned into scalding bile. Because what need did Osiris have to lock a door in this place so far from any other hint of civilization that it was a sprawl of white nothingness?

Unable to speak past the fear that had a stranglehold around his throat, he used a pulse of archangelic power to break the lock.

He expected heat when he walked through the open door, but the inside of the home proved as frigid as the outside. “This isn’t right.”

Angels were built to survive extreme cold, but that didn’t mean it was comfortable. He and Raphael were both dressed in heavy leathers, the insides lined to insulate against a landscape so painfully inhospitable.

Osiris had also lived in the tropics for so long because he didn’t enjoy colder climes. Alexander could still remember how his brother had groaned at the temperature when they’d been scouting a location for him to set up a laboratory in Alexander’s lands. Osiris’s dislike of snow and ice was also why he’d so rarely visited the Refuge after Alexander was no longer a child, far preferring that Alexander come to him and a place “where our nether regions won’t freeze off, brother-mine.”

His older brother’s laughter a ghostly echo in his head, he took in the icicles that dripped off the shelving across the way, the layer of fine ice that glittered in patches on the floor.

Having entered after him, Raphael crouched down to touch his finger to the ice. “It hasn’t set solidly.” Once back upright, he placed a booted foot on the ice and cracks spread outward, the thin shell fracturing to release a trickle of liquid. “This isn’t like the icicles—which I’m guessing formed out of trapped condensation. Water spilled here, began to freeze.”

Alexander pointed out a metal pitcher that lay overturned in the corner. “There.”

“There’s no other sign of trouble.” Raphael turned slowly around, taking in the entire space. “The books are still on the shelves, and look there—a plate of undisturbed food on the table from which the pitcher fell.”

“Knowing my brother, he was distracted by an experiment or a sudden thought.” Alexander’s nausea began to recede, to be replaced by a surge of amused affection. For this was just like Osiris. “He’s allowed the fire to go out, ignored the fallen pitcher in his rush to get to his lab.”

When he strode to the heavy iron oven and opened up the door, he saw a few embers, the heat the barest kiss on his skin. Nothing enough to hold back the atmosphere of this land of snow and ice so desolate that even angels gave it a wide berth.

“Osiris must have other means of heating his home.” Alexander shut the oven door. “This oven would barely make a dent.” That was when he spotted the explosion of pipes that emerged from the back of the oven and realized his error. “Water ducts,” he said. “They must run throughout this residence. The oven might be enough once the system is in stable operation.”

Raphael wasn’t listening to him; he was staring at a part of the far wall that appeared to have been damaged to reveal stone building blocks on the other side. As Alexander watched, Raphael put his hand on the stone, frowned.

“What is it, Rafe?” he said, falling back on the name he’d once called the boy—back when Nadiel was alive and Caliane in no danger of madness.

Back then, Raphael had been the cherished child of a beloved friend.

“I don’t know.” Lifting his hand from the stone, Raphael stared at it, then curled his fingers inward. “It disturbs me for some reason.”

Despite his increasing belief that Osiris was just being Osiris, Alexander didn’t disregard the young angel’s words; the boy might be arrogant but he was the son of two archangels, his blood formed of violent power.