Archangel's Resurrection (Guild Hunter #15)(63)

A questioning smile from his grandson.

“She is fierce and proud and an archangel of power in her own right.”

“But you’re mentioned there, too. And you were older. Aren’t you angry the histories have you so entwined?”

“No.” Then he’d eaten the food Xander had brought in, and shaken his head at his grandson when he would’ve spoken further of Zanaya.

The wound had been too fresh, Alexander’s pain bloodying him.

It was as fresh this day. Perhaps that was why he’d dreamed of swimming with her in a river of molten fire. She’d laughed and then dived, but when he’d tried to follow, he’d become lost, unable to find her even though he could hear the echo of her laughter rippling back to him.

Then a voice, old, so old.

And all at once, he remembered the words he’d heard just before he’d woken: Lovers fall and lovers rise. The river stops flowing. This time will be the end.

Alexander’s heart pounded as he stared around the room. But no aurora-eyed seer stood over him, whispering words of doom. No woman with hair of violet shimmered into existence in a dark corner.

Lovers fall and lovers rise. The river stops flowing. This time will be the end.

Hope clutched at him. Rise. The word rise. Surely, surely that meant there was hope?

The river stops flowing. This time will be the end.

His heart clenched into a fist, his breathing ragged. He refused to listen to those words, refused to countenance their meaning. He would focus only on the first part. He would look to a future where his Zani rose again.





The Last Ending





31


Zanaya came awake with a jerk, her mind blurry and her limbs feeling wrong. Gulping the cool air inside the fiery cocoon that embraced her, she fought to stay calm. Perhaps another person would’ve panicked, but Zanaya was not another person. She was the Queen of the Nile and she knew that there was no power in this world stronger than a member of the Cadre.

The Archangel of Death.

A chill echo, a cascade of memories of her last awakening. She’d been in Alexander’s territory then, safe in the soft black of her power far below the warm sands of his land. She’d kept to her decision and not told him that she intended to Sleep in his land. To do so would’ve been to tie a weight of love to his ankle, her Alexander stubborn and implacable, loyal and honorable.

She hadn’t wanted that for him, not when she hadn’t known how long she’d Sleep. And it was accepted fact that once an archangel entered the Sleep state, their power vanished from the world, no longer an impediment or provocation to any other member of the Cadre.

Else the world would be chaos, buffeted by competing winds of power.

Given their love, she’d known that Alexander might sense her had he dug down below the surface in the exact place in which she Slept, but otherwise, he’d never divine his Zani’s presence.

So she’d allowed herself the comfort of going to Sleep close to him.

He’d been Archangel of Persia for so long when she went to Sleep that she hadn’t been able to imagine any future world in which those lands didn’t belong to him—and when she woke, she’d been proven right, for there he was. She’d been able to taste him in her every breath, her lover full of arrogance and power and a brutal love for her.

But there’d been no time for love then.

She frowned, the threads of the past unraveling in fits and starts.

And she remembered that she hadn’t chosen to wake, though she’d been stirring, her body and mind rejuvenated from her long Sleep. She would have woken soon enough, but something had wrenched her prematurely out of her rest.

Her name is Lijuan.

Alexander had said that to her when she woke, while the sky turned a black akin to the grave, the air shredded by shrieks and screams.

There had been a war.

She’d risen because she’d needed to rise to help battle the Archangel of Death, she who would’ve spread her madness and her evil across the planet in a tide of death that was a facsimile of life.

Reborn.

That was what she’d called her shambling abominations.

Zanaya hissed out a breath hot with rage, still unable to comprehend how any archangel could permit themselves to fall so far into megalomaniacal madness that they’d believe they were doing a good thing in making the dead walk.

Blood in her fingertips now, her numb toes coming to life with stabbing pains.

Gritting her teeth, she rode the pain.

It hadn’t been like this on her last waking. She might’ve been wrenched out of it prematurely, but she’d come awake as she should: in complete and total control of herself, her body at full fighting capacity.

Today, she was . . . incapacitated.

Face hot, she searched in her cocoon . . . and her hand closed over Firelight. It wasn’t the same sword that Alexander had given her so long ago, but it was a worthy successor to the name. And it carried his amber. The two were always entwined—Firelight and Alexander’s amber. She never wore one without the other.

As she never carried Firelight when she and Alexander were broken.

With the fingers of her right hand wrapped around its carved hilt studded with opals—the gemstones that Xander—no, he was Alexander now—Xander the name of his grandson—and how astonishing that he had a grandson!