Archangel's Resurrection (Guild Hunter #15)(69)

He stroked every curve, kissed every inch of skin, loved her until his scent was on her and hers on him. But it wasn’t carnal. There was too much tenderness. Too much trust.

“I lost a quarter of my forces in the aftermath,” he told her as he leaned over her while she lay on her back on his wing. “My warriors were broken, wanted to retreat from the world. How could I blame them when I feel the same heart-sorrow?”

Her eyes shone, his Zani who’d always had a far gentler heart than most people realized.

“I wish the memories didn’t haunt me,” he confessed, “but it’s a fitting memorial that they do—because there are no graves for those children, no memorial but this.”

Wiping away a tear, Zanaya spoke in a husky voice. “You’ve grown wise in ten years.” She kissed his fingertips, then lifted his hand to trace the lines on it as she’d done when they’d first become lovers. “A mortal I once knew told me that our lives are written in these lines.”

“Did he read your palm?”

“Yes. He told me I’d have one great love in my lifetime.” A kiss pressed to his palm. “There are no splits at all in my love line.” Narrowing her eyes, she stared intently at his palm. “Just as well I spy no splits in yours either, General.”

When he shifted to kiss the rounded curves of her cheeks, she smiled, stroked his bare shoulders, and said, “You’re the most handsome man I’ve ever known.”

He felt his face go hot. He, Archangel Alexander, was blushing. It made her laugh and kiss his face all over, her hands so loving and tender on him that he let her. As he let her love him in turn, her hands exploring all the ridges and valleys of him, her lips a delicate benediction.

They fell asleep with her head on his shoulder, one of her hands on his heart, and one of her legs thrown over his. He closed his wing over her, holding her close, his Zani who’d returned to him and who he’d never again let go.

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

“Did you hear that?” Zanaya murmured, her voice drugged with rest.

Stroking his hand over her hair, Alexander said, “It’s nothing. A dream.” That was all he’d allow it to be, he thought as sleep sucked him under.

Our river will never stop flowing. Our love will never end. They were his final thoughts before he fell into the deep.

Above them, the tree branches rustled, the air a sigh.

Had Alexander been awake, he might’ve seen a ghostly white owl take to the air, its flight as silent as the heart of midnight.





34


Cassandra should’ve been at rest.

She’d done her duty by one of her charges. Zanaya was safe.

But the slipstreams screamed at her to look, to see!

Breath shallow and her owls restless, she battled not to hear the screams, battled not to see the spread of rot. Because that putrid death continued to dominate the slipstreams, the single other thread yet thin, fragile.

A breath. A stir.

She frowned, but her owls reassured her that her other Sleepers rested yet.

Astaad, Archangel of the Pacific Isles.

Favashi, Archangel of Persia for a heartbeat in eternity.

Michaela, Archangel of Budapest and Queen of Constantinople.

All lay silent and motionless, their lives caught in a knot in the slipstream that wouldn’t unravel, not while the rot spread its putrefaction. But the breath came again, small and stealthy and almost impossible to hear.

Another Sleeper was waking. A Sleeper Cassandra couldn’t quite see.

A Sleeper who wanted no one to see them, know them.





35


Alexander woke to Zanaya’s jerk.

Immediately vigilant, he found her staring across the span of his chest at what, to him, appeared to be a small wounded animal. His instinct was to assist the creature, but from the state of its fur—patches fallen off to reveal mottled green skin—and the smell that came off it, the poor being had a wound that had gone septic.

“It’s sick,” he said, stroking his hand down the rigid line of Zanaya’s spine. “I’ll give it mercy—there’s nothing else that can be done for it now.” He did so in a way that was both quick and painless.

Expression grim in the aftermath, Zanaya helped him bury the tormented creature, and they cleaned themselves in the icy waters of a nearby stream. It was only afterward, while they were seated on large rocks in a dawn-gray clearing some distance away that she said, “If I hadn’t seen that animal move, I’d have thought it dead. It had dirt and leaf debris clinging to it as if it crawled from where it had been buried by nature.”

Alexander knew where she was going with this, shook his head. “The animal bled red. Its blood was thick and clearly affected by infection, but it bled red. Lijuan’s creatures do not.”

A long stare before Zanaya exhaled. “I’m very glad to hear that, lover. The hurt creature must’ve been disoriented and in pain.” A fist rubbing her heart. “I see what you mean now, about seeing nightmares wherever I turn.”

“It’ll pass,” he promised her, and gave her a handful of berries he’d scavenged while she’d been considering the events of that morning.

A sudden smile. “You’ve picked me berries countless times over the eons, and I love it as much today as I did the first time.” Tilting up her head in a silent request for a kiss, she was a lovely whimsical creature with a core of molten steel.