Archangel's Resurrection (Guild Hunter #15)(73)

Alexander had never seen Raphael without that ring.

His heart twisted all over again as Suyin smiled at something Raphael had said. The newest of the Cadre and the youngest of the Cadre had become close after Raphael permitted one of his Seven to move to China for an entire year to help Suyin set up a court in her devastated territory.

That friendship had continued on over the years, and Alexander knew that it was to Raphael and Caliane that Suyin still looked when she needed to talk something over with a fellow member of the Cadre.

Was Caliane’s lover worthy of her? Zanaya asked, her voice soft. It’s strange to be in this world with those I know, and yet their lives have shifted in ways remarkable and unpredictable.

Alexander thought of his own sudden awakening, the heart-smashing news that Rohan was dead. Murdered. Yet his kind so rarely talked about the disorientation of waking in a world known but unknown.

He realized then that he’d never told Zanaya about Rohan and what had happened to his boy. He’d spoken only about Xander because speaking about Rohan broke his heart. She’d have assumed his son Slept or was in another territory. And he’d thought they had time enough to talk about everything. So much time.

He didn’t want to put it off again, but this wasn’t the place to share his memories of his precious boy, so he answered the question she’d asked. Nadiel was smart and good with his hands and he made her laugh, and he loved his son with wild fury. The other archangel’s descent into madness didn’t wipe out all that had gone before. She has never been sorry that she loved him.

Alexander had spoken but rarely to Callie on the subject of Nadiel, aware the loss and how it had come about had marked her for all eternity, but he had checked in on her in the aftermath. Before her own fall, her own descent into madness.

A good epitaph to a lost love. Zanaya’s eyes were soft with sorrow.

She made a hissing sound inside his head the next instant, and he knew without turning that Aegaeon, with his hair of blue-green, his wings of a darker green streaked by blue, and his insufferably bloated sense of self had entered the room.

“The Cadre is in session.” Caliane’s voice had them stopping their conversations and turning their entire attention to the meeting.





37


“It is good to see you again, Zanaya,” Caliane said on the heels of her pronouncement, her long black hair in a simple braid today and her gown a color-drenched blue that echoed her eyes, her wings a span of white but her skin kissed by the sun. Look at her thus and you’d take her for a maiden who’d never made acquaintance with a blade, far less won many a battle.

Of course, to do that, you’d have to ignore the low hum of her immense power.

“To have you here, whole and healed,” Callie continued, “it’s not a gift we dared hope for, much less so soon.”

Zanaya appreciated Caliane’s welcome. She and the other woman had never been friends, but they’d been distant allies of a sort. And they’d never had any hint of jealousy between them. Zanaya had taken one look at Alexander and Caliane together and seen what she had with Aureline. A rare and treasured friendship.

Never would she think to in any way fracture that.

“Healed except for these.” She pointed two fingers at her eyes. “They were gray when I woke. That bitch left a piece of herself in me, and I don’t like it in the least.”

Suyin stirred, her hand flexing as if she wished to go for the knife strapped to her thigh. “Did she leave any other traces? My aunt might have been a twisted power, but she was a power nonetheless.”

Zanaya had to fight from reaching for her sword. She had the feeling Suyin wasn’t quite in control of her reaction, shocked into it by the ghost of her murderous aunt. Zanaya couldn’t blame her—Zanaya’s own reaction to the new Archangel of China was less than controlled. She knew Suyin wasn’t her aunt, but the resemblance was uncanny.

Zanaya wondered if that made it easier or more difficult for Suyin to rule the territory that had once been Lijuan’s. “I don’t know,” she said aloud. “I hope to all hells that this is it, nothing but a superficial scar.” Even as she spoke, she felt an odd sensation in the back of her brain, a sense of stretching that she’d never before experienced.

As if she was reaching for something just beyond her sight.

Frowning inwardly, she shook it off. Had to be a remnant of her recent—and strange—Sleep.

“I think we all hope that,” Aegaeon muttered, the muscles of his arms bulging as he crossed them over the silver breastplate he wore over pants of a tight black. “If I never see any hint of Lijuan again, it’ll be far too soon.”

Too bad the same couldn’t be his fate, Zanaya thought with narrowed eyes. Alexander didn’t know that Aegaeon had tried to woo her at a time when the entire Cadre knew full well that she’d never be with any archangel but Alexander. She’d never told Alexander because, quite frankly, it’d have started a war and wasted a hell of a lot of lives.

Her lover was many things. But easily forgiving of such trespasses he wasn’t.

Zanaya, however, wasn’t going to be responsible for a war. She wasn’t some idiot beauty with an empty head who thought violence on her behalf the highest form of flattery. She didn’t need or want wars to be fought over her. She fought her own wars—and Aegaeon had learned very well that he should never ever put his hands on Zanaya. Or she’d literally cut one off.