Archangel's Resurrection (Guild Hunter #15)(79)

That was the thing. She didn’t know what the compulsion wanted her to do.

Her face was ice by the time Alexander unearthed the entire cairn. The lightly falling snow wasn’t enough to snow it in again quickly, so Zanaya had plenty of time to walk around, check for any sign of stirring from within—or any indication that someone had tried to dig their way in from the outside.

Archangels usually emerged without any real effort, but Antonicus had been wounded beyond anything she’d ever seen or could imagine. However there was nothing. Not a whisper. Not a sigh. Not even a rock out of place.

Still not satisfied, she placed her palm against the cairn, ready to sense a weak pulse, a warmth. “It’s cold,” she said. “Ice.” As Antonicus’s body must’ve become, his organs frozen in stasis.

Lifting away her hand with a wince, she shook off the bite of cold, then checked the entire cairn once more. The snow had begun to create little drifts at the edges of the structure, no heat to melt it. “No sign of life.” She stepped back. “Antonicus Sleeps.”

“I agree.” Alexander, his expression grim, had checked with as much care as Zanaya. “But I’m glad we came to confirm. Lijuan was a strange and unknown power.”

Unsettled yet, Zanaya stared at the grave the snow was once more on the road to claiming. “I’ll fly back here at regular intervals.” She wouldn’t rest easy otherwise. “Until I’m satisfied that whatever I’m feeling is nothing but a resonance to fading hints of Lijuan’s power.”

Until she knew she hadn’t returned a monster.





41


“Will you stay then?” Alexander asked on the heels of her thoughts. “Is your Sleep complete?”

When she glanced at him, she saw nothing. It didn’t shock her. He’d become very good at donning his “Archangel in charge of the universe” face over the years of his rule. So had she. It was a useful face to possess.

Especially when hiding powerful emotions.

“You’re angry,” she said, for anger was often the thing that came between them.

Hands on his hips, he shrugged. “I was when you first went into Sleep, but it’s been eons. I got over it a long time ago.” He folded his arms. “I just want to know as a member of the Cadre.”

Harsh words—except he was never that fidgety when he was truly being cold. “Ah,” she said, a softness in her heart that was for him and him alone. Always had been, always would be; it was a truth as immutable as the sky and the earth. “I was already on the verge of waking when I was pulled out by the Cascade. A few more years, and I would’ve risen.”

“Is that a yes?” A harsh demand.

Irritation surged. “Yes,” she said, legs set hip-width apart and her own arms crossed over her chest. “What? You expected me to sit mooning for you while you consorted with concubines and maidens?”

Snorting, he said, “I don’t recall you going into seclusion from pleasures of the flesh.”

A cold wind whispering past that suddenly made her feel ridiculous. “As if you cared,” she muttered, throwing up her hands. “We were always loyal when we were together. Always. Not only for the start or the end, but throughout—and for decades afterward.”

Alexander seemed to struggle with her words. At last, he exhaled and thrust his hand through his hair. “You make me forget that I’m an Ancient, am considered a leader of men and angels.”

“Lover, we were never such things to each other.” Because Zanaya, too, had glories to her name. Not as many as Alexander—he was simply inclined to heroic and huge quests—but no one who knew the history of the Queen of the Nile could say that she hadn’t made her mark on the world.

She glanced over at the cairn, her gut yet chilled and uncertain. “Let us leave this place. It’s not where I want to be having this conversation.”

Alexander rose into the air . . . after her. He’d always done that. Always waited to make sure she was safely aloft before he took off himself. She’d been infuriated at him so many times over the centuries for what she saw as paternalistic hovering—but he wouldn’t budge. The clash had led to more than one break in the timeline of their love.

Now, she shook her head, sad for all the time they’d wasted. “We were foolish young angels, were we not?” What did it matter if he liked to make sure she was safe before he took off? Alexander had long stopped trying to get in her way when it came to dangerous tasks. This? It was a small vagary of his, and she had vagaries of her own.

“Speak for yourself,” he muttered over the winds, clearly still in the grip of some mood.

Rolling her eyes, she left him be. And they flew on in a silence taut with the tangled lines of their history . . . their broken love story.



* * *



*

Alexander knew he was acting as young as his grandson. He could look on from the outside and shake his head at his own behavior. But inside . . . inside he was as knotted up as the first time he and Zanaya had fought. Because his emotions for her had never faded. No matter how many years he’d loved her, or how many times they’d shattered.

It had taken him centuries after she went into Sleep to take another lover. Mortals—and even young angels—wouldn’t understand such devotion, but when you lived so very long, time ceased to have meaning. He’d waited all those years for her to wake up so they could finish their fight.