Archangel's Resurrection (Guild Hunter #15)(80)

But she never had.

“You left me,” he said when they landed on an uninhabited island hours from the location of the cairn; its yellow-green grasses brushed his calves, the water that crashed to shore cold but holding no flecks of ice. “How could you leave me, Zani?” The wound inside him had never healed right; it had scarred and twisted and become stiff.

“Because I was old and tired, you stubborn fool!” Throwing up her hands, the passion of her a glory, she said, “You were old and tired, too, but you refused to come with me. I asked you over and over and you always had a reason to remain in the world!”

Alexander clenched his jaw. “I did have a reason. I stopped wars while you were Sleeping. I created an empire that stands to this day.”

“And how many wars did you start?” was the acerbic response. “Well?” She tapped her booted foot against the sandy soil beneath the grass.

Alexander glared at her, memories of a war he’d almost started at the forefront of his mind. “That’s not the point,” he said. “We had an agreement, you and I. We’d never leave the other to Sleep!”

Zanaya’s eyes flashed, then she shook her head. “No, Alexander. You made that pronouncement and expected me to fall in line.” She twisted up her lips. “You had a habit of doing that. Just because you had a few years on me.”

“A few—” His ability to speak devolving into wordless rage, he turned and strode to the other end of the windswept island, while the seabirds stared curiously with their bright black eyes.

Zanaya didn’t follow him.

When he returned, it was to find her seated on the beach of crushed shells, her wings spread in a glorious show behind her. “Look at us,” she muttered as he took a seat beside her.

Their wings overlapped.

An intimacy so taken for granted between them that even the worst anger had never torn it in two.

“What?” he said as he dug out a packet of dried fruits, nuts, and chocolate from a pocket in his pants, and passed it to her.

“I’ve been in the world less than a moon and we’re already fighting.” Opening the packet, she ate a small handful . . . and made a sound deep in her throat. “This is delicious! This world has many new wonders for me to explore, I see.”

He felt his lips curve; she’d always enjoyed trying different foods. “Zani, I love you.” A thing so true that it just was. “I’ve always loved you. I’ve never loved anyone else the way I love you. You’re part of my very breath.”

“You always did have a tongue as silver as your wings, lover,” Zanaya said, her eyes on the ocean. “Tell me about the woman who bore you a child.”

A stab in his heart, his eyes burning from a loss he wasn’t sure he’d ever accept.

Putting aside the snack he’d handed her, Zanaya touched her fingers to his cheek. “Alexander, you’re hurting.” Shock in her flared pupils. “I’m so sorry, lover. I didn’t know she had passed beyond the veil.”

He shook his head and took her hand in his, weaving their fingers together. “Jhansi is alive, though she Sleeps at this moment in time. She’s a gentle creature who has no familiarity with anger. She’s . . . like the summer air. Pleasant and tranquil.” He forced a smile. “We met one harvest festival, spent the night together. That was the extent of our relationship.

“She had heart wounds of her own that festival, and . . . I was . . . lost, tired.” His hand clenched on hers on the admission that his decision to stay awake while Zanaya Slept had begun to haunt him. “Jhansi and I, ours was a joining of circumstance and comfort. Neither one of us had any plans to meet again—until she came to me with news that she carried my child.”

He’d never doubted that the babe was his, even before Rohan came out looking like a carbon copy of Alexander but for his coloring, the majority of which he’d inherited from Jhansi. “She’s an honest and generous person. You’d like her, but her overall nature is on the far end of the spectrum from either of ours.” Jhansi was about as nonconfrontational as an angel could be.

“We never attempted to further our private relationship, but over the years, we became friends, for we were both very present in Rohan’s life. Jhansi was a good mother to our son, and I made sure she’ll never lack anything in her immortal life.” Jhansi had floated through immortality, not accumulating much. “But Rohan was more my boy than he was hers—we were alike in many ways and I loved nothing better than to spend time with him.”

Swallowing the knot in his throat, he said, “He was so smart and fearless, my son. Followed me all around the Refuge, and when he was old enough that I could take him to my territory, he couldn’t wait for night to fall so I would take him on flights.” Safe from the eyes of those who would see in Alexander’s child a vulnerability.

“He called me Papa as a child, Father as an adult, and we were friends once he was of an age where he no longer needed me to guide him—though he continued to come to me for advice on various matters. I’m proud of that. That my son respected me as a man as well as a father.”

His chest felt as if it was collapsing inward. “My Rohan is gone, Zani.” It came out rough, his throat raw. “Murdered by Lijuan because he refused to reveal my place of Sleep.” Because his son had known that place. Of course he had; Alexander would’ve never vanished without telling his cherished boy. “His beloved, Citrine, was also killed in the attack on their palace and all I know of her, I know from Xander.”