Archangel's Resurrection (Guild Hunter #15)(9)

“Oh, who’s this?” the man said with a wide smile that made Alexander’s muscles tense. “Don’t tell me this is your babe?”

“Indeed. This is my son Alexander.” His mother’s voice wasn’t quite right, her cheer too bright, too hard. “Alexander, this is Phiron, who stands fourth to Archangel Rumaia.”

The man laughed, hearty and long. “Oh Gzrel, will you not tell your son that we were almost more once upon a time?” Pale blue eyes twinkling, the man looked at Alexander. “I pursued your mother as a youth, was mad for her. But she had eyes only for Cendrion.”

“It was an age ago,” his mother said. “We were barely grown.”

“Quite right!” Phiron agreed with a clap. “But you must let me say that you still speak as sweetly. The sound is delicate music to my ears.”

“It is an honor to meet you,” Alexander said before his mother felt forced to respond, because, quite unlike his parents, he already knew how to play political games, to say one thing and mean another.

He studied political maneuvering as assiduously as his mother studied rocks and the earth.

Phiron slapped him on the shoulder. “I hear you’re in warrior training,” he said, giving away the fact he knew more about their family than he’d initially let on. “Perhaps I’ll have time to give you a private lesson while I’m in the Refuge.” A grin. “And now I must go. But we’ll meet again, Gzrel.”

His mother held her tongue until they were home, then she turned and gripped at Alexander’s upper arms. “My son, do not accept any invitation to be alone with Phiron. If you can’t get out of it politely, take Callie with you—her father is Rumaia’s weapons-master and of equal standing to Phiron. She isn’t a child who Phiron will dare mistreat or bully into silence and so he’ll be forced to treat you well.”

Having never seen his mother so distraught, Alexander fought his churning stomach to say, “Ma, what is it? Did that man hurt you?” Fury was a sharp and jagged sun inside him.

A shake of her head, her eyes skating away. “No, but . . . He holds grudges, Phiron, and he doesn’t forgive rejection.” She gripped the pendant that hung in the hollow of her throat. “I’m being foolish—it’s been so long and we weren’t much more than children. Yet . . . He has broken with his lover of many years, and I—”

She gnawed at her lower lip. “He carries anger behind that false smile, Alexander. His beauty is but a mask for inner ugliness. And we exist in front of him, a family that loves. It might not seem much, but, when in a mood, Phiron never needed much to bathe in rage. I fear he’s fixated on us this time around. Promise me you’ll be careful.”

“I promise,” he said without hesitation, already hating Phiron for the panic he’d seeded in Gzrel. He was also no infant—he knew his mother had lied. Phiron had hurt her; she just didn’t want to tell Alexander.

His hand fisting, he fought the impulse to go to the warrior angel, pick a fight. That would be stupid. He’d lose. He was a boy and Phiron the fourth to an archangel. He’d flick Alexander off like an annoying fly.

Far better for Alexander to find another way to deal with the threat.

But Phiron struck far faster than any of them could’ve expected. Four days later, Alexander came home to find his father bloody and beaten on the floor of their home, his face not much more than pulp. Cendrion’s wing bones had been crushed, the bloody imprint of a boot yet on them, and he’d lost an eye, but he was crawling to the door.

A long streak of blood on the polished wood of the floor Alexander had swept that very morning bore silent witness to his horrible journey.

“Papa!” Alexander crashed to his knees beside his father. “Papa! I’ll get the healer!”

Cendrion grabbed at him with hands that were mangled, his draftsman’s fingers shattered and twisted and his wrist missing the bracelet of metal and amber that was a constant on his body. “No,” he gasped out past the blood. “Gzrel . . . Phiron . . . has . . . Gzrel.”

The panic in Alexander turned ice-cold. But he didn’t freeze. No, he used the ice to think, to strategize, to bridge the gap between the boy he was today and the man he intended to become. “I understand, Papa,” he said with chilly calm. “I know what to do.”

Fear burned in his father’s single remaining eye as he tried to speak again. “Rum—”

“I know,” Alexander interrupted, for his father needed to conserve his strength. “I won’t go to Archangel Rumaia.” Phiron might’ve crossed a line that should be unforgiveable, but he was Rumaia’s fourth and as Alexander had learned when they were forced to give up their home to another of her favorites, she was indulgent with her inner court; she was as likely to tell Gzrel it was an honor to be so wanted than to punish Phiron.

Moving quickly now that he had a plan, he found a blanket and put it over his father’s broken body with tender care. Broken but not fatally. An angel could survive even this nasty a beating. And he knew the choice his father would want him to make. So instead of going to the healer, he flew hard and fast to General Akhia-Solay, second to Archangel Esphares.

Esphares and Rumaia were mortal enemies. And General Akhia-Solay was Ephares’s most trusted confidant—the general was also one of the seconds that Alexander most admired. From all Alexander had observed and heard, Akhia-Solay was smart, was a large part of the reason why Esphares held so much territory.