Archangel's Sun (Guild Hunter #13)(17)

“I didn’t realize your city had so much glass and steel. It reminds me of my son’s home but for the lack of towers that scrape the sky.”

“Narja stands up against any of New York’s temptations,” he said, chest puffing up. “We boast far more green spaces for one, and as for the towers—that’s a consequence of being a border city. The higher the building, the bigger the target.” As a result, the city’s buildings were constructed to not provide easy sightlines to the enemy, as the roads were designed to be confusing to the eye from above.

Noticing the Hummingbird’s wing muscles had begun to droop, he subtly lowered his speed. “My only regret is that you do not see my city in its full glory.” He had physically helped build the citadel that was the center of it, had even dug a garden or two that would normally be brilliant with color.

“It’s a place with heart, that I can tell regardless.” Angling her body to take in another part of his city, she said, “Are you aware that your ability to move the earth has created massive cracks in the earth that continue to creep farther inward? At one village, I was told that the gorge approaching them has advanced by half a foot per day—such a speed has them scrambling to relocate.”

He scowled, for he didn’t like to think of mortals afraid and alone because of the outcome of an immortal war. It was brutal reality when archangels fought, but he’d never been at peace with such a consequence; his mother had taught him that the strong protected the weak.

“My scholars have been studying the advance and they tell me it should stop soon, as the energy in the earth runs out.” His Cascade power to cause earth tremors had helped him defeat his enemy, but as with all archangelic gifts to be born out of that unpredictable confluence of time and power, it had more than one facet.

He’d been uncertain that he retained the ability when the Cascade ended with a sudden finality, taking with it much of what it bestowed. In the end, it turned out that he could still affect the earth, but at a tenth of the capacity he’d possessed during the height of the Cascade. Given what he was hearing about the others in the Cadre and the powers with which they’d emerged from the Cascade, it was a fair enough trade-off. They’d all lost something and retained something.

“That is good news,” the Hummingbird said. “I’m glad you continue to give your scholars room to work. It must’ve been tempting to haul them into the battle against the reborn.”

He decided not to take insult, for there was a grain of truth in her supposition. “I have been Cadre long enough to have learned to think for the future. Well I know that my scholars’ greatest weapon is their collective brain and not their sword arms.

“All but for one—Ozias is a warrior-scholar and she is my spymaster, her task to gather intelligence about the state of the territory. But she is only one angel doing a mammoth task. I thank you for the information you’ve brought me.” Unexpected though it was from a woman known for her penchant of living in a dreamworld.

“You fight a difficult battle, Titus. I offer what assistance I can.”

Spotting the increasing dip in her wings, he chose against giving her an overview of the citadel. “We’ll land on the balcony outside your suite,” he said. “It’s near mine so you can access me at any time should you have any need.” That wasn’t quite true. He’d be out in the field more often than not. But it seemed like the sort of thing an archangel should at least say when the Hummingbird stayed in his home.

It wasn’t anything he’d ever before had to consider. With the entire gentle court sent to safety prior to the beginning of the war, he had no one soft and sweet left on his staff to handle such things. Elia, six-hundred-year-old vampire and foster mother—by choice—of the orphaned children who lived in Titus’s court, would’ve no doubt managed it all with smiling joy, Titus none the wiser of the work involved.

He wasn’t a complete dullard in such things, however—there was a reason he’d offered Elia a position as senior courtier. She might be kind of heart and prone to dressing in frothy fashions while putting enormous amounts of cosmetic colors on her face, but she also gave his steward a run for his money when it came to dealing with problematic or touchy guests.

However, his steward was currently using his sword arm against the reborn, and Elia was on an offshore island with her charges; he’d had to pull people from other duties to ready things for his guest.

The only positive?

Members of his household staff were so honored by the Hummingbird’s visit that they hadn’t minded pulling double shifts to pretty up a suite for her while not falling away from their usual duties—whether that be repairing weapons or feeding the troops or a million other critical tasks.

After landing on the balcony and ensuring the clearly exhausted Hummingbird got down safely, he pushed aside the gauzy curtains of the open doors—to see soft, curving feminine furniture and vases full of fresh flowers. Thanks be to the ingenuity of his people; he had absolutely no idea where they’d found those blooms.

“I hope this will suit,” he said modestly after they’d both stepped inside—but the modesty was for show; he was very conscious his people had done well and deserved all the praise she would bestow.

Expression tight, she looked around. “I didn’t expect you to go to this trouble.” A tone to her voice that, on any other woman, he would’ve described as an edge. But this was the Hummingbird. Perhaps she was displeased about some small element of the room.