Archangel's Sun (Guild Hunter #13)(24)

Understanding his terror, Sharine thought quickly. “Titus and the squadrons are busy dealing with the reborn here.” This nest appeared to be massive. “Let us fly back toward the city and see if we can spot possible danger. We can also alert the vampiric teams as well as the guards left at the barriers.”

Obren fell in with her, a young soldier used to orders from a senior.

Sharine was no scout, but she had an artist’s eye and that eye caught on the slightly misaligned barrier to the northeast. Flying there on heavy wings, she met a nonplussed angelic warrior in the sky. “My lady,” the other woman began, “is there anything I—”

“The reborn are burrowing under the earth.” Sharine pointed down. “And this barrier is no longer flush to the ground.”

The warrior, to her credit, went on immediate alert. “I’ll have to request assistance and move the guard line back until it arrives.” Lines flaring out from her eyes, her lips pressed tight. “We have no one at the border who can bore into the earth with their power and I don’t think the weapons at hand will do so.”

Do you remember Akhia-Solay?

Memory whispered, Sharine’s fingers curling inward. Power, grown old and potent and stiff from disuse, heated in her veins. Her palm glowed champagne-pale.

“Tell your ground troops to move away from the barrier.”

Mouth falling open, the warrior angel stared at Sharine’s hand—then quickly snapped into action, yelling at her people to evacuate the danger zone. Sharine waited until they were just far enough, then released the power.

The resulting hole was only a fraction of the size of Titus’s but it was enough to reveal the tunnel beneath. The border guard and her people arrowed back at the reborn within, all of them shooting the weapons that spouted flame.

Sharine, meanwhile, stared at her hand.

Obren was doing the same. “I didn’t know you could do that.” It came out a whisper. “I was told the Hummingbird was an artist.”

“I’d forgotten,” she murmured, her mind using the unraveling skeins of memory to travel right back to the genesis of Sharine.





12


Eons Past

Papa! Papa! Look what I can do.” Light shot from Sharine’s small fingers to crack one of the stones that littered the wildflower-strewn mountainside. “See!”

Black eyebrows drawing together over his eyes, her father crouched down to touch the rock. He drew back his finger with a hiss, the pad of it red. Face falling, Sharine pressed her lips gently to it. “I kiss it better,” she said, having learned that from the mother of her friend who lived the next mountain over.

Her father didn’t smile, just took her hands in his and stared at her palms. But there was nothing there now, no hint of the pretty fire. “It’s inside me,” she told him, bouncing on her feet. “All fizzy and hot.”

Her father wasn’t like her friend’s father, who laughed and took her for rides on his back. Sharine’s father was old in a way that made her bones ache. She was too young to know how to put that into words, but she felt the weight of his age like a looming black cloud on the horizon. She knew he loved her—she felt that, too—but it wasn’t the same as how other fathers loved their children.

“We need to fly home to your mother,” he said in his deep voice, his eyes the same sunlight shade as her own but with streaks of brown.

Sharine wanted to play longer on this mountainside, with the sun shining so bright that the wildflowers appeared to glow, but she knew there was no point in arguing or dragging her feet. The last time she’d tried, her father had left her alone until she “came to her senses” and flew home. It might be fun to play alone here, but then she’d miss him and mama and go home and they’d be disappointed with her behavior.

Sighing, she flew up. She couldn’t fly as smooth or as straight as her papa, but she could stay in the air the whole way home now. Before, she’d used to fall, or have to rest. But her wings had become stronger over the past year, though she was still puffed, with her heart going boom-boom, when she landed in the stone courtyard of their home.

“Mama!” she cried as she ran inside, excited to share her new trick.

“Sharine, sweetheart, how often have I told you not to run?” Mama’s words were mild, the smile she sent Sharine’s way kind . . . and tired. Sharine’s mother was always tired. It was just the way she was—Sharine had no memory of a time when her mother wasn’t on the edge of exhaustion.

“Sorry,” she said with a smile and slowed down. “I showed Papa my fire. Can I have some food?”

Her mother’s sky-blue gaze went to her father, her golden hair rippling and the light purple of her wings restless, but they didn’t speak until after Sharine’d had her snack and was outside. But she was bad and she tiptoed back to near the window so she could listen. She knew she shouldn’t, that it was bad to listen in on other people, but no one ever had interesting conversations around her and she wasn’t a baby anymore.

“Her fire?” Mama murmured in her husky-soft voice.

“Yes.” Papa’s deeper tones. “She’s showing signs of an offensive ability. It may be that our daughter is destined to be a warrior.”

“I can’t believe it, not with how she loses herself in her art.” Sharine’s mother sounded as if she was smiling, and that was nice. “It’s apt to be a remnant from my mother. She served Qin until she decided to Sleep.”