Archangel's Sun (Guild Hunter #13)(28)

Sharine didn’t ask how a vampire, a being whose system couldn’t process anything but small quantities of food, had ended up cook to an archangel, just smiled at him. “Yes, you and your people provide the fuel for this great engine.”

He was beaming when she left.

Once back in her room, she put the bars in her little pack, then stood there for a second and for the first time, thought of what she’d done with the burrow, how she’d exposed it with her power. Her hand tingled. Looking down, she saw a shadow of the champagne energy that had erupted from her.

It stirred deep within her, so potent that it stole her breath, but still only half-awake. An energy left unused so very long that it had grown darker and denser with each passing century.

Of what was she capable? It had been an eon since she’d allowed herself free rein. First, she’d throttled her power in a vain effort to hold on to her parents, then it had fallen by the wayside of her art but for the few occasions she’d been forced to use it, as on that long-ago battlefield. Then she’d . . . forgotten it.

A youngling like Obren wouldn’t understand how a person could forget a central element of their nature, but while angelic memory was in many ways infinite, that didn’t mean you could always access what had been stored away so very long ago. An angel as old as Sharine, especially one whose mind had carried fractures for so long, could’ve forgotten many lives, many pieces of her existence.

The realization haunted her even as she stepped out to meet Titus for their journey to the abandoned settlement.

Responsibility lay a heavy cloak over his shoulders.

He didn’t speak as they took off, and neither did she, her mind busy with myriad flashes of memory as she attempted to pinpoint the moment when she’d forgotten the power that lived in her veins.

The knowledge had been lost long before she bore Illium, her babe who’d grown into a dangerously powerful man. And she’d never known it with Aegaeon, either. But the time between her childhood and before that critical point in her life was an eternity that spilled out to the horizon.

Head aching from the futility of it, she finally stopped tugging at the memory threads. That could wait. Right now, she had to watch Titus’s back, ensure he didn’t get taken unawares by anything. He was flying to her left and slightly ahead, his wings powerful, while she rode the draft created in his wake.

Oh.

He was doing it on purpose. The man might be a blockhead who thought she’d collapse at a loud voice, but he was also an honorable and clever warrior. That was one of the few facts she knew about him. All her information on Titus came from comments made by those who served at Lumia, and a few passing words from Illium.

He was beloved of his people.

He was beloved of women.

He was a man of honor and truth.

He was a warrior who showed no mercy against evil.

He wasn’t a scholar and his court wasn’t a scholarly one—but Sharine no longer took that particular tidbit as fact. Not after hearing him speak of warrior-scholars, and, on her return from the kitchens, glimpsing a number of people working in a great library.

Brows furrowed and shoulders bowed, the scholars had looked as tired as the warriors and household staff. No doubt, they’d been set to the task of seeing if there was another, faster way to stop the reborn.

Last but not least was the information that though Titus enjoyed women—tall and short, slender and voluptuous, pale-skinned or dark—he’d never come close to taking a consort.

The latter seemed to be a point of pride among his people, as if Titus gadding about like a fly laying its eggs on every possible surface was the epitome of masculinity. Sharine snorted to herself. Her mother would’ve been horrified at the inelegant sound but her mother was long-gone, turned to dust.

Aegaeon’s people, too, had been proud of their archangel’s virility and inability to commit his heart. Looking back, she saw not virility but weakness. It didn’t take any great skill to go about taking lover after lover if one was an archangel. Power alone was an aphrodisiac.

Oh, Archangel Titus’s charm is just . . . Sigh.

She’d overheard similar words more than once from those who’d passed through Lumia. Each smitten woman had placed her hands on her heart and spoken of how easy it was to melt into his arms, how gorgeous he was when he smiled, and how attentive he was as a lover. Sharine hadn’t thought she was paying attention at the time but, thanks to her accursed selective memory, she now remembered every morsel.

From what she’d seen, however, Titus’s charm consisted of being an archangel. She’d spotted no sign of any other talent in how he dealt with women. He was a blunt hammer and everyone seemed ready to fall for it.

Really.

If that was all one needed to be considered charming, she had a castle on a cloud she could sell them.

She snorted again.



* * *



*

Titus glanced to the right and slightly back. He could’ve sworn the Hummingbird had just snorted, but surely not. She was too refined and delicate a creature to snort.

Though she was also examining him as if he were an insect under a slide. There was a reason he didn’t spend too much time with the scholars of his court—he respected them as he respected all who had skills he didn’t possess—but half the time, he felt as if their greatest wish was to take him apart in order to work out how he functioned.