Archangel's Sun (Guild Hunter #13)(44)

She bared her teeth at him, feeling . . . free. For so many years, she’d been caged. Caged inside her parents’ rules, then her own fears, then her broken mind. For the first time since she’d begun to store memories, she didn’t—what was that statement she’d heard one of the young townswomen say?—yes, that was it: she did not give a shit. And it was glorious.

“Men who call strong women shrews,” she said in a tone formed of sugar syrup and molasses, “are often men scared of a woman’s strength.”

“My mother,” he enunciated with care, “was first general to an archangel. I was born with a respect for female strength.”

“If you say so.” She brushed imaginary dirt off her arms, then walked around to the other side of the bonfire. “I’ll keep an eye on this side.”

Through the curtain of flame, he was a big and powerful and infuriated man standing with his hands on his hips and his chest bare. His eyes pinned her to the spot as the fire began to die down—or they made the attempt in any case, his eyebrows drawn together in a glower.

Sharine smiled at him. She felt zero fear. All her life, she’d been afraid in one way or the other, but it was as if she’d gone through a fire of her own and come out reborn. On the other hand, the latter wasn’t the best choice of word, especially with her skin hot from the heat of a fire built to turn the reborn to ash.

Shedding of the skin, remaking, resurrection, they were all just words. What mattered was that she was becoming someone new, a woman she’d always had the potential to be—an angel of whom her son could be proud . . . and an angel who could look herself in the mirror and smile.





22


    I’m fine, Tito. But thank you, little brother, for offering to decapitate Aegaeon for me. I wouldn’t give that worm the satisfaction of beating my brother to a pulp. You’re a strong angel, but he is an Ancient and an archangel. No, Aegaeon doesn’t deserve the pain of someone of your worth.

—Charo, daughter of First General Avelina, to Titus, son of First General Avelina





23


Titus knew he should keep his distance from Sharine as they flew on after the fire was dead. She was clearly in a mood. But he was so fascinated by the contradictions of her and so aware of the gift he’d been given to safeguard that he stayed within an easy distance.

Not that she looked anything like the mythical Hummingbird. She looked like the straight-talking and confident angel who’d embedded a blade in a reborn eye. Her pants had mostly escaped being splattered with gore, but they weren’t pristine by any measure. But pants were far enough from the nose that you could mostly ignore the stench. Her boots, she’d managed to clean using the grass; he’d done the same.

He refused to focus on her form-fitting white top, though he’d seen many of his warriors fighting in far less. Not so many centuries earlier, the vast majority of them had fought with nothing but paint on their chests and fury in their hearts. It wasn’t the lack of coverage that bothered him, but the lack of coverage on Sharine.

The great artist Titus had been sent by the Cadre wasn’t meant to be a flesh-and-blood woman who had excellent aim with a blade, boasted breasts that plumped out slightly over the scooped neckline of her top and skin that glimmered with sweat. Neither was she supposed to have a curved-in waist and hips that flared just enough to have a man considering how they’d fit into his palms.

And it wasn’t her body alone that was giving him trouble.

She’d pulled her hair back into a tail that caught the light with every shift in the wind, every angling of her wings. The silken black tipped with natural gold—a gold that glittered here and there elsewhere in the strands—was astonishingly beautiful. As beautiful as her wings. No one in the world looked like Sharine. But it wasn’t a question of beauty, either. Many, many angels were strikingly beautiful, as were an equal number of vampires.

Plenty of women in his court could stand next to Sharine and not be deemed her lesser in beauty. Yet Sharine would shine regardless. She had in her a radiant light that drew others—the same rare light existed in her son. And Titus had a soft spot for young Illium. The youth was a little reckless at times, but Titus hadn’t exactly been less so as a youth.

The most important thing was that as Titus had been loyal to Alexander, Illium was loyal to Raphael. He was also a warrior who fought with fierce intelligence, the reason why he was a squadron commander. And wherever he went, the blue-winged angel drew others, the flame inside him a bright, beautiful thing.

That flame had come from his mother. It certainly hadn’t come from Aegaeon.

He growled deep in his chest, wanting to smash that hind end of an ass into paste, but sadly, his hands were tied on that score. Firstly, Charo would never forgive him for bringing up the pain of the babe she’d lost in the aftermath of Aegaeon’s heartless rejection, and secondly, the world needed every archangel it could get.

It was the latter thought that reminded him of a question he’d intended to ask—or perhaps he just wanted an excuse to talk to Sharine. “Have you had any word from Suyin’s court beyond the reports she herself has made to the Cadre?” The newest archangel in the world had been scrupulous in making those reports, conscious that everyone else needed to know how she was dealing with the devastation in her territory.