Archangel's Sun (Guild Hunter #13)(51)

He murmured for her to sleep again at one point. “Your body needs it after your earlier long flight.”

Discomfort at how good it felt being cradled in his arms made her want to argue, but she knew that was foolishness. Closing her eyes, she pressed her cheek against the steady drumbeat of his heart, and slept.

They flew on.

Night fell again, the stars shattered diamonds in the sky.

It was as the night was dawning into dark gray that she pointed to a smudge in the distance, darkness against darkness. “There it is, the place where I saw the mummified hand.”

Titus didn’t land in the center of the settlement as she’d done, but on the easternmost edge. “Dawn will come in the next two hours. I think it’s better if we wait to examine your findings in the light of the sun.”

Sharine had no wish to remain so long in this eerie, lifeless place, but she couldn’t disagree with him. Nodding, she reached back to lightly manipulate one of her shoulders. Though Titus had carried her with care, being in the same position for so long had led again to a predictable stiffness.

“I intend to walk the village border,” he said in what probably passed as a quiet tone to him, and that she found comforting.

Titus’s voice was an outward manifestation of his honesty.

“A walk would also help ease your muscles.”

She froze, unaware till then that he’d been watching her. It took conscious effort to keep her expression neutral and fall in step with his bigger, stronger form. Titus, in turn, maintained a scrupulous distance between them as they walked, not allowing his wing to brush against hers.

Both of them kept their eyes on their surroundings.

With the sky already graying at the edges, it was no longer pitch-black and so it was easy to see the signs of disturbance when they turned the corner—it was as if people had fought a desperate battle against an attacking force.

Titus crouched down to examine one particular set of prints. “I’ll have to look at this more fully in the daylight.”

“Wait.” Bringing out the phone device, she pressed the symbol Illium had shown her would bring light. It shot a glow, bright and sharp, onto the tracks. Pleased with herself, she said, “You really should get one of these. It’s quite clever—I can see why my boy loves it so.”

Titus’s response was muted, his focus elsewhere. “Could you move it so that the light falls on this point?” He indicated the relevant area with one hand.

Attention caught, she did as he’d asked. The beam of light hit a mess of dirt and grass that looked to have calcified around what might’ve been blood or other bodily fluids. “What do you see?” While Sharine could pinpoint the minute differences in a work of art that spoke the language of the artist’s brushstrokes, she didn’t know how to read the earth.

Titus brushed his fingers over the section. “It’s difficult to tell after all this time, but I’m near certain these were made by wings dragging on the ground.”

Sharine came closer, still saw only a bare glimmer of what was clear to him. “An angel who saw the reborn swarming the village and landed to help?”

“It’s possible.” His broad shoulders shifted as he angled himself to check another area. “The reborn could’ve ripped a young angel apart.” Expression dark as he rose, he said, “You should preserve the energy of the device. We may need it to examine further such areas.”

He was proven right. They stopped four more times during their slow walk, while the sky lightened from the east and the world became a kind of smudged gray that reminded her of fog in the mountains of the Refuge. She knew it would brighten until the sky turned a dazzling blue, the light so bright it hurt to look at, the heat intense enough to cut, but for now, the air remained cool, crisp.

“I thought I’d miss the cool summer green and icy winter white of the Refuge,” she found herself saying. “But Lumia feels like home, as does this land.”

“Perhaps it’s because you’re a different woman from the one who lived in the Refuge.” She was still chewing over the perceptive statement when he said, “Why did you stay so long there? Why not move with Illium to New York?”

Sharine had asked herself that same question, had no real answer. “I told myself I stayed to keep vigil over Raan’s grave, that I had to do it so people would remember him, my Raan.”

A smile that held no joy. “But I’d long stopped such visits by the time I met Aegaeon, going only once a year on the anniversary of his death. Difficult as it is to accept, I think I stayed because it was safe, with defined parameters. A cowardice on my part.”

“You judge yourself harshly.” Titus’s dark eyes landed on her, the contact reverberating through her entire self. “Even a wounded boar will retreat to lick its wounds.”

Before she could respond, he spotted more evidence of an angel having been present during the fighting. During because the imprint of dragging wings had been baked into the soil by the sun, along with the blood and other fluids. Then Sharine saw a hint of . . . “It’s a feather,” she whispered, pointing out the small discolored filaments stuck in the dried mud.

Spine stiff and voice grim, Titus said, “All of these imprints appear to have been made at the same time. They overlap and interlock with one another, as happens when we grapple in battle and our wings drop.”