Archangel's War (A Guild Hunter Novel)

by Nalini Singh

  Shifting, Elena took in the top of his wings. “No change up top.”

  “Show me your wings.”

  Stormfire erupted out of her back. She saw the midnight and dawn of herself but alive within it was his golden lightning. “I thought the blending only went one way.” He was one of the Cadre, while she’d been a baby immortal when she went into the chrysalis.

  “It appears not.” Not sounding worried in the least about that, he folded in his wings. “My mother has just asked if we intend to come inside or stand here all day.”

  Despite the constant changes happening to both of them, her shoulders shook at his impression of Caliane’s regal tones. “Behave.” Turning as one, they pushed through the doors . . . into moonlight.

  Elena’s breath caught.

  The living area had no opaque walls excepting the one that led deeper into Caliane’s suite. The rest of it—roof included—was glass. Vines crawled over the roof, thick enough to provide dappled shade in the daytime. Set out below the vines were white velvet sofas that featured curved legs; the seat cushions had buttons on them.

  “Come,” Caliane said, her face difficult to read. “I will take you to Nadiel.”

  Elena fell into step beside the Ancient, while Raphael took the rear. Caliane led her through another set of doors into a large bedroom. The lighting here was soft rather than harsh, curtains pulled over the windows. The bed was a four-poster made up in white-on-white sheets with the bed curtains a pale gold and the carpet underfoot a rich brown.

  “There.” Caliane shifted to face the wall behind them . . . the wall she would see when she woke each morning.

  Chest tight, Elena turned, too.

  The painter had caught Nadiel in an informal moment. He was shirtless, his legs covered in a warrior’s leathers, and his sword held across his thighs. A rag was crumpled in his right hand, and he was laughing, his eyes turned to someone just off to the left of the artist.

  Caliane, it must’ve been Caliane. There was a potent intimacy in his laugh, in his eyes. The artist had captured a moment between lovers, been talented enough to put that moment on canvas.

  “The Hummingbird,” she murmured, and it wasn’t a question. She knew only two angelic artists with gifts so incredible and Aodhan hadn’t yet been born when Nadiel died.

  “Yes.” Caliane’s voice held an age that pressed on Elena’s bones. “She dropped by for a visit, and as always with Sharine, she had her sketchpad with her. Nadiel was outside cleaning his weapons, and I was laughing with him about something or other, and Sharine was sitting there sketching and it was such a normal thing that we didn’t really notice. A year later, she gave me this.”

  It startled Elena to hear of the mysterious, haunted Hummingbird spoken of as just Sharine—a friend, a compatriot. But she was too fascinated by the portrait to follow that line of thought, to ask about the woman who was so very talented and so very broken.

  Raphael had told her once that while he had Caliane’s colors, he had Nadiel’s bones. She’d glimpsed that truth in the angelfire portraits in Lumia, now saw the totality of it: the shape of Nadiel’s face, the width of his shoulders, the height she could see even with Nadiel seated, it was a mirror of Raphael’s.

  Your father’s eyes were green. An astonishing green caught between emerald and aquamarine. So clear they were striking even caught in paint. She didn’t know why she’d never thought to ask about Nadiel’s eye color. Probably because Raphael’s father’s eyes had been pieces of angelfire in all the paintings she’d seen in Lumia.

  The man in this painting wasn’t burning from the inside out. He was tanned and muscled, his cheeks creased, and his wind-tumbled hair a lush brown that faded into gold at the tips. In his right earlobe flashed an amber earring and she knew it for Caliane’s mark.

  “He had such wicked laughter in his eyes.” Love was an ache in Caliane’s voice. “I knew him as a new member of the Cadre, but that was what first drew me to him as a man—his laughter. I heard it across a crowded marketplace and I had to know who it was that laughed with such open, unashamed happiness.”

  A glow suffused her face, her eyes luminous. “He had mischief in him, too. He made me remember the girl I’d once been, the woman beneath the archangel.” The next words she spoke were in a language Elena didn’t understand.

  When she glanced at Raphael, he shook his head. I do not know this tongue, hbeebti. It was one shared between my parents in their private moments and I have only a vague recollection of it in my memories.

  I don’t really need a translation, I guess. Piercing love had a flavor, a hidden song within. She really misses him.

  Their love is the one thing I never doubted. He’d grown up in the arms of that love. Even when they couldn’t be together, they would write letters, send each other small gifts, make comments many times a day about a thought they had to tell the other. The constant presence of that love had made it easier for Raphael to be apart from one parent during the periods when Caliane and Nadiel had to separate.

  For two archangels couldn’t coexist in the same territory for a long period without their energies leading to an inevitable conflict. That Nadiel and Caliane had managed it as much as they had was a testament to the agonizing depth of their love.

  Did you stay with both of them alternately?

  When I was a babe, I stayed with Caliane. But later, after I was grown enough to understand how things must be, I would go with my father at times, remain with my mother others. Old memories stirred awake at the corners of his mind. “Mother, do you remember the time I returned home with no hair?”

  Caliane’s sadness fractured in a waterfall of startled laughter. “Nadiel was so afraid of my wrath that he sent me buckets of flowers in the days before your arrival.” She still had her eyes on the portrait, but her next words were directed at Elena. “Our son had somehow gotten into a vat of tar. Nadiel managed to clean his skin and his wings but his beautiful hair was a lost cause.”

  Elena grinned and glanced at Raphael. “I’m trying to imagine you as a kid and failing, despite that baby portrait in the door.”

  “I can show you.” Caliane brought her hands together as if she were a young maid and not an Ancient; her smile was of pure delight. “I have portraits.”

  “Mother.”

  But both his mother and his consort were intent on ignoring him. Giving in to the inevitable, he trailed after them through another door. And into a room that had him groaning.

  It was a lovingly lit gallery.

  Of him.

  As a naked babe in his father’s arms.

  As an equally naked toddler caught climbing up the side of the house.

  As a boy—with pants at least—trying out his wings.

  As a fully dressed youth sitting beside his mother while she played the lyre.

  And more, so many more.

  “He would not sit still,” Caliane told Elena. “Sharine did most of these after managing a quick sketch while he was up to mischief.” She pointed at the painting with the lyre. “That one was the easiest. He liked to hear me sing and so he’d be quiet and in one place for that time.”

  “This is amazing.” Elena had a hand pressed to her chest. “Can I take photos?”

  “No.” Raphael glared at her. “Else I will contact your father and create a public gallery in the Tower of your childhood self.”

  A narrow-eyed look from his consort. “Fine. Be that way.” She turned her attention back to the paintings.

  Caliane held her wings with warrior strength, but her lips were soft and her face warm with affection as she told his consort the stories behind the paintings. Her memories were precise, detailed.

  “Why didn’t I ever know about this gallery?”

  Caliane laughed. “Ah, this is a thing for a mother. You were busy being a boy, a youth.”

  Raphael found himself
drawn to the single family portrait in the gallery: Nadiel stood with his arm around a young Raphael, while Caliane sat in front of them, but she was glancing back with a smile on her face, as if distracted by whatever the two of them had just said. Father and son were in the midst of a laugh Raphael could almost hear.

  “She has such hands, Sharine.” His mother came to stand beside him. “Did I tell you that I visited her? She has settled well into her new role in Morocco.” A touch on his forearm. “That is a good thing you did, Raphael.”

  “The Hummingbird was the best person for the task.” The Cadre had needed a neutral party to take over the running of Lumia and its surrounding village, and no one in angelkind had a bad word to say about the Hummingbird. “She is outside politics and alliances.”

  “But for her son,” Caliane reminded him.

  “Yes.” For Illium, the Hummingbird would do anything . . . but even Illium hadn’t been able to hold his mother fully to this world. The Hummingbird existed in one of her own; she was a broken instrument, a lovely shattered piece. Raphael had never seen so much of her work in one place—and in doing so, he mourned her all the more.

  The woman she’d been had understood life and love, understood what it was to be part of the world. Part of a family. But the family she’d painted with such tenderness was now as splintered as the Hummingbird’s mind.

  34

  While Elena’s stormfire wings continued to attract attention in the weeks after their return to New York, Raphael’s consort got off much easier than expected—the entire world was watching China. Not because anything had happened, but the opposite. Gadriel had reported a sudden and eerie calm among the residents, including vampires formerly on the verge of bloodlust.

  “Nothing I can put my finger on, but . . . my skin creeps.”

  Other commanders had reported much the same.

  That might not have been enough to keep the Cadre distracted had Michaela not caused short tempers three weeks later with her outwardly petulant refusal to attend any meetings of the Cadre, even via a screen.

  “The birth was a difficult one,” Keir murmured when Raphael and Elena called to check on her welfare. “I tell you this only because she has authorized it—but it must remain between you and Caliane.”

  “You have our word.” This was not a thing of games or manipulation.

  “The babe is strong, healthy,” Keir told them. “Michaela recovers with archangelic speed but even that is not instantaneous after a birth.” The healer’s ageless eyes held theirs. “She will not move to the Refuge. She is convinced her child will be safer within the walls of this stronghold.”

  Raphael saw no real cause for concern, not with Keir overseeing the newborn’s health as well as Michaela’s convalescence. “It’s unusual for a child to be raised outside the Refuge, but it’s not an unheard-of choice—I spent much of my time in either Nadiel’s or Caliane’s territories.”

  At first, his world had been confined to the safe spaces behind the walls of forts and citadels. To a small boy with wings he could barely control, it had been a vast play area full of secrets and challenges. He’d grown under the watch of honed warriors and highly educated courtiers who’d taught him the responsibilities that came with freedom. By the time he grew strong enough to fly over the wall for the first time, Nadiel had gifted him his first sword, and Caliane had taught him how to fire a bow.

  “I do not worry about the babe’s safety but its development.” Keir ran a hand through his hair in a rare restless gesture. “You attended the Refuge school for many a term, enough to make friends and to learn to be a child with other children. Jelena and Avi always took Tasha out of school at the same time Caliane did you, so the two of you could be playmates.”

  Such wild games he and Tasha had played. Two small sun-brown angels left to run riot across a vast court. I wish Tasha had not been so foolish as to attempt to come between us, he said to Elena. You would be most amused at the stories we could tell together.

  Give me a decade or two. Wings of storm and lightning brushed his in an electric caress. I might have calmed down by then and no longer want to fillet Ms. McHotpants.

  As he fought his smile, Keir said, “Nadiel was more lax in such matters, but his citadel was home to the mortal children of his youngest vampire soldiers. You were never isolated. I fear this babe will be brought up in a pretty prison.”

  “There is time yet.” Angelic babies developed very slowly; the child would need nothing but its mother for some time.

  “Yes, perhaps I am borrowing trouble without need.”

  After Keir signed off to go attend the infant, Raphael turned to his consort. “Would you like to fly? The skies are clear.” A welcome change after two heavily cloudy nights.

  “How about Cassandra’s site?”

  Raphael nodded. Squadrons of senior angels overflew the site several times a day on their way to or from other tasks, and sent through a report, but he wanted to put his own eyes on the location where Cassandra had disappeared with Favashi in her arms.

  No one else was around when they landed outside the fence that had once ringed a lava sinkhole. Today, when they walked to look through one of the windows in the fence, all they saw was a sheet of unbroken white.

  This early into December and Manhattan hadn’t yet seen any snow. But here, it crunched under their boots, a glittering carpet lit by starlight.

  A set of snowy wings drifted into view a second later, the owl coming to a graceful landing. Its mate landed moments afterward, and the two birds looked down, their gazes intent.

  “They miss her,” Elena murmured. “I can feel it the same way I can feel their minds, know they’re mine for the moment.” She pressed her hand to the glass. “I hope she’s found a semblance of peace.”

  The wind swirled around them, the snow rising. The owls took off in a silent burst, while Raphael and Elena stood in watchful quiet. Elena held her breath, not sure what she wanted. The last time Cassandra had risen, it had nearly meant the end of her world. Yet when it counted, the Ancient haunted by visions of the future had come through. She’d helped Elena—and she might’ve helped Favashi.

  But the wind calmed as swiftly as it had risen, leaving only flecks of snow stuck to Elena’s winter-weight leather jacket. “Nope, that wasn’t great for the blood pressure.”

  “A moment, hbeebti.” Stepping back so he wouldn’t buffet her, Raphael took flight. She watched as he swept over the former lava sinkhole from high above, the owls circling with him. See anything?

  Yes. Come.

  She rose to join him. Her heart tightened. Drawn in the snow was the body of a huge white owl, its wings spread wide. “She’s still partially awake.” Enough to know they had come to see her. Enough to reply. “Should we increase patrols?”

  “There is no need.” He nodded at the owls who’d dipped lower, closer to their mistress. “If there comes a day when her owls leave you, we will know.”

  “Yes.” The beautiful creatures were borrowed treasures, lent to her by an Ancient who had seen her birth millennia ago. “It’s not good that she’s still half awake, is it?”

  “We all agree that Lijuan is also partially awake, so the Cascade energies may be disrupting their Sleep.”

  Cold fingers on Elena’s spine. “Let’s hope they’re the only two Sleepers affected.”

  * * *

  • • •

  That hope was dashed two hours later, when Astaad convened an emergency session of the Cadre. Raphael had dressed quickly for the meeting, while Elena sat out of shot naked but for the blanket she’d wrapped around her body.

  The Cadre responded within a matter of two minutes—surprisingly enough, Michaela’s face was among them. Her razor-sharp beauty took center stage, but Raphael saw the lack of color under the skin, the slight puffiness around the eyes. If anyone else noticed, they’d put it down to having been woken out
of a sound sleep.

  The world had forgotten that Michaela had once been a mother; no one thought of her as maternal. He hoped for the sake of her babe that continued to hold true. Not everyone was a fan of the Archangel of Budapest and attacking her while she was weak could be a temptation.

  “I hope you have a good reason for this,” she muttered now, her words knife blades sinking into unguarded flesh. “Emergency calls are not to be made lightly.”

  Astaad had on a rumpled tunic, his hair windswept. “You must all see this.”

  His feed altered to show a turquoise blue ocean under a Pacific sun; that ocean was choppy, the water foamy. From the jerkiness of the image, one of Astaad’s people must be flying overhead with a recording and transmitting device. As they watched, the foaming of the water turned into a whirlpool so powerful that Raphael hoped the angel involved was high enough up not to get caught in its drag.

  “Astaad, my desert territory is currently suffering its twentieth ice storm.” Alexander pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose, his words clipped. “Such a phenomenon is not reason enough to—”

  “There!”

  Raphael’s entire body stopped moving. Because the water had just erupted up and outward, and Astaad had frozen the image.

  Archangel, am I seeing things or is the water spout in the shape of a face?

  His gut tensed as he recognized that face. You are not imagining it.

  Water god?

  Just an archangel of arrogance. Mortals have called him by many names over time, but he is said to prefer Aegaeon.

  You sound like you know him.

  He took a short sojourn from his Sleep during my lifetime. All of the Cadre here but for my mother would’ve met him at that time—and she is likely to have known him during another waking.

  “How long has this been going on?” Neha, her hair unbound and held back with jeweled clips, but her body clad in warrior’s leathers as she stood in a room with rough redstone walls.