by Nalini Singh
She looked at him for a long moment before inclining her head. “I trust your judgment.” In her hands were several thick notebooks. “Can you get a box from the external room?”
He made her come with him, not wanting the building to come down on top of her while he was away. After returning with the box, they quickly filled it with all of Charisemnon’s notes that they could find, then Sharine hefted it up in arms that trembled, but held. He, in turn, wrapped the reborn angel in multiple blankets so that no one would know it was an angel he held, then followed Sharine out of the bunker.
He’d send an excavation team here once the shakes had stopped and it was safe, but for now, this would have to be enough.
Ozias took the box from Sharine the instant they stepped out, her eyes narrowed as she observed Titus’s burden. But she didn’t ask any questions, her faith in Titus overwhelming her shock. “Back to Charisemnon’s border court?”
Titus nodded. He wasn’t about to carry this infection into his own court.
“Wait,” Sharine said. “May I have that?” She was pointing at the water flask his spymaster had strapped to one side of her thigh.
When Ozias, her hands full of the box, nodded, Sharine reached for it. Opening the flask . . . she began to pour the cool, clear water over Titus’s wounds. He could tell the scratches were already healing, and he felt no sense of sickness, but he let her do what she needed—with the blood washed away, she’d be able to see the healing edges for herself.
“It’s itching,” he murmured, his gaze on her downbent head, and his heart . . . soft. “You know what that means.”
A sharp, tight nod. “Good.” Closing the lid on the empty flask, she held on to it as the three of them took off.
She flew right next to him while Ozias went a little ahead, and they spoke as they flew. “She looks to be either at term or very near it.”
“You must advise me on this. Do we need a midwife?” He couldn’t believe he was asking such a thing, not when what was growing inside this dead creature brought to shambling life was apt to be a thing of horror. “Or can I open her womb after ending her life, and retrieve whatever germinates within?”
Sharine’s face went white, her bones sharp against her skin as she looked at the reborn angel in his arms.
“Think of your people,” he said gently. “Would any one of them wish to be in this state? Would they want for you to prolong their torture?” That was when he felt a movement against his chest, where the reborn angel’s stomach was pressed.
A rippling spasm.
He’d never been in such close contact with a woman about to have a child, and the ripple felt too big and strong, but he was old enough to know what was happening. “The decision’s been made—she’s having contractions.”
“I can act as midwife.” It wouldn’t be the first time Sharine had delivered a child; with age came many experiences, and she remembered acting as an emergency midwife to another angel well enough to do this. “It’s probably for the best if we don’t bring anyone else into it. We don’t know what either mother or . . . child, if it is a child, carry in their blood and other bodily fluids.”
For better or worse, Sharine and Titus had both already been exposed. Ozias hadn’t come in actual contact with the victim, nor had she spent time in an enclosed space with her. Sharine, in contrast, had scratched her hand while inside that room. Nothing but a minor scrape that was already all but healed, but still, a significant exposure.
She went to say something to Titus on that point, but went silent when her gaze fell on him. He was staring at the reborn angel in his arms, a twisted pain in his features.
“I recognize her from my last visit to the Refuge,” he said roughly. “Two hundred years old at the most. Barely out of training.”
So young. Sharine’s heart broke. A child this young shouldn’t be with child herself; it was beyond rare for such a young angel to fall pregnant. She’d also most likely have parents who were yet awake. Their world would shatter at this terrible loss.
She and Titus exchanged no further words the rest of the journey to Charisemnon’s stronghold. After landing directly in the inner courtyard, Titus ordered Ozias to stand guard, then carried the reborn to the closest bed. It happened to be a feminine room, dressed with soft fabrics and delicate embellishments.
Sharine was glad of the softness of the coverlet on which Titus placed the dying woman. No doubt they could revive her with a meal of flesh, but such an act would dishonor not only who this woman had once been, but the concept of life itself. Titus was right to say no angel would choose this existence.
Sharine tugged the blankets free, so the reborn was no longer bound up in them.
When Titus tore strips from one of those blankets, she wanted to protest that the reborn no longer needed to be tied up, that the creature was too weak—but she knew that was her heart speaking. Whoever this being had once been, that being was gone. Charisemnon had stolen a dignified death from her, turning her into this abomination of life, and now she couldn’t be trusted.
But she stepped in when Titus would’ve tied her ankles to the bed. “I’m in no danger from her feet. And it’s better if she has control of her lower body.”
Titus nodded. “I’ll be here should she somehow break her bonds.”
The reborn woman screamed then, a thin shriek of sound that raised every hair on Sharine’s body, it was so inhuman. Still, careful to keep her hand away from the woman’s snapping teeth, she stroked her hand over her hair. This child was dead, its torment close to over, but at this instant it was a creature caught in a trap it could never escape; Sharine would do it what kindness she could.
Oddly the stroking seemed to calm her, and when Sharine said, “Push!” she screamed but obeyed. The few shreds of clothing that still clung to her frame were no impediment to the birth. So Sharine kept giving the order—the contractions were coming one on top of the other now, in a rhythm that wasn’t that of a healthy angel.
No angel’s stomach had ever bulged and rolled this way. No angel’s body had gushed a greenish black fluid. And no angel’s eyes had been devoid of white, the sclera a sea of crimson.
Another scream, the reborn angel’s eyes locked with Sharine’s. For a moment, Sharine saw sanity within those eyes, saw a knowledge of horror, and she heard the whispered words, “Give me mercy. Please.” Then the woman snapped her teeth before screaming again and bearing down as she thrashed in her bonds.
Shifting lower down the bed, Sharine pushed up her sleeves and got ready to grab whatever it was that was about to come out, but Titus nudged her gently aside. “You don’t know if what’ll emerge will do so biting and clawing.”
She shuddered, her imagination conjuring up a nightmare. “Did you hear her?” Grief thickened her voice. “She asked for mercy.” Sharine couldn’t imagine the pain of this woman—to know that she was a diseased and dying creature, but being unable to do anything to stop it.
A curt nod. “She shouldn’t be conscious in any way. Once they rise, the reborn of this iteration—even the most cunning—have no sense of reason and no language. It confirms what we were told about the first angelic reborn.”
Grabbing a throw from the settee by the windows, she passed it to Titus. “So you can protect your arms at least a little.” After he took it, she went back to the head of the bed. Though the reborn woman’s eyes were now crazed red with no sign of sentience, her mouth bared as she sought to bite, Sharine stroked her hair and murmured gentle words that she hoped would make this a little easier.
The screaming suddenly reached a pitch that was pain in the ears, glass shattering. The reborn angel’s body erupted in a gush of dark, dark green-black fluid as she gave birth to whatever it was that Charisemnon had planted in her. Sharine only glanced over long enough to see that Titus was safe. Her attention was on the woman, whose breathing had altered dramatically, her chest r
attling.
And though she knew there was a chance of being clawed, Sharine slid one hand into the reborn angel’s. A weak grip around her own, her eyes holding Sharine’s for a profound moment of purest peace . . . then she gave one last breath and went still in a way only of the dead. The reborn did not pass in this way, but this woman had never been an ordinary reborn.
A single droplet of green-black rolled from her eye and down her cheek.
Tears burning her throat, Sharine gently closed the woman’s eyelids. By some mercy, they stayed that way. When she turned to Titus, it was to see him staring down at what he held cradled in the throw in his arms.
“Titus?” Breath lodged in her throat, she stepped over.
Her stomach churned—all she could see at first was putrid black-green. But then she saw the waving fisted hands with perfect tiny fingers, the mouth that was gasping for air in a face that Titus must’ve wiped clean, and felt an even colder horror run through her blood. Her words came out a whisper. “It’s a baby.”
“Check her fingers.” Titus’s voice was crushed stone. “See if she has claws.”
Gently wiping one fist clean using an edge of the throw, she unfurled those delicate baby fingers with care. Then she examined the babe’s feet. “Nothing. She has the same soft nails as any other infant.”
Shifting on her feet, she walked quickly into the suite’s bathing chamber and found what appeared to be an unused towel set hanging on a railing. Dampening the soft hand towel with warm water, she went back into the room and began to gently wipe down the child.
But it wasn’t enough; the slime was everywhere and it stuck. “Bring her into the bathing room.” Going ahead, she found a pitcher sitting to the side of the bathtub. It must’ve been for bathers to pour water over themselves—or perhaps for a body servant to do so.
She filled the pitcher with warm water, then made Titus get rid of the soiled throw and hold the child in the sink while she poured the water over the strangely quiet infant’s skin, washing it until it was clean all over its front. Unlike most babies this young, its eyes appeared to be able to focus and the baby watched her with eyes of a strangely familiar hue.
Deep gold with slivers of brown.
The last time she’d seen such eyes, they’d been set into a strikingly handsome male face, his lips lush and his hair a silken mahogany.
The face of an archangel.
42
I must use my own seed.
That is the key. That has always been the key.
—From the journals of Archangel Charisemnon
43
Wondering if Titus had noticed the infant’s eyes yet, if he’d realized the import, she said, “Turn the little one over.”
Titus said nothing, but his big hands were careful as he turned the baby so that her back was exposed; Titus made sure to support the child’s head. It took only a splash of water to clear away enough of the slime to reveal wings. The translucent and soft wings of an angelic child, with no deformity or malformation. She took care as she cleaned all of the slime off those wings, then the rest of the child’s body.
The babe’s skin was a dark gold that echoed her father’s. It had been impossible to see the original hue of her mother’s skin under the reborn rot, but it had probably been similar to Charisemnon’s for the child to so closely echo the shade.
Only once the child had no trace of slime on its tiny body did she pick up the biggest towel and spread it out on the counter so Titus could place the child on it. With the still eerily silent little one lying on her back, she began to wipe down her skin. She kept her touch gentle, patting the water from her skin rather than rubbing. “See if you can find some powder. It’ll help her skin after all it’s been through.”
Titus hesitated.
“She can’t do anything to me, Titus. She doesn’t have any teeth, far less any claws.”
He left at last.
In the interim, Sharine picked up and rocked the child in her arms. “What are you, little one?”
The baby hiccupped . . . then, throwing back her head, wailed. Wailed as if she was being beaten, as if the world had done her the greatest insult.
“At least she has a strong voice,” Titus said in an approving tone as he walked in with several canisters of powder in hand. “I didn’t know which was the right one.”
“Hush, my sweet,” Sharine murmured, rocking the child—to no avail. Her face turned red under the gold of her skin, her sobs jerky in between the wails.
“Hah, she is stubborn. Give her to me.”
Placing the baby’s tiny body against his shoulder, Titus patted her back with firm motions that didn’t rub or otherwise abrade her fragile wings. A slew of hiccups before the wailing trailed off. “See?” Titus beamed proudly. “It’s not difficult.”
Sharine felt her lips twitch. He’d be insufferable if not for the sheer adorableness of this picture. And she couldn’t blame the babe for snuggling against him. Were Sharine in the mood to snuggle into any man, Titus’s broad shoulder would be at the top of the list. “I see you’ve done this before.”
“Many children call my court home.”
Once the child’s eyes had closed, her little form in a snuffling sleep, Titus laid her down on the towel again and Sharine put the powder on her. She massaged those little limbs as she did so, in the same way another mother had shown her to do with Illium when he’d been a babe.
The child was still fast asleep by the time she finished, and Sharine gathered her up in a soft new towel in lieu of a blanket before carrying her out. She knew the child couldn’t understand anything she might see, but she made sure to keep the little one’s face turned away from her mother’s already decaying body.
The reborn angel had melted in the time they’d been in the bathroom. Greenish fluid leaked from her every pore, and right then, her fingers degloved to bone, her flesh plopping to the floor.
“I wish you peace, child,” Sharine said before she walked out of the room.
Titus followed, pulling the door shut behind them. “I’ll leave the body instead of incinerating it.” No smile now, his features grim. “I need to call our scientists so they can begin the tests.”
“You’ll have to tell the Cadre about her, won’t you?” Sharine said, her arms protective around the child. “You know they’ll consider her a threat.”
“She could mean death for every angelic child,” Titus said gently. “But we will give her a chance. I’ll ask my scientists to test her blood against the infection and see if she carries within her a cure . . . or if she is a sweet-faced carrier, designed to slip under our guard.”
Sharine didn’t resist when he plucked the child from her arms. Holding the tiny body in one arm, he sighed. “She’s his child.”
So he’d noticed the eyes after all. “Yes. Does that make a difference?”
A lopsided smile. “Only that that ass’s behind managed one last trick.” Leaning in, he pressed a kiss to the baby’s forehead. “She is but a babe dreaming innocent dreams, and if she’s no threat, then I’ll raise her as I would any other orphaned child in my territory. I’ll also tell her of her mother’s brave heart, she who fought to stay alive so her child would live.”
When he raised his free arm, she went into his embrace, this man warm and strong and with a heart capable of incredible kindness. And she tried not to think of what would happen if the tests showed the child to be a carrier, the unknowing bringer of a devastating disease.
* * *
* * *
Two days later and Titus could tell that Sharine didn’t want anyone taking blood from the child, but she clenched her jaw and gritted her teeth and watched eagle-eyed until the deed was done.
The babe’s sobs soon turned into sniffles after Titus picked her up and patted her back, her little body snuggled against his shoulder. “You are a courageous one.
” It was true—the child cried as would any child, but she also recovered quickly, her hands fisted as if in a stubborn refusal to surrender.
He knew he shouldn’t become attached to her, that he might yet have to execute her—and he knew damn well it’d destroy him to do so even if he hadn’t bonded with her. But he couldn’t suppress his feelings of affection. She was so tiny and so helpless. Some would say that made her the perfect weapon to annihilate the world.
“Is there any word?” Sharine asked, sweat dampening the hair at her temples and flecks of unknown substances on her tunic—she’d just come in from doing a shift watching over a ground team. “Does she carry the virus?”
“My scientists are having difficulty understanding what they see in her cells—hence the need to take more samples and confirm their findings.” He’d been blunt that they were to be careful with the blood they harvested, to not spend it too quickly. It was a baby, after all, from whose body they were drawing the samples.
The only reason he’d permitted it at all was because he had to give the Cadre a reason to allow this child to live. No one could force him to execute anyone in his territory—but were she the bearer of a plague, he wouldn’t have a choice. “Sometimes, being an archangel isn’t a gift,” he gritted out.
Sharine touched her hand to his upper arm, then reached up to stroke the baby’s back. “I don’t envy you, Titus. But I know that whatever you do, you’ll do with honor. This child will have the best possible chance with you as her champion.”
He dropped a kiss on the baby’s downy head and hoped he could uphold Sharine’s faith.
* * *
* * *
While the scientists worked, dressed in protective gear such as normally only used by mortals, the baby continued to live in the nursery inside Charisemnon’s court. Were she a carrier, to take her anywhere else risked spreading a disease. So Titus and Ozias had brought in everything the baby might need.
