by Nalini Singh
“When was this?” Titus asked. “The animals turning?”
“About three days ago?” The headman scratched his head, then turned to yell out the question to his son.
“Three days ago,” the male replied.
“Yes, that sounds right.” The headman turned back to Titus. “It feels an endless time, but it has been only days.”
“How does it begin?” He had to be sure it wasn’t in the air.
“A bite,” was the response. “We suspect one of the goats panicked and ran into the rotting ones and that was when it was infected. It then savaged a few others before we realized what was happening.”
Titus held back an exhale. Containable, he said to Sharine. If we eliminate the reborn, we eliminate the risk to animals at the same time.
Ask him if he noticed if the birds were affected. They have domestic fowl here, so he wouldn’t have had to look skyward.
The import of her question was an arrow deep in his heart. Angels were unlike any other living creatures on this planet—but birds came the closest. Not in their genetics, but in the simple fact that they lived so long in the sky.
“Were any of your animals untouched by the disease?” he asked instead of specifically speaking about birds. We can’t allow humans to see us as weak or vulnerable, he reminded Sharine, who wasn’t an archangel and couldn’t be expected to immediately consider such things.
Every member of the Cadre knew that should humans begin to see angels as vulnerable, they might get it into their heads to rebel against immortal rule, and that could have only one end: annihilation of mortals.
Angels needed mortals, but they didn’t need a lot of mortals.
Certain groups of angels had even been known to mutter that mortalkind needed to either be culled or have their population strictly controlled: They are insects, pests but for their one use. Pen them up in a corner of the globe, and ship out cargo loads as necessary. Mortals do not need to infest the whole planet.
18
Thankfully most of angelkind didn’t live on the fringe with the genocidal. But the reason behind the forbearance wasn’t always a thing of kindness. One old angel had put it bluntly to Titus: “Humans are born and die at such a rapid pace, regular outbreaks of disease devastating large swaths of their population, or bloodlust-driven vampires killing entire villages, that their growth isn’t really an issue.”
At first, Titus had believed that the zealots who argued for partial genocide hadn’t considered that the fewer the humans, the fewer the vampires. And many of the same old ones relied on vampires for almost everything in terms of the running of their households, and any necessary grunt work. But it turned out they had considered it.
It was Uram who’d told Titus that fact some five years before his death. “The hidebound ones talk of human farms to feed and maintain the vampires in the world, with only a limited number of new vampires created each year—to replace any who are lost. Mortals farmed for blood would have their brains intentionally stunted so they become true cattle, while any extra angelic toxin would be pumped into said cattle who’d then be executed before the transition was complete.”
The green-eyed archangel had laughed. “Who do they think will clean up after their cattle, feed and bathe them? Or perhaps they are to be in huge farms with their bodies permanently hooked up to blood-harvesting machines. That’s if the toxin transfer even works with all the changes—our kind has never been able to explain the why behind how mortals save our sanity.”
Uram had made the whole idea sound ridiculous . . . but he hadn’t been revolted, while Titus’d had to fight his rising gorge. Sometimes, he wondered if that had been an early sign of Uram’s madness, but then again, so many of the older angels thought little of discussing humans with such a lack of empathy.
Across from him, the headman frowned. “The goats were the first,” he murmured to himself.
As Titus listened with forced patience, the older male went through the various animals in the village including domestic cats and dogs. “The chickens!” He smiled. “No oddities with our chickens. And also the cats.
“We’ve eaten some of the chickens since and are all unaffected, so I think they must’ve been kept safe by being in their coop. As for the cats, they’re very fast and good at climbing, so they probably escaped being scratched by the rotting ones. It must also be said that cats will do as they will.”
Throwing back his head, Titus laughed. “Cats are like women,” he said in the aftermath of his mirth. “Unpredictable and as apt to hiss and claw as purr.”
The headman cackled but Sharine’s voice was frigid in his head. I am astonished that Tanae has not murdered you in your sleep.
Tanae is not a woman. She is a warrior.
Ah, all is clear now. Such sense you make. The tone of her voice declared him an imbecile.
Adding that to her list of infractions against an archangel, Titus returned to his conversation with the headman. “Did you notice any differences between the first attack by the reborn, and the ones that came after?”
“We’ve survived three nightmares, and each group of the rotting ones have been faster,” the elder said without hesitation. “My son and the other young ones say they also seem to hunt more as a group. A pack.”
He ran the long salt-and-pepper of his beard through his hand. “Many of us also believe their faces and bodies have changed as well, though it’s hard to say for certain—I saw them only in fleeting glimpses as we fought them with fire.”
The headman indicated the flaming torches Titus had seen from above. “It’s why we religiously feed these flames—so they won’t come near.” Another hacking cough before he returned to the matter at hand. “The first rotting ones, they looked human but for the madness. The ones that came after . . . there was something twisted about their bodies and they walked in a way I find difficult to describe.”
He ran his hand over his opposite forearm. “My skin is the deep brown of the richest soil, as is yours—if I may be so bold as to compare us even in this way. My wife’s skin is darker yet, a gleaming ebony that has returned in our spoiled and loved third grandchild.” A hint of a smile. “But you see we have people from the north in our village, and even Pieter who married our Sarra; he has white skin that burns before it alters its shade.”
This time, the headman’s cough had Titus nudging the other man’s ale toward him. After taking a drink, and though his voice continued to rasp, the other man said, “So hear me when I say I know mortal hues. The skin of the rotting ones has darkened but not in any way that ordinary flesh might do so.”
Chewing on his lower lip, his bushy eyebrows drawing together, the headman stared unseeing at the table. “It has changed color in the way that a piece of fruit does when it rots from within, a greenish tinge below the skin, the darkness that spreads a sickly bruise.”
“I understand exactly.” Titus finished his ale, needing the taste to wash away the ugliness of what the headman was describing. “Is there anything else I should know?”
“I’ve told you everything I could think to tell, but if you will allow, my lord Archangel—”
“You can call me Archangel, or Archangel Titus. You don’t need to add anything further.” Such additions were nothing but affectations. Lady Sharine was a good and proper address, but every member of the Cadre already had a title. Archangel on its own was the most powerful title in the world.
Some, like Caliane, accepted Lady—or Lord—as an alternate title, but he’d never heard of anyone else in the Cadre using two titles in concert. Trust Charisemnon to have chosen yet another method to feed his vanity.
“Archangel Titus,” the headman said solemnly. “If you will allow, I will ask a question.”
“Ask—but the question must be a fast one.” He put down his tankard. “I must soon be on my way—but I’ll return to speak with you in the future, after we�
�ve dealt with the most significant problems at hand.” Titus hoped the old man would make it to their next conversation, but he knew too well that mortal flames blinked out with a rapid fury that had burned him on more than one occasion.
There was a reason Titus tried not to become too close to mortals; he’d made mortal friends in his youth . . . and he mourned them to this day. Those who saw mortals as cattle had never danced close to their small, brilliant lights and been singed in the aftermath. It broke his heart to think of friends gone, gifts lost forever, dazzling minds silenced.
The headman took a deep breath, seemed to hold it before exhaling softly on his question. “How many of our daughters do you wish as a tithe?”
Rage was a thunder so violent in his veins that he was about to throw back his head and roar to the sky when a cool, crisp, and lovely voice spoke into his mind: Don’t terrify these people when you and your vaunted charm have made a bare inroad into their trust. It took incredible courage for him to ask that question. It’s no insult on you but an insult on the one before you.
Titus was so blindsided by the tone of her voice—no one spoke to him that way, not even his mother or sisters—that his rage morphed into red-hot insult. You would do well to remember that I am an archangel, Sharine.
I never forget, was the unflinching answer. But as I have mentioned, I had a son with one. Strip off the outer trappings and he still has the same parts as any other man. Just. Like. You.
We do not have the same parts, he said nonsensically, angered on a level so deep it rarely came to the fore. Don’t ever compare me to that—He cut himself off, not sure what insult would be good enough. He didn’t know all of what Aegaeon had done to Sharine; what he did know had him curling his lip. What honorable man chose to leave his child behind, chose to break a small and brave heart?
Titus, Titus! Look, I can fly good now!
Illium wouldn’t remember meeting Titus as a child, but Titus remembered the small and fearless blue-winged boy who’d crossed mischievously from Aegaeon’s Refuge territory into Titus’s on a regular basis. He’d enjoyed the little one’s grit and bravery, had thought Aegaeon a lucky man to have such a son.
“Archangel, I did not wish to anger you.” The headman was a pasty brown from how his blood had rushed to his feet—quite a feat with skin as dark as theirs.
Titus refused to look at Sharine. “I’m not angry at you,” he said, every muscle in his body locked to stone hardness. “I’m angry at that piss-stain upon the earth that you once called your archangel.” He wasn’t about to withhold his punches; it wasn’t as if humankind didn’t already know of the enmity between him and Charisemnon.
“I don’t want your children or your women—any who wish to apply for a position in my citadel of their own free will are welcome to do so once your village no longer needs their assistance to survive.” He crushed the metal of his tankard, barely noticing the damage. “I don’t need or want young girls to warm my bed. I have plenty of women lining up to do the same.”
Stop. Stop. Your modesty overwhelms.
Truly, she’d been sent to torment him. It’s not bravado or conceit when it’s the truth.
To the headman, he said, “Does that answer your question?”
The headman’s eyes were wet and shining as he rose with Titus. Once up, he bowed so deeply that Titus was afraid he would tip right over. Instinct had him reaching out to catch the man’s shoulder, say, “There’s no need for that. We have shared ale. You have lived to be a graybeard and you have learned wisdom with it.”
Though this man was but a fraction of Titus’s age, human lives moved at a different speed, and so there were things the headman understood that Titus didn’t and wouldn’t for eons more.
It made him wonder what Sharine had experienced over her long immortal lifetime, the lessons she’d learned . . . the bruises she carried.
She came to stand at his side at that instant, an expression on her face that he couldn’t quite comprehend. Since not asking her questions did nothing to keep her mild and content, he decided he might as well ask her to explain—and he would, once they were alone. Which they soon were, their good-byes short before they lifted off.
Titus let Sharine go first so that she wouldn’t be buffeted by the draft created by his more powerful wings. “What?” he said once they were back on their flight path. “Have I grown a second head?”
“No,” she said after a penetrating glance. “Let’s just say I find myself surprised at your capacity for certain kinds of understanding.”
As far as backhanded compliments went, it was one of the best ever inflicted on Titus; even Nala would be hard-pressed to better it, and his sister was renowned for her acerbic wit. Nala didn’t talk much, but when she did, she made an impact. “How do you think I look after my territory? By being a reckless brute?”
“Such a course of action certainly seemed to have worked for Charisemnon.”
Titus went to reply then shut his mouth. She was right. Charisemnon had ruled with brute power much of the time—but that hadn’t been all of him.
“Much as I’d like for him to be remembered as a vicious idiot, he had a kind of cunning that I will never possess.” A simple truth. “Charisemnon could manipulate his people in ways I find difficult to comprehend. Though he took their children, their daughters far too innocent and young to be in a man’s bed, they revered him.
“Even in the headman’s village, there will be some who think of him as the right kind of archangel, of me as too rough and unrefined in comparison to his sophistication. The horrors of war and the reborn have torn the veil from most eyes, but why did it take so long? Why, for such a long part of his reign, was he worshipped as a god?”
“Because they had no choice.” Sharine’s voice ran over him like water, silken and bitingly cold at once. “He was a being of devastating power—as you are a being of devastating power; they had no avenue of appeal. Either they lived under his rule and found a way to rationalize it—or they died, likely tortured and broken.”
“That isn’t true!” Titus raged. “They could’ve crossed the border to me.”
“Leaving behind all they ever knew? Leaving behind their families? All the while with no way of knowing if you were any different?” Nothing cold or edgy in her tone this time, rather a poignant depth of knowledge. “To mortals, archangels are all one and the same. The Cadre is too far above mortal existence to truly understand them.”
“You are all but an Ancient,” Titus said, not sure why no one ever referred to her as such—perhaps it was the sense of bright freshness that clung to her. “You’re no closer to mortals than I am.”
“Before Lumia, I was even further away.” Surprising words, soft and heavy. “Lost in the fragmented pathways of my mind.”
Titus had so many questions, but he made no move to pursue that thread. No one became as she had unless it was a thing of terrible pain. He wouldn’t rub that pain raw anew, no matter how she irritated him.
“Since moving to Lumia, however, and basing myself in the adjacent town,” she continued, “I’ve come to see mortals not as a faceless mass but as individuals. I know that some are funny and sweet. Others are courageous.
“Still others have darkness in their hearts. And I know that outside Lumia, most mortals have never been in close contact with an angel. The idea of speaking to an archangel . . . It is beyond their comprehension.”
Sharine knew that she was being hard on Titus; the truth was, she couldn’t help it. It was simply that he reminded her so much of Aegaeon. Her former lover’d had the same confidence, the same swagger to him.
Though she was beginning to think that Titus had a far bigger heart. Big enough to rule this continent and bring it back from the brink of ruin. It was tempting to admire him for his clear moral lines and refusal to bask in his power, but Sharine wasn’t about to fall prey to the urge.
Especially when she’d already found herself susceptible to his devastating smiles. No, the last thing Sharine needed was to begin to admire the Archangel of Africa. Big, brash, beautiful Titus would use any such admiration to walk all over her. Not because he was cruel, but because he was Titus.
19
Avelina, your Titus challenged me to climb a mountain—and the damned pup beat me! To assuage my mortally bruised honor, I challenged him to climb down in the dark. It is as well that he doesn’t know that terrain as well as I do, for otherwise, he would’ve beaten me again, without remorse.
I thank you for trusting me with the gift of your son. With each century that passes with him under my command, he becomes less a stripling, and more a man I consider a friend. It’s a strange thing for one so old as I to have a youthful friend, but I think I would’ve considered him a friend no matter at which point in life I met him.
Soon, the time will come when he leaves my court. It is inevitable. He must learn more of the world, learn more of himself. But always, I will hold a place for him in my army.
Enjoy your sojourn with Euphenia. Tell the child she owes me a concert.
—Letter from Archangel Alexander to First General Avelina
20
After flying for another ten minutes, Sharine said, “What do you have against Aegaeon?” She’d been startled by the depth of Titus’s anger when she’d made the comparison between one archangel and the other.
Titus shot her a look darker than any she’d ever witnessed on his face. “I have sisters, do you know that?”
Sharine frowned. Perhaps she had known that once upon a time, but if so, she couldn’t lay her mental fingers on the knowledge. “Are they older than you?” she asked instead of answering.
