Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 118699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 593(@200wpm)___ 475(@250wpm)___ 396(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 593(@200wpm)___ 475(@250wpm)___ 396(@300wpm)
So much so that, at times, he wondered how Callie could bear it.
But then . . . Xander carried so many echoes of Rohan in his face and his manner. Alexander loved him all the more for it, for being a living piece of his son. It must be the same for Callie.
He was thinking that perhaps he and Zanaya should discuss hosting a small gathering for their friends in the future when the sky began to darken above him. Alexander grimaced. He could handle the cold and the wet like any other angel—but that didn’t mean he liked it. Especially since he was wearing his favorite set of leathers, black with accents of silver in the fastenings and buckles.
His third had taken one look at him and said, “Going courting, sire?” a glint in the greenish hazel of his eyes.
Alexander had been ready with his riposte. “Lemei mentioned that General Keemat’s favorite flowers are daffodils. In case you had an interest in that knowledge.”
Valerius, stocky and contained and not prone to displays of emotion except with his closest intimates, had actually begun to turn red under the naturally pale hue of his skin. “You should lift off now,” he’d muttered as he tugged at the collar of his tunic. “Go impress Lady Zanaya with your sartorial splendor and leave me in peace.”
Alexander would much rather do exactly that than turn up at Zanaya’s home bedraggled by rain.
But the sky didn’t turn the bruised hue of clouds heavy with rain. It went a sickly green, ugly and putrid . . . and reminiscent of how Antonicus’s skin had appeared when they buried him.
Life in the process of rotting.
Halting, he hovered in the sky, looked first to the east, then to the west, then north followed by south.
The entire sky was sick.
Gut tight, he turned and resumed his journey at the highest possible speed. Zanaya was waiting for him on the rooftop of her fortress and as soon as he landed, she said, “It’s worldwide.” Lips pressed tight, she added, “Titus saw it first, asked to initiate a meeting. I sent a message that you were en route, so he’s holding off.”
His hairline damp with sweat and his wings aching, Alexander nodded. “Let’s go.”
But when the faces began appearing onscreen, two of the Cadre remained missing. They had, however, been replaced by two people who weren’t archangels but who did have the right to speak in the place of the two missing archangels.
“Elijah has flown to the cairn,” said Hannah, consort to the Archangel of South America, he who’d also become known as King of the Pride in the aftermath of the Cascade. “In absolute terms, he’s located the closest to the cairn, can make the journey the fastest.”
Hannah, an artist of great renown, had a streak of green-and-white paint in the tight black curls of her hair, and a smaller streak of sky-blue against the ebony skin of her neck. She wore what appeared to be a white painting smock over which rose wing arches of deep cream. The smock was flecked with pigment, silent witness to the speed at which things had taken place this dark day. “He believed it was important he do that at once.”
Elena Deveraux’s silvery-gray eyes were unflinching in the face of so much power as she said, “Raphael’s done the same—he was heading to a meeting with Archangel Elijah when the sky changed, so he won’t be far behind him.”
That near-white hair pulled back into a tight braid and her upper body clad in a black leather jacket, her expression grim, she could’ve been an experienced warrior angel of many centuries of age. “Raphael didn’t want Archangel Elijah to be alone if there was a possibility that Archangel Antonicus might be rising.”
No one had any disagreement with the actions of either archangel.
“That leaves us with no reason for this meeting,” Neha said, her voice curt. “Let us reconvene when Elijah has returned.”
Alexander considered the other archangel. His spymaster had passed on rumors of Neha’s increasing disengagement from her court, and Alexander wondered if the Queen of India was so short with them because Antonicus’s resurrection would put a halt to her plans to Sleep.
If, as the signs indicated, the Ancient had risen, he couldn’t be in any way healthy. The ugly shade of the sky was in no way akin to the deep purple that had previously announced his presence. The best-case scenario was that he was fully mentally present, just physically damaged. That, they could work with; but if he bore wounds on the mental level . . . that could be deadly.
Archangels had too much power to wield it with anything but iron control.
As for Neha, it wasn’t hard to see her exhaustion. Her pain.
He might not have understood her anguish before he lost Rohan, but the man he was today knew what it did to a person when they lost a child. Neha’s daughter was never coming back, as Rohan was never coming back. But where Alexander had a grandson, a living memory of his beloved boy, Neha had been given no such grace.