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)
13
Nine hundred years.
That was how long it took for Zanaya to rise to the post of first general to Archangel Inj’ra. No one could’ve predicted that she’d make it to the position so startlingly young, but she’d proven herself many times over—and she’d brought Aureline and Meher with her.
For her best friend had survived the blow that haunted Zanaya to this day.
Two years they’d spent without her, while she lay in a healing sleep. Not anshara, for she’d been too young to take herself into that rest designed to allow a badly wounded angelic body to heal. This had been a rest induced and enforced by the healers.
Two long years that Zanaya’s world had been too quiet, too solemn. It would’ve been easy to say then that loving people wasn’t worth it, that it led only to devastation and anguish. But Aureline had made Zanaya better than that, had taught her to understand subtleties of emotion that Zanaya’s own mother had long forsaken. Yet Rzia had taught her something too: that to hold on to rage forever was to poison your own existence.
With each step she took, Zanaya moved further away from Rzia and the coldhearted and isolated child she’d attempted to raise. Those very steps had also brought her to this moment where she wore the intricately carved golden arm sheaths that were the right of Inj’ra’s first general.
Aureline and Meher, as her first and second lieutenants respectively, had been presented with a single metal cuff each. The two had forced themselves to keep up with her as she blazed her way through the ranks. Neither wanted Zanaya in a leading role without her most trusted people at her back.
“You have enough ambition for all three of us,” Meher said on that memorable day after Inj’ra promoted Zanaya to first general.
He was lying flat on his back on the grass as they spoke, staring up at the cloudless blue sky. “I’m exhausted from just being in your shadow.” Except he was smiling as he said that. “My entire clan is agog—I was meant to be the black sheep, the jokester they loved but who never achieved anything important, and here I am, in an archangel’s most elite squadron.”
Shooting Zanaya a salute from his supine position, he said, “Thank you for forcing me to be ambitious, though I’m sure I’d have made a perfectly charming layabout.”
“I don’t think it was me,” Zanaya replied, amused at his antics. “You were following Auri.” Theirs had been an interesting love story to say the least, but when it had finally begun in earnest at long last, it had been like watching two interlocking pieces come together with a satisfying snap.
Zanaya had never been anything but happy for them. Well, except for the times they’d aggravated her during their courtship. Heavens but they’d been young and dramatic. As she’d been so painfully young without ever being aware of it.
To think she’d believed she could handle an archangel!
She snorted inwardly. Confidence was one thing, foolish arrogance quite another.
Today, she watched from her seated position against a tree as Aureline flopped over onto her stomach beside Meher, then leaned across to kiss him. “You sell yourself short, sweetheart. You’re steady and relentless and indefatigable. You just need a cause or a leader you trust—and we have that.”
There went Auri, being so gently wonderful again, Zanaya thought as she picked up her goblet of cider, her hound, Maslan, lying quiescent under her hand. Of her cherished Balan’s line, his coat was a glossy black in the sunlight, his body lean and long. To look at him thus, you’d never know him for a master of the hunt.
“We are both off duty today, are we not, Maslan?” she murmured with a smile as she scratched him between his pointed ears before taking a sip of the cider.
It had been a gift from Aureline and Meher, the bottle left to chill in a cold stream well before the ceremony that had elevated Zanaya to her present rank. Aureline had also sweet-talked the kitchen staff into packing them a near-banquet, and Meher had scouted this sun-dappled location in which to gather.
Mivoniel had joined them for the first half of the celebratory meal, having been invited to the ceremony by Archangel Inj’ra herself. It was a thing of great honor to Zanaya that her archangel valued her enough to make such an effort, but she’d been even more honored and overjoyed that her mentor had traveled so far to witness her triumph.
“If I ever decide my old bones wish to once more join an archangel’s troops,” he’d said, “I’ll be applying to you.” A grin. “Have to use those connections.”
It had been a laughing joke, but Zanaya had responded seriously. “I’d have you at my back anytime, Mivoniel. You’re one of the best fighters I’ve ever known—but more than that, I trust you to the core.”