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)
“Why say you that?”
She nodded at the fog peculiar and chilling. “I’ve woken to a terrible world. I don’t know if I’ll survive it.”
A cold wind across her neck, as if Cassandra herself had brushed her fingers over her nape.
Zanaya straightened her spine, stilled her heartbeat. Death held no fear for her. She’d lived a vast span of time.
Then a masculine voice carried over to her on the night currents, familiar and beloved.
Glancing over her shoulder, she thought, But I have not loved him enough. It will never be enough.
This time, however, wasn’t theirs, even had they not already been squabbling. This time was for the Cadre to step up and eliminate a menace that had been born of one of them. And it was to that topic they soon turned, discussing what knowledge they had of Lijuan’s fog. At one point, Neha showed them a line of birds who’d all fallen on this side of the strange border. As if they’d begun to fly in, only to die.
Neha confirmed that, as far as they were able to tell, the birds had died the instant they made contact with the fog. Caliane followed that up with the information that Neha’s people had discovered other small animals, including snakes, with their heads in the fog and the rest of their bodies in Neha’s territory.
Dead as soon as they attempted to enter that oily miasma.
“Enough.” Antonicus exercising his voice again. “It is time I do what must be done—I am not a child to be scared by ghost stories.” His voice dripped with contempt for what he clearly saw as their cowardice.
Fool. A good general reviewed all information before making a decision. They didn’t send people blundering off into the unknown. But if Antonicus wished to volunteer to blunder, then Zanaya would use the resulting knowledge. And as she’d said to Alexander, she still wished him well.
Antonicus continued on. “I will see you all after I return from speaking to this Lijuan who believes herself a goddess even over immortals.”
Zanaya was aware of Alexander coming to stand beside her as all the archangels lined up on the edge of the roof to watch Antonicus’s progress over the sea of black. He’d agreed to drop down into the fog at a point that would be visible to them, before rising to head on deeper, toward Lijuan’s main stronghold.
She held her breath as he reached the first point. He turned to indicate that he was about to dive by raising his arm . . . then dived into the black that wasn’t black. Her chest tightened as the moments passed and he didn’t emerge. She truly hadn’t expected the death fog to affect an archangel—and an Ancient at that.
No, there he was!
A sudden burst of hope . . . shattered when it became clear that Antonicus was injured.
It was Caliane’s son, Raphael—the only archangel who, she’d learned, had a proven immunity to at least some of Lijuan’s powers—that flew out to assist Antonicus. And it was Raphael who carried back an archangel wasted and hollow, Antonicus’s eyes sheened by oily blackness.
Laying him down on a mat on the roof, Raphael was able to use his power to chase the black from Antonicus’s eyes, but it was a temporary reprieve.
Zanaya had seen archangels die, but never in such a way. Always in battle, always in a blaze. This . . . Her gut clenched. She crouched beside the body alongside the rest of the Cadre, an honor guard of archangels as Antonicus’s wings began to curl and go black, as his skin became a rotted green, and as his chest sank inward, as if his body was turning into viscous soup.
Until . . . it all stopped.
Antonicus lay frozen in a moment of decay and death. Perhaps because archangels could come back from many things.
Which was why Zanaya didn’t argue when it was mooted that they shouldn’t destroy his body but bury it in a distant place of ice and frost where he couldn’t spread the infection that riddled his frame—and where he could lie in peace for eons as his body fought to repair itself.
“I don’t know if I want to hope that he’s alive or not,” she said to Alexander as they flew ahead of the group some hours later, having already taken a turn carrying the sling that held the body. “The horrors in his eyes, on his face before he was no longer present . . . imagine being trapped in that moment for all eternity.” For there was a chance that Antonicus wouldn’t die—but wouldn’t wake either.
He’d remain forever a partially rotted corpse.
“He had no mind at the end,” Alexander said. “I’m certain of that. If he Sleeps, it’ll be a Sleep devoid of all knowledge. Which may be what keeps him sane should he be alive.”