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)
But things had changed. Alexander no longer saw his grandson as a memory of Rohan. Xander was far too much his own man for that—and what an astonishing young man he was; gifted in battle but also with a way about him that said he understood the pain and suffering of others.
Xander, too, knew him now not as a powerful Ancient but as the grandfather who’d race him across the plain, and who’d laugh with him when the boy made one of his rare—but always amusing—jokes.
No, Alexander couldn’t go into Sleep. Not until Xander had healed and grown to the point he no longer needed the old man who was his only living family in the entire world. Because Alexander felt old for the first time in his existence.
Weighed down by grief and a missing that wouldn’t end.
Always before, he’d known she’d wake. He’d been able to bear it because there existed a future in which she’d wake. Now . . .
“You miss her,” his grandson had said a month after the war. “Lady Zanaya.”
“Ah, Xander.” He’d gripped the side of the boy’s neck, tried to dig up a smile. “You’re too young to be interested in the love stories of us Ancients.”
But stubborn Xander, blood of Alexander’s blood, had stood firm. “I wish I’d met her.”
“I do, too. More than anything.” However, his grandson’s squadron had been on the farthest border from the fortress at the time of Zanaya’s waking, and Alexander had thought he’d have plenty of time to introduce this bright young piece of his heart to the woman who owned that heart. “She would’ve liked you.”
“I looked her up in the histories,” Xander had added. “They’re old, those histories, and most of the chapters are written from the accounts of the Ancients who were around at the time, but one thing remains a constant throughout: many of the fragments say Alexander and Zanaya or Zanaya and Alexander, as if to see one was to see the other.”
He’d smiled then, a smile formed of pain and grief and echoes of joy. “She’d be very angry at such an interpretation. Never say so to Zanaya.”
A questioning smile from his grandson.
“She is fierce and proud and an archangel of power in her own right.”
“But you’re mentioned there, too. And you were older. Aren’t you angry the histories have you so entwined?”
“No.” Then he’d eaten the food Xander had brought in, and shaken his head at his grandson when he would’ve spoken further of Zanaya.
The wound had been too fresh, Alexander’s pain bloodying him.
It was as fresh this day. Perhaps that was why he’d dreamed of swimming with her in a river of molten fire. She’d laughed and then dived, but when he’d tried to follow, he’d become lost, unable to find her even though he could hear the echo of her laughter rippling back to him.
Then a voice, old, so old.
And all at once, he remembered the words he’d heard just before he’d woken: Lovers fall and lovers rise. The river stops flowing. This time will be the end.
Alexander’s heart pounded as he stared around the room. But no aurora-eyed seer stood over him, whispering words of doom. No woman with hair of violet shimmered into existence in a dark corner.
Lovers fall and lovers rise. The river stops flowing. This time will be the end.
Hope clutched at him. Rise. The word rise. Surely, surely that meant there was hope?
The river stops flowing. This time will be the end.
His heart clenched into a fist, his breathing ragged. He refused to listen to those words, refused to countenance their meaning. He would focus only on the first part. He would look to a future where his Zani rose again.
The Last Ending
31
Zanaya came awake with a jerk, her mind blurry and her limbs feeling wrong. Gulping the cool air inside the fiery cocoon that embraced her, she fought to stay calm. Perhaps another person would’ve panicked, but Zanaya was not another person. She was the Queen of the Nile and she knew that there was no power in this world stronger than a member of the Cadre.
The Archangel of Death.
A chill echo, a cascade of memories of her last awakening. She’d been in Alexander’s territory then, safe in the soft black of her power far below the warm sands of his land. She’d kept to her decision and not told him that she intended to Sleep in his land. To do so would’ve been to tie a weight of love to his ankle, her Alexander stubborn and implacable, loyal and honorable.
She hadn’t wanted that for him, not when she hadn’t known how long she’d Sleep. And it was accepted fact that once an archangel entered the Sleep state, their power vanished from the world, no longer an impediment or provocation to any other member of the Cadre.