Archangel's Enigma

43

Andromeda and Naasir helped the wing brothers hurriedly pick up and set aside the broken pieces of their homes. Part of the village was just gone, crumbled into dust. What remained was nothing whole.

“We will have to greet the sire under the open sky,” Tarek said, and though his expression and tone were controlled, the same couldn’t be said for all his men and women. Their distress at being unable to show due honor to their archangel was clear.

Andromeda thought of everything she’d heard of Alexander. “The stories say that your sire preferred to drink mead with his warriors around a fire, rather than to sleep comfortably in a sumptuous tent.”

The wing brothers visibly relaxed.

“Yes.” Tarek nodded. “He’s one of us.”

Decision made, they cleared out the communal space near the lake, then one of the fleet-of-foot scouts was dispatched to fetch their vulnerable. To Andromeda’s surprise, he went not in the direction of the caves, but toward the damaged trees. Secrets, more secrets.

Deliberately turning her back on the trees so she wouldn’t see this one and thus be able to betray it in Charisemnon’s court—a stabbing pain in her gut—she continued to help pick up and stack shattered pieces of wood and glass and roofing material. When she started finding personal items, she made a neat pile of them inside a former home that had no roof but had three walls that had survived to about three feet off the ground.

It would work well enough as a storage space for now.

The noncombatants flowed into the village a half hour later, bubbling with excitement. Their dismay at seeing the broken state of the village was quickly overcome by half-terrified joy at playing host to not only their own archangel, but to a second one. Most people never came within close proximity to even one archangel their entire lives.

Nerves or not, the cooks were able to get a fire going and create a stew out of food items scavenged from the devastated homes, as well as flatbread. When a fridge was dug out of the debris, everyone clapped at the find of undamaged fruit within. Someone else discovered that their tins of dried fruits were dented but whole, and soon a newly washed and barely chipped plate was bearing a bounty of dried figs and other sweetmeats. A teenage boy placed it on the large wooden table that three of the wing brothers had put together with the materials at hand.

When Naasir dug out a bottle of mead that had been buried under the fallen beams of a house, a raucous cheer went up. Grinning, he passed it to Andromeda and went hunting for more supplies, his senses having made him a favorite of the cooks. Anytime they needed something, they’d tell him, and more often than not, he’d find it in amongst the debris.

The village was as neat as it could be by the time the sun streaked the sky the dark pink and rich orange of sunset. Not only were the villagers ready for Alexander, they’d created shelters for the young and the weak, and cleaned themselves up as much as possible. Aware Alexander had been injured, everyone was on tenterhooks.

As the sunset grew ever more dazzling before beginning to darken until the clouds glowed like rubies, the village went quieter and quieter.

“Papa! Angels!”

Following a small child’s pointed finger, Andromeda looked to the color-splashed sky above the caves to see wings of glittering silver side by side with wings of an astonishing white gold that seemed aflame.

Overwhelming power and magnificent beauty, the sight made her heart stop. “They aren’t like us,” she whispered to Naasir, feeling that understanding in her bones. “They are nothing like us.” As different from her as she was from a mortal.

Arms wrapping around her shoulders from behind, Naasir nuzzled her temple. “They love as fiercely, Andi. And they fight as wildly.”

His words made the difference in their growing-up years so clear. To him, Raphael wasn’t a distant archangel who was a deadly member of the Cadre. Naasir saw Raphael as his sire and a warrior first, everything else second. She would’ve liked to have seen Raphael through his eyes over the years, gotten to know the blindingly powerful being who landed not far from them in a strong sweep of wings.

The power that burned off the two archangels made her eyes hurt.

As Alexander’s people, young and old, knelt down in front of him in a silent and devoted fealty, Raphael walked to join Naasir and Andromeda. Having moved around to stand beside her, Naasir clasped the archangel’s forearm in greeting when Raphael held it out, his own hand closing around Naasir’s forearm.

“You did well, Naasir,” the archangel said, his voice as pure as the searing blue of his eyes. “Alexander is of the opinion that you have no respect for anyone.”

Naasir grinned. “Especially not for stubborn Ancients who refuse to listen to reason.”

A slow smile before Raphael turned to Andromeda and held out his forearm. Her mouth dried up, her heart thundering. “I have a warrior as a consort, scholar,” Raphael said at her frozen response. “I recognize one when I see her, even if she chooses to wield the pen more often than the sword.”

Awed and astonished, she gripped his forearm, the power that lived in his body an almost painful ache in her bones. And yet his consort had been mortal before her transformation, was yet an angel newborn. Andromeda wanted desperately to meet Elena Deveraux at that moment, to know the woman who had the strength to hold her own against an archangel.

“Because of your and Naasir’s courage and will,” Raphael said after they broke contact, “Alexander lives today. He will not forget it.”

Andromeda found her voice at last, and though it came out raspy, it did at least come out. “I’m glad an Ancient has not been lost from the world.”

Raphael nodded and turned to watch as Alexander greeted his loyal sentinels one by one, having asked all his people to stand. “My mother will be happy to have a compatriot with whom to speak.”

That was the moment Andromeda realized a staggering truth. “There are now eleven living archangels in the world, two of them Ancients.”

The Cadre had, at rare times, been less than ten, but never more. Never.

“It appears the Cascade has changed the natural equilibrium of the world more deeply than anyone comprehends.” Raphael looked up at the painted sky, but she knew he saw the battle that had broken its peace not long ago. “Ten has been enough to maintain balance throughout time. That apparently no longer holds. More Ancients may yet rise before this is over.”

Because the Cascade was just beginning.