Archangel's Sun

25

Sharine didn’t disagree with Titus’s judgment, harsh though it was.

The Archangel of Northern Africa that she’d gotten to know had been jaded and dissolute in a way that was difficult to explain. It was oft said that power corrupted, and archangels were the most powerful beings in the world—but archangels also had to deal with myriad problems to maintain a healthy territory, from keeping a firm hand on vampires, to—at the basest level—ensuring the population had work and didn’t starve. That didn’t even take lethal territorial politics into account.

An archangel couldn’t simply sit pretty and “exist.”

It was unlikely that Titus thought of himself as a crouching threat over the other members of the Cadre, but he was, as were they in turn. Power such as that of an archangel didn’t sleep. It watched and so by default, the members of the Cadre watched each other. Friendships, love, logic might stop them from making constant war, but the threat of it loomed always.

Ennui shouldn’t have ever been a realistic possibility for Charisemnon.

“Do you know what happened to him?” she asked. “I had little to do with him prior to my stint at Lumia.”

“From what I’ve heard of his youth, he was always possessed of arrogance and the belief that he was better than others. However, many a young man believes so.”

About to make a quip about Titus’s own brash confidence, Sharine found herself remembering how he’d sat with the headman in the village, how he’d spoken to the elderly mortal with patience for his wisdom. Titus might believe strongly in himself but he didn’t look down on others. It was a critical difference between the two archangels.

She had to stop trying to put him in the same box as Aegaeon or Charisemnon or their ilk just because she was discomforted by the fact he aroused urges in her she’d believed long dead and buried. Against her, his skin was like silk, his heat a delicious burn, and the vibration of his chest when he spoke an increasingly familiar pleasure.

“The tipping point,” Titus said even as her cheeks glowed, “was Lijuan.”

Another kind of heat blazed in her. “You can’t simply blame another.” It was lazy and absolved one party of responsibility in a circumstance that both’d had a chance to influence. “I say that as a woman who so long blamed Aegaeon for what I became. But I”—she slapped a hand over her chest—“made choices along the way.”

Not the initial fracture. She hadn’t been able to stop that. Her brain had gone into shock, her mind skittering. But she’d had moments of sanity at the start, moments where she wasn’t lost, and to this day, she didn’t know if she could’ve fought harder to come back. Had she surrendered? Had she chosen her prison?

“No.” Titus cradled her closer, the action making her suck in a quick breath as her heart kicked. “What I mean is that it was akin to an explosive reaction such as my scientists create when they mix two inert substances together.”

Sharine frowned. “You think they would’ve stayed rational instead of power-hungry monsters had they never met?”

“I can’t speak for Lijuan, for she was already an angel of seven and a half millennia by my ascension, but I feel I knew Charisemnon well enough to say that he was a man who liked luxury and worked the utter minimum necessary. He wouldn’t have thought to stir himself to such grandiose plans of war on his own.”

Titus’s neck and shoulder muscles moved strongly as he angled them into the wind so that they could ride it, his wings powerful above them. “One of my scholars once told me a tale of two mortal murderers and he used a term that seems to fit here: folie à deux.”

A madness of two.

“I’m not sure I agree with you,” Sharine said. “I’ve heard of Charisemnon’s appetites—one such as him would always want a bigger thrill, more sensory fulfilment. But”—she pressed her fingers to Titus’s lips when he would’ve interrupted her—“I do believe there’s a grain of truth in your supposition. Charisemnon and Lijuan egged each other on, as children do on a playing field.”

Titus didn’t respond, his eyes locked with hers. Her pulse jolted, her cheeks burned. Jerking her fingers from the unexpectedly soft curve of his lips, she went to make some quip to diffuse the tension that locked both their muscles . . . only to realize they were nearly halfway to their destination.

It had taken Titus bare hours to cover a massive distance. She hadn’t realized how fast he was flying, he’d done such a good job of protecting her from the wind. Sharine was in no mood to be protected from anything, but she couldn’t fault him for the care he’d taken with her.

A curl of warmth in her stomach, an ache that was pure temptation; it had been a long time, whispered a deeply hungry part of her. Why not break her fast with such a lover?

Shrugging off the thought, for she had no intention of becoming another one of Titus’s admiring legions, she said, “Do you need to rest?” Even an archangel couldn’t go on indefinitely.

“At the dawn,” he promised. “I have no desire to be covered in more reborn rot.”

Sharine grimaced. “Agreed.”

So it was that they flew on through the night hours. At some point, she fell asleep in his arms, and woke to find him sweeping down to a grassland. Skin hot, she sat up. “My apologies.”

“Do not worry,” he said as he landed. “You didn’t snore.”

Sharine would’ve snapped back a retort, but he was putting her on her feet and she groaned as she stretched out her body. Things creaked. Lovely. Titus, too, was stretching—and he was glorious under the soft gold of the dawn light. “Your tattoo,” she found herself saying. “It appears almost alive in the light.”

He scratched the ridged lines of his abdomen. “A trick of the light.” Eyes narrowed, he was looking past her. “Damn.”

Sharine followed his gaze, caught the darting movements. “Reborn.”

The slide of swords leaving sheaths was the only warning she received before Titus took off. Sharine followed, her wings aching from having been collapsed in his arms for so long. But Titus had the situation well in control, and the reborn were soon dead. He used a small pulse of power to erase their bodies, then landed again.

“If you could, Lady Sharine.” He pointed at the splatters of blood on his chest.

Sharine’s hand was already coated in power. Stepping close, she began to get the blood and gore off him. Her focus only slipped when she was nearly done; she became darkly conscious of the heat and size of him, her stomach taut and her mouth dry. It was all she could do not to jerk back when the task was done.

Titus glanced down, his expression shuttered. “We should fly again.”

“I know I’m slower, but it’d help my wings if I could spend at least an hour in the air on my own.” Not being pressed up against him would be a bonus.

Nodding, Titus waited for her to take off first.

When she did eventually end up in his arms again, she had enough distance from that spike of need that she could be rational. Not lying to herself about the depth of the attraction didn’t mean diving headfirst into a bad decision. She asked him of the political history between him and Charisemnon, listened intently.

Later, he asked her about her friendship with Caliane. Laughing, she told him stories of their long association, memories so strong they’d survived her lost years and more. And it struck her that she hadn’t spoken for so many consecutive hours with another person . . . for a long time.

He murmured for her to sleep again at one point. “Your body needs it after your earlier long flight.”

Discomfort at how good it felt being cradled in his arms made her want to argue, but she knew that was foolishness. Closing her eyes, she pressed her cheek against the steady drumbeat of his heart, and slept.

They flew on.

Night fell again, the stars shattered diamonds in the sky.

It was as the night was dawning into dark gray that she pointed to a smudge in the distance, darkness against darkness. “There it is, the place where I saw the mummified hand.”

Titus didn’t land in the center of the settlement as she’d done, but on the easternmost edge. “Dawn will come in the next two hours. I think it’s better if we wait to examine your findings in the light of the sun.”

Sharine had no wish to remain so long in this eerie, lifeless place, but she couldn’t disagree with him. Nodding, she reached back to lightly manipulate one of her shoulders. Though Titus had carried her with care, being in the same position for so long had led again to a predictable stiffness.

“I intend to walk the village border,” he said in what probably passed as a quiet tone to him, and that she found comforting.

Titus’s voice was an outward manifestation of his honesty.

“A walk would also help ease your muscles.”

She froze, unaware till then that he’d been watching her. It took conscious effort to keep her expression neutral and fall in step with his bigger, stronger form. Titus, in turn, maintained a scrupulous distance between them as they walked, not allowing his wing to brush against hers.

Both of them kept their eyes on their surroundings.

With the sky already graying at the edges, it was no longer pitch-black and so it was easy to see the signs of disturbance when they turned the corner—it was as if people had fought a desperate battle against an attacking force.

Titus crouched down to examine one particular set of prints. “I’ll have to look at this more fully in the daylight.”

“Wait.” Bringing out the phone device, she pressed the symbol Illium had shown her would bring light. It shot a glow, bright and sharp, onto the tracks. Pleased with herself, she said, “You really should get one of these. It’s quite clever—I can see why my boy loves it so.”

Titus’s response was muted, his focus elsewhere. “Could you move it so that the light falls on this point?” He indicated the relevant area with one hand.

Attention caught, she did as he’d asked. The beam of light hit a mess of dirt and grass that looked to have calcified around what might’ve been blood or other bodily fluids. “What do you see?” While Sharine could pinpoint the minute differences in a work of art that spoke the language of the artist’s brushstrokes, she didn’t know how to read the earth.

Titus brushed his fingers over the section. “It’s difficult to tell after all this time, but I’m near certain these were made by wings dragging on the ground.”

Sharine came closer, still saw only a bare glimmer of what was clear to him. “An angel who saw the reborn swarming the village and landed to help?”

“It’s possible.” His broad shoulders shifted as he angled himself to check another area. “The reborn could’ve ripped a young angel apart.” Expression dark as he rose, he said, “You should preserve the energy of the device. We may need it to examine further such areas.”

He was proven right. They stopped four more times during their slow walk, while the sky lightened from the east and the world became a kind of smudged gray that reminded her of fog in the mountains of the Refuge. She knew it would brighten until the sky turned a dazzling blue, the light so bright it hurt to look at, the heat intense enough to cut, but for now, the air remained cool, crisp.

“I thought I’d miss the cool summer green and icy winter white of the Refuge,” she found herself saying. “But Lumia feels like home, as does this land.”

“Perhaps it’s because you’re a different woman from the one who lived in the Refuge.” She was still chewing over the perceptive statement when he said, “Why did you stay so long there? Why not move with Illium to New York?”

Sharine had asked herself that same question, had no real answer. “I told myself I stayed to keep vigil over Raan’s grave, that I had to do it so people would remember him, my Raan.”

A smile that held no joy. “But I’d long stopped such visits by the time I met Aegaeon, going only once a year on the anniversary of his death. Difficult as it is to accept, I think I stayed because it was safe, with defined parameters. A cowardice on my part.”

“You judge yourself harshly.” Titus’s dark eyes landed on her, the contact reverberating through her entire self. “Even a wounded boar will retreat to lick its wounds.”

Before she could respond, he spotted more evidence of an angel having been present during the fighting. During because the imprint of dragging wings had been baked into the soil by the sun, along with the blood and other fluids. Then Sharine saw a hint of . . . “It’s a feather,” she whispered, pointing out the small discolored filaments stuck in the dried mud.

Spine stiff and voice grim, Titus said, “All of these imprints appear to have been made at the same time. They overlap and interlock with one another, as happens when we grapple in battle and our wings drop.”

Titus rose again, his thighs taut against the fabric of his pants. “What I can’t understand is why did the surviving villagers leave if you found evidence they managed to burn up the reborn?”

Wrenching her gaze away from his thighs, she said, “It’s possible they were too few in number with too little food to survive here.” Even as she said that, she found herself shaking her head. “But if that were the case, I would’ve thought they’d head toward Lumia. It’s the closest settlement.”

“They would’ve had to cross mountains,” Titus pointed out. “Impossible if they had injured among their number.”

Though dawn had come, bringing with it the first kiss of the sun, Sharine rubbed her hands up and down her arms. It had nothing to do with the temperature, however, her mind filled with agonizingly detailed renderings of the slaughter that’d taken place here. At times like these, being an artist was a curse.

“I hope that’s it. I hope the survivors found safe harbor.” She refused to even consider that their bleached bones might lie somewhere in the wild, far from safety.

“There’s enough light.” Titus looked up at the sky. “It’s time to examine the site of the burning.”

While she kept watch, Titus checked all the buildings they passed, found no one alive or dead.

“Do you think the pyre included the bodies of their dead?” she murmured as they walked closer to the shriveled, blackened remnants of the fire. “Not simply the infected ones, but those who fell in defense of the village.” She’d seen no graves on their walk, no signs of disturbed earth as happened with a burial.

“I believe so, and I can’t blame them for their choice.” Titus’s tone was grim. “Even if they had no knowledge of the fact the reborn can infect the recently dead, they’re unlikely to have had the manpower to dig multiple graves, or the supplies with which to create more than one fire.”

Sharine’s throat ached for these people who’d been forced to make choices no one should ever be asked to make. “They had to know the danger they’d face out in the open,” she said, thinking of the roaming packs of reborn, vicious and pitiless. “They must’ve been desperate indeed to head out.”

“My guess is that they knew no one would be coming and, as you said, starving to death was a real possibility.” Titus looked up. “From the charts we found in Charisemnon’s court, this settlement isn’t on any normal angelic flight path. No one would’ve seen a sign asking for help.”

She touched the phone in her pocket. “Why did they not use modern devices?”

“We brought down the network across the entire continent during the battle.” Titus’s expression twisted. “It would’ve left them with no means of communication with the outside world. And so I was partially responsible for whatever happened here.”

Sharine found herself touching her hand to his forearm, the warmth of him soaking into her skin. “This is the way of the world,” she said simply. “When immortals fight, it’s the weaker beings who pay the price. Yet you had to fight. Had you not, chances are these people would’ve been just as dead, and the death wave would’ve continued unabated—you know your nemesis wouldn’t have stopped.”

Titus, his muscles rigid, didn’t say anything. Dropping her hand, she carried on at his side . . . but his open distress at the deaths here caused a crack in the walls she’d put up around her innermost self. This man, this archangel, he kept surprising her with the depth of his heart.

“We’re here.” In front of the damaged wall through which she’d seen the bones.

Titus strode up to it. “Wait.”

As she watched, he tore apart the wall with care not to damage the remains on the other side. Parts of the wall, almost burned through, crumbled into dust at his feet. She wondered why the flames hadn’t engulfed the entire village. Perhaps it was that the bodies hadn’t burned hot enough or the fire had somehow starved.

Enlarging the space with methodical concentration, Titus worked until he’d eliminated most of the wall and they were looking on at a makeshift crematorium. Piles of ash played witness to the intent of the fire. But the flames hadn’t been hot enough and skulls rolled around on the floor, while long thighbones as well as smaller finger bones lay in the light falling through the new opening.

She pointed out what had brought them here, the elongated hand . . . which she now saw was attached to a body. No wonder she hadn’t been able to see it during her first visit; the body was at the bottom of many others. Titus silently moved the other remains aside—with care, but at speed, to reveal the body at the bottom.

It hadn’t burned up in the fire, simply been scorched in a way that meant it had mummified in the interim.

It had no head.

Her eyes widened but her horror had nothing to do with the decapitation. She’d just understood the import of the body’s spinal structure. “Titus.”

Titus went to crouch down, then seemed to decide against it. Sharine wouldn’t want her wings dragging in all that death, either.

“That’s an angelic back,” he confirmed.

She forced herself closer. There was no avoiding the truth—under the skin, angelic bodies were built differently from mortals in ways both subtle and profound, because angels had wings and thus musculature not possessed by those who couldn’t fly. This was especially so when it came to the back and chest areas.

Even though this angel’s wings had been burned away, and no trace remained of any of the muscles or feathers that would’ve once overlaid the bones, that he was an angel was indisputable.

Her boots crunched on something.

Gut churning, she lifted her foot at once, and looked down. The bones on which she’d inadvertently stood were fine and long. Not mortal. “Wing bones.” She shifted back so Titus could see. “An angel died here.”

“No.” His hand fisted at his side, his voice harsh and deep. “An angelic reborn died here.”