Archangel's War

33

Elena had never before been in Caliane’s private quarters. Raphael met her outside, told her his mother was waiting within. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected; what she got was both surprising and not. The space was exquisite in the way of a being who had lived millennia upon millennia and could choose from an endless number of cultures and designs.

The palette was white and a pale gold for the most part, the high walls of the hallway in which she walked covered in a wallpaper that stole her breath. Delicate and lovely, the design proved to be lovingly hand-painted. The floor wasn’t glossy marble but a warm glowing wood of pale honey, the curtains that hung over the large windows a white muslin so fine it was air.

It was a warm and welcoming space . . . until you got to the floor-to-ceiling doors that blocked the way to Caliane’s inner sanctum. Heavy iron, they bore the emblem of two crossed swords. Elena stopped far enough away that she could take in the entirety of the massive block of metal, and after a while, began to see elements hidden within the initially bold design.

Each of the swords, for one, was unique, the hilts boasting intricate designs that had nothing in common yet were somehow complementary.

“My father’s.” Raphael pointed to the right. “My mother’s.” The one on the left. “His burned up during his death and she broke hers into pieces and threw it into the ocean.”

A stab in Elena’s heart. She couldn’t even begin to comprehend what it would’ve cost Caliane to execute the man she loved so deeply, a love she hadn’t found until an eon into her long existence.

She deliberately brushed her body against Raphael’s as they took several more steps. Oh. “I almost missed all the other designs.” Intricate pieces that made no sense until you were close enough to see the details.

Raphael touched one particular panel. “My birth.”

She saw the child then, cradled within two palms, one masculine, one feminine. It was a stylized image, the infant not visible except as soft curves and a hint of wings on the back, but she put her fingers on the panel and smiled. “Finally, I get to see baby photos of you.”

No laugh from her archangel, his eyes on two panels high on the right-hand corner that seemed shinier than the others. “Those were not there before.”

Squinting, she tried to see what he had . . . Her skin tightened. A blaze of light. A falling angel, his wings broken and fire licking up his body. Nadiel’s fall. Right below that was a panel with the collapsed body of another angel, his wings crumpled and his body shattered until his limbs twisted into the wrong shape.

Raphael’s last encounter with Caliane before she woke sane.

“This is her history,” she whispered, realizing that these doors held the eternity of an archangel’s life. Even the broken and bloody pieces.

“I did not think she would choose to remember that.” Raphael’s gaze remained locked on the two painful panels. “Sometimes, Elena, I do not understand my mother.”

“Well, don’t ask me for advice about how to deal with parents. You’ve seen the stellar state of my relationship with Jeffrey.” But she leaned into him and when he spread his wing, she moved her hand to brush over the inner surface. And froze. “Um, Archangel?”

“Hmm?” He was looking at another panel.

“Did you forget to mention acquiring black and purple feathers?”

That caught his attention. Looking down, he took in the black feathers that came out from the curve of his wings, as if growing from where his wings emerged from his back.

Those obsidian feathers faded into indigo and a deep blue before the white-gold of his wings took over. “It appears you have marked me once again.” He flared out the other wing, which bore the gunshot scar. “The underside is the same here.”

Shifting, Elena took in the top of his wings. “No change up top.”

“Show me your wings.”

Stormfire erupted out of her back. She saw the midnight and dawn of herself but alive within it was his golden lightning. “I thought the blending only went one way.” He was one of the Cadre, while she’d been a baby immortal when she went into the chrysalis.

“It appears not.” Not sounding worried in the least about that, he folded in his wings. “My mother has just asked if we intend to come inside or stand here all day.”

Despite the constant changes happening to both of them, her shoulders shook at his impression of Caliane’s regal tones. “Behave.” Turning as one, they pushed through the doors . . . into moonlight.

Elena’s breath caught.

The living area had no opaque walls excepting the one that led deeper into Caliane’s suite. The rest of it—roof included—was glass. Vines crawled over the roof, thick enough to provide dappled shade in the daytime. Set out below the vines were white velvet sofas that featured curved legs; the seat cushions had buttons on them.

“Come,” Caliane said, her face difficult to read. “I will take you to Nadiel.”

Elena fell into step beside the Ancient, while Raphael took the rear. Caliane led her through another set of doors into a large bedroom. The lighting here was soft rather than harsh, curtains pulled over the windows. The bed was a four-poster made up in white-on-white sheets with the bed curtains a pale gold and the carpet underfoot a rich brown.

“There.” Caliane shifted to face the wall behind them . . . the wall she would see when she woke each morning.

Chest tight, Elena turned, too.

The painter had caught Nadiel in an informal moment. He was shirtless, his legs covered in a warrior’s leathers, and his sword held across his thighs. A rag was crumpled in his right hand, and he was laughing, his eyes turned to someone just off to the left of the artist.

Caliane, it must’ve been Caliane. There was a potent intimacy in his laugh, in his eyes. The artist had captured a moment between lovers, been talented enough to put that moment on canvas.

“The Hummingbird,” she murmured, and it wasn’t a question. She knew only two angelic artists with gifts so incredible and Aodhan hadn’t yet been born when Nadiel died.

“Yes.” Caliane’s voice held an age that pressed on Elena’s bones. “She dropped by for a visit, and as always with Sharine, she had her sketchpad with her. Nadiel was outside cleaning his weapons, and I was laughing with him about something or other, and Sharine was sitting there sketching and it was such a normal thing that we didn’t really notice. A year later, she gave me this.”

It startled Elena to hear of the mysterious, haunted Hummingbird spoken of as just Sharine—a friend, a compatriot. But she was too fascinated by the portrait to follow that line of thought, to ask about the woman who was so very talented and so very broken.

Raphael had told her once that while he had Caliane’s colors, he had Nadiel’s bones. She’d glimpsed that truth in the angelfire portraits in Lumia, now saw the totality of it: the shape of Nadiel’s face, the width of his shoulders, the height she could see even with Nadiel seated, it was a mirror of Raphael’s.

Your father’s eyes were green. An astonishing green caught between emerald and aquamarine. So clear they were striking even caught in paint. She didn’t know why she’d never thought to ask about Nadiel’s eye color. Probably because Raphael’s father’s eyes had been pieces of angelfire in all the paintings she’d seen in Lumia.

The man in this painting wasn’t burning from the inside out. He was tanned and muscled, his cheeks creased, and his wind-tumbled hair a lush brown that faded into gold at the tips. In his right earlobe flashed an amber earring and she knew it for Caliane’s mark.

“He had such wicked laughter in his eyes.” Love was an ache in Caliane’s voice. “I knew him as a new member of the Cadre, but that was what first drew me to him as a man—his laughter. I heard it across a crowded marketplace and I had to know who it was that laughed with such open, unashamed happiness.”

A glow suffused her face, her eyes luminous. “He had mischief in him, too. He made me remember the girl I’d once been, the woman beneath the archangel.” The next words she spoke were in a language Elena didn’t understand.

When she glanced at Raphael, he shook his head. I do not know this tongue, hbeebti. It was one shared between my parents in their private moments and I have only a vague recollection of it in my memories.

I don’t really need a translation, I guess. Piercing love had a flavor, a hidden song within. She really misses him.

Their love is the one thing I never doubted. He’d grown up in the arms of that love. Even when they couldn’t be together, they would write letters, send each other small gifts, make comments many times a day about a thought they had to tell the other. The constant presence of that love had made it easier for Raphael to be apart from one parent during the periods when Caliane and Nadiel had to separate.

For two archangels couldn’t coexist in the same territory for a long period without their energies leading to an inevitable conflict. That Nadiel and Caliane had managed it as much as they had was a testament to the agonizing depth of their love.

Did you stay with both of them alternately?

When I was a babe, I stayed with Caliane. But later, after I was grown enough to understand how things must be, I would go with my father at times, remain with my mother others. Old memories stirred awake at the corners of his mind. “Mother, do you remember the time I returned home with no hair?”

Caliane’s sadness fractured in a waterfall of startled laughter. “Nadiel was so afraid of my wrath that he sent me buckets of flowers in the days before your arrival.” She still had her eyes on the portrait, but her next words were directed at Elena. “Our son had somehow gotten into a vat of tar. Nadiel managed to clean his skin and his wings but his beautiful hair was a lost cause.”

Elena grinned and glanced at Raphael. “I’m trying to imagine you as a kid and failing, despite that baby portrait in the door.”

“I can show you.” Caliane brought her hands together as if she were a young maid and not an Ancient; her smile was of pure delight. “I have portraits.”

“Mother.”

But both his mother and his consort were intent on ignoring him. Giving in to the inevitable, he trailed after them through another door. And into a room that had him groaning.

It was a lovingly lit gallery.

Of him.

As a naked babe in his father’s arms.

As an equally naked toddler caught climbing up the side of the house.

As a boy—with pants at least—trying out his wings.

As a fully dressed youth sitting beside his mother while she played the lyre.

And more, so many more.

“He would not sit still,” Caliane told Elena. “Sharine did most of these after managing a quick sketch while he was up to mischief.” She pointed at the painting with the lyre. “That one was the easiest. He liked to hear me sing and so he’d be quiet and in one place for that time.”

“This is amazing.” Elena had a hand pressed to her chest. “Can I take photos?”

“No.” Raphael glared at her. “Else I will contact your father and create a public gallery in the Tower of your childhood self.”

A narrow-eyed look from his consort. “Fine. Be that way.” She turned her attention back to the paintings.

Caliane held her wings with warrior strength, but her lips were soft and her face warm with affection as she told his consort the stories behind the paintings. Her memories were precise, detailed.

“Why didn’t I ever know about this gallery?”

Caliane laughed. “Ah, this is a thing for a mother. You were busy being a boy, a youth.”

Raphael found himself drawn to the single family portrait in the gallery: Nadiel stood with his arm around a young Raphael, while Caliane sat in front of them, but she was glancing back with a smile on her face, as if distracted by whatever the two of them had just said. Father and son were in the midst of a laugh Raphael could almost hear.

“She has such hands, Sharine.” His mother came to stand beside him. “Did I tell you that I visited her? She has settled well into her new role in Morocco.” A touch on his forearm. “That is a good thing you did, Raphael.”

“The Hummingbird was the best person for the task.” The Cadre had needed a neutral party to take over the running of Lumia and its surrounding village, and no one in angelkind had a bad word to say about the Hummingbird. “She is outside politics and alliances.”

“But for her son,” Caliane reminded him.

“Yes.” For Illium, the Hummingbird would do anything . . . but even Illium hadn’t been able to hold his mother fully to this world. The Hummingbird existed in one of her own; she was a broken instrument, a lovely shattered piece. Raphael had never seen so much of her work in one place—and in doing so, he mourned her all the more.

The woman she’d been had understood life and love, understood what it was to be part of the world. Part of a family. But the family she’d painted with such tenderness was now as splintered as the Hummingbird’s mind.