Archangel's War

4

Raphael came awake with the side of his face on dirt so hot it glowed, his rest prematurely ended, and his new heart not yet ready. It had, he realized, broken under the weight of the violent energy release and exposed the small mortal heart within. That small heart had exploded from the pressure.

Fragments swam in his blood, weaving their way through his entire system. A system devoid of wildfire. Devoid, too, of the golden lightning. Uncaring of the loss and of the agony in his chest, he opened his eyes . . . and looked into those of liquid silver.

He held that molten gaze for an eternity.

She didn’t respond, the silver cloudy and hazy before she lowered her lashes again.

Dazed, he told himself, she was simply dazed and emerging from a long sleep. She had been wrenched too early out of the chrysalis that would consume her even as it remade her. It’d take her time to awaken fully.

The world glowed around them, golden fire crackling, a cocoon formed of pure energy.

He’d last seen her in a shared dream, as they fought the vicious strength of the Cascade to save her mind, her memories, her. In the end, this had been their only choice—for Raphael to release the raw violence of his power and hope it fatally disrupted the chrysalis process, tearing Elena from the grip of the Cascade’s machinations.

But though he’d punched his power into the earth, it swirled in the air around them, as if there’d been so much that even the earth couldn’t contain it.

Raphael cared nothing for that. His only focus was Elena.

The closed fan of her lashes threw shadows onto her skin, her lips soft, and he could almost believe she was simply resting beside him in their bed. But even in sleep, his Elena was never so motionless, never so serene.

A nightmare gnawed at him: that the worst had happened, that the chrysalis had succeeded in its purpose and created a being with Elena’s face, but without her soul, without her memories, without her laughter and her spirit.

His nails dug into the dirt, the grit hard and hot.

He forced himself to take in the rest of her. The chrysalis had been too small. He’d seen that for himself. It could not hold his hunter’s strong, lithe body, didn’t have space for the wings of the warrior who was his consort.

Cracked pieces of the chrysalis lay all around her. The inner surface of the broken pieces swirled with wildfire: white-gold with violent swirls of blue . . . and now, an opalescent shade that morphed from midnight to dawn then back again. Elena’s skin glowed brighter than the wildfire, as if she had a light within. The Cascade had tried to turn her into a repository of power, so that he would have a source of extra fuel when he went into the war on the horizon. It had tried to turn his Elena into nothing but a reservoir.

As if he would trade her for power.

As if he would be alive without her.

As if he wouldn’t give up eternity for her.

Raphael had stopped the horrific unwanted process. But to save his Elena’s soul, her memories, he’d had to do it while the chrysalis was too small. Her body hadn’t had time to grow. It was small, misshapen. She was badly hurt and he was responsible.

His hand fisted on the dirt, his eyes stinging.

He squeezed them shut and when he next opened them, his pupils had adjusted to the piercing golden light that drenched them. He saw his Elena again. Why were her knees . . .

Raphael sucked in a breath.

She was not misshapen, was not wounded in a way that would mean centuries of constant pain. She was whole. At some point, she’d managed to tuck her knees to her chest, curling her body around it. Like a child in the womb . . . but Elena was no child.

As he watched, she sighed and began to uncurl, a butterfly emerging from a too-small chrysalis. It seemed impossible even though he was watching it happen. And then he understood. Her body had made a trade.

Elena was whole—but at a price.

Her legs were long, the legs of his tall hunter who could haul him down for a kiss with a hand on his nape. Her arms were the right size to throw knives and shoot a crossbow and spar with him with skill and humor. Her face had begun to fill out, though her cheekbones still cut like glass against her skin.

Then came the price: she was far too thin from her shoulders down, her rib cage prominent and her collarbones jutting out. Thin didn’t do enough to describe it. She was emaciated, her bones held together by tendons and covered by a translucent layer of skin. That skin continued to glow softly from the inside out, making his tough-as-nails hunter seem to be some ethereal otherworldly creature dropped into the world before she was ready.

It’d infuriate her, but such a terribly fragile body—nothing but bone and tendon and a luminous inward light—could bend and curve and fit inside a too-small chrysalis without losing pieces of itself.

She had made the right trade because flesh could be nourished. Missing limbs might take an eon to regenerate for an immortal so very young . . . because the Elena in front of him was not mortal. Not with eyes of liquid silver.

Raphael didn’t care if she was mortal or immortal—whatever happened, they would go into it together. That was their promise. He worried about her physical body only to the extent that he couldn’t bear for her to be in pain. All he truly cared about was if she had come back to him; his Elena’s heart, his Elena’s soul, his Elena’s courage.

He’d given her a piece of his heart, but only so she could make it hers.

Never had Raphael been afraid except when it came to his warrior lover. He was an archangel. Beyond fear. But in that moment fear closed its cold hands around his throat. Breath tight in his lungs, he made himself take in the rest of her face. Short strands of near-white hair lying across her cheek. Fine bones under her translucent skin—but that skin was Elena’s dark gold. The glow hadn’t faded.

As if her blood was liquid gold and the light of it shone through.

She blinked, shook her head a tiny fraction. Around her fell the last pieces of the chrysalis as her legs unfurled to their full length. Her eyes opened again and when they met his, they were clear, a pure silver without the gray of humanity. That, however, could mean the worst had happened. That his Elena was immortal but lost to him forever, a container of energy without soul or self.

I would rather die as Elena than live as a shadow.

His hand flexed painfully then fisted again, dirt and grit crushing into his skin. He would do what he had promised. He would end her if she was no longer his Elena. He would not allow an empty shell, a corruption of life, to walk around with his consort’s face. He would not allow the Cascade to degrade his Elena. But first, he would know.

Every muscle in his body locked, he reached out with his mind. Elena-mine.

No response, no sense of a presence inside his head.

He clenched his jaw. It wasn’t over yet. Her ability to speak to him mind-to-mind had been stolen long before the chrysalis. What they’d done together, wrenching her out of the chrysalis, shattering it before it was done consuming her, that might’ve compounded the harm. The piece of his heart that he’d given her held incredible power, but her body might not have known how to utilize it to protect her mind against the forces tearing at it.

She’d been his Elena in the dream where they’d met before he released his power, but he had no idea how much time had passed in the dream. Had it taken him seconds to expend his power? Days? Months? What had happened to his consort’s mind and self during that time?

“Hbeebti.” His voice was raw. And his heart, it was in pieces inside him. A new heart would grow in its place, was already beginning—though it faltered and stuttered, slowed by his lack of power. “Elena.”

Nothing, no response.

He had no weapon, no energy to form angelfire, but he was an archangel. His base strength was enough to break her neck, tear her limb from limb.

Mouth opening in a yawn, she blinked again and gave a harder shake of her head, strands of her hair floating up into the golden energy, and her forehead lined in a frown. His pulse pounded, his regenerating heart sucking energy from his limbs—because arms and legs weren’t a priority when you had a heart to grow.

There wasn’t much that could kill an archangel. Burned to a cinder by an ordinary fire, they would wake—perhaps after years, but wake they would. Blown to pieces by anything but the powers of another archangel, they would eventually regenerate from a single piece and rise again. Only another archangel could kill an archangel.

Some laws of nature were fundamental. Even the Cascade could not alter them.

His growing heart continued to draw energy from other nonessential parts of his body.

Raphael might lose some flesh during the process, might even lose an arm or a leg, but it would not be anything in the scheme of his immortal life. Nothing akin to Elena’s fragility. His hunter, who had never been fragile, would swear a blue streak at becoming conscious of her current state.

He couldn’t wait to feel her ire, fight with her over her stubborn need to quickly regain her strength. She’d probably want to begin lifting weights before she could walk. He’d hand her the damn weights himself if she’d just talk to him, tell him they’d made it, that the Cascade hadn’t won this battle.

Around them the golden energy continued to glow and form small eddies in the air, tiny lightning flashes hidden within it.

He reached once again for her mind. Elena, do you hear me? His chest ached.

If she was gone, this was it for him. He had lived over a thousand five hundred years. It was enough. If Lijuan had risen monstrous while he and Elena slept, he’d do what he could to burn out that scourge because Elena would want him to do that, but he would not live thousands of years without her. He could not live another day without her. Warrior mine, he said with his mind, repeating the words aloud.

His body felt heavy, lethargic, but he lifted his hand to cradle her cheek. Gently, so gently. Her skin felt like the fine rice paper his mother had used to wrap homemade sweets for him when he was a child. It had torn so easily. He would not tear his Elena.

Warm, she was warm. But her eyes, they were closed again. Silver glowed against the diaphanous shell of her lids. Had the chrysalis consumed her from the outside in? Had he stopped the process in time? Or had he taken too long and she’d been consumed down to the merest speck, only to begin again, this time as an empty husk meant to hold energy?

If it was the latter, the woman he loved beyond life, beyond eternity was gone, their love story ended and his immortal existence with it. So be it. But he would know first. He would be certain. “Until you speak, I will wait.” He would know the instant she opened her mouth whether he held a creature of the Cascade or his Elena.

And if she never spoke? That would be an answer in itself.

His hunter was not a woman to hold her silence.

“In the end,” he said, “before I released the power in my body, I spoke to Cassandra. You and I, hbeebti, we changed the prophecy.” He wanted Elena to open her eyes and ask him if Her Evilness was finally going to die, wanted to hear her groan when he told her what Cassandra had said:

The future aligns. Paths are chosen. Death comes. Such death, child of flames.

Goddess of Nightmare.

Wraith without a shadow.

Rising into her Reign of Death.

Wings of silver. Wings of blue.

Mortal heart. Broken dreams.

Shatter. Shatter. Shatter.

A sundering. A grave.

I see the end. I see . . .

“Not exactly an improvement over the last one, Archangel.” That’s what Elena would say were she awake. “Lots of dark portents and shattering, and now there’s a grave, too? Great, just great.”

Had it been his and Elena’s grave that Cassandra had seen? For if death came, they would lie together in the earth. He would not permit a sundering—not in life and not in death. Whatever their future, they would walk into it together. Never divided. But if this wasn’t his hunter, she had already left him. He would have to follow. “Elena, wake for me,” he whispered on the stuttering beat of his broken heart.

A whisper of warm steel in his mind. Umm? A sleepy sound.

His tiny regenerating heart began to pound as loudly as if it was fully formed. Because that sleepy murmur, it had sounded like his Elena. The warm steel? That was her strength tempered with heart. “Guild Hunter?”

She yawned and shifted closer, until her breath kissed his skin. He ran his thumb over her cheek with immeasurable care, afraid to snag it and break the fragile surface. “Elena, wake up.” Please.

Raising a hand that was far too slender, her bones defined against her luminous skin, she rubbed at her face without dislodging his hand from her cheek. When she dropped her hand, she gave him a quizzical look. “Archangel, is your hair on fire?”