Chapter 17
Even her madness is a thing of impossible beauty.
—Raphael to Elena (Before the Rising of Caliane, Archangel of Amanat)
Walking through the large rocks that were part of the garden’s starkly lovely landscape, Elena soon began to hear two male voices that weren’t raised but rather pitched hard and low. A private conversation that vibrated with anger.
“—gave up that right! So stop with the posturing! Stop with introducing me as your fucking son!”
“You are my son,” was Aegaeon’s equally enraged response. “You may choose to maintain ties with that upstart pup of Caliane’s, but you are my son.”
“You chose to stop being a father to me long ago, Aegaeon,” Illium gritted back. “Enough with this falseness. Treat me as another archangel and don’t otherwise think about me.”
“If I treated you as another archangel, we’d be in the midst of a massive war. You are impertinent and arrogant and—”
“And your equal,” came the response in a cold, hard tone that Elena had never, ever heard from Illium. “I am Cadre, and if you want to—”
“There you are!” Elena walked out of the rockery as if she was a vacuous fluffhead who had no idea of the dangerous emotional tides that swirled around the two.
As if she wasn’t faced with two archangels whose wings were glowing as they powered up to strike.
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
“Archangel Aegaeon, it’s been an age! I’d love to catch up, but I believe the Huntress of the Ages was searching for you.”
Much as she loved her, Elena didn’t enjoy having Tiamat’s voice in her head. It was too heavy with age, an agonizing weight of memory to it, but she’d already reached out to warn the other woman that she planned to send Aegaeon her way.
Tiamat’s response had held the amused humor of an apex predator: Excellent.
I did not wear a backless gown today specifically to see his face as he struggles to define what I am and, thus, how to treat me—but I will enjoy the incidental outcome nonetheless.
I do believe he will explode from the pressure of it soon.
Neither Aegaeon nor Illium moved.
So Elena tucked her hand through Illium’s arm; his body was rigid against her.
She tried to think of a name that wouldn’t tip Aegaeon over the edge.
“I’ve also been sent over by Archangel Suyin to bring you back to the party, Illium.
” She managed a ridiculous giggle. “She mentioned that you’d promised her a dance.
” As far as she knew, Aegaeon had no argument with the Archangel of China.
Power burned over her skin, archangelic anger not a thing with which to play. But this was her Bluebell, and he put his hand over the one she’d curled around his biceps, and said, “You are correct to remind me of my promises.” A clipped nod at Aegaeon.
Who clenched his jaw so tight that Elena could almost hear it grind before he inclined his head at her. “Consort. I look forward to our conversation later.” Then he took off in a smooth vertical rise that spoke to his power.
Waiting until he was out of sight, she turned to Illium and just hugged him. Her breath came out shaky.
That had been too close, far too close.
Illium hugged her back, his body strong and warm. “You know this war is coming, Ellie.”
She knew that; they all knew that. The tension between once-father and once-son had been growing in increments ever since Illium rejected Aegaeon’s offer to join his court, but it had ramped up to a lethal level after Illium’s ascension.
The rage of two archangels, fueled by a lifetime of painful emotion on Illium’s part—and cold arrogance on Aegaeon’s.
“Not today,” she said, looking at him as they broke the hug. “Not so long as any of us can stop it.” He meant far too much to far too many people for them to even chance losing him.
Because though they were both Cadre, Aegaeon was an Ancient, while Illium had ascended only three hundred years ago. Power wasn’t a linear thing defined by age when it came to the Cadre, but it did have an impact—especially when some archangels carried gifts bestowed by a Cascade.
Exhaling, he strode to the other side of the clearing, then back.
He was dressed in a strikingly cut black tunic that bared his arms—on which he wore metalwork sleeves of black filigree.
Worn for the beauty of them, not for usefulness.
No doubt made by Aodhan, his love for Illium in every curve and swirl.
“I would ignore him.” He thrust his hands through the blue-tipped black of his hair. “I do ignore him. But he isn’t satisfied with that. He wants us to play some fantasy game of family.”
Glittering diamond-bright wings above them, Aodhan coming to land beside Illium…as Elena slipped away. Her part of this was done, Aodhan now the one Illium needed.
She wasn’t expecting to see Caliane standing near where Elena had first entered the rockery. Raphael’s mother looked a goddess lit by moonlight as she stared up at that same orb.
Elena hesitated before walking over to join her. “It’s a stunning night, isn’t it?”
Caliane’s lips curved. “I walked with my mate on a night such as this many an eon ago. We had come to a grand ball thrown by an archangel whose name I can no longer remember, were still new lovers then. He took me by the hand, and said he had something to show me, and he walked me to a hidden night garden.”
She turned to look at Elena, her eyes lost in time.
“All the flowers within bloomed only in the moonlit hours, their petals aglow from this cool, cold light.” Her smile faded.
“He was so delighted with himself that day, my Nadiel, that he’d found such beauty for me. He knew how much I enjoyed gardens.”
Elena had long ago stopped being nervous around Caliane, but today, she found herself hesitating. Nadiel wasn’t a topic on which they’d ever really spoken—Elena had always felt it wasn’t her place. “All these millennia later, you miss him,” she said. “I understand.”
Caliane looked at her. “Do you, child? You are but spring’s first breath, the rust of time nowhere near you.”
“I was mortal,” Elena reminded her, a deep ache in her heart. “With mortal family. Mortal friends.” And perhaps…a mortal child.
“Ah, their lives flicker and are gone before they can truly burn bright.” Beautiful words, but there was no sorrow in them, none of the empathy she was used to from Caliane.
Raphael’s mother had long ago vowed to face what she’d done in her madness, and in that reckoning, had become a far kinder person, one who understood grief and guilt and despair in a way many immortals never would.
“Perhaps that is better,” Caliane added.
“A quick burn rather than an endless span of an agony that leaches into the bones and calls itself at home.” Her eyes went to the moon again.
“I think at times that the pain of it will end me, but I do not end. I am forever. And he is never. I killed him. As I killed the mortals who would not follow my command to be at peace.”
Elena’s heart thudded, the skin of her palms suddenly too dry and hot.
Because the way Caliane had just referred to the murder of two ancient cities had been…
flat. A mere fact. Nothing of emotion to it, no grief or guilt or acceptance that she’d committed an atrocity.
Archangel, you’re right about your mother.
The answer was immediate. Where are you?
She told him, while Caliane stared at the moon again and began to recite a list of names, pausing in between to explain. “Others I killed. In battle for most.”
The susurration of wings as familiar to her as her own breath, Raphael landing on Caliane’s other side. “Mother,” he said, “will you walk with me?”
“Of course, my son.” She turned to look at Elena, her gaze silvered by the moon. “You will not mind if I steal him for a few moments?”
Elena shook her head while inside her chest, her heart squeezed. I hope you can get through to her.
The waves of Raphael were turbulent in her mind when he replied. I must.
Or Caliane would die, Elena realized. Because as she’d learned during her very first hunt, the Cadre would not countenance a mad archangel.