Chapter 19
Caliane and Nadiel never lost one another, Elena. My parents loved even in the madness.
—Raphael to Elena (Once, in Amanat)
Raphael walked his mother away from the lights of the stronghold and through the cool air of the moon-washed desert, while she told him stories of her courtship with Nadiel.
“He was so young that I didn’t take him seriously at first.” A smile that held a thousand unspoken memories.
“But he was not one to give up, your father.”
Only once they were far from the other guests and she’d fallen silent did he say, “You lied, didn’t you, Mother? You’re not giving your body and mind the rest they need.”
A long pause, her steps hitching a little before she picked up her smooth glide again. “Do not fuss so, Rafi.”
His back grew stiff. “Stop. Listen to what you just said.” No one but Nadiel had ever called him Rafi. Not even Caliane. She had especially avoided any reference to that childhood pet name after Nadiel’s death, as if understanding how much it wounded Raphael to hear it.
Caliane halted, sucked in a breath. “Did I just say…?”
“Yes.” He turned, faced her. “Mother, something is very wrong with you.” He would not dance around this, would not allow it to get to the stage where she engaged in wholesale slaughter. “You are losing yourself again.”
Pain in the lines flaring out from the corners of her eyes, in the crack in her voice as she said, “Do not tell me to go into Sleep, Raphael.” It was a plea. “I have had but a moment in time with you.”
It had been near to a thousand years since her waking, but at Caliane’s age, that truly was a droplet in time.
“I have to,” he said, his own voice a rasp, and it was only at that instant that he realized he’d been looking forward to introducing his child to his mother…
and that her continued sanity had given him hope for his own future.
“My mother when she is sane,” he said, holding the moonlit blue of her gaze, “is honorable and kind—she doesn’t lie or forget her past trespasses, and she doesn’t hurt me even by accident.” All she’d wanted since she’d found her sanity again was to protect him, love him.
Caliane’s breathing sped up, her lips appearing to tremble before she pressed them tight. “I will ask Marduk and Tiamat for their judgment on this,” she said at last, her voice yet uneven. “You must allow me this—they are older, have knowledge that we have long lost.”
It struck him then that she wasn’t talking to him like a fellow archangel or even an ancient, but as a mother who’d made a promise to her son to never again become a monster.
In the pursuit of that promise, she was prepared to exile herself from the world because he’d asked it—all she wanted was a chance to plead her case.
His eyes burned, his throat painful. “Yes,” he said. “Ask them. Tonight, while I am with you.”
“You no longer trust me.” Caliane’s gaze was hurt but beyond that lay a growing coldness that told him the time would soon come when she’d no longer care about her promises to him—or to the world.
Shh, my darling, shh.
“I buried children, Mother.” Raphael was harsh because this line he would not permit her to cross. Never again. No matter what it took. “I dug rows upon rows of graves for the babes who died of a terrible, dark grief after you sang their parents into the sea.”
The anguish and horror of that time would live forever within him.
It was a pitifully small penance for his mother’s crimes.
“Their lives flickered out one after the other,” he continued, refusing to let her look away. “Keir could not stop it. No one could stop it. So many died in my arms, Mother. I couldn’t hold them to life, couldn’t do anything but be with them as they left this world.”
“I forgot them.” A horrified whisper. “Raphael, I forgot about the children. I never forget about the children. They haunt me night after night, tiny ghosts that reproach me for my cruelty. Yet when I spoke with Elena just now, I did not remember them.”
She took a rapid inhale. “I must talk to Marduk and Tiamat now.”
“I’ll organize it. You know the library at the far end of the house?” At her nod, he said, “Go there. I’ll get the others to you.”
“No.” Caliane gripped his arm. “No, you must not leave me alone. Not when I am not…well. I do not trust myself.”
Hating her anguish and the specter of madness that haunted them both, he walked with her while reaching out to Marduk with his mind to ask if he and his consort would join them in the library. I apologize for taking you away from your ball, he said at the end.
This is more important, Marduk responded. I will find Tia and meet you at once.
Elena-mine, Raphael said afterward, telling her what was to take place. Will you ensure the guests don’t notice we are all missing?
It was a hard thing he was asking of her, especially since he was taking away the hosts themselves, but she said, Consider it done, Archangel.
Bluebell and Sparkle just got back—I’ll ask them to do one of their aerial displays.
It’ll hold everyone’s attention. I hope you find an answer for Caliane.
A mental kiss, steel awash in the windstorms of spring.
He held Elena’s touch close as he stood in the library only minutes later, none of the group having taken their seats. Marduk had shut the heavy doors after he entered with Tiamat, enclosing them in a cocoon of silence thick with portents dark and unwanted.
“Lady Caliane,” Tiamat-Neith said after Raphael had explained the situation, with Caliane admitting how long it had been since she’d slept of a night.
“I’m afraid there is only one solution.” Her tone was gentle.
“At a certain age, the brain cannot…process, I believe that is how those of you in the new world put it.”
“Too many memories, too much emotion.” Caliane’s lovely gift of a voice was all grit. “It is all leaking out, becoming a sludge.”
“Yes, just so.” Tiamat’s gaze was tender as she looked at her consort. “It’s part of why Marduk was so against staying in this time for a long period. At our age, we can begin to fray in ways dangerous to those around us.”
Marduk entered the conversation, his voice dark with eons-old knowledge. “It does not impact all of us equally. In truth, while I would not last, Tia could.” His turn to look at Tiamat, before he pressed a kiss to her hair.
She closed her eyes, leaning into him. Their wings overlapped.
“Marduk is right,” Tiamat said on the heels of the moment, her eyes open once more—and in them was that eerie, inexplicable motion. “It is an affliction that knows nothing of fairness.”
“So it is clear.” Caliane’s face was pale. “I will not delay, for in that delay, I could cause great suffering and horror.”
“That is for the best,” Tiamat said, “but it is possible that since you are choosing to go into Sleep while your mind is clear rather than tangled in madness, that you will not need centuries to recover. Toward the end of our time, some of our old ones Slept for a decade or so at a stretch every two centuries, and they were many millennia your elders.”
“The elders used to call it their time to become again,” Marduk added. “Perhaps you simply need to become again, Lady Caliane.” The ice blue of his gaze was acute in that dragonish face. “You must know how to ensure you wake after a certain defined period.”
“How will I know if I am safe to wake?” Caliane insisted, and in her voice was an anguish that made Raphael hurt for his mother.
She had tried so hard.
Marduk looked to Raphael. “You must trust the judgment of those who have no reason to lie to you.”
A long inhale, before Caliane said, “I will slip away now. That is the simplest and safest way to do this. Before any of the others become aware of my weakness.” While her mien was stark, her decisiveness was of the warrior again, nothing lost or dreamy about her.
The problem, of course, was that she could as easily flip back. “I’ll come with you,” Raphael said. “Elena too.” His consort wasn’t as fast as either of them, but in this, he needed her by his side.
“A decade,” Caliane murmured. “It is not so very long.” But in her voice hung a thousand tears.
* * *
It was the quietest journey of his existence, the weight of the horror that had almost taken place a black cloud that followed them from an Australian desert to the lush forests of Kagoshima, Japan, and home to Amanat.
Wild horses raced beneath them as they flew into the city protected by a shield only his mother could produce. Jelena and Avi were waiting in the garden in which Caliane chose to land, and he knew she’d warned them of her arrival.
He and Elena landed in silence behind her.
“I must Sleep,” his mother told the two warriors, her voice and expression stark. “Now, today.”
Jelena and Avi knelt as one. “We are ready to come with you, sire.”
Avi, speaking for both of them.
But Caliane shook her head. “No, you must stay. As must Tasha, and the entirety of my innermost court, along with all my senior generals and warriors.” She held out her hands so that Jelena and Avi could take one each, rise.
“Sire,” Jelena began, her distress clear.
“I will Sleep for a decade,” Caliane told her.
“There is unlikely to be an ascension in that time—so you must watch over my territory. The Cadre will no doubt arrange oversight flights, but with nine, no one will argue against an experienced senior team maintaining the situation until I rise again.”
“We understand, sire,” Avi said at last, but his eyes had a wet shine. “We will do as you bid and wait for your return.”
Caliane touched her hand first to his cheek, then to Jelena’s. “Your devotion humbles me.” Soft words. “I won’t let you down. Now go, gather the others who must remain in the world, and leave Amanat. You have an hour.”
In that short window, Caliane sent a message to everyone in Amanat, telling those who did not wish to go into Sleep with her to step outside the shield.
You will not be punished or considered disloyal, she said.
Rather, it will be your task to help maintain my lands until I rise again in ten years’ time.
Jelena and Avi will show you the way. Listen to them for they speak with my voice.
As Raphael had expected, the vast majority of Amanat chose to stay—his mother’s people were not just loyal; they loved her. In sanity, that was a gift she cherished. In madness, she might use them with the same carelessness with which the Archangel of Death had used her people.
Only once all was ready, mere minutes left, did Caliane turn to Raphael. “My son.” Tears rolled down her face. “A decade, Raphael, and if you deem me mad on my rising, I will listen and return to Sleep. This I vow.”
He crushed her into his embrace. “I love you, Mother.” Then there was no more time. He took Elena’s hand and they rose into the sky—and out of Amanat’s shield.
When they landed, it was beside the senior team and the few other residents who’d left the city. Their faces were grim where they weren’t awash in tears, and they stood in absolute silence as the timer clicked over to the hour…and Amanat sank into the earth.
Yet Raphael knew that if they dug there, they’d never find it.
While most angels could bury themselves in Sleep, his mother alone could take an entire city with her—and in a way that defied any explanation.
For Amanat had never been unearthed, even when explorers and hunters dug endlessly in the last place it had stood.
Grass rippled in front of them, no sign remaining of the vibrant city that had existed there mere moments earlier.
His mother was gone.
* * *
Child of mortals. A voice as old as time, faded and sleepy in Elena’s mind. I will watch over her. Tell this to her son.
Elena swallowed to wet her dry throat. “Archangel?”
“Yes.” Eyes of an astonishing, impossible blue shadowed with grief met hers.
When she passed on Cassandra’s message, he gave a ragged half laugh. “I don’t know whether to be grateful or terrified. Only one of the archangels she took with her into rest after the war has emerged.”
Wrapping her arms around him, she pressed the side of her face to his chest and reminded him: “Zanaya emerged whole and healthy. I don’t think she’ll release Caliane until she’s the same—it’ll help your mother, too, to know that.”
Nuzzling the side of her head, Raphael said, “A decade isn’t long in an eternal life. She will still get to meet our child whether they are a toddling immortal babe, or a mortal youth.”
Elena hadn’t even thought about that, but now, her eyes pricked. Because she wasn’t the only one with a missing mother in this relationship now. “Yes,” she whispered. “We’re going to give her one hell of a surprise.”
Raphael’s arms tightened around her as hers tightened around him, both of them leaning into each other to withstand the emotional storm.