Chapter 20
I should not be awake, young one. There is a reason I Sleep, a reason the Ancestors Sleep. We chose to give this world over to the young and we have all kept our promise through eons uncounted.
—Archangel Marduk to Raphael (As the Mantle Fell)
They returned to Marduk’s territory after Amanat vanished as if it had never existed.
Neither Raphael nor Elena, nor anyone in Caliane’s court, would even whisper of her Sleep until enough time had passed that all her people were in the right places to argue for their right to caretake the territory, rather than having it divided to be governed piecemeal by other archangels.
With the ball long since over, Raphael and Elena would’ve gone straight to New York, but Marduk and Tiamat had requested that they return if they could.
This time, however, they’d been invited to meet the couple at a small private stronghold on the eastern side of Marduk’s lands, a region draped in subtropical green.
The other archangel had squeezed Raphael’s shoulder before he and Elena left for Amanat. “I would have one more conversation with you, blood of my line.”
The weight of realization was heavy on Raphael’s shoulders as he exited the shower enclosure a half hour after they’d landed in the depths of the night.
The Cadre, he thought, would soon—far sooner than he and Elena had theorized—be eight.
Not only that, but the two missing voices would include their wisest.
For that was what Caliane had become since her waking.
Do not tell me to go into Sleep, Raphael. I have had but a moment in time with you.
Her plea haunted him.
“I will miss her far more than I would’ve ever imagined when first she woke,” he said as he walked into the bedroom…
to see that his consort was already asleep on top of the sheets.
She was still wrapped up in the large white towel she’d grabbed after telling him she was getting out before she gave in to the urge to jump him.
Love overwhelmed him in a rush as powerful as any Cascade. All long legs and hair that glorious shade that was hers alone, her body sleek with muscle and power, she was the most precious being in all the universe to him. And now, she carried their child—and that child was demanding of her body.
Not wanting to disturb her, but also not wanting to risk her lying in the damp towel, he used a dusting of his power to leach the water from the towel.
The droplets hovered in the air until he released them harmlessly on the balcony across from the bed, the doors to which they’d left open so the breeze could flow in.
He’d have to show her that trick after she woke, he thought even as he picked up a soft blanket from the foot of the bed and opened it over her.
“Sleep, hbeebti. Dream only the sweetest of dreams.” He wished he could compel that, leach the blood from her dreams as he had the water from the towel, but some things were beyond the reach of even an archangel.
All he could do was hold her safe in this world while she walked the shadows of another. Slipping into bed beside her after he’d dried off his own body, he covered her with his arm and his wing.
* * *
Elena was sitting on the mat again, shelling peas with her mother. “I was so scared you’d never again visit me in my dreams. Not after we finally set you free like you wanted.” She could still see the daisies floating on the water as she stood on the cliff with her body leaning into her father’s.
Beth’s hand had been so tight on hers, as tight as the day they’d put Marguerite into the earth when Beth had been far too young to understand why her mother wasn’t coming home ever again.
Majda’s tears had been quiet, Jean-Baptiste’s anguish raw.
And Jeffrey? Jeffrey had watched the daisies on the water until there wasn’t even a whisper of them on the horizon, his thin face carved with lines of grief he’d locked in a box for two decades.
Today, Marguerite’s eyes crinkled, the near-white of her hair haloed by the sunshine coming in through the kitchen window. “I have told you many times, chérie, I will always visit my bébé.” A glance back, a smile. “Ari and Belle are here now. I hear them laugh.”
Elena did, too, her sisters forever young women full of promise. “Do you ever see Beth?”
“Oui, of course!” Marguerite laughed, her movements whispering the scent of gardenias into the air. “My smallest bébé, she comes to see me with her own children and their children! So many we are, Ellie! My table overflows.”
Elena knew she was dreaming this night, but still, the conversation made her happy.
She liked to believe in a world “beyond the veil,” as the angels said, where her family was safe and whole and happy.
She didn’t ask about her father—it seemed cruel when he’d loved two women in his life, and when the second of those women—kind, elegant Gwendolyn—had always known that she was the second.
Jeffrey Deveraux had only ever truly loved one woman, and if he lived beyond the veil, it would be with Marguerite.
“Careful, azeeztee.” Marguerite caught a pea when it would’ve gone flying to the floor, then popped it into her mouth. “Delicious.”
Elena laughed and ate a few, too. “Maman?”
“Yes, bébé?”
“I’m going to have a baby, too.” She pressed a hand to her stomach as she held her mother’s sparkling gaze—so full of joie de vivre.
Marguerite’s entire face glowed. “Oh, oh!” Leaning over the basket of unshelled peas, she cupped Elena’s face in her hands, and in that instant, she felt warm and alive and oh-so-real. “I will spoil them so, mon petit-enfant. I will be a most terrible influence.”
Then the peas were gone and they were standing, and her much shorter mother was enfolding Elena in her arms and murmuring to her. “You will be a wonderful maman, azeeztee. Better than I ever was.”
Elena didn’t even care that she was in this awkward bent-over position, just wanted to stay longer. “Ma—”
“Hush.” Marguerite’s hand stroking her hair. “I broke, bébé. I broke and I left you and Beth and your papa. But you won’t break. You’re as strong as Jeffrey was. He stayed. You’ll stay, too.”
* * *
Elena’s eyes opened to the soft light of dawn and the awareness that Raphael was lying awake beside her, his wing over her body. “He stayed,” she murmured. “That’s what my mother said to me in the dream. Jeffrey stayed, and so will I.”
Having loved her long enough to understand what she meant without further explanation, Raphael just cuddled her closer. The scent of him was warmth and power and home. “Your mother knows her child.” A nuzzle of her hair. “A good dream, then?”
“Yes, a wonderful one.” She stroked the underside of his wings. “Did I fall asleep before you came out of the shower?” She remembered a heavy lethargy in her bones, the decision to lie down for just a minute.
“Yes.” His hand on her bare abdomen, her body naked under the blanket and his wing; the towel must’ve come off at some point. “Super-parasite, remember?”
Her cheeks creased. “We need to break that habit before they come along, or we’re going to scar our child for life.”
“Perhaps we should argue about names. I hear that this is common among first-time parents.”
Turning in his arms, she smiled at him, happy in this moment, her body full of energy. “Hello, Archangel.”
“No,” he said sternly. “We are expected for breakfast.”
“It’s only dawn.” Then she kissed him.
And because he was her Raphael, he slid his hand from her abdomen to between her legs and well…they were almost late for breakfast.
Which the four of them had decided to eat in the lush green gardens of this home.
Winter had come in this hemisphere of the world, but with this part of Marduk’s territory being subtropical, the foliage still thrived.
And with the sun out on this blazingly clear morning, even Elena didn’t feel a chill.
They prepared their meal together—for Marduk and Tiamat had never had any staff here, in this haven away from the world. The conversation during breakfast was easy in the way of old and trusted friends but full of the poignant awareness of the goodbye to come.
They all knew it, even if nothing had been verbalized.
It wasn’t until after breakfast was done, as they walked in the wilderness that surrounded the home, that Marduk stopped by a deep green pond shadowed by the tree canopy, and took his mate’s hand in his.
Tiamat, in turn, smiled. “Yes, my beloved,” she said, though Marduk hadn’t spoken aloud.
And Elena knew. “You’re leaving right now.” Her stomach dropped. “We thought you’d do it in the months after the ball.”
“So we confound the world once more.” Marduk came as close to a grin as Elena had ever seen on him. “Raphael, Andreas knows to ship the dining table to you. I would have it go to no other.”
“Are you certain you must go?” Raphael asked the other archangel.
“Yes. It is time for us to Sleep.”
The morning sun caressed the sharp edges of Tiamat’s cheekbones as she added, “We have known this for the last decade, but we have managed to hold on—and it has been a joy to do so, to have more time with you both.”
“I would not have stayed so long had Tia not awoken,” Marduk added, “but even together, we cannot go on forever.”
Another look shared with his consort before they both turned back to Elena and Raphael.
“There is a point at which memory and life become so heavy that each breath is a battle,” said the man who was adamant he wasn’t an Ancestor. “It was a battle we were happy to fight to spend this time here, but rest calls to us now.”
“We may be immortal,” Tiamat murmured, “but we cannot live forever in the world.”
“You have done far more for this time than we had any right to expect, and I thank you from all of us.” While Raphael’s words were formal, he did nothing to hide the emotion in his tone. “We are honored to have known you, Marduk, Tiamat.”
Elena just gave a jagged nod, her chest tight.
“The Cadre will be eight for a short period only,” Marduk said, his own voice difficult to read. “The energies stir again. Another will soon wake.”
Electricity crackled through Elena’s veins, as Raphael’s wings glowed. “Who?”
“I cannot tell.” Marduk scowled. “I am not that impertinent child, Cassandra.”
Elena’s skin prickled as she thought of the archangels she knew who’d fallen in battle due to catastrophic injuries or chosen to go into Sleep…but that was the tip of the iceberg. No one knew how many archangels, Ancients…and Ancestors Slept the long Sleep of immortals.
“We leave the care of our people in your capable hands, Raphael,” Marduk said. “We know you will ensure a smooth transition of power for the time it is needed. My second understands what is to come.”
“You have my word,” Raphael said, then held out his arm in the way of warriors.
Marduk took it, and the two men embraced.
Tiamat, meanwhile, came to Elena. “I have left you my entire collection of blades, but for two favorites which I take with me into my Sleep.”
“I’ll treasure them.”
Their embrace was as heartfelt as Raphael and Marduk’s, Elena’s throat thick when she drew back. She’d always before thought hundreds of years such a long time, but it wasn’t, not when it came to people you loved saying goodbye.
Hugging her again, Tiamat whispered in her ear, “Marduk does not know, for it is my gift to know of such subtle alterations. But I will tell him of the continuation of our bloodline as we fall into Sleep—it will give him good dreams for all eternity.”
Her smile was deep as she drew back. “It is a line of power, Ellie. A line of love. A line of courage.” Her hand on Elena’s shoulder. “And a line of wildness. Your child will be a glory, and perhaps we will wake again to meet them one day.”
Elena gripped her friend’s hand. “The baby has mortal cells.”
Tiamat’s smile grew even more. “Of course they do. You are the child’s mother. But Raphael is their father—and his bloodline is power in the child’s veins. This cannot be altered.”
Heart thudding as the other woman stepped away, Elena watched her take Marduk’s hand before the two of them turned and walked farther into the wild.
They glanced back in a final goodbye when they were almost out of sight in the shadows between the trees, two beings from another time whose power was a hum in the air and who, despite their age, yet looked at each other with smiles, with playful mischief.
Then they continued on, and were gone.
“It is a great trust they’ve offered us,” Raphael said, his voice solemn. “To tell us the exact day they go into Sleep. We could track them, find their place of rest.”
“That we won’t is the reason they told us.” She hugged his side. “Tiamat knew I was pregnant. She said the baby is of your bloodline, mortal cells or no mortal cells. That that bloodline is power.”
“So come what may, our child will be a force to be reckoned with.”
“I’m really going to miss them.” Tears spilled down her cheeks. “Shit.”
Raphael kissed her tears off her.
Unspoken was that their emotions would have to wait until after they’d done what they’d promised Marduk and ensured his territory was in good hands. They’d have to wait, give it time, until no one knew when Marduk and Tiamat had gone into Sleep, had any way to track them.