Chapter 22
Michaela, Archangel of Budapest, Queen of Constantinople, and Muse Most Beautiful.
—Entry on the List of the Fallen Who Sleep (War of the Death Cascade)
Michaela rose in a cataract of haunting music across the entire world, while the sky rained flower petals and the orchids brushed by musk and acid filled even the darkest alleys.
The only sighting of her actual rising came from a shipping trawler in the Pacific Ocean at the far southern end of the world.
The images captured by the awed crew showed an archangel with wings of an exquisite bronze that dripped seawater as she rose from the waves, and skin the hue of coffee swirled with cream, her body a caress of dreams and desire.
Her hair was a tumble of glorious brown threaded with gold down her back, and her power a warm bronze glow in the air. She wore what she’d been wearing when she’d fallen in battle—but it had been mended, bore no wounds from the war.
A gift from Cassandra, Raphael thought when he saw the images.
As to why neither Michaela’s hair nor her clothing appeared wet despite the fact she’d emerged from the ocean, that was a display of simple archangelic power.
The bronze glow of that power yet lingered around her when she appeared in the meeting chamber of the Cadre. It had been Andreas—bold and strong—who’d first welcomed her to this time, and Andreas who’d shown her how to connect with the other archangels.
No member of the Cadre had been close enough.
The angel who’d been Marduk’s second for the entirety of his rule had flown out toward Michaela the instant the shipping trawler sent in its report and—per the conversation he’d had with Raphael afterward—met a Michaela whole and strong who’d recognized him at once.
“Andreas?” she’d said, coming to a halt in the air, for she’d already oriented herself toward the largest land mass in the vicinity and had been heading that way. Archangels did not get lost in the sky. “Unless my senses are deceiving me, you are far from home.”
So it was Andreas who’d told her how much time had passed.
“I was prepared for her to strike out,” he’d shared with Raphael. “She was never the most temperate of the Cadre. But she just went motionless, then asked me toward whose territory she flew.
“After I informed her that the territorial boundaries were set to be redrawn just prior to her waking and had been delayed by it, she asked me to make arrangements for her to talk to the Cadre.”
Now here they stood, a Cadre of nine when they’d been on the brink of having to rule with eight.
“It is good to see you, Michaela,” Elijah said.
Raphael’s emotions toward Michaela were too complicated for such a simple welcome.
She had been mercurial, cruel, and capricious—but she had also stood on the side of right when it came down to the wire.
And she was a good ruler. Still, he’d have preferred to see calm, tempered Astaad in her place, but then, that was his partiality for the former Archangel of the Pacific Isles speaking.
Michaela didn’t immediately respond to Elijah’s greeting; she was staring too hard at Suyin.
Raphael belatedly realized how it must look to her—Michaela had fallen in a violent battle of the archangels against She Who Was Death, but here stood an archangel with hair of the same snow white and a distinctive familial cast to her features.
Michaela hadn’t been conscious for Suyin’s ascension. She hadn’t been conscious for Illium’s, either, but she seemed unsurprised by the fact the blue-winged angel stood in the Cadre.
“I am Suyin,” Suyin said, holding the vivid acid-touched green of Michaela’s gaze without flinching. “Archangel of China and Builder of Worlds.” The latter was a title that had been hers by right long before her ascension—for she was an architect, a true builder of worlds.
“Ah.” Michaela’s nod was elegant. “I apologize for my rudeness. I just didn’t expect to see another of that line—but I know you are not her. You designed a palace for me once. In Constantinople.”
Suyin’s smile was startled. “Yes. An edifice of golden rock later awash in flowers. If I built it, then you made it a glory of art and beauty.”
“We didn’t expect to see you rise from your injuries,” Titus said bluntly before Michaela could respond to Suyin’s words; his voice was a boom of thunder in the obsitru meeting chamber. “This gives me hope for Astaad and Favashi.”
“I can give you no news of either,” Michaela said in the same oddly subdued tone she’d used thus far. “I know Astaad and I went into anshara together because Lady Cassandra told us so—her voice was the last thing I heard. But she has not spoken to me since, so I have no further knowledge.”
She looked around. “I see we are nine.” A deep frown. “How long were you eight?”
“A mere glimmer,” Alexander answered. “Less than a turning of the moon.”
“In fact,” Zanaya added, the infinite darkness of her skin flawless, “we didn’t even know that both Caliane and Marduk—whom you did not meet—had chosen to Sleep until this week. You come into a world more stable than you may have ever known it.”
“My mother will return,” Raphael said to the room at large. “She plans to Sleep for a mere decade and has left a strong team in the role of caretakers. Archangelic oversight will be necessary, but I don’t believe the territory needs to be broken up to be ruled piecemeal.”
“How certain are you of this?” Elijah asked, and it was no challenge, not from the archangel who had once been Caliane’s first general and was now one of Raphael’s closest friends.
“It’s her stated plan,” Raphael said.
“She governed her lands with grace and control.” Alexander folded his arms loosely, his right hand on the opposing biceps. “It won’t take much to keep an eye on it. Ten years is but a breath.”
“I’m with Alexander—we keep watch, but don’t split up the territory,” Illium said, to an echo of agreement from the others—with those closest to Caliane’s lands agreeing to put in appearances to give silent notice to any dangerous vampires who might think to take advantage of the situation.
“I hold what were once your lands.” Aegaeon met Michaela’s gaze, the blue-green of his own aggressive. “I do not intend to give them over.”
Raphael waited for aggression from Michaela in turn, but she said, “As I understand it, the Pacific Isles stand without a ruler. I claim them as my own.”
Well, came a private message in front of Raphael, that’s weird. Why is she being reasonable?
Of course it was Illium.
I, too, am somewhat concerned, Raphael replied.
Maybe she’s still coming fully out of Sleep, will get back to her usual irritating ways soon enough.
But as it came to be, that didn’t happen.
In the reports Raphael received from her new territory in the days that followed—though no longer from Andreas, because Michaela had asked him to step in as her second for an interim period at least—it seemed that she was being a good archangel.
Strong, thoughtful, and not unnecessarily harsh.
And crucially, so different from Marduk that they could not be compared.
The vampires in her territory were already in thrall to her beauty and power.
She didn’t, however, seem to revel in it as she once had. Jason’s spies reported her as contemplative, said that she was often seen walking through the desert gardens in the most western of Marduk’s strongholds.
As for Gavriel…
“Just received a formal letter from Michaela,” Illium told Raphael a week after her return, holding up what looked to be a sheet of heavy parchment. “A request that I allow her to make contact with her son if he would accept the contact.”
No, Raphael thought, this wasn’t the Michaela they’d all expected to rise from the shattered remains of herself. “Your answer?”
Illium shrugged onscreen, his shoulders muscled under well-worn black leathers. “Gavriel is a man of his own—we’ve spoken, and he knows that if he wants to open communications with his mother, even go see her, I won’t stand in his way.”
The other man put down the letter, the currently overlong strands of his hair—black dipped in blue—sliding over his forehead before he shoved them back.
“He can take leave for as long as he wishes. I’m also prepared to lose him if he decides to stay with her, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. ”
“How is he doing?”
“You know Gavriel.”
“Yes.” Whether it was growing up under Keir’s care, or his own temperament, Michaela’s son—a cherished son—was as calm and centered as the healer. Not much unsettled him. He also knew how to stand his ground without making it a battle. All of which made him an excellent man to have on your team.
“Still,” Illium added, “I’m keeping an eye on him—has a way of going quiet, our Gavi, into his own head at times.
Been that way since he was little. I remember finding him sitting on rocks in the Refuge, just frowning and thinking hard.
I’d just sit with him then, until he was ready to talk. Bit harder now he’s an adult.”
Pride unfurled inside Raphael and not for the first time, to see this archangel he’d known since the other man was a boy become a leader so empathic and intelligent. “Right now, it seems Michaela is still taking stock, is in an introspective frame of mind.”
Illium nodded. “I did suggest to him that he should pen a polite response as soon as possible, even if the response itself is that he needs more time. I want his first meeting with his mother to start off on the right foot.”
“Michaela loves him, that much is true. Never would she have abandoned him of her own volition.”
“Another big difference between her and the asshole.” Scowling, Illium put his hands on his hips. “I hope it works out for them. I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like for her, to leave her baby behind after she spent so many years waiting for him.”
Raphael’s entire being thrummed with a visceral understanding of Michaela’s pain. His child was yet to be born, and he felt as if that child held his heart in their tiny hands. Michaela had given birth to Gavriel, cradled him in her arms, and then was forced to let him go.
The Archangel of Budapest had her faults, but he hoped Gavriel understood that his mother had fallen not because she wanted to leave him, but because she’d stood against the voracious, devouring darkness that was the Archangel of Death.