Chapter 40
“I’m hallucinating. Or that fish they fed me on the plane was laced with LSD.”
“Sara, if you don’t come and hug me, I’ll shoot you.”
—A Conversation Between Best Friends (Once, in the Refuge, after an Angel was Made)
They departed from New York without fanfare, choosing to leave in the depths of the night.
Now, hours later, they flew through the hazy gray of the coming dawn, high up in the atmosphere. Over three hundred members of the Legion had taken off earlier, and since they had a habit of taking off en masse, no one would’ve noted that as unusual.
The ones who remained behind would ensure everyone believed the entire Legion was present and accounted for—it wasn’t as if anyone went around counting their numbers.
People just looked up and, oh, there was a new gargoyle on an old skyscraper, and there was one crouched in a tree in one of the parks that ran through the city.
Just going along being their lovable weird selves.
The air at the high elevation at which they flew was frigid, the light that began to touch the horizon a softness of pink and gold. Her flight clothing well insulated, Elena felt good flying into it, appreciating the gift of flight as much today as she had the first day she’d taken to the sky.
Never would she take it for granted.
She swept left and down once they were far enough out that it was only them and the Legion over an endless expanse of ocean blue. Then she played in the air—and her archangel played with her.
Both of them knew that, no matter what, she’d be grounded for a period after the birth as her body recovered.
It was a simple physiological fact that Nisia had shared—plus, Elena had the feeling that she wouldn’t want to be away from their spark for even a second, and infants that young couldn’t be taken up into the high atmosphere.
So she and the baby would cuddle and bond and walk the Refuge, and wait until they could touch the skies together. Today, however, she whooped it up while the Legion flew up and over her, not confused but playful, too.
Elena, we like this.
She grinned. Me too!
They flew on after that play, because she knew she’d tire herself out if she kept it up. Despite her discretion, however, Raphael still ended up carrying her the final half hour to their scheduled rest stop on a deserted island—which Sam had stocked with supplies.
Jason had fueled two other rest stops, a number of Tower couriers taking care of several more, while Galen and Izar would, when it was time, fly out from the Refuge to hide food caches in two other locations.
Because Elena continued to eat like a horse that hadn’t seen food in years.
The first rest stop left her feeling lethargic as a result, and she curled up to sleep for a bit against Raphael’s chest while the Legion hunkered around, curious about this new place but watchful all the same.
She woke to find herself tucked against Raphael’s chest as he flew through the air on wings far more powerful than her own. “I’m heavy,” she mumbled.
“And I’m an archangel.” A kiss protective and hot and of her lover. “I could carry you forever and never tire, Guild Hunter. Sleep.”
She did sleep again, her body needing it. Then she flew until the next stop, and so it continued, the journey a slow and meandering one full of small delights—like witnessing a horde of tiny turtle hatchlings race to the ocean, their safety assured by the Legion, who kept the circling birds at bay.
This hatching, at least, had been given a free pass at the start of their lives.
Elena sobbed at seeing it. She didn’t even care if it was just her hormones. She was stupid happy to see those turtles run their tiny hearts out to the water, where she would imagine they all grew up to be big strong turtles.
Then there were the multiple glorious sunsets and sunrises across time zones, the sky a painter’s favorite canvas, the hues altering between one breath and the next, until she flew in a kaleidoscope.
“I think this is a babymoon,” she mumbled to Raphael when they stopped for a proper rest at a spot that one of their people, one of those who loved them, had set up with bedding for her.
“Sara and I heard about babymoons when she was pregnant. We used to joke about what she was going to do on her babymoon. I knew she wasn’t serious about it—she was too busy as director. ”
Already sleepy, she snuggled in. “But I snitched to Deacon about the whole concept, and he decided to kidnap her for a long weekend in the Caribbean—while I, Vivek, and the others covered for her.”
The memories warmed her from the inside.
“She was so annoyed when she realized—you know how irritated she got when she didn’t have her finger on the pulse—but she came back tanned and happy and no longer in the mood to chop off heads.
She needed that weekend. Just like I need this small adventure before I nest.” The last word was a mumble, sleep already sucking her under.
She was aware of slipping into the soft dark, and she was aware of sitting on the decrepit sofa on Sara’s roof while her best friend sat beside her, both of them nursing hot mugs of cocoa liberally doctored with alcohol against the chill night air.
Elena took in Sara’s glowing, unlined skin, her dark hair, her strong body. “You never come see me. I figured it was because you were happy beyond the veil.” Her heart twisted. “You are, aren’t you? With Deacon?”
“You always worry so much, Ellie.” Sara scowled, but she nudged Elena’s shoulder with her own at the same time. “I had to go, didn’t I? I wasn’t going to add another ghost to your long list. But”—a narrow-eyed look—“I think you can handle it now.”
She kicked her legs up onto the ancient coffee table, which they mostly used as a footstand. “So tell me about your new best friend.”
Elena bit down on her lower lip. “I’m trying, okay? I haven’t quite got to the best friend stage, but she calls me on my shit.”
“Good start at least. You can be hardheaded.”
It was Elena’s turn to scowl. “Did you come after all this time just to insult me?”
Sara grinned. “So who is it?”
“Greta.”
“Greta, who—no!” Sara almost dropped her drink. “Not Dmitri’s admin? I dealt with her. She was efficient, which I appreciated, but I always got the sense that she hated people.” A sip of her drink, a sigh that made her breath mist the air. “So tell me about her.”
Elena did and, in the doing, realized how much the other woman meant to her. “I’ll do better,” she promised Sara, but her throat was thick. “Zoe is amazing, Sara—she shines brighter with each new year.”
“I know.” A glance at Elena’s belly, and suddenly, Elena’s drink was plain hot chocolate topped with marshmallows. “Your kiddo will be amazing, too.” She took Elena’s hand. “Because you’ll be an incredible mother. Trust yourself. I do.”
Elena’s lower lip trembled, and she leaned her head against Sara’s shoulder. Her best friend put one arm around her, and they sat there in the cold as the stars began to emerge overhead.
“Roof walk?” Sara murmured a long time later, after Elena complained of an ache in her back.
When Elena nodded, Sara helped haul her up.
“I’m waddling,” she complained to her friend.
“Like a duck,” Sara agreed.
They laughed.
The lingering echo of it had Elena smiling when she woke.
* * *
She was well rested by the time they arrived at the snow-dusted landscape of the Refuge, thanks to their final stop having been only two hours from the angelic stronghold.
A stop at which Galen had stashed a jar of her favorite pickles alongside the other supplies. Because contrary to all predictions, Elena was not yet sick of pickles.
“Look,” she’d said to Raphael while eating them straight from the jar. “I like Galen, and we get along fine these days.” She’d punctuated the air with her pickle. “But this was two thousand percent not his idea. He only does warm and fuzzy, and possibly even cute, with Jessamy.”
Her archangel had bitten off the top of her pickle before saying, “I may have shipped two crates of that stuff to the stronghold, and suggested the staff include them in the provisions Galen was to stash.”
She’d given him a kiss tart with pickle juice. “Now, that’s true love.” She’d then eaten the rest of the jar, because Keir and Nisia had both confirmed that her craving for these pickles was doing nothing to harm their child. Turned out the super-parasite was burning through everything.
But those rogue mortal cells…they continued to concern the healers.
“The rate of energy usage leans ninety-nine percent toward an immortal babe,” Keir had said during the last checkup he’d done in person. “But we won’t know for certain until the birth.”
“It’s all right, Keir,” she’d said, feeling oddly wiser than him for the first time in her life. “We’ll live our baby’s timeline.”
A simple, ineffable choice that had given her and Raphael the ultimate peace.
Now, belly full—of more than just pickles—but tension taut in her spine, she headed not for their Refuge stronghold, but to the Medica. They’d had word a bare ten minutes ago that Hannah had been admitted to the Medica even though she wasn’t yet at full term.
But Hannah, Eli’s arm around her shoulders, was just walking out of the main Medica building when Elena landed. The other woman’s dark skin held a golden shine, it was so full of health, her black curls currently in a loose updo that suited the rounded softness of her face.
Which lit up at first sight of them. “Ellie!”
As Raphael greeted Elijah, Elena hugged her friend. “I was so worried when I heard!”
“I’m fine. I felt as if I was having contractions, and well, everyone is always on tenterhooks with angelic births, so they said I should stay here while they kept me on watch, but Keir has confirmed those were not contractions.”
She exhaled. “He assured me my babe is healthy and would’ve come through if I’d had to give birth a touch early. But I’m very happy I won’t have to rush; I want to enjoy every minute of this experience.”
Hannah suddenly looked up, her attention caught by several of the Legion who’d chosen to crouch or stand in the rocky garden that bordered a section of the pathway to the Medica. “Extraordinary.” A breath of a word. “Do you think your Legion would mind if I painted them?”
“You can ask,” Elena said. “Don’t take offense if they don’t answer—they’re still getting the hang of interaction again, after all this time.”
Attention shifting to Elena, Hannah slid her hand into hers. “We’re having babies, Ellie.”
“I can’t wait to meet both our little sparks.” Elena’s face felt as if it might crack with the width of her smile.
Hannah squeezed her hand. “I will do the first sketches of both my child and yours. If Aodhan or Lady Sharine object to the latter, inform them that I will take them on in battle—we’ll meet at dawn, sketchpads in hand.”
Their shared laughter was electric through the serene quiet of the Refuge.