Chapter 41
Naasir’s firstborn cub has informed me that he’s aiming to join the Seven when he’s of age. The Ancestors help us all.
—Dmitri to Illium (Before the Ascension of the Archangel of Stars)
The next afternoon, Elena sat on a balcony of their Refuge stronghold under a crisp winter sky so blue it hurt.
A thick rug insulated her feet against the cold of the stone, and on either side of the balcony stood two enormous clay pots that radiated heat; the old-fashioned heating not only kept her cozy, it was in harmony with the energies of the Refuge.
Most modern tech didn’t do well here long-term.
She’d already visited with Jessamy, but Andi and Naasir were in India helping Venom out with a problem, so she’d catch up with them later.
Trace, suave as always, had kissed her on the cheek with a familiarity that had grown over the centuries, while Yana and the stronghold staff had prepared so many dishes for her for every meal thus far that even the super-parasite hadn’t been able to finish them all.
Majda, Jean-Baptiste, and Eve were to arrive in about ten days, though she was to send them all daily updates—“In case our great-grandchild decides to arrive early,” Majda had said, to Eve and Jean-Baptiste’s fierce nods.
Now, she sat in the late-afternoon sunshine, her legs propped up on the balcony wall that had been put in place a few centuries ago when a member of their staff had a child, and watched her archangel spar with Galen in the sky.
Below, the Refuge sparkled white, the temperature cold enough that the snow that had fallen in the night wasn’t about to melt.
“Your papa and Galen missed each other,” she told the baby.
“Neither will say it, of course. But they’re not just sire and warrior.
They’re friends, and we didn’t stop for long when we dropped by to share the news about you—it’s been more than a year since they’ve had a chance to just hang out alone. ”
Lazy limbed in the heat from the clay pots, she nonetheless sensed the stealthy intruder climbing up from the ground floor to this third-floor balcony that overlooked a sheer drop into nothing.
Her lips curved. “You have wings,” she said to the dangerously handsome man with brown skin and silver hair who appeared on the balcony. His wings were a silvery gray at the top that flowed into a pale golden brown.
Those wings were unlike those of angelkind—but they weren’t like the Legion’s leathery ones, either.
The closest comparison was probably to Tiamat’s wings, but even that was only a hazy similarity at best. Like Misha’s and Nasien’s, Izar’s wings were covered by the tiniest feathers anyone had ever seen, until they appeared almost like a pelt.
Those feathers also altered color and pattern if you caught one of the triplets at just the right moment, the moment when their skin rippled with a tiger’s stripes—because that stripe would appear in their wings, too.
Elena only knew that because she’d known the boys since they were children, before they’d gained full control over their half-chimera abilities. These days, they preferred to maintain their secrets…from everyone but family.
Izar shrugged, his shoulders pure lithe muscle under the sleeveless cream-colored tunic he wore with rugged black pants.
“Climbing is more fun.” Then he pretended to pounce down from his crouch on the balcony wall—except, of course, she’d never been in any danger, because he made sure to land sleek as a cat next to her, before he went down on his haunches to look at her belly. “There’s a cub in there.”
When she reached out to stroke her fingers through the heavy silk of his hair, he turned into the touch, letting her pet him in a way that would get other hands bitten off.
As with Misha and Nasien, she’d held Izar when he was a baby.
Later, after they were old enough, the triplets had spent summers at the Tower.
She loved the boys as if they were her own.
“Yes,” she said. “Our little spark.”
Izar continued to stare with an open fascination.
“Ma said it’s only one?” He tilted up his head.
“Won’t your cub be lonely?” His eyes were a translucent brown with a center of gold that starburst around his pupils; he’d inherited those eyes from his mother, and they were breathtaking in their beauty.
“Only one,” she confirmed, awash in affection for this powerful man whose shoes she’d tied when he was a little boy with fingers that didn’t quite have the dexterity—and who also thought shoes were weird and unnecessary inventions.
As evidenced by his bare feet today—it was as if he didn’t even notice the snow.
“But,” she added, “Hannah’s having one, too, so I’m hoping they’ll be friends.”
Izar, who’d been one of three since birth, nodded solemnly at that. No matter where they were in the world, the triplets were always exactly that—triplets. All of them aware that they could call on their brothers and they would come, regardless of distance. As would their father and mother.
“Our baby will have a large pack,” she said, using the words Naasir used when he spoke about his brood. “Quite aside from Raphael and me, they’ll have you, Misha, Nasien, your parents, and so many more people around them.”
“Yes, but we’re not cubs. It’s good Hannah is having a one-cub, too.”
From his scowl, it was clear he didn’t agree with this whole business of having single children, and likely never would; all of Naasir and Andi’s boys had taken after their father in their mannerisms and views of the world—though Nasien was the image of his mother when it came to his intense passion for history and languages, while Misha loved new technologies.
“Did you bring me a present?” she said, joking with him because it was the one question a young Izar had always asked her each time they saw each other after a longer separation.
Not because he was spoiled, but because the grinning child knew she always brought him a brilliant new color of playing clay, as she brought Nasien a book from his current favorite series, and Misha a puzzle game.
Izar gave her a sly smile, then bounded onto the balcony wall with the ease of a cat, before jumping off, his wings barely flaring out. She had no idea how the cubs all did that, how they never crashed—and how Naasir managed it without wings.
Poor Andi had lived with constant heart attacks when the boys were young. After she’d realized they’d inherited their father’s desire to jump from high places, she’d made Naasir move them to the ground floor for ten years, until the cubs had learned to actually jump and not just believe they could.
Not that Naasir would ever gainsay his adored Andi, but Elena had been able to tell that he was bursting with pride at his little clan of chimera-angels.
The only ones of their kind in the world.
But not one-beings, not when there were three of them.
And in being born, they’d made Naasir no longer a one-being either.
His joy in that, Elena knew, was limitless.
Izar actually used his wings when he came back up, but that was only because he was holding a box in his arms.
Landing on the balcony beside her, he put the box on the ground. “It’s heavy.”
It was also wrapped—badly—with silvery paper around which Izar had tied a ribbon of the same shade of indigo as in her wings.
Heart mushy, she put her feet down on the balcony, then reached over to undo the bow and pull off the paper.
The box inside proved to be plain brown, but when she opened it, what she found within took her breath away—it was a small metal sculpture of her, with her hair out and a blade in her hand as she crouched on a rock as if on a hunt.
“Izar.”
“It’s the before,” he explained. “I will make one of you with the cub inside you, now that you’re here and I can see you, and the third will be the after, with you holding your cub.”
She lifted the statue despite his warning that it was heavy, and balanced it on her knee. “It’s breathtaking.”
“I’m getting better,” he said, leaning his body against her shoulder, as tactile as his brothers. “Aodhan says so.”
Because Aodhan, student of the Hummingbird, was now teacher to the half-feral boy no one had ever expected to create art—no one but his parents, who’d found him crying in frustrated anger as he attempted to shape mud pies into intricate patterns.
It hadn’t worked, of course, and he’d been too young to do anything but react with emotion.
But Andromeda was a librarian, and she was best friends with Jessamy.
Together, they’d figured out that Izar needed to play with something that would hold its form, and had given him the soft and malleable playing clay that had been a staple through the centuries for all children.
Elena had helped by couriering—and hand-carrying—dazzling new colors of the material, hues they couldn’t make in the Refuge.
“I didn’t know you’d started to work in metal.” She was astonished at the level of detail he’d put in this, down to the buckles on her boots, and the tiny dots of the loops in her belt.
“I gave my first one to Ma, and to the leader of our pack.” The last he said with a grin, but when it came down to it, their family did function that way—it had been the only way to control three untamed little boys.
Naasir had spent a lot of their childhood growling and grinning at the same time.
“I’m honored to have the second,” she said, and let Izar put it in the box for her.
“The sire will like it, too,” he said, and it wasn’t a question. “Because it’s you.”
The simple absoluteness of the statement made her glow. Because he was right: to the archangel who sparred high in the sky above, she was his heart. As he was her own. And now, they’d created a shared little piece of their heart.
Her stomach rumbled just then. “Izar, can you get me a snack from the table inside?” she began, but he was already back by her side by then, a glass of milk in one hand and a plate of savories in the other.
“Thanks, Tiger Wings.”
Izar’s grin was a slash in his face at her usage of the childhood moniker he’d demanded everyone call him. Opening his mouth, he did an excellent approximation of a tiger’s snarl.
Her own grin cutting her cheeks, she said, “Grab a plate of your own and keep me company.”
He did exactly that, eating savory pastries—one in each hand—while he crouched on the balcony wall commenting on the Galen-Raphael session high above.
He’d been taught by Galen, as were all the children in the Refuge, and—though not a warrior by inclination—he’d kept up his training because it was a good outlet for the primal side of his nature.
Like his brothers, he was also brutally fast. In battle, the triplets were lethal.
Content to be here with another part of her sprawling family, Elena just sat in the sunshine on this heated balcony and let happiness fill her veins. Inside her, the baby stretched, as if they, too, were lazy in the warmth.