Chapter 59
We will keep this for our child.
—Raphael to his Elena (Once in Brooklyn)
“Not a baby, Mama!” came the immediate complaint from their happily huffing child, who was currently dragging his wings on the flower-laden ground as he ran back toward her. Angelic wings this young were definitely designed for a bit of rough-and-tumble.
Nix tripped on his own wing, fell, and lost a couple of the exquisite feathers of iridescent dark indigo hidden within those striking black feathers with filaments of white gold.
He was up and dusting himself off before Elena could react.
“Oops!” He threw up his hands before starting his journey again. “Look, Mama!” He held up his hands, palms out.
The most adorable bolt of power “zapped” her. It felt like a tickle.
It still shouldn’t have come out of a toddler.
“Wow,” she said while panicking inside. “You’re smart.”
But something else had already caught her son’s attention—a blue flower, which he decided to grab in one pudgy fist. Sitting down, he began to carefully eat the petals.
Elena and Raphael just looked at him with the mild curiosity of parents who were simply glad he was in their line of sight and not attempting to get into the Tower’s weapons locker so he could “sword-fight.”
“Tasty?” Raphael asked.
“I’m a ’orsie,” was the response, one petal sticking out of his mouth.
“Oh, of course, that explains it. I did wonder.” Raphael’s lips quirked up as he looked at Elena. “Don’t worry about the power bolt, Elena-mine. I seem to have a vague memory of my mother saying I did that as a toddler, but grew out of it…until I grew back into it as an adult, I suppose.”
Elena rubbed her forehead. “I really hope your mother wakes. It’d be nice to have some advice on how to deal with your mini-me.”
But the minutes ticked on with no sign of Amanat.
Elena glanced over to where Raphael was smiling and talking to Nix as their son ran beside him while tugging his favorite toy with him—a wooden bee designed to be pulled along on wheels.
“You’re getting faster and faster, Phin,” he said. “Soon I won’t be able to keep up with you!”
Her heart broke for her archangel.
The shadow of madness continued to haunt him. While the dreams were rare, she often sensed him lying awake at night, mind turbulent with the idea that he might one day harm their son.
All she could do was remind him that, unlike Nadiel and Caliane, they lived with each other day to day, that she’d notice any mental decline long before it became dangerous.
That reminder did seem to work, but she knew that seeing his mother rise after a short Sleep, once more herself, would be the most solid brick in the foundation of his confidence that he could deal with the situation should it ever occur—that he never had to let it get to the point where he harmed the people he loved.
Seeing that the skies were now more gray than anything else, Elena exhaled. Caliane had well and truly missed the deadline, but as long as Raphael and Nixie were playing, she wouldn’t remind her archangel that darkness would fall within the next hour, signaling bedtime for their little boy.
He was so young for an angel and needed even more sleep than mortal children.
Another surprise she’d discovered during the journey of motherhood. Just one of those things angelkind knew so well that no one had thought to mention it to her.
“It is a healthy thing,” Keir had assured her when she brought up her worry about Nix’s sleeping habits during her year in the Refuge. “Remember, immortals mature at a far slower rate than mortals. You must apply that to everything.
“Even when he is the age at which you first met Sameon,” Keir had added, “he’ll spend near half the day in sleep so his bones can strengthen, his wing muscles developing as his brain settles down from the adventures of the day.
That is why school is so few hours for the little ones.
So they have time to play before they need to rest.”
“Mama!”
Wanting to laugh, her entire body warm with love as Nix ran to her, his hands out and hooked in his “I’m a scary creature” look, Elena instead made a scared face and began to run away from him.
It made him giggle and “growl” and give chase.
Of course, it was Misha who’d taught him that game, with Bengal and Tigress’s enthusiastic participation. He was also an excellent babysitter so long as Elena and Raphael didn’t mind that their child was a little more untamed in the aftermath.
Babysitter wasn’t quite the right word, however. It was more a case of Misha swinging by when he had a free afternoon and taking off with an ecstatic Nixie. They’d come back with stories of stalking through forests, catching fish with their bare hands, and building forts from foraged materials.
Children should be wild things, chérie. Full of mud and laughter and play.
Elena no longer knew if Marguerite had ever truly said those words to her when she’d been a child, or if they were from one of their dream conversations, but she knew her mother would agree wholeheartedly with them.
Her father as he’d become after losing Marguerite, Ari, and Belle might’ve chided her that Nix would end up spoiled and undisciplined, but the father who’d thrown Ellie up into the air when she was a child would’ve understood.
The earth trembled under her feet.
Heart kicking even as Raphael called out her name, Elena turned and scooped Nix off the ground; he’d stumbled onto his hands and knees at the tremor. “I think”—she kissed his cheek, his body warm from all his running around—“Grandma is about to arrive.”
“Here,” Raphael said when he reached them, “I’ll put him up on my shoulders.”
Hands in his father’s hair only moments later, Nix watched with shining eyes as energy filled the massive area in front of them, arcing bolts that went in every direction…but never touched them. Because Caliane knew her child, and she knew the woman her son loved.
A spark arced toward Phoenix, only to stop, hesitate, then twine around him.
“Guess we won’t get to surprise her,” Elena said, one hand tangled with her archangel’s.
“I don’t think this is conscious. She won’t ‘know’ anything until she wakes—this power acts in a way akin to Cassandra’s owls. The owls are part of her, but she’s only truly aware of what they see when she’s at a certain level of consciousness.”
As always, Elena looked around at this mention of the Seer of Seers.
But there were no owls today, the only visible energy that of a huge dome of sheer power that covered a vast area…
as the ground opened to reveal the peaks and curves of the tallest roofs in the ancient city that rose up out of the earth.
Amanat.
Caliane’s home and forever her favorite city, even when she lived in other regions as part of her duties as an archangel.
It was as lovely as always, the buildings only two stories at the highest and built of natural materials, flowers pouring out of window boxes and lining the cobblestoned pathways. And the people all asleep where they’d chosen to be when Caliane took them into her self-imposed exile.
“I thought they’d choose beds,” Elena said, glimpsing a man in a simple brown tunic and pants seated on the ground, his head pillowed on his hand—which he’d placed on a small stone bench.
Under his other hand curled a plush black-and-white cat.
“They don’t sense the hours and days between leaving this world and appearing again.” Raphael squeezed her hand. “To them, it is but a moment.”
If she’s waking, Cassandra must consider her sane again. Elena ran her free hand over his forearm. And Caliane made you a promise—to rise only when she was sane.
This time, the owls did appear, a whole bevy of them flying around inside the energy dome of Amanat.
Child of mortals. Such an old, old voice in her head, so heavy with time and a Sleep that might be endless.
Cassandra?
But the Ancient was gone again, and so were her avatars, her momentary wakefulness buried under the weight of her rest.
Elena would tell Raphael of the small contact, but not now…because Amanat was waking beyond the energy barrier. The man who’d been lying with his head on the stone bench opened sleepy eyes, yawned, then began to stretch.
His cat did the same, displaying sharp little teeth.
A maiden seated on another bench, her back to a wall and a basket of flowers in her lap, smiled before opening her eyes.
More people stirred out of doors or poked their heads out windows.
They were sluggish, their bodies yet catching up to this time, which, Elena thought, was why the energy barrier remained impermeable.
Caliane, protecting her people.
Raphael went motionless beside her. “She’s awake.” A rough whisper, his hand tight on hers. “She reached out to me. A fleeting contact—her mind hasn’t yet caught up with this world. I think”—he frowned—“it must take her longer to fully wake when she brings Amanat with her.”
“Should we wait, come back tomorrow?”
“No.” Plucking Nix from his shoulders, he shifted the boy to one arm. “Let’s go get him fed, see to Bengal and Tigress, then return to check on the situation.”
I would not have her wake to absence, he said privately into her mind.
Me either. Caliane deserved the respect of their presence.
Even as she replied, Elena took in Nix’s excited face, his eyes locked on Amanat, the arcs of energy yet circulating in the dome reflected in the vivid mountain blue.
“I don’t think we’ll have any trouble keeping him up long enough to meet her.
” Love filled her veins, such a piercing and all-consuming thing that, at times, she wondered how she could even breathe.
Then she met another set of eyes of intense mountain blue, the eyes of her archangel, and her love spilled over into an ocean that swept her away while keeping her buoyant.
Two pieces of her heart.
Integral and forever.