Chapter 60
My Cali, our son…I love in a way I did not know before I held him in my arms.
—Nadiel to his Caliane (On the Birth of a boy named Rafi)
Though Caliane knew that going into Sleep wasn’t an action that added dirt or sweat to the body, she nonetheless made sure to have a quick but thorough bath, then dressed in new white leathers prior to meeting Elena and Raphael.
A few of her people had a vague recollection of seeing them outside the barrier when Amanat first rose, but with their minds groggy at the time, no one was quite certain.
Even Caliane wasn’t sure she hadn’t dreamed the conversation she’d had with Raphael.
Raphael, my son?
I’m here, Mother. We’re here.
Such joy she’d felt then, her eyes hot even in her half-awake state. I am…still rising.
Take your time. We’ll return soon.
She didn’t know why he hadn’t stayed close by—that was the sort of thing her son was wont to do, and his consort was the same. Perhaps he remained angry with her. The thought of it hurt, but she would make it up to him.
“Sire.”
She looked around to see her steward in the doorway to her suite; she’d taken the eons-old vampire into Sleep with her, with the other woman’s consent.
Caliane had been determined that this time wouldn’t be like the last, when she’d simply taken her people with her—none had blamed her, but she knew at least some had lost lovers and family during their long absence from the world.
The selfishness of her own actions haunted her, and even caught on the edge wave of a new madness, she’d managed not to make that same mistake. But she’d come so close, too close to the brink. “Are they there?” she asked, hope in her tone.
But Lira, tall and lean, her hair loose black curls and her skin a warm brown, her lips full, shook her head. “However, they left a message outside the barrier.” She held up a sheathed blade, the sheath studded with jewels.
Caliane’s entire spirit blazed bright.
Accepting the blade with care, she said, “Oh, they will come back. They had to leave for some reason, but they will return.” Because this blade was the one Raphael had gifted his consort, a cherished object that neither one of them would simply leave behind.
“He could’ve left an actual note,” grumbled the woman who’d wrapped Raphael in his swaddling clothes once upon a time.
Caliane laughed. “You have never been a morning person, Lira.”
The vampire yawned. “Good thing it’s dark out.
I’ll be able to sleep again soon enough.
” For now, however, her eyes were sharp.
“I will speak to the kitchens about organizing a supply run after we know the state of the world and of the Cadre. At present, they tell me that we have enough supplies to get us through the week.”
Illium, that curious child of Sharine’s, had once quizzed Caliane about how her ability worked. “How can you eat a thousand-year-old potato?” he’d asked when someone mentioned how Amanat had risen with its food stores in much the same condition as when the city first went to Sleep.
Caliane hadn’t had an answer, her capability a Cascade-born one. She did, however, have the feeling that Raphael’s ability to heal was linked to her ability to preserve her city and people with her when she went into Sleep.
They were both things of life after all.
“I don’t believe I am the unwanted eleventh,” Caliane murmured. “I think they were nine for a decade. If this is so, it shouldn’t be difficult for us to resettle.”
While she couldn’t read the energies of the world as Marduk had claimed to be able to do, she was an Ancient deeply attuned to the earth—she felt the powers that controlled it, and right now, she didn’t feel any sense of wrongness, as if she’d disturbed the order of what should be.
But, her confidence dented by the madness to which she had almost fallen, she couldn’t be certain.
“Lira, we must talk.”
The other woman halted in the midst of straightening the red bloom tucked behind her ear. “Sire?”
“It shouldn’t have come to a brush with madness.
” Caliane had thought about that as she fell into Sleep, had still been thinking about it as she woke.
“You saw I was sliding, and yet you didn’t confront me even though you are my close friend and have daily interactions with me.
Even more so than Jelena and Avi, or any of the warriors. ”
Lira flushed, head bowed. “I am at fault, sire. I know this.”
“No, Lira, you misunderstand me. I know why you didn’t confront me.
” In madness, Caliane lost herself, lost the woman who was rational and thoughtful and who did not lash out without warning—and Lira wasn’t a warrior, to come to her in aggression.
She was a gentle administrator who had once been a maiden.
She’d stand no chance should Caliane turn dark.
“I apologize to you for allowing myself to decline into that state,” Caliane said, “and please, my friend, if you see even a hint of the same in the future, tell me long before I become dangerous to you.”
But Lira had an obstinate cast to her jaw. “I should’ve warned you. I did sense it months before it came to a head, but I allowed my love and loyalty to blind me to the truth.”
“Perhaps we can share the blame, then,” Caliane said, because while Lira was a gentle being, she was also a stubborn one.
“But more than that, we must come up with a plan for the future—I will consult Jelena and Avi on this, too. The simplest solution may be for me to set up a regimen of short Sleeps. The only question will be the duration of both my tenure in this world and in Sleep.”
Lira nodded slowly. “Politics do not fall in my arena, but if you do this, you’ll have to leave your territory in the hands of others in the hope that they care for it.”
“I suppose we will soon discover how well that choice worked. But even if the Cadre decides I must give up my territory each time, start anew when I wake, I will do this.” She wasn’t hungry to rule a large territory, had taken over India prior to this Sleep only because there’d been no other option, the lands desolate and devoid of their archangel.
As Lira went to speak, Caliane felt Raphael’s mental touch. We return to you, Mother. A ten-minute flight at most.
I will be waiting for you. Her heart squeezed. “Come, Lira,” she said. “My son is on his way back with his consort.”
Lira scowled. “That’s another thing we have to get going—scouts in the air.
” Not an unexpected thought from Caliane’s steward, for while she wasn’t a warrior, she worked with them on a daily basis.
“The wings should be fully functional by now.” Though she fell into step with Caliane on the way out of Caliane’s home, she peeled away once they were at street level, off to do her duties.
Caliane smiled and spoke with her loving, generous people as she walked through her city, but her goal was the “gate” in the shield that she could open or close at will. Now, she opened it, so it would be welcoming to Raphael and Elena when they landed.
Several of her people joined her on the walk there, chattering about gossip they’d left behind a decade earlier, and asking each other what their predictions were for the current Cadre lineup.
Still others were eager to catch up with mortal and immortal friends who either lived outside Amanat or had left the city when it went into Sleep.
There was no discontent that Caliane could hear, but when one of her most senior maidens fell into step beside her, a basket of flowers in one arm, Caliane said, “Are you happy, Heliae? Do you and the others understand that Amanat is never to be a prison, always a home?”
A startled smile from the maiden. “Of course, my lady.” She tilted her head to the side, her hair a sheath of golden silk. “But you are wrong on one part.”
This was why Caliane had always liked Heliae—she was clever and sharp of wit, and after so very long, she was also a friend to Caliane in a way many of the powerful in the world wouldn’t understand, for Heliae was a vampire of minor innate power. But her spirit? Her spirit was incandescent.
“Tell me, so I may fix it,” Caliane said.
“You are our home, my lady.” A smile as bright as her spirit. “We travel with you into Sleep for you are the sun around which we spin—the sun around which we choose to spin.”
Caliane’s heart filled, but she worried that she hadn’t given her people enough chances for independence. She would make that her secondary goal this waking.
Her first was to be a good mother.
Amanat’s energy shield shimmered in recognition of her presence as she walked, and she knew that should she touch that energy with her fingers, it would ripple along her skin.
Not playful, for she wasn’t playful…hadn’t been for a long time.
But joyous all the same, for she had learned joy again after an eon in the darkness.
That joy overflowed as she saw Raphael coming in to land on the other side of the open gate. Elena swept in alongside him. But what—
Her heart thudding as her people cried out around her, she ran most unceremoniously to her grinning son, to come to a stunned halt in front of him…and the little boy he carried in his arms, who had skin as golden as his mother’s and eyes as wild a blue as Raphael’s.