Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 121854 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121854 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
The city murmured with life beside him as he called his mother using the function that would permit them to see each other. After learning of that capability in modern technology, his mother hated audio-only calls.
Eyes of pale champagne against sun-kissed skin, hair ebony tipped with gold, and the wings that appeared behind her a wild indigo caressed by palest gold, his mother’s face came onscreen within a single ring, and he knew she’d been waiting for him—but she hadn’t reached out.
It wasn’t a power play, rather the opposite.
She was very careful to treat him as an adult these days, hesitant at anything that might be considered an overreach. Oh, she still told him to listen to his mother at times when he was teasing her, but things like this? Where it might be thought that she was attempting to be the adult while treating him as a child, she tried so hard not to do it.
In her lost years, she’d often thought him a babe. She’d made him honey cakes and kissed his hair and told him to be good for his teacher. He’d gone along with whatever she said, and not once had he blamed her for her fractured mind. That would be like blaming the earth for being cracked after an earthquake.
The one thing that had never changed was her love for him. She’d drenched him in maternal affection even as she lost piece after piece of herself.
But his mother was a survivor, too. She’d come back strong and defiant…except for this one thing, this churning guilt inside her when it came to her son.
He’d never mentioned that he’d noticed how careful she was about not crossing any boundaries, and he never would mention it. That would hurt her, shake the foundations she’d rebuilt out of courage and determination—and pure spite at Aegaeon; Illium wasn’t about to repay her endless love by causing her pain. He loved seeing her grow ever tougher and even a touch wild, Titus her willing accomplice.
Talk about besotted. The archangel who loved Sharine, the Hummingbird, was still in that stage. So perhaps it never passed when love hit hard, so real it spun you in circles.
Illium decided he was okay with that.
“Illium,” his mother said, her gaze awash in infinite joy and shadowed by black lashes dipped in gold. “I heard there was a party last night. I didn’t expect you to be up so early.”
“You have better spies than most archangels,” Illium teased, well aware that it must’ve been one of the people who worked under Titus’s spymaster, Ozias, who’d passed on the information.
Archangels, even those who were allies or friends, spied on each other. Illium thought of it as a game between the friendly archangels, but it also made him worry for what everyone said was the growing power in his cells. He wasn’t ready to play the games of the Cadre, might never be ready.
A vein on his arm glowed liquid gold at that instant, a silent reminder that the choice had never been his. Ascension couldn’t be controlled. In his case, all he could hope for was that it would wait until after his first millennium of life.
He might survive it then.
“You’re too thin.” His mother frowned. “I know Suyin too well to think she wouldn’t feed her people, so what have you been doing to get yourself in this state?”
He grinned. “Hollow bones, that’s what you used to say.” The truth was that he’d been running at full capacity the entirety of the time he’d been in China; Suyin had needed everything he had, and he’d seen no reason to hold back.
Suyin herself was as thin as a rail right now—and that took serious overwork by an archangel. “I would give of my blood if it would heal this land,” she’d said during his last week in her territory, as she crouched down with her hand on the dirt of a newly plowed field.
“But even an archangel’s blood can’t turn back the clock of this evil, magically fix what my aunt polluted. Hers was a power corrosive. But it also limited her—she could’ve never understood the heart of the people who are now mine. Their courage humbles me.” A glance up at Illium. “As does the power of the friendship shown to me by others.”
His mother’s voice broke into the echo of Suyin’s poignant words. “I’m going to find out how to order you meals in your city,” she said, then hesitated.
Wondering if she was going too far.
“I’d rather you make me a giant batch of your honey cakes,” he said with a grin that told her it was all right, that he didn’t see her need to care for him as an overstep. “I’m sure one of Titus’s spies—ahem, couriers—will drop it off for you.”
Her lips twitched. “According to my beloved, archangels don’t do anything as pedestrian as spy. They reconnoiter.”