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)
He could reach in his hand and scoop it up and it would overflow.
Then it did, pouring out of every cell in his body until he was nothing but light, nothing but an incandescent golden fire that burned across the entire world.
32
Raphael had blasted out the Land! order the instant he realized what was happening. Accidents did and could occur during an ascension, angels scorched out of the sky if they lingered too long after the energies spiked. Even major structures like the floating habitats would’ve been destroyed if they hadn’t descended and attached themselves to their allocated anchor points.
Illium couldn’t stop that. Neither could Raphael. The forces of ascension were their own.
His fingers curled into his palm as he stood on a skyscraper of black glass on the eastern edge of his city, a city he’d seen rise and fall and rise again through time. But today, even his beloved New York couldn’t hold his attention, not when Illium burned up in the forces that had once captured Raphael in their irreversible grasp.
He wondered what Illium saw, what he felt. He’d asked his mother about it once, asked Uram, too, and both their stories had been different from his own. Only on one thing had they all agreed: ascension made them other in ways incomprehensible but unequivocal.
Archangels weren’t extraordinarily powerful angels. They were whole different beings.
It’s Illium, isn’t it? Elena’s mental voice was strong, his consort no longer the just-born angel she’d once been.
Yes, hbeebti. The energies we believed had set him free were but waiting.
Grief and pride roared through him in an agonizing fury.
Grief that he would lose Illium from his territory, and that the boy full of laughter and joy he’d watched grow into a man of heart and honor would now have to tangle with the politics and power plays of the Cadre.
Pride because Elena’s Bluebell had not only survived but thrived after going through in the first five hundred years of his life more than most immortals did their entire lifetime. Illium had a spine so strong that nothing could or would break it, and a mind so intelligent that he could bend without considering it a blow to his power. He also had a heart that meant his rule would be honorable…would be glorious.
The rule of Archangel Illium would one day be legend; this Raphael believed with every fiber of his being. I always knew he’d fly high. In his mind ran a laughing little blue-winged boy shouting, “Rafa! Rafa! Watch what I can do!”
That time was gone forever now, Illium’s ascension creating a stark dividing line between past and present. From this moment on, the two of them would no longer be able to be in the same place for long periods without giving in to an aggression that couldn’t be controlled, for it was an impulse born of the physical changes in their bodies. An impulse linked to the energies of the world itself.
Raphael would never again go flying with Illium except when they visited each other’s territories. Illium would never again sprawl in an armchair in Raphael’s home and have a drink while Raphael did the same, their interaction having nothing to do with politics.
To be Cadre was to be a political creature.
I will miss him with my every breath, he said to his Elena, his throat thick and his heart aching as the golden sky cracked with a rain unnatural and unearthly in its jeweled beauty.
I want to hold him in my arms and protect him from the world of archangels, Elena confessed in a shaky tone. But I’m so fucking proud of him at the same time. He was fine with not ascending, never got annoyed with the idiots who whispered that he was a failed ascension, had the confidence to just shrug it off. He’s lived life on his own terms. Anger threaded her words now. The forces of ascension are ripping that away from him.
Yes. It is a paradox that in order to become one of the most powerful beings in the world, we must at the moment of transition be utterly powerless. Perhaps there was meant to be a lesson in that, but no archangel appeared to have learned it.
Our task now, he added, is to be his friends as we have never before been. Raphael lifted his hands, his palms and fingers coated with Illium’s golden rain, his skin a gloaming of mystery. You know we will lose them both? They were a pair, had always been a pair.
Illium and Aodhan.
Sparkle and Bluebell.
Archangel and Second.
I know. The rest of the Seven are going to be devastated.
I’ve been lucky beyond compare. He had to acknowledge that, had to focus on the gift and not the loss. No other archangel has had such a devoted group of warriors with him for centuries upon centuries. One or two, yes, but never an entire united group that functioned as a seamless unit. I’ll tell Illium to take others from my troops if it’ll give him a first court that he trusts. It wasn’t the done thing among angelkind, but theirs was no ordinary relationship. I will give him every advantage.