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)
Realizing he wasn’t the only one who’d been kicked in the gut, Illium pressed his lips to Aodhan’s jaw. “I want you more,” he said. “I need you more.” Meeting those incredible eyes, he laid it all out in the open. “In private and in public, you’re the one person with whom I don’t ever have to be an archangel. With everyone else, I have to walk a fine line. Never you.”
“You don’t have to ask. I’m here.” An unwavering look. “I’ll also skewer anyone who dares try to take my place.”
Illium grinned because this was the man he knew and loved. “As for the other…Adi, Ellie used to be mortal. She’s still much, much weaker than Raphael and always will be.” Elena’s power had grown over the years, but she was no archangel—and, like Illium, had never desired to become one.
“Rather stab myself in the eye with a blunt blade,” she’d muttered one night when the question came up during an informal dinner hosted by Honor and Dmitri.
Everyone had laughed at her answer, especially Raphael, but Illium knew it had been sincere. As had his own: “I’ll join you in the one-eyeball league.”
But the choice had never been his and now he had to learn to live with his new reality.
“Our power imbalance is no imbalance at all in comparison to Ellie and Raphael,” he pointed out. “We’re closer to Dmitri and Raphael.” The man who stood as Raphael’s second had become ever more brutally strong over the years, his discipline growing apace with his vampiric power.
Aodhan blinked, thought of Elena as she’d been when they’d first met. Such a fragile life, so easily snuffed out. Yet she’d held her own against Raphael over and over again. Power in a relationship was what the people involved decided it should be—and as Ellie knew Raphael would never use his archangelic powers against her, Aodhan knew Illium would never use his.
“I’m glad one of us is thinking,” he said, taking Illium’s hand and raising it to his mouth to press a kiss to the palm.
“I’ll have you know this pretty face conceals a genius brain,” Illium quipped before kissing Aodhan’s knuckles in turn.
Aodhan’s smile came from his very core. “So, my pretty genius,” he said, “where do you think the Cadre will put you in terms of your territory?” Then it hit him. “Where do you think you and the Cadre will decide?”
Because Illium was one of the ten most powerful beings in the world now.
“I’ll find out soon. I’m guessing a meeting will be called within the next few hours.”
Illium, Raphael said into his mind that very moment, we meet three hours hence.
Raphael gave no more instructions on the how of it because none were needed—Illium was one of the team who’d set up the Cadre’s current private communications system when the technology first became available. A team of nine, one from each of the territories, Illium given the task rather than Vivek both because everyone knew Vivek was basically Raphael’s secondary spymaster, and because Illium had always made sure to learn any new tech as it emerged.
Which was why he also understood the reason he hadn’t received a direct notification of the meeting. He needed to be put into the system—which would occur the first time he accessed it. It likely had to do with tradition, too. Outside of exigent situations like war, the Cadre was of an age overall that preferred the personal touch.
You are welcome to stand with me at the facility inside the Tower built for such things, Raphael continued, but I suggest it be better that you stand on your own for this first gathering. Use the setup in the basement of our Enclave home.
Thank you, Raphael. Illium forced himself to address the other man archangel to archangel so that he wouldn’t make a mistake when they were among the others. I appreciate the advice. Because this first meeting after his ascension would cement his position in the Cadre in the minds of the others.
He wasn’t an Ancient risen, his power long set in stone. He was a new archangel, a man all of the current Cadre had known well before he became a first general. Should he stand with Raphael, certain other archangels would see it as a weakness—and it wouldn’t be just those who weren’t his allies. That was the thing he’d come to understand since ascension altered the elemental structure of his being.
“I get now why archangels seem to war over nothing,” he said to Aodhan. “The power inside us is a feral force that wants total dominion, and that’s ready to strike at any overreach—or what it sees as overreach. It’s always watching the other predators, looking for weaknesses.”
Aodhan’s expression was tight. “You make it sound like a being apart from yourself.”