Total pages in book: 148
Estimated words: 139178 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 139178 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 696(@200wpm)___ 557(@250wpm)___ 464(@300wpm)
“Anise, my friend,” Nix had proudly told Lady Sharine.
“Well, then, I’m afraid you and Raphael are doomed.” Lady Sharine had nuzzled a laughing Phoenix then. “You will give your poor parents quite the time, little one. Perhaps take a day off from mischief now and then, hmm?”
Nix had shaken his head while laughing so hard, it had been impossible not to laugh with him.
Now, said mischief-maker stood in between Elena and Raphael on an open field inside a forest in Kagoshima, each of them holding one of his hands. He kicked up his legs and swung between them now and then, not yet impatient because this was an adventure.
He’d already tried to catch one of the wild horses, crying, “Horsie!”
A word he now repeated in a questioning tone, his face mournful as he looked up at his father.
“Angels don’t ride horses,” Raphael said, his lips curved. “Our wings are too big and heavy.”
“Nixie small,” was the quick response, their child’s verbal skills now around that of a mortal two- to three-year-old.
Another ten, fifteen years, and he’d be like Sameon had been when Elena first met the boy who’d grown up to become part of her Guard. “Your wings are big,” she pointed out, nodding to how they dragged on the ground, once again reminded of Sam and how he’d sighed as Jessamy nudged at him to raise them.
Phoenix looked back over his shoulder, then scrunched up his face real hard as he tried to raise those glorious black wings with filaments of white gold that glittered in the sunshine. The hints of darkest indigo in his feathers were only visible in a certain light; hidden even deeper and only visible on the underside close to where his wings grew out of his back were feathers of pale gold.
“They are identical to my father’s feathers,” Raphael had told her when they’d first discovered them. His voice had been gritty, his hand tight on hers. “I am glad to see them again.”
“Grr,” Phoenix said now, imitating Bengal—who had vocalized his annoyance at being left at their residence in Japan—as he continued to try to lift his dragging wings.
Elena’s heart freaking melted. Despite appearances, their baby’s wings weren’t actually fully grown yet. He was also too small to have the muscle strength to succeed in his effort, but if determination were a currency, the kid would be well into the gazillions by now.
“Ugh.” He blew out a breath, then looked at Raphael, back at Elena, a gorgeous little boy with play-tumbled hair dressed in black pants and a black collarless tunic, which Holly had decorated on one side with a fall of painted feathers that perfectly matched his own. “Grandma?”
“Yes,” Elena said. “We’re waiting for your grandmother.” Her eyes met Raphael’s, and in them, she saw a fierce determination that had been apparent since the day of Nix’s birth.
“Nadiel was a wonderful father,” he’d told her one sleepless night, after their then-baby son had finally fallen asleep on her archangel’s bare chest five hours after midnight. “Until his madness, he was a father who gave me a grounding in all that I needed to be a good man. I will be the same kind of father to Phoenix. One who is there and present, not lost in his own worries.”
And so her archangel fought his demons while she battled her own urge to wrap their son in cotton wool, both of them determined to give him a childhood colored in love and adventure.
“I wouldn’t worry,” Lady Sharine had told Elena after she confessed her fear of being stiflingly overprotective. “Your child is as feral as Illium once was, and I say that as a compliment, not a rebuke.”
Now, their smart and feral boy kicked up his legs again, swinging between them while murmuring “Grandma” to himself. After a while, feet back down, he stared at Raphael, his gaze considering. “Papa Grandma’s baby?”
Raphael’s grin was huge as he crouched down to their son’s height, his wings a glory behind him. “Yes, Phin, I was a baby once,” he said, using a nickname he alone used for their son—it had happened organically, but afterward, she’d seen how much it meant to him to carry on the tradition of a father having a special name for his child, so she’d left it to the two of them.
Seeing her archangel and their son interact, their bond steel forged in love, it made her heart grow three sizes in a single heartbeat.
“Wow,” Phoenix said. “Mama”—he looked up—“Papa was a baby.”
Elena nodded solemnly at this important information, while Raphael continued to explain, “Grandma is my mother, Caliane. Like Shari-grandma is Uncle Illium’s mother.”
They’d already explained it all to him, but he was only small, and he’d never met Caliane. Now, he nodded solemnly. “Grandma,” he said firmly. “Cali-grandma?”
“No,” Raphael said softly, “she’s just Grandma.”