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)
She Slept beside her child.
“Don’t lie to me.” Aegaeon’s snarl shattered the anguished peace of the memory. “You have been part of Raphael’s life for centuries. I have watched you be so.”
“That is not true trust. That is a son allowing his mother some access to his life while forever keeping her at the corner of his eye. He was right to do so.” Her heart cracked again. “Because I did almost go mad a second time around, and I didn’t see it.”
She held the turbulent storm of Aegaeon’s gaze. “I had no idea I was once again becoming a monster, bringing all his concerns about me roaring to life.
“If I had done what you are doing, if I had held on to my arrogance, I would’ve lost him!” This time, she couldn’t stop her voice from rising. “I would’ve never been given the chance to hold my grandchild in my arms, or to hear him call me his grandmother.”
No glow of power around Aegaeon’s wings or his hands, the tempestuous spout of seawater pierced by sunlight it had previously blocked out. “He will not give me any respect,” he said, his voice a thing of crushed stone.
“He is angry,” Caliane said. “As my boy was angry with me for a long, long time.” She exhaled. “And you keep on giving him reason to be angry, Aegaeon.
“You show him not the statesman I once knew you to be, but a petulant and arrogant Ancient surrounded by sycophants. You would force his love and respect—and he is an archangel. Even were he not, would you respect you right now? Or would you, at best, fear and despise you?”
The water fell away, the sun bathing them in its glow.
Aegaeon’s hair blew back in a breeze that was natural, his eyes hard and jeweled as he stared out past her. “I thought of him when I went into Sleep,” he ground out. “I was aware I’d miss some of his life, but I thought it’d be fine. We’d pick up as we’d left off.” His throat moved as he swallowed hard. “I forgot to remember that he’d be a man full grown by then, not the child who clung to my every word.”
A sense of exhaustion to his shoulders. “Am I so bad, Caliane? That you do not respect me, either?”
She had a choice to make: be politic and keep him calm—or tell the harsh truth and perhaps reignite his fury. “Yes,” she said. “We have never been akin to each other, you and I. I’ve always found you too brash, but once…once, I respected you despite our differences.
“You were a good archangel, and you had good people around you. Strong people. But at some point, you began to build edifices to your glory and your great generals left your court or went into Sleep. Rather than replace them with people of the same strength and honor, you began to surround yourself with those who defer to you.”
Heat on his cheeks again, his shoulders bunching. “Why are you here?” he asked bluntly. “It is surely not to make friends.”
“Because what I did to my son? It will haunt me for all eternity—I will never, ever forget, no matter how many ages I live.” She blew out a shaking breath. “I don’t wish this for anyone, Aegaeon, not even you. If you win this war you want to start, you will spend eternity haunted by the image of your bleeding…perhaps dying child.”
He flinched…and then he said the one thing she’d never expected him to say, not even after she confronted him with it. “I’ve held a dying child in my hands before.” His voice was raw torment and anguish. “She was so fragile, her skin translucent and her body so tiny that I could fit all of her in one palm. I tried to keep her warm, keep her alive, but I could do nothing.”
“You know it was no fault of yours—the sweet child was simply born too soon,” Caliane murmured, her mother’s heart hurting for him. “That you even became a father at that age, it was a shock to all, including the healers.”
Aegaeon didn’t respond, his gaze distant.
But Caliane wasn’t done. “I will make you angry when I ask this,” she said, “but I will ask it all the same. Because it’s important for you to answer.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Don’t push it, Caliane. I respect you even if it isn’t reciprocated, but you are not my sire.”
She was startled into a smile. “You know, I had forgotten that we ever had sires.”
His responding smile was almost of the man he’d once been, the youth she vaguely remembered. “Yes, we were even children once.”
If he had always been this man, she thought, he wouldn’t now have a son who despised him. “How,” she said, “could you leave Illium behind when you’d already lost a cherished child to the arms of death?”