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)
As he stared out at the night, two angels flew upward past the Tower, heading for the high altitudes. They wouldn’t have spotted him; all the private areas of the Tower were shielded from external watchers using technology invented by Illium. For Elena’s Bluebell had held true to his determination to be himself, no matter if he’d ascended into the ranks of the Cadre.
It amused Raphael on a daily basis to see how Illium’s refusal to be what the older members of the Cadre expected confounded, irritated, and at times inspired those same archangels.
You know, I never considered that I could be other than what was expected of an archangel. Perhaps it is never too late to change.
The most surprising statement thus far.
Because it had come from Alexander. The Archangel of Persia had been set in his ways even when Raphael was a youth.
“Well, damn.” Elena had whistled when he’d shared Alexander’s comment with her. “Cadre meetings have clearly gotten a lot more fun since Illium’s ascension. Didn’t Caliane threaten to strangle him last year?”
He’d laughed then, because the threat had been more exasperation than truth. Illium had laughed, too, then stuck out his neck as if for Caliane’s hands. Which had made Raphael’s mother scowl—while Raphael fought a grin—and call the meeting to an end “before we all turn into savages.”
But he had no laughter in him this night when his right temple pulsed with a low throbbing pain, even though the Legion mark had long faded into near obscurity on his skin, barely visible even to Elena, who was the only person he ever permitted that close.
Well, no, that wasn’t quite true. Naasir’s cubs had seen it, too, when they’d been children who’d loved to hang off their “Rafa.” Because, of course, Illium and Aodhan had made sure the three boys knew of the name only small children were permitted to call Raphael.
He could still remember how Izar’s curious little fingers had touched his temple. “Dragon?”
“Dragon,” Raphael had said. “Like Marduk.”
Delighted, Izar had immediately shared this knowledge with his brothers, who had both roared with him in what Raphael assumed was their reproduction of a dragonish roar. To this day, Raphael received random packages from the boys with dragonish mementos inside. The most recent one had been from Nasien—a tiny figurine featuring a slumbering dragon, its tail curled around three dozing cats.
He had no idea how or where Nasien had found it, but it held pride of place on his office shelf.
To everyone else, the Legion mark was forever gone, fading with most people’s memories of the strange beings who had once crouched on rooftops, hung off buildings, or perched in trees in Central Park. Living gargoyles who had been seven hundred and seventy-seven voices—and one coherent voice—in Raphael’s head.
You are in our memory. The aeclari of the Death Cascade. The aeclari who…loved us.
Lifting his hand on that echo of words that had been some of the last the Legion had ever spoken, he rubbed at the pulsing. It did nothing to ease the irritation. Biting off a curse, he went into the bathroom so he could see if anything was visible.
The mark remained less than a shadow.
The pain, he realized, was of him. Born of the same twisting anguish that had him leaving his Elena alone in bed.
A mind, cool and collected, touched his before he could begin the process of calming himself with conscious will; the contact was quiet enough that it wouldn’t have woken him had he been asleep.
Sire?
I am awake, Venom.
The vampire, who’d been by his side for more than a millennium now, shifted his mental voice to a normal pitch. Lady Caliane is on the line.
Though their world had long ago moved away from the visible lines and wires that first enabled long-distance communication, the language persisted. Jessamy, who’d traced the complexity and evolution of language for most of her existence, had told him that sometimes certain elements became set in stone, never to change no matter what.
“As an example,” she’d said one day two hundred years ago, when the two of them had been walking through the Refuge of an afternoon, “people do not realize that when they refer to their morning cereal, they are referring back to the Archangel Ceres, who was well known for his harvests and who has Slept for eons. Language is a most fascinating mystery.”
I will speak to her, Raphael told Venom now. Transfer the call to the suite.
Shrugging on a loose cream-hued tunic, he stepped out of the bedroom. The waiting call flashed on the faceted crystal that sat in a cradle of polished stone on a side table. He could’ve carried that crystal anywhere, but he wanted to be close enough to intercede should the nightmares begin to hunt Elena, so he touched his finger to the crystal, and when the menu popped up, chose to answer where he stood.