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)
“We have…missed you, too.” The Primary released her when she released him, but only to turn to Raphael. “We have come as called, sire.”
Raphael gripped the other man’s forearm. “You are welcome. You have been missed. How long can you stay?”
A tilt of the Primary’s head. “Until you are not afraid any longer…and perhaps longer.” His words were directed at both of them.
Not many people would dare tell an archangel that he felt fear, but the Primary wasn’t exactly an ordinary being.
And Raphael was no longer the cold and remote archangel Elena had first met.
“Our babe will be very vulnerable after it is born,” he said. “That babe is more precious to us than our own lives.”
“We will protect the child.” The Primary looked at Elena’s abdomen. “We will…love the child of our aeclari.”
Eyes hot, Elena just beamed. “Welcome home.”
* * *
* * *
Less than a half hour after their triumphant return, Elena stood with the Primary at the foot of the enormous central tree that had grown where the Legion building had once stood, its roots generally mirroring the foundation of that long-ago construction, though with no harsh angles or lines.
“You kept your promise,” the Primary said, his eyes focused on the soaring central tree. “You protected our home.”
“We managed to keep the building functional for over a hundred years,” Elena told him, her mind a green field of memory. “By then the trees had begun to push out the walls, and the roots to literally lift the foundations, so we decided it was better to pull out the remnants with care while protecting the plants.”
She put her hands on her hips and continued, “I hand-transplanted the more delicate plants with a team of trained helpers.” It had been a long, painstaking task, but they’d managed to save pretty much everything. “I’m sorry we couldn’t keep the building.”
The Primary gave her an intrinsically Legion look, as if he was having trouble comprehending her strangeness. “It was not the building that was our home,” he said in that voice that echoed with seven hundred and seventy-six others. “Our home has survived.” He touched his palm to the trunk of the nearest tree.
Elena thought of the perfect microclimate within the interconnected and—thanks to the massive tree at the center that supported all the climbing plants—vertical forest. “I’ve been trying to figure out how you did it, but I’ve never quite succeeded. A lot of it has to do with the plantings, and how you organized those plants within the whole, but there’s something else, isn’t there?”
The Primary had always had the ability to be inscrutable, apparently without intent, but today, he said, “We had never before had the chance to create a home. We did not know that we could until we were given that chance. It seems that we have within us the ability to be the builders of such homes.”
He paused. “We sensed the first aeclari as we Slept.”
Hearing the question he didn’t ask, Elena said, “Marduk and Tiamat-Neith? Yes, they were with us until recently.” She swallowed. “I miss them.”
“We were glad to speak to them after…a very long time.” The Primary looked once again at the huge tree that centered the forest. “Our maker would know the answer to this home we have built.”
“Yeah, he wasn’t talking.” Elena folded her arms with a scowl. “Every time I asked, he’d say that mysteries are good when you’re immortal.”
It will keep you engaged through time, rather than becoming jaded and of the belief that you know everything. The latter is stupidity, of course. Even I don’t know everything, but immortals have a tendency to tumble into that fallacy far too often.
No matter how much Elena had argued with him on his stance, he’d been resolute. “One day,” he’d said in the last year he and Tiamat had spent in this time, “you’ll figure it out. You have the blood of life in you, hands that understand the earth and plants.”
Then he’d said the most surprising thing of all. “I was like you, Elena. I was known for my great gardens, all of which I tended with my own hands, shedding much of my blood into the soil over the ages as is the case with any gardener.”
That was it, the only clue he’d ever given her. “Does it have to do with blood?” she asked the Primary, since he was being so talkative.
But he came as close to a shrug as the Legion ever had—and it delighted her to see it so soon after their return. It had taken them a long time to get to that point, and she’d been afraid they’d lost all of that growth and development during their long Sleep in the deep.
“We do not know the how of it, only that we can do it.” He opened out his wings. “I must go. My brethren have found many surprises and delights.” But before he flew up into the canopy, he said, “We did not expect our home to still be here. We remembered it, but we did not expect to see it again. We are…happy.”