Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 112287 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112287 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
“Don’t you mean nine?” Aegaeon snarled. “You’re forgetting yourself.”
“I don’t count.” Marduk’s voice held no room for argument. “I came into this time when the unraveling had already begun. It must be the eight that existed with the first quake.”
“Qin,” Alexander said, the single word hard. “We have no idea when exactly he went into Sleep.”
“It was before the quake,” Raphael said. “Atu last saw him over a week prior, so I think it’s safe to assume that.”
“Eight pieces,” Suyin murmured. “I will have to search Lijuan’s most private palace for mine. It is apt to be there.”
“It will be near you,” Marduk insisted, his scales appearing to alter color in the cascade of light that rained off the chandelier. “The subcomponents are designed to find their way to their archangel. The base, however, can only be found by triangulating all eight other pieces.”
“But why?” Zanaya twisted so that she faced Marduk, her temper afire in the glow that pulsed off her wings. “Why this . . . game!”
Marduk watched her with an unblinking gaze. “It is no game. It is a reset, exactly as I stated.”
“For the Mantle?”
“For the world.” Marduk’s smile was cold. “From what I know of this most recent Cascade, it well demonstrated that the power we carry in our bones and blood can flow and ebb, rise and fall.
“Cascades are created of us because we are the biggest reservoirs of power in this world. It is our energy that fuels the very planet on which we stand. We have within us the ability to annihilate it out of existence, shatter it into dust.”
Raphael suddenly saw it, where Marduk was going. That forgotten field. Excruciating pain. The birds. The grass growing around him. Later, having to put himself back together.
Heart and mind and limbs and skin and blood and every tiny cell.
“It’s a safety,” he said in a beat of silence amid the furious discussion that had broken out. “To prove the Cadre can work together. A key to retune the power that burns through the world, before it destroys that very world. The failure of the Mantle is the initial indicator of the need for the reset.”
Marduk’s smile was feral. “Blood of my line,” he said in open pride. “You see it. When the old ones decided to Sleep, it was after a time of terrible war and loss. Their wisdom came at a grave cost, but with it, they set up the Cadre system. A thing of trial and error, until it became clear that the optimal number was ten. It was also understood that it was critical the Cadre function as a unit.”
Titus scowled. “You’re saying the world is falling apart because the currents of power that run through it—our power—have become too unstable.”
Marduk brought his fist down on his thigh. “Yes, Titus! This is so!”
“Too many changes.” Caliane’s face was solemn but tired with it. “Too many ripples in the river of power. Had the Ancestors not set this safety in place that forces a Cadre to work together—”
“—the world would burn as we turned against each other,” Suyin completed.
“What is the alternative?” Alexander insisted. “If a Cadre fails to initiate the safety and the Mantle falls?”
“The Cadre dies, the world becomes chaos infinite for a turn around the sun, and then civilization restarts with those few who survive.” Flat words that brought with them an eerie silence as every archangel but Marduk stopped so much as breathing.
“In not working together, you prove yourselves unfit to continue,” he said into that absolute quiet. “You end the instant the Mantle falls. So do your consorts, seconds, courts, and anyone of your bloodline, regardless of age.
“Any vampires you’ve created, or who have been created by those of your court, die with you. That combined power returns to the system, and, one year to the day, the system resets itself.”
“Our Ancestors didn’t play games.” Raphael held the gaze of the man who was part of his own lineage, his thoughts a mix of rage and admiration. That anyone would threaten Elena, threaten children—it was grounds for annihilation; but he also saw the wisdom in what the Ancestors had done.
Their brutal regime ended in the chance of a restart, as opposed to an archangelic war that might destroy the planet itself, ending their species and every other species on the planet.
Marduk shrugged. “Archangels are arrogant. This gives you sufficient motivation—whether you care for your own skin, or the skins of those you love.”
Aegaeon folded his arms across his chest. “We need a description of these objects for which we are to search like jesters stumbling about in the dark. Or is that a secret, too?”
Marduk’s eyes went slitted like those of the great winged serpent whispered of by his skin. “None of this is a secret. It is knowledge meant to be passed from archangel to archangel in an unbroken chain. This isn’t a test. The Compass exists because it needs to exist.