Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 118699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 593(@200wpm)___ 475(@250wpm)___ 396(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 593(@200wpm)___ 475(@250wpm)___ 396(@300wpm)
He’d been pathetically weak when he’d crawled out of the cold grave in which his so-called brethren had entombed him. But he’d been clever still, hadn’t he? He hadn’t made a show of it, had used what pitiful flickers of power remained to tunnel all the way out into the ocean before he swam back to shore to regather his strength.
No trace of disturbance. No sign of an awakening to alert the enemy.
He could still feel the ice-cold water shoving into his mouth and nose, wrapping its frigid hand around his throat, burning his eyes. The cold had been immense. He’d known that . . . but he hadn’t much felt it. He hadn’t drowned either. Hadn’t died.
Because you are already dead, Antonicus. A whisper from deep within his psyche.
Shoving both hands through his hair, he roared out a “No!” to the silent forest around him, while his victim lay twitching below. Removing his sword, he sliced off the food’s head. Antonicus had been careful to hoard his energy, only make a certain kind of reborn.
It had . . . disturbed him at first when he felt the craving to share the noxious darkness within, create others like him. He’d had flashes of shambling, mindless creatures, images of an archangel whose power was death. And that was when he’d understood: this was power. And he wasn’t one of Lijuan’s shambling creatures; no, Antonicus was an archangel. That bitch hadn’t made him a reborn. He’d stolen her power, made himself a master of the reborn.
But Antonicus’s reborn were better. Stronger, more intelligent, faster. The weakling he’d just fed on wasn’t one of his chosen, wasn’t worthy of being reborn. His only purpose had been to push Antonicus over the edge of energy.
He wouldn’t lie. It had concerned him when the elements hadn’t reflected his awakening—though the silence had been to his advantage. The waters hadn’t boiled, the sky hadn’t altered to the shade of the dark blooms of violet that his people had sown all across his lands in homage to their archangel.
It had made him question himself, question what he was . . . but now he knew that he’d simply roused himself too early. His power had needed a little more time to recover back to the levels appropriate to an archangel.
He wiped his sword on the dead man, then slid it into the sheath at his back. At least he hadn’t had to acquire that; the others had entombed him in what he was wearing on the day of his—
His mind buzzed, cutting off the images.
He didn’t pursue it, some part of him aware that he didn’t want to see the things he’d seen that night, much less hear the nightmare screams.
Once, his heart might’ve thudded at the thought, but today, his chest was silent.
Ignoring that oddity, he flexed his hand and smiled at seeing the crawl of power beneath the green-tinged delicacy of his skin. This was his true waking. His archangelic powers hadn’t disappeared after all, as the others would soon see.
Antonicus, Archangel of a fabled city named Elysium, had risen.
50
Strange how slowly time moved when he was far from his Zani.
Now, at last, the time had come that Alexander would see her again. His grandson had, in the interim, taken up a post at one of Titus’s forts in order to learn a specific set of skills from a warrior stationed there.
So it was that Alexander and Zanaya had decided that they’d meet at her fortress. That gave Xander enough time to get to them, stay, then return before his leave ran out. But Alexander intended to precede him by a day.
He needed that time to be with his consort.
The skies were a cerulean blue when he took off—the hue so pure and so deep that it reminded him of Callie’s eyes. Reminded him too of the son she’d had with Nadiel.
Two archangels in love.
It could be done.
His friends’ love story had spanned countless mortal generations, only ending because of Nadiel’s descent into madness.
What Alexander had never told Caliane was that—and he was well aware that Zanaya would have raised an ironic eyebrow had she been awake—he’d tried to talk Nadiel into Sleep. But in his defense, he’d only done so because he’d glimpsed signs of Nadiel’s subtle decline. “Sleep exists for a reason,” he’d said in an effort to make his friend and fellow archangel interrogate his own behavior. “You’ll lose nothing by going into it.”
But Nadiel had been intractable. Not a man prone to anger, he’d laughed at Alexander’s worries, slapped him on the shoulder, and told him not to be “such a grim Ancient.” So young and vibrant he’d been, with his hair of mahogany gold and eyes of a vital green mingled with the barest hint of blue, his heart brimming with courage. Raphael might’ve inherited his coloring from Callie, but his features were an imprint of his father.