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)
Her expression grew hard as granite, all softness erased. “You’ll regret your words one day, Archangel Alexander.”
He should’ve been furious with her for speaking to him in that tone, but Zanaya made her own rules when it came to Alexander. The only rule he wouldn’t permit her to break was the one that would lead to her touching him. At least not until she was a thousand years of age or more.
He could not—would not—take her to his bed while she remained dewy with youth. He’d seen such things happen between angels and it never ended well. Either the youth outgrew their elder, or the elder crushed the youth’s growth. All of it due to the fact that angels grew slowly, including in their maturity.
* * *
* * *
Needing to speak of Zanaya even if he wouldn’t permit himself to have her, he found himself telling his second—and friend—all of it. “It may be condescending to say that, squadron leader or not,” he said at last, “Zanaya doesn’t know herself yet—”
“—but that makes it no less true,” Avelina completed for him.
Tall and taut with the muscle of a honed warrior beneath her well-worn leathers, she had eyes of a brown so pale it was amber, and skin the shade of purest onyx. Though it made Alexander’s chief of “soft” operations, Zakariah, groan at the “cruel waste of beauty,” Avelina usually wore her mass of tight black curls in fine braids threaded through with strings of shimmering bronze.
“I’m a warrior, Zak,” he’d heard her say dryly. “I’ll leave the fashion to you. I’m more interested in hair that leaves my field of view clear and is easy to maintain. There are, sadly, no hair maids on the battlefield.”
Avelina had been his lieutenant when he’d ridden into battle as a general, had agreed to stand as his second for the moment. It wasn’t that she didn’t wish to be in his court. Quite the opposite. “I’m a good lieutenant,” she’d said to him, “and I will of course walk by your side as you grow into your power. But seconds have to be so much more than lieutenants and I won’t hobble you due to your loyalty.”
When Alexander had scowled, she’d laughed, her trademark husky tone warm with affection. “Oh, Alex, you know how you are. There’s arrogance there, but it’s well earned—your most enduring trait, however, is that you are loyal to those you choose as your own. You might now be an archangel, but that doesn’t mean you’re no longer the same warrior I followed into battle and who I knew would have my back in any situation.”
Only very few people still spoke to Alexander with such openness. That was a reality he hadn’t understood until he ascended. Now it made so much sense to him that Callie had never put distance between them; she’d needed the frank honesty of a friend. Such was a gift, one that became near impossible to find when you were one of the most powerful beings in the entire world.
Today, Avelina nodded over at where Zanaya was departing the court, her squadron fed and rested and ready to take off from the desert sands so prevalent in his territory. Much of his land was colored in the hues of sunset, and Alexander would have it no other way. As Osiris had his lush tropical island, Alexander had his land of whispering sands, date palms tall and proud, and hidden aquamarine oases.
He and Avelina stood on a high parapet of the old fort of rich red stone that had already been in place when Alexander took over these lands. He’d build his own fort, to his own specifications, but until then, there was nothing wrong with this one—built by another warrior archangel, it was designed for defense and offense both.
“She is lovely and strong,” Avelina said, “and I see how she looks at you.” A slight narrowing of her eyes as the desert breeze blew across the scents of the bustling marketplace just outside the walls of the fort. “There’s arrogance there too—but it isn’t earned. Not yet. She’s young, a little foolish. But we were so as youths, too. Do you remember?”
“Far too well,” Alexander muttered as he watched Zanaya take off in a sweep of wings that reminded him of the stars at midnight, diamond pinpricks in the black. “It’s all I can do not to pull her back, not to have her by my side, but I know that in so doing, I’ll change her.” It was inevitable.
“Yes.” Avelina pushed back from the parapet. “One day, she’ll understand that.”
Until then, he thought, she’d think him a coward unwilling to take a risk. Alexander would’ve raged against anyone else who dared have such thoughts—but Zanaya was young and a little foolish. That was the way of things.