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)
“Surrender, you upstart!” the other archangel yelled, her once-content eyes red with blood fury and the burnished sunlight of her skin streaked by golden paint; it was all she wore but for a short loincloth, her taut breasts also painted gold.
Alexander’s paint was silver, his own loincloth covered by a short skirt studded with metal. He still fought naked at times, but there was something to be said for not having his private parts exposed to the wind and the rain and the snow.
“Your time is done, old one!” Alexander yelled back, burying Sha-yi in silver lightning. “Look below! My people have swarmed your stronghold!”
Sha-yi looked down for but half of a moment—and that was all the time Alexander needed to land a fatal heart blow. He was no bloodthirsty monster, didn’t usually go for a death blow when fighting another archangel. Most of the time, the battles came out of pent-up aggression, with neither party willing to battle to the death.
Sha-yi, however, was far beyond any reason or sanity. To leave her alive would be to prolong the war, lose more innocent lives. Because both their people were dying for her madness.
Now, she screamed, a burning star of angelfire in her chest.
Alexander flinched, hit by a wave of pity woven with a breathtaking sense of loss.
Sha-yi had been an unquestionably good archangel once, a woman Alexander admired deeply and wished to emulate. She’d helped him countless times over the years, and they’d broken bread anytime the other felt the need to converse with a fellow archangel without flying to a more distant territory. Of all the older archangels on the Cadre, she’d always been his favorite.
Now, she was dying in front of him.
Battle had stopped the moment the armies realized what was happening, and the world was silent when Sha-yi fell from the sky. They hadn’t been so high that she’d break apart . . . not that such a thing was an issue any longer.
Alexander fell with her, and the fighters below all pulled back to give both archangels space and privacy. She looked so fragile as she lay on the churned-up ground, her white wings now muddy and her limbs without power. And though Alexander had struck the heart blow that even now ate away at her, stealing the life of this Ancient who’d done so much good in her time, Sha-yi gripped the hand Alexander held out.
“Thank you, my young friend,” she whispered and though blood dripped out of her mouth, the rich brown of her eyes was clear for the first time since they’d begun to fight. “I waited too lo—” Releasing his hand, she arched her back, her mouth open in a silent scream.
The explosion of angelfire blinded him.
When he could finally see again, Archangel Sha-yi was gone, millennia of life, of memories, of wisdom obliterated. Nothing was left in the aftermath but a scar on the landscape that would take decades to fade.
Shaken and wounded in a way he couldn’t have predicted, Alexander went through the necessary motions . . . but he broke when Zanaya walked through the doors of his private suite halfway through the night.
Her hair was drenched in sweat, her face hot, bearing witness to the grueling pace she’d set herself. “Alexander, I heard.” She opened up her arms.
He went into them, into the only pair of arms in the world he’d allow to hold him as he mourned the loss of a magnificent life that shouldn’t have ended in pain and madness. It didn’t matter that Zanaya was so much smaller; she wrapped him up in her wings and in her fierceness, and he could just be.
* * *
* * *
Zanaya watched over her lover as he dozed restlessly. She’d known Sha-yi through Alexander’s words about her, could understand the depth of his grief. The other archangel had been a great help to Alexander when he first ascended, and in the end, he’d been forced to end her immortal existence. It would be akin to Zanaya having to kill Mivoniel.
That Sha-yi had thanked him for it might one day ameliorate his pain, but not today.
“Shh.” She brushed her fingers through his hair, soothing him as he frowned and turned. “Sleep, lover. Rest.”
While he did eventually fall into a deeper rest, she found herself wide awake and afraid in a way she’d never before been. Because Alexander was an archangel, too. As full to the brim with power as Sha-yi had been. Could it happen to him? A madness insidious and total?
Narrowing her eyes, she made a promise to herself that she wouldn’t permit him to ignore the need to Sleep. He’d told her that Sha-yi herself had been trying to say that she’d stayed awake too long. Zanaya would do everything in her power to ensure that Alexander never ended up losing himself to the insanity that had turned Sha-yi from archangel to maddened monster.