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)
Zanaya hoped Alexander was right when it came time to hold the burial. She and Archangel Elijah formed the hole where Antonicus’s body would lie cradled in impermeable stone. Then they all joined together to lower Antonicus into the hole.
“To Antonicus!”
Zanaya’s eyes met Alexander’s as they said the name of the gravely injured archangel, and she could read his thoughts in his eyes: the general was afraid that they’d made a mistake, that they’d just buried a problem rather than dealing with it. Antonicus was infected with a darkness beyond anything either of them had ever before seen.
If he returned . . .
We must give him a chance, she said to Alexander, mind-to-mind. It’s the only honorable choice.
Yes, he agreed at once. But we will watch. We will be ready.
22
Afterward, their mood somber, the Cadre split in various directions to return home, all of them knowing this was but the first strike.
“How has she become so?” Zanaya asked Alexander when they finally landed on the balcony of his main fort. “Zhou Lijuan? Was she always a great power?”
“I knew her as a young woman,” Alexander said. “She was powerful but no more so than you or I. Had she not given in to this madness, I could’ve seen her becoming a strong Ancient.” He thrust a hand through his hair as he led her inside and down a corridor carved out of the local red stone, paintings etched into the stone itself.
“I’d blame it on the Cascade,” he said, “but Titus informs me that there were more subtle signs of change in her before this evil.” He began to tell her of those signs; he’d always been generous when it came to information that was Cadre business.
Halting in front of a set of heavy golden doors, he held her gaze. “These are my rooms, Zani. Will you come with me this dark day?”
Perhaps she might’ve refused at another time, still bruised from their earlier altercation. But after witnessing what had taken place with Antonicus, she said, “Yes. But you, my general, will provide for me a bath first and foremost.” She would not lie with him rife with the stink of death.
A tug of his lips, a smile so open that it showed her a glimpse of the youth she’d been born too late to know. “Only you would order me to draw you a bath.” Hauling open one of the doors with an easy grace, he waved her in. “My lady.”
Laughing, she strode in.
She experienced no surprise at seeing the relatively meagre furnishings in the initial area of his suite. He’d always gone for spare in his living quarters—except for in one place. “Ah, there it is.” A huge four-poster bed complete with curtains that could be tied back, and luxuriant bedding.
“Will you make fun of me for my continued liking of comfort when I sleep?”
“Never,” she said as she took off her sword and kicked off the boots that a member of Alexander’s staff had managed to find for her. “Not when I enjoy it so much.”
Water ran somewhere close by and she knew he’d started to fill the bath. Padding toward the sound of that water, she dropped her clothing until she was bare to the skin, the air kissing every inch of her.
Leaning one hand against the doorjamb of the bathing chamber, she took in the floor tiles of gentle desert gold riven with streaks of a deeper gold; the color was reflected in the dark gold of the water spouts, but the walls were a simple cream, as were the thick towels that sat piled up in a woven basket to one side of what she assumed was a built-in bowl to wash the face.
Water gushed from one of the golden spouts, and given the steam rising up from the bath, that water was hot. No need then, to build a fire below the bath, or to have water heated elsewhere in the home carried up in buckets. How extraordinary . . . and yet somehow not startling.
Because even when certain things changed over the eons, they remained the same. This world might have technologies far beyond what angelkind had discovered when she went to Sleep, but people still needed to bathe, to wash their faces.
But the most intriguing thing in this room was the angel who stood beside the bath, half bent over it as he tested the water with his hand. His wings were a glory of silver against the muted colors of the space, his hair shining in the light that poured from a fixture in the ceiling. For the people of this time had also managed to harness light.
“Someone already came in and filled it two-thirds of the way up,” he told her as he flicked the water off his fingers. “You won’t have to wait—” Speech bitten off on a harsh inhale as he turned, saw her.