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)
Else the world would be chaos, buffeted by competing winds of power.
Given their love, she’d known that Alexander might sense her had he dug down below the surface in the exact place in which she Slept, but otherwise, he’d never divine his Zani’s presence.
So she’d allowed herself the comfort of going to Sleep close to him.
He’d been Archangel of Persia for so long when she went to Sleep that she hadn’t been able to imagine any future world in which those lands didn’t belong to him—and when she woke, she’d been proven right, for there he was. She’d been able to taste him in her every breath, her lover full of arrogance and power and a brutal love for her.
But there’d been no time for love then.
She frowned, the threads of the past unraveling in fits and starts.
And she remembered that she hadn’t chosen to wake, though she’d been stirring, her body and mind rejuvenated from her long Sleep. She would have woken soon enough, but something had wrenched her prematurely out of her rest.
Her name is Lijuan.
Alexander had said that to her when she woke, while the sky turned a black akin to the grave, the air shredded by shrieks and screams.
There had been a war.
She’d risen because she’d needed to rise to help battle the Archangel of Death, she who would’ve spread her madness and her evil across the planet in a tide of death that was a facsimile of life.
Reborn.
That was what she’d called her shambling abominations.
Zanaya hissed out a breath hot with rage, still unable to comprehend how any archangel could permit themselves to fall so far into megalomaniacal madness that they’d believe they were doing a good thing in making the dead walk.
Blood in her fingertips now, her numb toes coming to life with stabbing pains.
Gritting her teeth, she rode the pain.
It hadn’t been like this on her last waking. She might’ve been wrenched out of it prematurely, but she’d come awake as she should: in complete and total control of herself, her body at full fighting capacity.
Today, she was . . . incapacitated.
Face hot, she searched in her cocoon . . . and her hand closed over Firelight. It wasn’t the same sword that Alexander had given her so long ago, but it was a worthy successor to the name. And it carried his amber. The two were always entwined—Firelight and Alexander’s amber. She never wore one without the other.
As she never carried Firelight when she and Alexander were broken.
With the fingers of her right hand wrapped around its carved hilt studded with opals—the gemstones that Xander—no, he was Alexander now—Xander the name of his grandson—and how astonishing that he had a grandson!
Her thoughts skittered this way and that, gathering together the more frayed edges of her memories. This wasn’t normal, she kept thinking, but at the same time there was no point in wallowing in the irregularities. She had to work out what was going on, what was—
A piercing stab that had her dropping Firelight to slap her hand over the side of her neck . . . where Lijuan had bitten her. Clinging to her like a mongrel dog and sucking her blood as if she were a vampire and not an archangel.
But no . . .
Zanaya squeezed her eyes shut, unraveled more tangled threads. Lijuan hadn’t wanted blood. She’d been able to feed on the lifeforce of others—even archangels, it appeared. She’d fed on Zanaya.
Rage was a storm vortex inside her.
She’d fought back, she remembered, had called up the whirlwinds that were her trademark power, but Lijuan, this evil that had grown while Zanaya Slept, had been too powerful, a monster unleashed.
Zanaya had felt her body go cold as Lijuan sucked up all her energy, all her warmth, all her life! She’d seen her limbs begin to shrivel, felt her heart stutter. Her sight had faded at rapid speed, until the last thing she remembered was blurred gray. Then . . . nothingness.
She must’ve fallen from the sky, her wings crumpled and her body emaciated.
Half-terrified that she remained in that mummified state, that Lijuan had somehow turned her into one of her reborn, a shambling parody of life, she lifted one of her arms. Lit by the glow from the fiery cocoon, her skin proved as midnight dark as always, and as smooth, her flesh what it should be.
Her breath pulsed out of her in a ragged exhale, but she held back the wave of relief. Because she didn’t feel like herself. Something was off. Perhaps it was her legs that remained shriveled.
Dropping her arm, she bent one leg at the knee, and the living fire of the cocoon rippled around her to make space. She looked, her skin cold, but her leg was whole, too, her flesh rejuvenated. Still uncertain, she ran her hands over her body—and realized she wore a simple linen shift that stopped midthigh. She made a face.