Gritting her teeth and refusing to consider failure, she got aloft and began to circle around. Other than the impossible-to-climb chute down which they’d slid into this pit, there didn’t seem to be any other fissures or tunnel mouths.
She flew higher.
Naasir watched to make sure Andromeda was steady on the wing before he pulled off the shreds of his useless boots and began to prowl around in search of an exit. The air currents in this room were stirring wrong against him, his skin rippling with stripes between one breath and the next. What wasn’t visible unless someone stroked him at the exact right moment, was the fine, fine, fine layer of fur that occasionally appeared on his skin.
Maybe he wouldn’t tell Andromeda about that part of him—he’d just let her discover it one day while they were playing naked. She wouldn’t mind; he knew that about her now. She liked him despite the fact he wasn’t in any way “normal.” No, that wasn’t right. Andromeda didn’t like him despite his unusual nature. She just liked him.
Even when she scowled at him, she liked him.
Standing in different parts of the pit as that knowledge settled into his cells, he tuned into the air currents. When he felt Andromeda start to descend, he looked up. “Can you stay up a little longer?” Her landing would disturb the air that had settled after her takeoff.
She nodded and began to circle gently instead of staying in place. Realizing she was hurting too much to maintain a hover, her burnt feet and scorched wings making him want to snarl, he clenched his jaw and went toward a particular part of the wall. The air was fresher here, moved faster. “Andi.”
Landing softly behind him when he gestured, she pulled off what remained of her own boots, and hobbled over to peer at the wall. “What do you see?” A sudden blink, her body motionless. “Why can I see?”
Naasir, able to see no matter the light, hadn’t noticed the fact it was no longer pitch-black, the luminescence from the walls at a much higher intensity. “Alexander.”
“I guess this means he liked us after all.”
“Not enough to lead us out of here.”
“Alexander was never known to be an easy archangel.”
Grunting in acknowledgment, Naasir began to run his fingers along the lines where he’d felt the fresher air. “There’s a door here.”
Going to her knees below the outwardly unbroken stone, Andromeda began to feel around the wall at ground level. “Sometimes the pressure point is hidden lower, where people are less apt to—” Her fingers slid over a faint, shallow indent. “Naasir.”
He came down beside her, confirmed he could also feel it. Fitting a finger against the indent, he pushed.
No door. No effect at all.
“I think we need to find two,” Andromeda said, thinking back to an ancient door she’d read about in a history book. “Let’s hope it’s not a code which requires the application of pressure in a precise rhythm.”
“Alexander can just drop those he doesn’t like into a boiling pit,” Naasir pointed out with a shrug. “Anyone allowed to stay alive must be given a way out.”
“Good point.” Andromeda felt for the second dent alongside Naasir.
“Got it.”
Touching the spot Naasir indicated, she nodded. “I’ll push here and you push there.”
When nothing happened, her heart squeezed, the idea of being entombed a nightmare.
A harsh groan split the air the next second, motes of dust shining in the luminescence.
Rising to stand on marginally less painful feet, she took Naasir’s hand and they backed away in case the mechanism swung outward, but when the ancient door finally moved, it was inward. The tunnel within was gray with thick cobwebs that made it clear no one had traversed it for centuries, but the walls glowed with the same luminescence as the central chamber.
“I hate cobwebs.” They stuck stubbornly to her feathers and this thick, they might even affect her ability to fly once they made it out.
Again that smile from Naasir, the affectionate one that hit her right in the solar plexus. “I’ll go first and clear the way for you.” Stepping in, he started using his claws to rip away the sticky mass.
Sword in hand, she got the bits that he missed and together, they managed to keep her wings mostly unsticky. “I’m trying very hard not to think about the spiders who built these, or about what just crawled over my foot.” She shuddered.
“You don’t like bugs?”
“Not ones with more than six legs. Or shells. Or antennae.”
Naasir chuckled and they carried on. It felt as if they walked for two hours on their burnt feet before the tunnel spilled them out into a small cave illuminated with the same luminescence that had lit their path this far. Given the lack of natural light, it was clear they were still deep inside the cave system.
Where they might permanently remain, courtesy of the angry wing brothers waiting for them, their crossbows pointed and primed.
Three hours after the tense meeting outside Alexander’s chamber, night had fallen over the oasis and the wing brothers knew what was coming. The fact their archangel was waking had caused wide-eyed awe among the younger members of the Brotherhood, grim joy in the older.
“I am happy to know I will see the sire again.” The tautly held emotion in Tarek’s tone was a testament to the loyalty Alexander inspired in his people. “I only wish his Sleep hadn’t been so precipitously interrupted. He did not plan to wake for thousands of years.”
The leader of the Brotherhood was sharing a meal with Naasir and Andromeda under the starlight. She went to speak, ask him about his long service, when a long-range scout ran in. It turned out the wing brothers’ phones didn’t work here, either—they had a hidden communications bunker a considerable distance out from the oasis.
It was of no use right now. All communications systems had gone down not long after Alexander told Naasir and Andromeda he was about to wake. As far as the Brotherhood had been able to ascertain, it had affected the entire territory, perhaps farther. All information was currently being passed through a relay of runners and old signal beacons that utilized a Brotherhood code.
“The fighting continues at the palace.” Accepting a bottle of water, the scout gulped it down. “It seems Rohan called in all his squadrons and ground troops prior to the attack.”
“Your warning,” Tarek said, and it wasn’t a question.
Naasir’s eyes gleamed in the dark. “Who is winning?”
“Rohan and Xi are evenly matched. Stalemate.”
That, Andromeda knew, wouldn’t last. “Lijuan will tip the balance unless Favashi returns home in time.” The Archangel of Persia had to know about the assault, as it had begun prior to the communications blackout.
A blood vessel pulsed in Tarek’s temple, his hand fisted on the table. “We can’t leave our post to go to his aid and I do not think Rohan would wish it.”
“Let’s hope Lijuan is too weak to arrive anytime soon.” The fact the Archangel of China wasn’t already here was a good sign. “The storm you mentioned—would it be enough to delay Raphael?”
Naasir had expected his sire to arrive tonight.
“According to the last report we had before everything went dark,” Tarek said, “the lightning storm is pummeling every part of the world except this territory, and the strikes are violent enough that all planes and angels have been grounded. Your sire may have been forced to land midway—or he was hit and needs to recover.”
“He’ll be here.” Dressed in a loose linen shirt he’d put on over his ravaged back after one of the wing brothers offered to replace his ruined tee, Naasir put another piece of meat from his own plate onto hers.
She smiled and ate the offering; it was nice to have someone who wanted to take care of her. She intended to do the same for him—the wing brothers had provided bottled blood, but she could tell he didn’t like the taste. If she ate well, he’d have no excuse not to feed from her.