It had reminded her of when she’d first left her familial home. Most fledglings were nudged out of the nest at a hundred years of age. In mortal terms, angels were about eighteen in maturity and growth by then, ready to take up training or further studies or to go exploring.
Sharine’s parents had asked her to spread her wings when she was eighty years of age. “We’re old, child,” they’d said to her. “We want to make sure you are settled in the world before we surrender to the Sleep that whispers to us nightly.”
Back then, Sharine had been scared—and also ashamed of her need for them to stay awake. Today, she felt a hot burst of anger. She was older than they’d ever been, and she would never, in a million years, walk into Sleep while her son was of an age where he needed her.
Is that not what you did when you walked into the kaleidoscope?
Flinching at the cutting words from the same part of her psyche that had delivered the earlier slap, she shrugged off the wave of shame that threatened. All that would do was cripple her, make her useless. No, the time of shame was past; she had to stride into the future—and make people see her. See Sharine, and not the Hummingbird.
After stripping off her dirty clothing, she walked into the bathing chamber. It was as luxuriant as everything else in the suite, complete with scented soaps, plush towels, and other extravagances. She’d heard that Titus had a liking for art and soft, beautiful things—women included. From the look of him now, however, he wasn’t bothering with any of that. He looked exactly what he was—a warrior who had little time for fripperies while his territory was overrun with vicious reborn.
Teeth gritted, she bathed quickly then was annoyed at herself for automatically picking up the bottle of lotion afterward. But that was a habit too ingrained to shun and since his people had made the effort to provide for her with such care, she slathered her body in the silky cream scented softly with a flower she couldn’t name, before heading out into the bedroom and pulling on her blue-gray tunic and dark brown pants.
Having washed her hair the previous night, she simply brushed it out, then pulled it back into a tight tail at the back of her head. Again, when she looked in the mirror, she saw a fresh-faced young woman looking back at her. Only her eyes gave her away. They were old, telling of the life she’d lived . . . and not lived.
Gut tight, she turned away, her hand going to her right wrist, where she wore a bracelet that Illium had sent her from New York. It was made of platinum metal, each of the links slender but strong; the heart that hung from one end bore not her name but his. It had made her laugh, because of course her mischievous boy would do this. She wore the gift with pride, her son’s name, her son’s love.
She deliberately didn’t go up into the art room. It was an act of willpower on her part. Perhaps Titus had done her a favor there after all—he’d placed her drug of choice within reach and now she’d have to resist temptation each time she was in this suite, thus building her strength of will.
She’d spoken to Keir, an angelic healer, not long before she’d come to Lumia, right when she’d begun to find her way out of the kaleidoscope. It was Caliane who’d urged her to do so. “If I were badly wounded in battle,” her friend had said, “I’d seek a healer and feel no disquiet in doing so. A wound of the mind is no different.”
Keir had made time to spend near to an entire week with her. For some reason, she’d found herself telling the calm-eyed and slender healer all of it, digging right down to the heart of what Caliane had termed her wound.
“Aegaeon’s actions impacted on brutal past trauma,” Keir had said in his gentle way, this man who was one of the few in angelkind not very much taller than her own diminutive height. “Each event in our life leaves a mark—in your case, two critical events left deep fractures in the same part of your psyche. Those fractures compounded into a break when Aegaeon chose to take an action that I, as a man, as a healer, as a lover, cannot comprehend.”
Keir wasn’t one to exhibit intense emotion—at least to his patients. He tended to be a haven of calm. But his brown eyes had held a wealth of darkness when he’d said, “You retreated into what you knew best in order to heal. You can’t blame yourself for that instinctive action.”
Sharine accepted that Aegaeon had acted with unwarranted vindictiveness. To this day, she didn’t know why—as vulnerable as she’d been then, to charm of a kind she’d never experienced in her mostly solitary and quiet existence. Aegaeon had overwhelmed her; she’d wanted desperately to cling to him—and that was on her and the ghosts that haunted her—but in actual fact, she hadn’t.
He’d kept his harem, kept his life away from her and Illium in the Refuge.
Sharine hadn’t attempted to clip his wings, hadn’t sought to alter the core of his nature, content with the scraps of affection he threw her way.
How foolish she’d been, how hungry for connection.
But it all added up to a single conclusion: he’d had no reason to strike out. Not only at her but at her son. Their son. Forget what he’d done to her, it would’ve cost him nothing to have gone to Illium and hugged him good-bye. It would’ve taken but a sliver of his time to tell their boy that his father was going to Sleep for a period, but that he loved him and would return.
Such things mattered to a child, mattered deeply.
For breaking their bright, beautiful boy’s small heart, Sharine would never forgive him. Never. Even if she lived to the end of time and beyond.
No one hurt her child.
Hand fisting at her side, her nails digging into her skin, she opened the door of the suite and stepped out into the hallway. That hallway was wide and fell away onto a massive central core. Walking to the railingless edge, she looked down and realized that she was about three stories up in a huge citadel built of gray stone that was both martial and hard—and lovely.
Fine veins of minerals wove through the stone “bricks” and each piece of stone had gradations of color that caught her eye and had her running a hand over the nearest support pillar. It was warmer than she’d expected, the stone smooth from all the time it had stood here, all the warriors and others who had placed their hands against it.
It could’ve been a cold place, but the stone had a glowing heart, and against the walls of the central core hung tapestries lush with the life of this land. Huge works of art that she could stand in front of for hours, taking in detail by detail. But that was just the start. Above her curved a gently sloping ceiling on which had been painted a night sky sparkling with the stars she’d see if she looked up after darkfall.
Each star, she realized suddenly, was a dazzling gemstone turned tiny by the distance.
Below her, meanwhile, was a buzz of constant movement.
Titus’s people walked this way and that and crisscrossed over what looked to be a massive carpet in the colors of sunset that could’ve come from Morocco. Perhaps during a time prior to the warlike tension between Titus and Charisemnon. Most of those she saw wore weathered and bloodied warrior gear, including more than one angel in full, lightweight armor that wouldn’t impede them in the sky.
But she also spotted one angel and two vampires who looked to be in the livery of household staff, the colors rich gold and deepest brown. Titus’s colors. They were rushing, their faces hot and sweat dampening their hair.
Sharine had the terrible feeling it was because of her.
“You are ready!” The heavy boom of sound didn’t startle her; she’d heard Titus’s door open and close.
Annoyed at his tone and in no mood to hide it, she said, “You sound surprised.”