Sharine wanted to reach out and hold him, but all she could do was listen.
“Too many of our own are gone, including the Legion,” he told her. “It’s too silent in the city. It feels strange to say that when the Legion barely spoke, but they were always around—sitting on tops of buildings like gargoyles or flying in small groups, or just gathering on balconies. I miss them. We all miss them.”
Sharine didn’t truly understand who and what the Legion had been, but she understood the loss of friends. War was not kind, and war did not discriminate. “From what I’ve heard, your friends gave of their energy so that a great evil could be defeated. They went with honor.” Such a thing would make no difference to her should her son have died in the war, but she knew it mattered.
Illium nodded. From the arc of his wings above his shoulders, she could tell that he was holding them with his usual muscle control even though his feathers remained soft and downy. As they’d been when he’d first grown his feathers. A smudged sky blue those baby feathers had been, so delicate and airy that she’d worried about damaging them each time she gave him a bath.
“How are your wings?” He’d lost both during the war, but was growing them back at a pace that terrified her for what it meant for his power levels.
Her sweet boy’s father was an archangel. An Ancient. Not every child who had an archangelic parent ended up being Cadre themselves, but that was looking like a certainty with Illium. He was only just over five hundred years old, and already, there were those in the world who thought he should have control of a territory.
She knew he’d been offered many positions, but he stayed with Raphael both out of a deep sense of loyalty and love—and because he was intelligent enough to know that he wasn’t ready. But sometimes, power didn’t give its wielders a choice. If Illium ascended . . .
No, she wouldn’t think about that. Her son would be torn apart by the forces of ascension should he rise too young. She could still remember how difficult it had been for Raphael—and he’d been a thousand years of age. She’d been terrified Caliane’s beloved boy would die, simply fragment into a million pieces from the power surging through his veins.
When he landed, his eyes had been blue fire, his skin crackling with lightning—and his wings ablaze in a way that had reminded her of Nadiel’s fiery fall. She’d been distant from the site of the battle where Caliane had executed her true love, but she’d seen Nadiel’s beautiful wings crumple, seen fire devour him as he fell—a star that had burned too bright and consumed itself.
7
On the small screen of the phone, her son spread his wings so she could see the progress of his healing. “Getting there,” he said. “In the meantime, I’m working on the ground. It keeps my muscles conditioned, and it also helps with wing strength because I’m constantly shifting those muscles when I lift or bend or turn.”
They spoke of other things in the time that followed, such things as might be spoken of between a mother and her son. At one point, she said, “How is Aodhan?” Illium’s best friend had been so often in their house as a child that she felt entitled to maternal worry.
Illium scowled. “Fine.”
Sharine, once out of the last vestiges of the fog in which she’d lived for so long, had sensed a visceral change in the relationship between her boy and his friend; she wondered if she should say something.
Friendships so deep were rare in an angel’s lifetime and should be cherished. Anger and bitterness could destroy that which was most precious. But, she remembered, even as they fought, they looked out for each other. The two had too many years of friendship and loyalty between them to allow it to shatter—but she would keep an eye on both, ensure stubbornness didn’t get the better of them.
“Give him greetings from me and tell him of this number. I would speak to him, too.”
“I will,” Illium promised, though he was still scowling. “You’ll be careful, Mother.” It was an order, a quiet one but an order nonetheless.
She allowed it, for she knew it was reflex after so many centuries of having to care for her, of having to be the parent. There was so much she’d missed of her son’s life, so much of his pain that she didn’t understand. Never again would she let him down.
“I promise to take every care,” she told him, her heart an ache. “I realize I’m going to be dealing with dangerous creatures in Titus’s territory.” The last thing already worn warriors needed was distraction in the form of watching out for a senseless angel. “You will use this device again to speak with me?”
“I’ll call.” He grinned, a glint in his eye. “I wonder how Titus will deal with you.”
“He is an archangel and I am an old and experienced angel who can assist him. We’ll work well together.”
Her son’s laugh held a glee that had her narrowing her eyes, but she allowed him his mischief, deeply content to see joy fill him to the brim once more.
Sharine saw nothing much of note in the first hour that she flew beyond Lumia. That wasn’t surprising—though Lumia’s lands stopped well before the hour mark, her troops flew that far regularly to stay in fighting shape and maintain their endurance.
In the ordinary scheme of things, they knew never to interfere with Charisemnon’s people, but Sharine had made the decision to breach that rule when the reborn began to spread across Africa—she’d ordered her warriors to quietly eliminate any reborn threats they saw. The shambling creatures who’d reached this far north had been small in number and soon dispatched.
Charisemnon had been too focused on his battle with Titus to pay attention.
The true scars appeared a half hour or so beyond that perimeter. A small village lay half in ruins, a large central area burned to blackened beams and collapsed roofs. Wanting to understand what had taken place there, she did a careful circle above the dead silence to ensure she wasn’t dropping down into danger.
Only when she was certain she saw no movement, no indication of anything living below, did she come down in the center of the long, wide road that seemed to be the heart of the village. Her position gave her an excellent view in all directions; she’d rapidly spot any reborn who might be scuttling toward her.
However, the only things moving in the charred landscape were pieces of fabric that might’ve once been curtains, tiny flags in the light wind. Perhaps this village had fallen prey to the battle between the two archangels. But no, that could not be. The fighting had taken place far from here, near what had been the north/south border.
Then she saw the red can tumbled on the ground, recognized it as the same type of can she’d seen the people of her town use to carry fuel. Once she began to search, she saw the other cans. Many had rolled away from whatever had been their original position, likely pushed or blown out by the storm of fire, but there was no hiding their widespread nature.
The fuel had been carefully dispersed to burn this place down.
A chill in her blood, she headed toward a large, blackened building that might’ve once functioned as a school or community hall. She took extreme care; she had no wish to make herself a victim of the reborn. She might be old and thus difficult to kill, but she wouldn’t survive decapitation—and, according to Tanicia, recent updates from the border had the creatures hunting in packs.
Again, however, she heard only a silence piercing in its intensity.
She didn’t know what she’d expected when she looked through the narrow gap created by the shattered and half-fallen wall of the large building . . . but it wasn’t bones. So many bones. Horror struck her at the thought of all who had died within; wondering if she should attempt to find a way to get deeper inside, unearth more answers, she looked down.