Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 112287 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112287 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
In the end, they—one and all—decided to return to their territories in haste, to search for or retrieve their part of the Compass.
As archangels lifted off into the star-speckled night sky to scatter in all directions, Raphael stood on the cliff edge of his Enclave home with Marduk and watched them fly. “The last time I had so many archangels in my territory was during the war.”
Marduk, his head turned skyward, said, “It is a glory to see the skies filled with wings again.”
Raphael glanced at the other man, wondering if he was simply talking about waking from Sleep to see the sight . . . or if he was talking of a time when the skies had emptied. But even before Marduk looked away from the sky and to the waters of the Hudson, he knew the old archangel wouldn’t answer him.
So he asked a different question. “Why did the Ancestors make the decision to hide our early history?”
50
“Because in a world of immortals, history can become a weight that halts growth. To allow their children to spread their wings without fear, the old ones decided that their mistakes and their world—a world they nearly destroyed—should vanish into the mists of the past.”
It was a deeper answer than Raphael had expected to be given.
“How long?” he asked. “How long ago did the old ones walk the earth?”
Marduk’s smile gave nothing away, his eyes that of the creature that marked his skin. “The current time, the current history of angelkind? It doesn’t even begin to compare to the age of the old ones. They began with the dawn of this world, and they ended with the dawn of yours.”
A riddle? Or the absolute truth?
“Where do you consider yourself to fall?” he asked, curious. “In the old world or the new?”
Marduk turned to watch a wing of angels take off from the Tower. From this distance, they were dots against the sky, but their aerial finesse couldn’t be missed—they flew as a disciplined team, one large shadow angel with a single goal.
“That’s Illium’s wing.” Each wing had a different style, and Illium’s was as quick, sharp, and innovative as the angel himself. “Aegaeon’s and Lady Sharine’s son. You’ve met him—golden eyes, blue wings.”
Marduk’s smile spread until it was full-out laughter, his face lit with humor. The sound was deep, wild, of a creature too big for this world. “Ah, now I understand why the hotheaded blue-haired one wishes to rip you to shreds. But why is Titus so sanguine?”
“Because Lady Sharine would rather shoot out Aegaeon’s eyeballs than ever again touch him.” Raphael enjoyed the image; watching Illium’s once-broken mother, a woman who’d nurtured Raphael at his most wounded, come further into her power with every year that passed was a privilege.
“For such as her, even my impatient mate will sit still for a portrait.” He stared out at the gleaming steel of Manhattan. “I wonder what my consort will think of this world when the time comes. I will dare her wrath and wake her for a few years before we return to our Sleep.”
“We’ll need you until we get a permanent ninth,” Raphael pointed out.
Marduk shrugged. “What will that take? Five or six hundred years at the most? Lady Sharine’s child has within him the seeds of ascension. If you say you do not feel it, I will call you a liar, blood of my line.”
“We all feel it,” Raphael confirmed, his chest tight. “We just hope it’s not too soon. The forces of ascension would tear him apart. I barely survived and I was a thousand years old. Illium’s only just passed the half-millennium mark.”
“Hmm.” Marduk continued to stare out at the glittering skyline of his city. “Come, young blood, let us search for the piece of the Compass that belongs to you.” With that and no answer as to whether he fell in the old timeline or the new, he snapped out his wings in a leathery silence eerie and alien.
Raphael’s own opened with a soft susurration.
They were halfway across the Hudson when he saw Elena heading toward them. She’d changed into her flying leathers, complete with a jacket that covered her arms and sealed around her neck. Wildfire arced over her wings in a silent lightning strike.
Raphael was expecting commentary from Marduk, but he said nothing. Not then, and not when they landed on the Tower roof. Instead, he walked to the edge from which they could see the Legion building. “I sense their hearts within.” A murmur made in that voice unlike any other, a roughness of crushed stone touched by emotion. “I would be pleased to see my Legion again.”
He moved his head in that characteristic motion he had, slow but intense. Looking past Raphael, he stared at Elena. “You can help search for the blade.”