Archangel's Resurrection (Guild Hunter #15)(16)

“We tried so hard to stay awake for the next step on your journey,” Cendrion murmured to him. “But the tiredness weighs heavy on our bones now, son. We’ll wake in future times to see you in your glory.” A glance over at where Osiris was distracted with talking to Gzrel. “You’ll watch over Osiris? I know he’s your elder, but he becomes lost in his alchemical experiments these days, and we worry—”

“There’s no need, Father,” Alexander reassured the man who’d brought him up with a gentle hand—far too gentle for a child of Alexander’s rebellious bent had Osiris not also taken a hand in his raising. “I’ll make sure my brother is safe and protected, even as he wanders the pathways of the mind.” It was as if their positions in life had been reversed, with him the elder now, watching over his increasingly more cerebral brother.

The last of the tension washed out of his father, his face becoming startlingly youthful.

When he went into Sleep with his beloved Gzrel, it was under the watchful eye of two sons who made sure their parents’ place of Sleep was protected and inaccessible to anyone but the two of them. Afterward, Osiris returned to the island he’d turned into a giant laboratory.

There were no concubines now, only a small number of assistants and other staff.

“I am no longer of the body, little brother,” Osiris had said the last time Alexander and he had spoken on the topic. “I see so much.” A fist thumping into the open palm of his hand. “If only I could make it real.”

“I’d help you if I could, Osiris, but you’ve always been the smarter of the two of us.”

Deep laughter, his brother’s warmth embracing Alexander as it had done when he was a child—and yet there was a near-manic quality to Osiris now, one that unsettled Alexander. “In some ways, brother,” Osiris had said, “and in others you are the master—the strategist no one will ever beat in battle.”

As Alexander flew away from Osiris this momentous day, his thoughts went back to that instant, that conversation, and he had the sudden blinding thought that Zanaya would one day out-strategize him. It should’ve been an infuriating thing to imagine . . . but it wasn’t. Because should she get to that point, she’d be old enough and strong enough that he’d no longer have to fight his compulsion toward her.

Alexander’s entire body burned at the idea of it.





10


It was darkfall by the time Alexander flew into the territory that he “managed” for Esphares—the truth was that he did as he pleased with no oversight now that Akhia-Solay, too, had gone into Sleep. Alexander had been given the land because none of the Cadre wanted him out of their sight. He wondered if they thought he would foment rebellion.

Alexander snorted as he worked out in the beaten dirt of his home practice ring the next dawn, his feet bare and his body clothed in nothing but streaks of paint made from the local pigments. Alexander was no idiot. He knew that no angel, no matter how powerful, challenged an archangel and came out the winner.

Archangels were as far beyond angels as angelkind was beyond humankind.

Spiking his fighting staff on the ground, he spun up, then around to land on both feet, sending up puffs of dirt. There was no applause, no cries of encouragement. He did these morning sessions on his own, pushing himself to the edge and beyond. To his mind, a true general should be in the same or better form than his soldiers.

That was what it meant to lead.

Alexander planned to be that way even after his ascension.

But as the years passed, ascension seemed nothing but a foolishness laid on his shoulders by others. The lack of growth did have one positive outcome—Esphares began to use him as a general in truth once again. So it was that Alexander flew into ruthless battle against the army of another archangel.

But where that archangel’s general stayed safe behind the front line, Alexander was right at the forefront. That was why he brought home victory, winning another massive stretch of land for his archangel.

When Esphares stirred in Callie’s direction, however, Alexander talked him down. “She’s a young archangel, barely born,” he said, talking to the ego because archangels this old were all ego and nothing else. “You’ll gain more from becoming her mentor. The biggest threat to those in the Cadre is age and distance—she’ll anchor you to the world, and her power will become yours.”

The latter was a lie; Callie would always know her own mind, and she’d be no one’s puppet. But the rest . . . yes, that was true enough. Now that he was working so closely with the Ancient who was his archangel, he’d begun to see that this being was in no way similar to angelkind. Half the time when Esphares looked at Alexander, it felt as if an alien intelligence, cold and distant, was weighing him up as food.

“Is that who I’ll become one day?” Callie said to him when Esphares invited her to dinner and she accepted so she could visit with Alexander. “A creature devoid of empathy and humanity?”

“I don’t know.” Alexander couldn’t imagine his friend so—of all their childhood peer group, Callie was the most empathic, the one most apt to speak on behalf of the underdog. “I guess we’ll find out.”

Laughter, Callie’s hair a black river under the sunshine. “Oh, Alex, you do keep me from diving too deep into the weeds.”