Archangel's Sun (Guild Hunter #13) - Nalini Singh Page 0,14

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