Archangel's Sun (Guild Hunter #13) - Nalini Singh Page 0,23

she’d simply rested her wings and done a few small chores. Including washing out her second set of clothing.

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