Archangel's Sun (Guild Hunter #13) - Nalini Singh Page 0,5

there. After finding his broken body on a field far from civilization, she’d covered him in the shade of her wings and she’d brushed his tangled hair back from his face, and she’d held him.

Such a determined youth he’d been, but so very wounded inside.

To see him now, strong and vibrant and loved fiercely by a woman who was everything Sharine could’ve ever wanted for him had she the imagination to consider that someone like Raphael’s consort could exist, it made her heart bloom, made her believe in happiness and in changing your destiny.

Caliane had never told her son, but at Raphael’s birth, some of the bitter old ones had whispered that this was a child bound for lunacy and decay, that his mother was an Ancient far too long in the tooth. So strange, that such a prejudice could exist in a race of immortals, but there were always those who looked for the darkness in everything.

Those same ones had whispered that Sharine was the harbinger of death.

Caliane’s boy had quieted them all. He was a shining embodiment of the best of them, a critical reason why the world wasn’t today drowning in blood and death. Not the only reason, however. “Where is Elena?” Her fingers curled into her palm at the memory of the knives she’d held under Elena’s tutelage.

“In the park with her best friend, Sara, and Sara’s child,” Raphael said, his face lighting up in a way it never did for anyone else. “We decided that we could all do with an hour away from the grim task of getting the city to rights. It shatters the spirit, to see our home in ruins.”

Sharine could not imagine the devastation of seeing a cherished city broken and burned, but one thing she knew—Raphael’s city was a place with a brave heart. It would rise again, gleaming towers of metal and glass that touched the sky, its rivers clean of the debris and gore of battle, and the scorched land rejuvenated.

“What will you do with your hour, my boy?” she said, itching to push a wayward strand of hair away from his eye.

A sudden, dazzling smile. “I’m going flying with Illium. We plan to meet Jason as he flies home.”

“I’m surprised that you even know he is in the vicinity. Your spymaster is wont to slip in and out of cities like smoke.” She knew very well that Jason had been near Lumia in the months prior to the war, but she’d only discovered that after the fact.

The Cadre trusted her, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t under watch. A decision with which she had no argument. No one had watched the one before her, and evil had thrived. Simply because she had no intention of doing the same didn’t mean the next person to have this responsibility would be as trustworthy.

Raphael laughed, making her smile, it reminded her so of his gleeful childhood laughter as he all but bathed in paints. “I’m of the opinion that Jason allowed himself to be seen. He knows we worry about him when he is beyond our help—and so, sometimes, he throws us a bone.”

Shaking her head at these games of the young, Sharine said, “I’ve received your letter.”

Astonishing blue eyes holding her own, laughter yet lingering in them. But his words when they came were of an archangel. “What do you say to our request, Lady Sharine?”

“You’re certain that it’s me you want for this task? I am far from a warrior.”

Expression wry, Raphael said, “Titus requires certain handling.” A tug of his lips. “He’s a warrior and an archangel I respect beyond many others, but he does like to get his own way.”

Sharine interpreted that to mean certain immortals were threatening to quit the service of the Archangel of Africa. “Are you saying I’m to be the go-between?” She raised an eyebrow. “Archangel Titus has run a successful court these many years.”

Sharine had never had anything to do with him, their paths simply not crossing over the years. He was millennia younger than her, for one, and her life was art, while his was the path of a warrior. But those of Lumia’s forces who’d served under him spoke of the archangel in the highest terms.

“I’m afraid it’s gone beyond that,” Raphael admitted. “His people are blood loyal, but a number of warriors seconded to him from other territories have quit.” His jaw was granite now. “Those who don’t know Titus see his current short temper as an insult—and