Archangel's Sun (Guild Hunter #13) - Nalini Singh Page 0,6
have not the sense to understand he needs every body we can muster.”
Oh, now she understood. Some of the old and powerful ones expected sweet ways and delicate words even in exigent circumstances. “I’m surprised that you believe I can deal with him.” Angelkind had long handled her with kid gloves. As you would a delicate and cracked vase.
“I mean no insult, Lady Sharine, but we have no other option.” Grim words. “I did a weeklong stint in Africa half a month past, and it’s from Titus’s territory that Jason even now returns. Venom is also on his way home from Africa.”
Venom, Sharine recalled, was the young but powerful vampire with the eyes of a viper. “You have upheld the bonds of friendship.”
“It was beyond that. It was a duty of the Cadre—Africa would’ve been overrun elsewise.” Hands on his hips, his wings held with rigid control. “Alexander crossed the border to assist at the same time. We believed three archangels working together might eliminate enough of the reborn that Titus and his people could then clean up the rest, but the situation is catastrophic.”
“I’ve had news the infection is spreading rapidly.” Lumia was isolated, but it wasn’t cut off from the external world. More so with the arrival of Trace—the vampire was extremely good at maintaining lines of information.
“Yes—and the strain in Africa appears to be stronger and more virulent than in the rest of the world. Charisemnon must’ve been collaborating with Lijuan to create a more noxious enemy. It’s a small mercy that strain remains confined to Africa, but it leaves Titus in an unenviable position.”
Flaring out his wings, he snapped them back in. “If I could, I’d relocate to Africa until we’d erased the danger, but my territory is badly damaged—far worse than we initially believed. And then there are the vampires who’ve given in to murderous bloodlust. I must stay home and I need my strongest people here. The other territories are in much the same position.”
None of which answered the question of why the Cadre believed Sharine could deal with the short-tempered archangel. There were many who’d say that she’d break under such pressure. Sharine knew she wouldn’t—she was too angry to break, fury a forge that was tempering her cracks into hardened scars.
Caliane had another theory. “I believe your time in what you call the kaleidoscope was a desperate attempt by your mind to give you the space to heal wounds that never quite healed the first time around. The ugly ones who taunted you in the aftermath of your parents’ deaths, they caused catastrophic damage inside you at a time when you were already a bleeding, wounded creature.”
Vivid blue eyes rampant with rage. “Aegaeon’s sudden reappearance merely sped up your return to reality—but not by much. You were already partway home; you couldn’t have run Lumia otherwise.”
Sharine was starting to believe Caliane was correct in this. She couldn’t have run Lumia had she remained in the fractured landscape of her mind—her memories alone bore that out. She could detail each and every day of the past year. A few blurred edges at the start, but nothing forgotten or lost.
None of that explained why she was being asked to join Titus. “I don’t have the powers of your Seven, far less the power to take on an archangel.”
Raphael looked at her in a careful way. “My mother once told me to look at Illium with care if I wanted to see the root of his power—I didn’t understand then, but now I ask myself from whom he inherited his fidelity, his hair, his heart . . . and his speed.”
A stirring in the back of her mind, the creaking of long-buried memories. “That is why Raan called me a hummingbird.” It was a murmur more to herself than to Raphael, aged memories sighing to wakefulness.
So fast you are, my little bird. Sunshine in your eyes, color streaked across your skin, light of feet—and the speed of a hummingbird. I could not ever catch you should you seek to fly away.
She had forgotten the genesis of her other name until this very instant, forgotten that it had been a loving caress from Raan. Forgotten that he’d done a painting of her in flight, her wings and body creating streaks of color in the sky just like the small, jeweled bird.
“Lady Sharine?” Raphael’s voice, interrupting her thoughts, reminding her again of the now, of the here—but without impatience.
The blue-eyed boy’s mother was an Ancient; he understood