Archangel's War (Guild Hunter #12) - Nalini Singh Page 0,177

rotting from the inside at the end—his breath was foul and putrid—but he got in a lucky blow,” Titus muttered—at Titus volume, which was a low boom. “He broke it to pebbles. It’s healing, but I will be one-armed for some days.”

That wasn’t the only damage. The usually smooth near-black of Titus’s skin was baby pink on one side of his face when he angled his head, though his eye had escaped injury. It will all heal, Raphael reassured his hunter, aware of her feelings for the archangel. His body has focused on the worst wound first. The facial damage is superficial.

It’s just hard to see Titus of all people hurt.

Yes.

“You fly strongly,” Raphael said aloud, conscious that was what would matter to this generous and honest archangel in whose army he’d once been a green recruit.

“I shoot well, too.” Titus’s smile was a slash of white in his face. “I saw a ship on my flight here. It was crawling with that infectious filth my once wise friend Lijuan calls the reborn. It is now at the bottom of the ocean.”

“Titus, I think I want to kiss you.”

Elena’s declaration had Titus throwing open his arms. Laughing, Raphael’s consort went into them and planted a kiss on the other archangel’s uninjured cheek. “Your wings . . .” Titus stared at the brilliant stormfire. “New things are not always good, but this I like.”

“Come on,” Elena said. “You need to rest, eat. You flew a long way.”

“I would’ve been here earlier, but I had to wipe that bearer of disease, that betrayer of honor, that putrid pustule, off the face of this earth.”

“Charisemnon is dead?” Raphael asked, for they couldn’t afford mistakes on this point. “There is no doubt?”

“Not a one, young pup. I eliminated his sorry being from existence with angelfire.” He settled in to fly beside Raphael. “I could not bring my army—they would have been too slow and it would have left my people with no assistance in fighting the reborn plague.”

“I would not expect it, Titus.” That the other archangel had come, injured and straight off the field of battle, it was more than enough.

“So, who else has made it?”

“Elijah and Michaela.”

“She’s a beautiful dagger, but she knows her duty. And Elijah has always been a good man. What excuse do the others offer?” He didn’t wait for an answer before booming, “If I am here, they should be here! I had to fight another archangel to do it!”

Sire, I may be hallucinating this time, Aodhan said, but Astaad just dropped out of the clouds. He has another angel with him—A jagged pause. It is Aegaeon.

Raphael stopped. “We may have more company.” He turned, watching the skies until he glimpsed the wings of the Archangel of the Pacific Isles. A deep black where they grew out of his back, Astaad’s wings faded in a gradient to pale gray at the tips—it made him very difficult to see against the night sky. Only the paleness of his skin gave him away.

The angel who flew beside him had far flashier coloring.

“Astaad! You took your time!” Titus called out when the two were close enough. “Did you bathe in dirt on your way here?”

Astaad, his goatee not as neat as usual and his tunic and pants a dark brown instead of his preferred white, smiled with the ease of a man long used to Titus’s ways and well able to hold his own. “I see Charisemnon got in a few licks.”

“Hah! You should’ve seen the mongrel dog by the time I got through with him.” Titus clasped forearms with Astaad, while Raphael welcomed Aegaeon out of political necessity. At this point in time, he had to be one of the Cadre, not the young archangel who’d once held a small blue-winged boy’s heartbroken body in his arms.

Astaad then turned to say a personal hello to Elena. “Mele sends her best. She is at home, safe on an island free of noxious contamination.”

The rest of the journey passed quickly, but they landed at the Tower to find Neha and Caliane waiting for them. Neha’s face was smudged with dirt and tired in a way Raphael had never seen it, her dark green leathers dusty. Caliane wore old white leathers, the color now closer to a pale yellow where it wasn’t smudged with dirt and soot.

Both his mother and Neha had their hair in braids at the back of their heads, swords at the hip. Neha took in the landing party. “So,