Archangel's War (Guild Hunter #12) - Nalini Singh Page 0,113
arms. “She’s seven thousand years old and has decided she’s on vacation this century. And she likes planes.”
Elena thought it over and realized that when you’d lived so long, taking a century off to relax was no biggie. “Lucky for us she decided to vacation as an air traffic controller.”
“Regardless, inform her that all vacation time is cancelled until the Cascade is past.” Raphael’s eyes were on the screen. “There is no sense to the twisters. It appears to be chance your plane was coming in to land when they appeared.”
“Seems to line up with reports coming in from other territories,” Dmitri said. “Devastating weather events all over the place. Flash flooding in Chile. Major landslide in Turkey. Whirlpool in a lake in Switzerland—casualties are going to be significant there. Thing swallowed up multiple pleasure craft.”
Elena rubbed her hands up and down her arms. “The pace of chaos, it’s speeding up.” Like a concerto rising to an inevitable crescendo: war.
* * *
• • •
When she and Raphael made it up to their suite at last, it was to find the Primary waiting for them on the night-draped balcony. A patient gargoyle crouched on the very edge, his hair dripping. Sliding open the doorway and spilling light onto the balcony, Elena said, “You know you’re welcome to wait inside.”
The Primary rose from his crouch.
Elena went motionless when he stepped into the light. “Your second becoming,” she whispered, recalling words the Primary had spoken to her what felt like a lifetime ago.
The Primary’s eyes remained that pale, pale color with a ring of vivid blue around the irises that echoed the color of Raphael’s eyes, but his skin had gained a hue that wasn’t gray or pale. It was very much alive. And his hair, it was a vivid black, the shade of midnight skies. The shade of Raphael’s hair.
“It happened today.” The Primary lifted up his hand to stare at the back of it. “I have not been in full color for . . .” A tilt of his head. “For endless eons. Since the last aeclari.”
“Are your brethren the same?” If her archangel was disturbed by the strange echo of his coloring, he didn’t show it.
The Primary took time to answer. “They are themselves. Only the Primary is of the aeclari.” His dark pupils suddenly bled outward in waves of silver. Until the silver met the blue and the two merged, with the blue flowing into the silver at the edges. The pupils re-emerged from the silver-blue sea.
Elena put her hands on her hips. Eerie but pretty.
Look at his wings.
Elena hadn’t paid much attention to the Primary’s bat-like wings—the wings of the Legion never seemed to change. Apparently, that rule was now over and done with, because the Primary’s formerly gray wings boasted a rim of white-gold that brushed inward into a vivid purple before fading into gray.
“You have pieces of both of us,” Raphael said.
“We glimpsed the mirror and the mirror changed us.” The Primary went down on one knee. “I come to offer the sire the power that is his. Today, you took only a percentage and returned the overflow to us.”
“You told us once that if Raphael took the power, you’d have the choice to stay in the world as separate beings, or return to the deep,” Elena said. “Is that still true?”
A small hesitation. “Things have altered. We feel the dark energies rising and rising. We wish to give you not just the power we hold for you, but the power that makes us.”
Elena’s heart iced.
Raphael’s wings brushed hers as he spread them out, her lightning dancing over his feathers before returning to her. “What will that mean for you?”
“We do not know. We may die,” the Primary said with no indication of fear or anguish. “We may return to the deep to begin again.”
The idea of a city without the Legion’s crouching presence, their green home abandoned and empty, was anathema to Elena. Her heart rebelled so hard against the idea of it that she couldn’t speak.
“At this moment, I do not need any of the power,” Raphael said. “I would rather have my Legion present and at full strength. A battle is brewing and I will need as many experienced fighters as I can gather.”
The Primary rose to his feet. “The last aeclari were not like you.” He seemed to be struggling to untangle memories so old they were beyond time. “You are . . . new. You . . . break patterns.”