it wasn’t exactly a hardship to sit back under a glorious night sky with her archangel beside her and their trip to Lijuan’s poisonous territory a future problem.
“I have seen terror in many faces over time,” Caliane said, “and I have seen the slavish devotion evidenced by Lijuan’s courtiers. I have never, however, seen such an entwined mix of worshipful devotion and bone-chilling terror.”
She opened out her wings, then pulled them back in, the sound of feathers brushing against one another a whispering rush. Elena had retracted her own wings soon after entering Amanat—no point wasting energy right when they had a dangerous journey coming up.
“The courtier is no weakling and had often been in the presence of an archangel,” Caliane continued, “but she shook when she spoke, sweat rolling off her, her eyes unable to meet mine.”
Raphael’s wing brushed the back of Elena’s chair. “Afraid enough to leave China, yet enthralled with her mistress?”
“I believe she worships her idea of Lijuan while being terrified of the truth of her.” Caliane finished off her mead. “The courtier’s estate was in a rural region. Most of the people around her were poor farmers. She did not much notice when they began to go missing—especially as the vast majority were mortals.”
No huge surprise there. Even Elena’s archangel didn’t always see the value of mortal lives. He’d come a long way from when they’d first met, but from an immortal perspective, mortals were fireflies—pretty things that blazed bright for a heartbeat before disappearing forever.
“Then,” Caliane said, “members of her own household began to go missing. At first, she believed they’d run away, but when one of her most trusted staff members didn’t return from a walk, she decided to investigate.”
An angel winged his way high above, keeping watch over Amanat’s borders.
“She found ghost villages, their people gone in the midst of living their lives. Pots left on stoves that had burned out, washing partially hung, gardens half harvested with the harvest left to rot in the open air. A baby’s bottle filled and left standing to curdle, a bag of foodstuffs gone putrid on a kitchen counter.”
The chilling recitation raised the tiny hairs on the back of Elena’s neck.
“I will say this to her credit—she didn’t turn tail and run at the first village. She went to five villages one after the other. She found not a man, woman, or child in nearly all of them.”
Elena sat up straight, exchanged glances with Raphael. “Nearly all?”
“In one village, she discovered living people so emaciated it was as if they were made of dust. When she attempted to speak to them, they gave her blank looks and continued to shuffle about their business. The tasks they were doing appeared to be repetitive—familiar movements that didn’t need input from their minds. She says they achieved nothing, but continued to repeat the motions.”
The candlelight caressed Caliane’s face. “You have spoken to me of how Lijuan fed on her people during the last battle, how you found one of her half-absorbed angels in the aftermath. It appears she is now doing this from beyond Sleep.”
“This confirms she is not in true Sleep.” Raphael’s voice was grim. “She must’ve gone deep enough that her power is no longer detectable by the rest of the Cadre, but not so deep that it will be a long waking.”
“She’s glutting herself,” Elena said. “Our worst-case scenario.” So many vanished people, all absorbed into her flesh. What would that make her when she rose?
“The unfinished ones may be from a day when she fed so much she could no longer finish them off,” Raphael said.
Elena’s fingers grew bone white around the stem of her goblet. “It could’ve been at the other end, Archangel. Early tests to work out how she could absorb and hoard power long-term.”
Two pairs of eyes as dazzling as crushed sapphires crashed into hers.
“If you are right, hbeebti, the war that is coming will be for far more than territory.”
“An archangel who can hoard lifeforce stolen from others . . .” Caliane’s jaw worked. “She will be an unstoppable, rapacious power that consumes the world.”
The dark echo of Cassandra’s voice in Elena’s head, ancient beyond compare.
Goddess of Nightmare.
Wraith without a shadow.
Rising into her Reign of Death.
28
Elena and Raphael left for China in the pitch-dark hours before daybreak.
The two of them caught the jet to the border of Lijuan’s territory, then dropped out of the specially designed hatch. Raphael went first, so he could catch her if her wings didn’t