“No,” she said after a penetrating glance. “Let’s just say I find myself surprised at your capacity for certain kinds of understanding.”

As far as backhanded compliments went, it was one of the best ever inflicted on Titus; even Nala would be hard-pressed to better it, and his sister was renowned for her acerbic wit. Nala didn’t talk much, but when she did, she made an impact. “How do you think I look after my territory? By being a reckless brute?”

“Such a course of action certainly seemed to have worked for Charisemnon.”

Titus went to reply then shut his mouth. She was right. Charisemnon had ruled with brute power much of the time—but that hadn’t been all of him.

“Much as I’d like for him to be remembered as a vicious idiot, he had a kind of cunning that I will never possess.” A simple truth. “Charisemnon could manipulate his people in ways I find difficult to comprehend. Though he took their children, their daughters far too innocent and young to be in a man’s bed, they revered him.

“Even in the headman’s village, there will be some who think of him as the right kind of archangel, of me as too rough and unrefined in comparison to his sophistication. The horrors of war and the reborn have torn the veil from most eyes, but why did it take so long? Why, for such a long part of his reign, was he worshipped as a god?”

“Because they had no choice.” Sharine’s voice ran over him like water, silken and bitingly cold at once. “He was a being of devastating power—as you are a being of devastating power; they had no avenue of appeal. Either they lived under his rule and found a way to rationalize it—or they died, likely tortured and broken.”

“That isn’t true!” Titus raged. “They could’ve crossed the border to me.”

“Leaving behind all they ever knew? Leaving behind their families? All the while with no way of knowing if you were any different?” Nothing cold or edgy in her tone this time, rather a poignant depth of knowledge. “To mortals, archangels are all one and the same. The Cadre is too far above mortal existence to truly understand them.”

“You are all but an Ancient,” Titus said, not sure why no one ever referred to her as such—perhaps it was the sense of bright freshness that clung to her. “You’re no closer to mortals than I am.”

“Before Lumia, I was even further away.” Surprising words, soft and heavy. “Lost in the fragmented pathways of my mind.”

Titus had so many questions, but he made no move to pursue that thread. No one became as she had unless it was a thing of terrible pain. He wouldn’t rub that pain raw anew, no matter how she irritated him.

“Since moving to Lumia, however, and basing myself in the adjacent town,” she continued, “I’ve come to see mortals not as a faceless mass but as individuals. I know that some are funny and sweet. Others are courageous.

“Still others have darkness in their hearts. And I know that outside Lumia, most mortals have never been in close contact with an angel. The idea of speaking to an archangel . . . It is beyond their comprehension.”

Sharine knew that she was being hard on Titus; the truth was, she couldn’t help it. It was simply that he reminded her so much of Aegaeon. Her former lover’d had the same confidence, the same swagger to him.

Though she was beginning to think that Titus had a far bigger heart. Big enough to rule this continent and bring it back from the brink of ruin. It was tempting to admire him for his clear moral lines and refusal to bask in his power, but Sharine wasn’t about to fall prey to the urge.

Especially when she’d already found herself susceptible to his devastating smiles. No, the last thing Sharine needed was to begin to admire the Archangel of Africa. Big, brash, beautiful Titus would use any such admiration to walk all over her. Not because he was cruel, but because he was Titus.

19

Avelina, your Titus challenged me to climb a mountain—and the damned pup beat me! To assuage my mortally bruised honor, I challenged him to climb down in the dark. It is as well that he doesn’t know that terrain as well as I do, for otherwise, he would’ve beaten me again, without remorse.

I thank you for trusting me with the gift of your son. With each century that passes with him under my command, he becomes less a stripling, and more a man I consider a friend. It’s a strange thing for one so old as I to have a youthful friend, but I think I would’ve considered him a friend no matter at which point in life I met him.

Soon, the time will come when he leaves my court. It is inevitable. He must learn more of the world, learn more of himself. But always, I will hold a place for him in my army.

Enjoy your sojourn with Euphenia. Tell the child she owes me a concert.

—Letter from Archangel Alexander to First General Avelina

20

After flying for another ten minutes, Sharine said, “What do you have against Aegaeon?” She’d been startled by the depth of Titus’s anger when she’d made the comparison between one archangel and the other.

Titus shot her a look darker than any she’d ever witnessed on his face. “I have sisters, do you know that?”

Sharine frowned. Perhaps she had known that once upon a time, but if so, she couldn’t lay her mental fingers on the knowledge. “Are they older than you?” she asked instead of answering.

“The youngest was a thousand years old at the time of my birth. My oldest sister is now some eight thousand years old.”

“Is it a mother you share or a father, or both?”

“Zuri and Nala are twins, thus share both parents. We, all five of us, are linked by our mother, Avelina. My sisters,” he muttered, “are also bonded by their shared aggravating temperament.”

“Your mother is very fertile.” Sharine felt the stab of admiring envy, for such fertility was not often found in their kind.

“She also loves children and is brilliant at raising them to be strong, honorable angels—I’m quite sure I would have another sibling by now if the first general hadn’t decided to go into Sleep a millennium after my birth. Truly, my mother would have to beat men off with a stick were she not so formidable they don’t dare advance on her without permission.”

His pride in his mother was open, as was his exasperated affection for his sisters. Again, her heart threatened to open for him, this man so blunt about his loves and his hates. With Titus, nothing was hidden, nothing was a subtle game. Despite all she’d told herself, he was nothing like Aegaeon but for the fact both were archangels.

That made Titus far more dangerous to her than she’d realized.

“My sisters are equally desired,” he said, with a grimace only a brother could produce. “Aegaeon made a play for Charo, the scholar among us. Wickedly witty with her friends, but shy with others. He hurt her.”

The potent simplicity of that statement hit hard. “Yes, he is that kind of man.” One who seemed to have none of the empathy so evident in Sharine’s son. “He hurt me, too.”

“Is that why you were lost?” Titus asked, then made a grumbling sound. “All of angelkind says the Hummingbird is lost in her own world, but unfortunately for me, you seem to be quite present and aware in my world.”

Her lips twitched, her amusement a surprise to herself. But his grumble was half-hearted at best . . . and that was a surprise. “I didn’t fragment because he left me,” she clarified, for the idea of Titus seeing her as fragile was unbearable. “I had a young son whom I loved with every part of myself. Illium was my reason for being.”

“Then what?” Titus asked at his usual volume.

“Why do you feel you have any right to ask me that question?”

He shrugged. “How will I discover anything if I don’t ask? It’s not as if I’m holding your feet to the fire to force you to answer.”

It was such a Titus thing to say that she felt laughter burst the seams of her being, such amused delight as she hadn’t felt in a long, long time. She laughed with her son at times, but that was different, a moment between mother and son. This, laughing with Titus, it felt an adult thing that reinforced her feeling of wholeness.

He was staring at her when she caught her breath and glanced at him, his eyes stunned. “Doppelganger,” he said at last, the boom of his voice a rasp. “It’s the only explanation.”

Laughing again, she wiped away her tears . . . and had to fight the urge to fly over and tug up his scowly lips into a smile. Such a childish impulse for an old immortal, but Sharine didn’t feel old right then. Maybe it was because this blunt hammer of an archangel had given her the gift of laughter, and maybe it was because it was time, but she told him the truth.

“To understand why my mind fractured,” she said, “you must understand my history.” A single glance and she knew she had his full attention—though he continued to scan the landscape as they flew. “I loved a man named Raan at the very dawn of my existence. I was a decade past my majority and he thousands of years old when we fell in love.”

Titus growled akin to one of the lions that roamed his lands. “He shouldn’t have put his hands on you.”

Anger was a whip in her voice when she set him straight. “Even with the gift of hindsight, I can tell you there was no coercion, no manipulation. Some souls are just meant to meet and to entwine.”

A stubborn silence from Titus before he blew out a breath. “I first became friends with Alexander when I was a pup of some two hundred. We are friends still, though he is an arrogant old man.”

It took her a second. “You’re speaking of Archangel Alexander?” Caliane called him “Alex” but theirs had always been a deep friendship quite apart from Sharine’s own with Caliane.

When Titus gave a nod, she shook her head. “You astonish me, Titus.” It was no lie; Alexander was an Ancient, would’ve been an Ancient during Titus’s youth, and yet she could see why the archangel had formed a liking for the undoubtedly brash young warrior Titus had been.