She’d taken time to think about what she might need and what she could borrow. Titus was a man who had many female warriors and staff, and while she was at the smaller end, she wasn’t so small as to make borrowing clothing or shoes difficult. In the end, the pack had ended up a weight she could easily carry for her entire journey.

As for her clothing for this journey . . . She’d always worn gowns of various kinds—simple patterns without embellishment, as well as more intricate pieces. Even with the latter, however, she was no fan of heavy enhancement, preferring beautiful fabrics and cuts. Still, since taking up her position in Lumia, she’d come to appreciate the versatility offered by the clothing worn by her warriors.

Now, she pulled on brown pants that hugged her legs, and a mid-thigh-length tunic in gray-blue with three-quarter-length sleeves. The tunic bore silver edging on both the sleeves and the bottom edges.

A gift from the Archangel of India when Sharine accepted the post in Lumia, the fabric of both the pants and the tunic included subtle shimmering threads. As well, the embroidery was imperfect—the kind of imperfect that spoke to an artisan’s personalized touch. It all sang to Sharine’s love of color, of art.

After dressing, she went to the mirror and considered the fall of her hair. She’d become used to wearing the gold-tipped black of it out for the most part, but today she picked up a hairbrush and ran it through the strands, then wove her hair into a braid that she tied off with a plain black tie.

She laughed at the face that looked back at her—with her hair thus, and dressed with simple practicality, she looked young and hopeful.

Immortality left its mark, but not always in the face or the body.

Sharine’s marks were all internal. Her face was that of the young woman she’d once been. A woman who’d been scared and anxious much of the time, a girl she wished she could go back and reassure.

Hair done, she went to sit on a stool near the doors that led out to her balcony, and pulled on socks, then boots. Her preference was to remain in sandals that she tied with strings up to her calf, but Titus was currently having to deal with hordes of reborn. Sharine needed footwear that wasn’t going to make her a liability should she end up in a fight.

Dawn sunlight fell on her wings as she sat lacing up the boots, and she looked across, imagining how she’d capture that tracery of light on a canvas. Falling into the strokes, into the shades of paint and how she would mix each to precise perfection.

The main part of her feathers would be easy enough—the intense indigo was familiar and a color she’d painted often back when Raan had her practicing portraiture by doing her own, but with that champagne-like shade dusted all over the filaments, it was so filled with light as to be almost impossible to capture. As well, the texture of the sun was further altering the—

“Sharine,” she muttered, deliberately breaking her gaze and turning her attention back to her boots. This was a truth she hadn’t shared with anyone, not even Caliane. The broken shards of her self hadn’t fully healed—every so often, her mind tried to spiral back into that shattered landscape where everything was soft and hazy and she didn’t have to think about pain.

It had been so easy to live inside its embrace, to do her art and not confront a life that had left scars so deep they could never be buffed out or erased. She’d been a coward and it was time she admitted that. Caliane might not see it that way, but Caliane didn’t have a son who’d had to parent his own mother.

Heart aching, she couldn’t help herself from picking up the device Illium had given her last time he visited Lumia. No, it hadn’t been the last time, it had been the time prior. He’d come alone then, and he’d nagged her until she sat down with him to learn how to use this device.

“It’s called a phone,” he’d told her. “A small version of the screen you use to talk to Raphael and Archangel Caliane.”

Sharine had never much bothered with technology—even the technology of the time in which she’d been born. She’d been far more interested in working out how to capture all the hues of the world. But, wishing to indulge her son and content to just be with him, she’d sat and listened.

Today, she dug back through her memories in an effort to remember what he’d attempted to teach her. She hadn’t paid enough attention at the time, still partially lost in the kaleidoscope, so her retention wasn’t as sharp as usual.

But Sharine was through with giving up.

Jaw set, she touched different parts of the screen, activating things until the device began to look familiar at last. Even faded and hazy, her memory was one of her greatest advantages, the reason she could paint so true to life.

Teeth biting down on her lower lip, she created a message: my son, are you awake? i would speak to you. It didn’t look pretty, but it would do. She sent it. She didn’t know what time it was in his city, and she didn’t know what duties lay on his shoulders, but she knew he must be very busy.

Yet the phone began to buzz in her hand a moment later, a still portrait of Illium coming onscreen. She glanced frantically at the available options, not knowing which part to touch. Thinking that red was almost universally the color of warning, she decided to touch the green. And her boy’s living face appeared on the screen.

He was sweaty, the blue-tipped black of his hair damp against a background of darkness lit up by the lights in the windows of a building behind him, and he had the most enormous smile on his face. “Mother, did you do that yourself?”

Squaring her shoulders, she said, “Of course. You shouldn’t doubt your mother.”

His laughter made her lips curve, everything inside her suddenly warm and happy. He was so beautiful, her boy. With his golden eyes and his skin kissed by sunshine, and his wings of astonishing silver-blue. But the most beautiful thing about Illium was his heart. He loved so fiercely, her son. And he mourned so deeply that it was pure devastation.

“I am going to Titus’s territory,” she told him. “Will I be able to use this device there?”

He nodded. “I’ve set it up so you can use it anywhere. If you want, I can give your contact number to Raphael and Elena and anyone else you want to stay in touch with.”

“Yes, I’d like that.” No longer would she isolate herself in ways big and small. “Teach me how to retrieve the number and I will give it to my people, too.” It was certain that she’d have access to all of Titus’s technology while in his court, but Sharine was discovering that she wasn’t happy being reliant on others.

Illium taught her how to navigate the phone, then reminded her that she must charge it with electrical energy, as she’d been doing every few days since he first gave her the device. Afterward, she took in his face, the angles of it thinner than usual. “Tell me of your city.”

“People say we were lucky.” He thrust a hand through his hair. “It’s true we don’t have to worry about a reborn scourge like so many other territories—but that’s only because of how much of the city was destroyed. The earth itself is so badly scorched in places . . .”

A lowering of his head, his voice tight when he next spoke. “There were so many dead, Mother.” Golden eyes shiny-wet, he looked away for a second before meeting her gaze again. “So many biers to fly to the Refuge, so many graves to dig, so many friends to mourn whose bodies had to be incinerated after what Lijuan did to them.”

His shoulder muscles bunched, his jaw working. “We had to effectively sanitize the entire city before the vulnerable could be permitted to move back in. Aside from a small respite offered by the glittering rain that fell during Suyin’s ascension, the smell from the rotting corpses of Lijuan’s black-eyed army wouldn’t leave. For a while even Raphael worried we’d have to burn the entire city to the ground and start again.”

Sharine wanted to reach out and hold him, but all she could do was listen.

“Too many of our own are gone, including the Legion,” he told her. “It’s too silent in the city. It feels strange to say that when the Legion barely spoke, but they were always around—sitting on tops of buildings like gargoyles or flying in small groups, or just gathering on balconies. I miss them. We all miss them.”

Sharine didn’t truly understand who and what the Legion had been, but she understood the loss of friends. War was not kind, and war did not discriminate. “From what I’ve heard, your friends gave of their energy so that a great evil could be defeated. They went with honor.” Such a thing would make no difference to her should her son have died in the war, but she knew it mattered.

Illium nodded. From the arc of his wings above his shoulders, she could tell that he was holding them with his usual muscle control even though his feathers remained soft and downy. As they’d been when he’d first grown his feathers. A smudged sky blue those baby feathers had been, so delicate and airy that she’d worried about damaging them each time she gave him a bath.

“How are your wings?” He’d lost both during the war, but was growing them back at a pace that terrified her for what it meant for his power levels.

Her sweet boy’s father was an archangel. An Ancient. Not every child who had an archangelic parent ended up being Cadre themselves, but that was looking like a certainty with Illium. He was only just over five hundred years old, and already, there were those in the world who thought he should have control of a territory.

She knew he’d been offered many positions, but he stayed with Raphael both out of a deep sense of loyalty and love—and because he was intelligent enough to know that he wasn’t ready. But sometimes, power didn’t give its wielders a choice. If Illium ascended . . .

No, she wouldn’t think about that. Her son would be torn apart by the forces of ascension should he rise too young. She could still remember how difficult it had been for Raphael—and he’d been a thousand years of age. She’d been terrified Caliane’s beloved boy would die, simply fragment into a million pieces from the power surging through his veins.