As Elena laughed, a voice older than Celesta’s entered his mind. Come home, my son. The hope in it was a painful thing, for he would never again think of Amanat as home. The last link that tied him to his mother’s beloved city had broken as he lay bleeding on a forgotten field far from civilization while his mother walked away, her feet light on the grass speckled with his blood.

We are on our way, he said in response, because as his hunter had pointed out more than once, Caliane was trying. She’d come back sane. And she’d been staunch in her support of Raphael since then.

He knew his consort’s response to Caliane was colored by her own deep grief. Her mother could never come back, could never try to make it up to her. And so his tough consort was far softer on Caliane than Raphael would ever be—he remembered the pain too well, remembered Caliane’s madness as hundreds upon hundreds of tiny graves.

He’d helped dig those graves.

Days spent on a task no angel ever wanted to do, for children were a gift.

Instead of rising into the sky with Elena, he took her hand, and they walked through the waving grasses that separated the landing area from Amanat.

Elena ran the fingers of her free hand across the tips of the grasses. “There’s such beauty here,” she murmured. “Sometimes, I think Caliane has the right of it—just put a bubble around our city and dare anyone to try and get through.”

But she was shaking her head even as she spoke. “Except what about the rest of our people, those scattered across the territory and the world? How could she have left so many behind? Was it because of her madness?”

This, too, was true—that while Elena was soft on Caliane, she saw his mother’s flaws. “I worry, Guild Hunter,” he murmured. “About the madness that took my mother and my father. It is in my blood.” Indelibly a part of him. “There are indications it may be brought to life by the surge in power during a Cascade.”

“Don’t worry, Archangel. I’ll shoot you between the eyes if you show signs of impending psychotic delusions.” The near-white canvas of Elena’s hair was licked with orange-red as the setting sun caressed her, her eyes liquid silver that burned. “Then I’ll drag you to Keir. If he can’t help, you’ll be putting us both into Sleep. I’ll figure out a way to make you.”

“I am most assured.” Lifting their linked hands, he kissed her knuckles, while behind him his wings trailed over the grass, leaving a dance of fire that didn’t scorch.

“I’m serious.” She ran her fingers through his hair, locked her gaze to his. “I’ll never let you fall. We do this together.”

She was a young immortal, with no power when compared to him . . . but he knew she would keep her word, hold him to account, not let the cold of immortal power win. “Always,” he said.

A fierce kiss before she turned her attention to the shield less than fifty meters away. “Shall I?”

“My mother will be most disappointed if you do not.”

A wicked grin. “Also, I want to show off.” Light burst out of her back and in the colors of sunset sparked wings as extraordinary as his consort.

“Elena, they are no longer pure white-gold and lightning.” Color had begun to bleed out into the fire. Black at her back that faded into indigo, deep blue, and the whispered shade of dawn. The same colors as the wings he’d been forced to amputate to save her from further pain—but lightning danced through them now, violent and beautiful.

Instead of looking back to see the change, she touched the fingers of her free hand to his jaw. “No brooding. We survived. And I got retractable wings out of it. I’m not sorry.”

“Neither am I.” If he hadn’t done what he had, made the choices he had, she might not have returned as his Elena, with her own memories and thoughts and emotions. “But I will never forget slicing off your wings.” It would haunt him forever, that image.

“I know it was a fucking nightmare.” Both hands on his face now. “But those wings were dead already. Because of what you did, I was able to turn into a butterfly.” She frowned. “Okay, I suck at metaphors, but you get what I mean.”

“You are a butterfly with warrior’s wings.” He kissed her hard, holding that image in his mind, of her emerging from a chrysalis into a being of beauty and strength.

Light lived under Elena’s skin when they parted.

At last she looked at her wings. “Guess these are my colors and I’m determined to have them.” A satisfied look in her eye, she ran her fingers through the energy.

It was thus, both of them afire, that they walked through the shield and came face-to-face with the woman who was the template from which he’d been cast.

27

Caliane was no longer the oldest Ancient awake in the world—the Cascade had been stirring up many things, including Sleepers who had lain dormant in secret places for eons upon eons—but she was unquestionably one of the two most powerful.

She wore a gown of cerulean blue with bejeweled clips on the shoulders and sleeves that flowed down into cuffs embroidered with delicate care. Her skirts floated to brush the earth, her midnight hair soft waves down her back.

Seeing her this way, regal and elegant, no one would believe that she was a warrior angel. Her voice was renowned in angelkind, but Caliane could make music with her blade, too. The wings of purest white that sloped gracefully down her back were capable of split-second turns and rapid acceleration in battle, and her fighting leathers were as well-worn as his. She had been his first teacher when it came to the sword.

His mother was a woman of many faces, the one she showed him today luminous with maternal warmth. “My son. My Raphael.”

He bent his head and she pressed her lips to his forehead, her hands on his biceps. “My heart sings to hold you thus, to see you standing strong and alive before me.” She turned without warning to take Elena’s face in her hands. His hunter’s hand clenched on his, her body stiff. Caliane had softened toward Raphael’s “most unusual consort,” but she didn’t treat Elena as a mother did her child.

Today, however, she pressed her lips to Elena’s forehead and said, “And you, my son’s heart, I feel joy to see you walk into my city as a warrior once again.” She reached for Elena’s hair, running the short strands through her fingers and examining the tiny feather at the end of one.

“There is nothing I despise more than those who seek to see a strong woman fall.” With that cutting denunciation, she broke contact. “Come, you must be hungry after the journey. We will break bread, and I will tell you what has been happening across the water in China.”

That sounds creepily ominous.

Even more so because my mother isn’t known for being melodramatic. Caliane did not speak in twisted truths and mysterious lies. We knew this wouldn’t be easy—Lijuan is no simple foe.

They followed Caliane deeper into Amanat.

His mother’s city had its own microclimate, warm and temperate no matter if snow fell outside. Flowers bloomed in window boxes and trailed down walls of aged stone. Lush grasses grew against foundations. Vibrant green vines crawled up the sides of the houses, some blooming with tiny flowers. The colors of Amanat scented its air.

Elena took a suspicious sniff. “I’m in danger of fainting from the fresh air. Where’re my exhaust fumes, my mishmash of cooking smells, that special eau-de-subway?”

“You will endure,” Raphael said solemnly.

“I dunno, it’s strong stuff.” She stepped off the path, her intent to examine a particular vine. Don’t worry. I’ve practiced—no more accidentally putting trees on steroids.

Caliane came to a halt, her expression indulgent when she turned to him. “You will build her a new greenhouse?”

“It was her favorite part of our home.” Even more than her weapons, Elena cherished her plants. Today, she shifted away from the vine to say something to a passing maiden . . . and the vine began to bloom. Not in huge bursts, but in small, secretive flickers.

Caliane went motionless, the utter stillness of a very old being. “More secrets, Raphael?” A chill in the air.

Raphael made a decision at that moment—whatever her flaws, Caliane would never betray him and, by extension, Elena. “We do not know all of who we are after our waking.”

“Such things for one so young . . .” Caliane’s voice was soft. “This isn’t good, son of mine. Power grows with age because age tempers us, makes us calmer, better able to weigh our decisions. Lijuan is a case in point—she gained too much power too quickly, lost herself inside it.”

Raphael wondered what his mother would say if he told her of the cold storm inside him, insidious and vicious and hungry.

* * *

• • •

An hour later, after he and Elena’d had a chance to “wash off the road dust,” they met Caliane in a leafy candlelit courtyard deep in Amanat. A table covered with a crisp white tablecloth and weighed down with food and drink sat in the center. Caliane’s people had whispered away to leave them in privacy under a velvet blue sky studded with stars.

“Do you remember your first taste of mead, my son?”

Raphael found himself laughing, the memory unexpectedly bright. “A friend and I made off with a jug long ago, when we were boys in short pants,” he told Elena. “We were curious about this drink we weren’t allowed to have.”

“Nadiel and I found the boys fast asleep in another angel’s garden.” His mother gave him a sternly affectionate look, and for an instant, it stabbed him in the heart, the family they’d once been. “Angel-mead is not meant for little ones.”

Elena grinned. “Do you still see him? Your friend.”

“We have a glass together every decade or so.”

“He remains a rapscallion,” Caliane said as she took a seat. “He has rejoined my court, but half the time when I send him out, I’m simply waiting to hear what calamity he’s walked into now.”