Archangel’s Enigma (Guild Hunter #8)(33)
Author: Nalini Singh

“You listen well, scholar.”

Andromeda inclined her head. “It is my task to listen and to record.”

Lijuan smiled right as her face changed into the skull avatar. It turned the smile into a grotesque grimace filled with agonized howls that made Andromeda want to clap her palms over her ears. Controlling her breathing with grim effort, she gripped her hand tighter in front of her.

“Then hear this,” the archangel said in her sepulchral voice. “I have need to speak to Alexander.”

“The Ancient Sleeps.” Andromeda’s response would be expected, shouldn’t engender torture or violence. It remained a calculated risk nonetheless. “No one is meant to disturb an angel’s Sleep.” It was a taboo on par with that which forbade the abuse of children.

“I understand your qualms, but the world is changing and you must change with it.” Lijuan’s bloody eyes held her own. “Xi tells me you know where Alexander Sleeps.”

“No, Lady. I do not,” Andromeda said even as the crushing depth of Lijuan’s power threatened to suffocate her. “Alexander was too good a general for it to be otherwise. I know only of a possible location where he might have gone to ground.”

“Lying to me would not be a good idea.” A strange chill infiltrated the air at Lijuan’s words.

“I would not.” Andromeda’s breath felt like shards of ice in her lungs, stabbing and painful. “Alexander was an Ancient when he went to Sleep. He must have had the power to hide himself in the same way as Caliane.” Raphael’s mother had taken an entire city with her into Sleep, and when it rose after more than a thousand years, it was in a location far from its origins. “We cannot know whether he buried himself in the earth or under the seabed.”

Lijuan nodded at last, the inhuman chill receding. “You speak the truth. I must not forget that Alexander was always a great tactician. The tales his peers told of him as a young fighter . . .” A shake of her head, her tone almost affectionate as she added, “He would neither confirm nor deny most of them when I asked.”

Aware Lijuan’s mood could turn in a heartbeat, Andromeda used grim focus to keep her voice steady, though fear was a cold intruder in her gut. “May this scholar importune you for such stories as have been lost in time?”

Lijuan laughed and for an instant Andromeda could see the archangel as she’d once been. The one who was old and arrogant, but also wise and a cool head on the Cadre. The one who had found amusement in a wild boy who’d pretended to eat her cat.

“So young and curious.” Lijuan shook her head. “Yes, I will tell you stories, scholar, but first, you will give the possible location of Alexander’s place of Sleep to Xi.” It was an order. “He will mount the search.”

Spine stiff from the relentless discipline it took to stand firm against Lijuan’s power, Andromeda didn’t crumple. “Lady, as a fledgling historian, I took certain inviolable oaths. I cannot reveal Alexander’s possible location without compromising those oaths.”

“Your qualms do you credit, but as I have said, the world has changed.”

Though her flesh was icy from the renewed chill and her bones ached, Andromeda fought for courage, found it in the sudden memory of a sword dance with a silver-eyed vampire who wasn’t a vampire. Naasir thought she had a secret skin. Today, she’d wear the skin of a troubled young scholar and it would be her mask and her shield.

“May I have a night to consider my decision?” she asked. “It is a difficult one, for while my oaths are sacrosanct to me, I know Alexander’s strength is needed in this world.”

Lijuan’s face faded to almost nothing without warning, as did her body. “You are of the blood of an ally, so I will give you this chance.” An echoing, screaming, horrifying voice. “Go. Consider.” A wave of her hand as her body took form again.

Andromeda left before the archangel changed her mind. Her vampire escort was no longer outside the great doors, but Xi was on his way in. “General,” she said calmly, fighting the pounding urge to run until she had no more breath and the sinuous, screaming shadows of Lijuan’s throne room were far in the distance. “Am I forbidden from exploring the citadel? I’m curious to see Suyin’s creation.”

“Go where you will,” Xi told her. “If you need help to find your way, ask any of the people you meet.” A curt nod. “I must attend my archangel.”

Andromeda forced herself to walk away at a tempered pace, her heart beating so rapidly it was all she could hear. Xi’s acquiescence confirmed Andromeda’s suspicions that Lijuan didn’t intend for her to leave. Ever.