Archangel’s Enigma (Guild Hunter #8)(70)
Author: Nalini Singh

“Like my son.” Caliane’s love for that son was a piercing arrow to the heart. “Raphael collects the wild of heart to him.”

“He is the archangel who is least stuck in time,” Andromeda ventured to say. “Even Michaela, who so often plays to the cameras, keeps a court that works much the same today as it did a hundred years past.”

The pure white of Caliane’s wings seemed to glow even in the muted light; Andromeda was grateful that they no longer glowed in truth, because when an archangel glowed, people generally died.

“He is my son,” Caliane said quietly. “And he is Nadiel’s son. Together, we created a child who will one day fly higher than both of us.”

Having the sense that Caliane was speaking more to herself than to Andromeda, Andromeda kept her silence.

“Now he makes me even prouder by seeking to protect Alexander.” A cold tension in Caliane’s regal features. “I Slept during that time, but Jelena tells me that Alexander once thought to raise an army against Raphael.”

Andromeda took her life into her hands. “Yet he didn’t in the end,” she said. “I think he was tired and he saw Raphael as a young interloper. War was the easy answer to his need to find a reason to go on living in the world. In the end, he showed his wisdom and left the world to the young.”

Caliane pinned Andromeda with eyes aflame with power.

Her throat dried up, her pulse a rabbit in her chest.

25

“As I did in my time,” Caliane said at last, turning her attention back to the glossy green trees as they continued to walk. “Alexander was my compatriot, but we were never friends. He was a terror as a child, always breaking his bones and skinning his knee, while I was a girl who preferred to keep my dresses clean and to have civilized tea parties free of dirty boys.”

Andromeda felt wonder unfurl in her. Caliane’s memories came from a time so long ago that there was no one else awake in the world who knew them. “Is it lonely?” she asked impulsively. “To be the only Ancient in the world as Alexander once was? The only one with memories of times long gone?” Lijuan might believe herself an Ancient, but even if she was older than anyone knew, her age came nowhere close to Caliane’s.

Caliane didn’t strike her down for the impertinent question. Rather, the Ancient smiled. “I see why you are Naasir’s friend, scholar. You are as recklessly courageous as my son’s leashed tiger.”

Naasir isn’t leashed, Andromeda thought. He simply chose to give his loyalty to Raphael—and she had a feeling Raphael understood that. Their relationship wouldn’t otherwise be so strong.

“Yes,” Caliane said after a minute’s quiet. “It would be a pleasure to have a compatriot to speak with of times no one else remembers—perhaps I will invite Alexander to Amanat when he wakes. He grew up into a great general, and despite his foolishness in threatening my son, seems to have learned a modicum of civilized manners along the way.”

Andromeda realized Caliane was saying more than her words told. There was a hidden undertone to her statement. Caliane and Alexander hadn’t been friends, but instinct told Andromeda they’d been more than strangers. Not lovers; that wasn’t it. It could be as simple as the fact they’d sat on the same Cadre—perhaps they had exchanged dry insults across a negotiating table, all the while conscious that in the end, only an Ancient could understand another Ancient.

“Do you know of any secret places lost in time where he might Sleep?” she asked, hope burning inside her. “Could he have hidden himself under the earth as you did?” If so, the Sleeping archangel was safe.

But Caliane shook her head. “No, Alexander didn’t have an affinity for the earth.”

Andromeda’s brain clicked—despite having risen from the sea, the Legion, too, were rumored to be of the earth. Raphael must’ve inherited some of his mother’s gift, though his had manifested in a different form. “If not earth—”

“Hush, child.” A deep frown. “My memories are tangled skeins I must unravel.”

It was over a half hour later, the world gray, that Caliane said, “Metal. Alexander’s affinity was to metal. He could make iron flow like water and draw gold and silver out of the earth.”

Andromeda’s eyes widened. That fact was in none of the Histories.

“When he was a cocky youth, he pulled gold out of the earth in front of me and fashioned it into a bracelet.” Caliane shook her head. “He and Nadiel had such a rivalry . . . but Alexander grieved with me when my love’s heart no longer beat, and he remembered who Nadiel had once been.”