Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 118699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 593(@200wpm)___ 475(@250wpm)___ 396(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 593(@200wpm)___ 475(@250wpm)___ 396(@300wpm)
“Sorry about that.” Alexander shrugged. “My fault.”
“No. He is the archangel who well knows the unspoken rules of the Cadre.” A steely-eyed look. “He has forgotten that all the members are equals. But no matter. I can learn from the old while never forgetting who I am.”
She tightened her lips. “You know he should be Sleeping? I won’t ask for your opinion on the point, for it would be akin to treason for you to agree with me, but we both know I speak the truth. Our kind may be immortal, but we’re not meant to take up limitless time and space.”
“We’re young,” Alexander said, simply to rile up his friend. “I wonder if we’ll feel the same when we’re doddery old Ancients.”
Callie shot him a sharp look . . . and then they were both laughing at the idea of being as old as Esphares and refusing to Sleep. Alexander knew it was highly unlikely he’d ever make it to such a grand old age. As a general for an archangel prone to war, he went into battle far more than most of his compatriots.
There would come a time when he’d find himself fighting against someone who was faster, stronger, better trained, and that would be the end of Alexander, first general of Archangel Esphares. He wouldn’t rail against a death in battle—he’d been born for battle and it made sense to him that he would one day die on a battlefield.
So it was that he continued to fly into battle after battle in the years that followed, while Esphares became increasingly more maddened—to the point that Alexander began to see that the rest of the Cadre was starting to come together against him, Esphares considered such a threat that they were willing to set aside their petty grievances against each other.
And on this subject, Callie couldn’t talk to him, because that would be to lure him into treason, and whatever you might say about Alexander, no one had ever called him disloyal. However, neither was he one to follow blindly. So it was that as the dark clouds of a war to end all wars swirled on the horizon, he went to speak to Esphares deep in the cave-like court he kept in the mountains covered in the constant snow and ice that were part of his territory.
Esphares no longer had a second now that Akhia-Solay had gone into Sleep, had come to treat Alexander as if he held that position. Today, he ranted and raved as he paced around a stone table on which he’d placed markers to show how he wanted the troops positioned for the latest fight.
Alexander waited until his sire had worn himself out of his first anger, then he took his life into his hands. “If we put troops here,” he murmured, pointing out one section, “your enemies can collapse the cliff onto them, killing or badly injuring thousands in a single strike.”
When Esphares remained silent, his eyes glittering, Alexander continued to slowly and methodically decimate his archangel’s “plan.”
Esphares’s wings began to glow, never a welcome sight. “Are you calling me stupid, young pup?” Fury turned his features into a caricature of the handsome angel he’d once been.
“No, sire. I’ve looked up to you for thousands of years. General Akhia-Solay was brilliant, but he couldn’t have won all he did without working side by side with an archangel as brilliant.” He held Esphares’s eyes, though it was a painful thing to hold a gaze brimming with archangelic power. “You would’ve never made a single one of these mistakes then.”
The deadly glow didn’t dim, but something of Alexander’s passion seemed to get through to Esphares and he stared at the stone table. “Why did I not see?” It was a question almost to himself.
But Alexander answered. “Because you are tired, sire, and a tired fighter always falls on the battlefield. It’s a law you taught me yourself, when I was a fledgling in your army.”
“Archangels don’t get tired, child,” Esphares said, and the way he addressed Alexander was a deliberate insult.
Alexander ignored it. “How many memories do you carry, sire? How much of the weight of history do you bear? How powerful is the crushing force of it all?”
Esphares spun around, his wings opening and snapping closed in a violent motion that created a powerful gust of wind and knocked over all the pieces on the battle table. “I am an archangel! I have the capacity to be endless!”
“Yes,” Alexander said. “But there’s a reason the Cadre is only ten or less. Never more. Else our world would burn ever more, as archangels lived atop archangels. There’s a reason we Sleep. We can be infinite, it’s true, but my mother used to say that being infinite is also our hidden curse. We see no end, and so we live without urgency. We begin to dim in ways small and terrible without ever seeing it.”