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)
The world roared, Titus lifting up the earth beneath the enemy’s feet.
Landing hard on the asphalt of the abandoned road beyond which lay territory Lijuan’s people had won, he crouched down on one knee and placed his hand on the dirt that Titus had lifted to the surface for him by purposefully cracking this section of the road.
The song of the metals within hummed through him, pure and resonant.
Smiling, he unleashed his power and every piece of metal that was touching the earth began to melt. A few weapons, other tools. Nothing but collateral damage . . . because Alexander’s true target was the metal of the buildings that loomed over the enemy. “It’s time for your mistress to learn that she cannot dance with the entire Cadre and win.”
The air began to howl with violent winds the same instant that the buildings began to shiver and fall.
Smiling again and aware his eyes had gone a liquid and inhuman silver, he looked up.
To see his lover encased in a whirlwind as black as the heart of midnight as she trammeled the enemy, such a power as this world hadn’t seen for eons. Oh how he loved her. He’d tell her after the war, and they would work it all out.
He was so certain of that outcome that when things went wrong, he refused to believe it was happening. He’d just decimated an entire wing of Lijuan’s black-eyed army while Zanaya fought one of Lijuan’s generals a short distance away, the man’s eyes a hue that said he was fueled by his archangel, his power more than it should’ve been.
Zanaya was winning, of course she was winning . . . when Lijuan appeared right behind her, a nightmare out of mist.
Zani!
Even as he shouted out the mental warning and began to fly toward her, Lijuan gripped Zanaya’s upper arms with fingers as thin as claws and struck with the speed of a cobra to sink her teeth into Zanaya’s neck.
And Alexander’s world ended.
Desolation
30
Lovers fall and lovers rise. The river stops flowing. This time will be the end.
Alexander jerked awake out of a terrible sleep, certain he’d heard an old, old voice in his head. Older than that of an Ancient. A voice he knew . . . but no, it was gone now, whatever nightmare it was that haunted him.
Twisting to sit on the edge of his bed, his feet on the floor and his head in his hands, he tried to reset his mind. For once, he was clean, his naked body devoid of streaks of dirt and other, more viscous substances. Hair that had been damp when he went into sleep was now dry, and his wings no longer carried the stench of the reborn.
He’d been fighting day after bitter day to cleanse his territory of the last traces of Lijuan’s evil, and finally—months after that bitch’s death—it was done. No more child reborn roamed the landscape, though he had sentries on constant surveillance and all the leaders of the towns and cities and villages knew to contact the fortress at once should there be any sign of reborn.
So it was that he’d finally lain down to rest for longer than an hour or two.
He was tired.
To the bone and beyond.
Even archangels could get tired when they didn’t rest and barely ate. It was only Xander thrusting food into his hands that had made him remember to fuel his body. His grandson, who had already lost his parents and had been born long after his grandmother and grandfather went into Sleep, was the sole reason Alexander forced himself to continue on as more than an automaton tasked with cleaning up Lijuan’s mess.
Some would say that he could now lie down into a final and eternal Sleep, slip into that silent unthinking deep where he didn’t have to experience heartbreak every time he opened his eyes and remembered that his Zani was gone.
The only reason he didn’t was Xander.
An angel of a bare two hundred with skin of dark gold and hair of a brown so dark it was moments away from black. Alexander knew that, though his wings appeared black when folded, the black faded into brown with hints of gold. The biggest surprise, however, was the underside of pure silver.
A silver identical to the shade of Alexander’s wings.
Family. They were family. And his grandson was dealing with a grief not many angels his age ever had to experience, both his parents lost in a single act of violence. The youth was doing it with grace, but he remained fragile within. Oh, the child wouldn’t put it that way—he was a warrior after all—but Alexander had mentored many a youth, and he’d raised a son.
He knew the boy was hurting yet. As he knew Xander would break forever if he lost his grandfather, too. The child had bowed in respect to Alexander when they first met, not knowing that Alexander wanted no such formality—he’d wanted only to hold this boy who was the last surviving piece of Rohan. The child of Alexander’s child had been bewildered and grief-stricken then, and he didn’t know Alexander.