“What do you see, Guild Hunter?”
For a moment, she thought he’d guessed the direction of her thoughts, but then she followed his gaze. This lost city, its stone walls carved with ethereal, delicate art she recognized as so ancient as to have no modern equivalent, slumbered around them, an elegant lady perfectly preserved. “It should be crumbling into pieces, but everything’s ...”
“As if the city is simply sleeping through a long night,” Raphael murmured.
Elena nodded. “Yeah.” Followed the thought through to its logical conclusion. “Raphael, what happened to the people who lived in Amanat at the time it went to sleep?”
Without discussion, they walked through the first doorway wide enough to accommodate wings, and found themselves in some sort of a temple full of light despite being carved into a mountainside. Elena didn’t know what she’d expected to see, but it wasn’t what they found.
32
They lay in peaceful repose, small groups of women curved around each other, faint smiles on their faces, as if they were having the most pleasant of dreams. “My God.” Stunned, she kept watch as Raphael walked across the stone floor inlaid with precious gems of sparkling fire and dazzling brilliance, his wings leaving droplets of water in their wake.
When he bent to touch his fingers to the neck of a maiden—the word fit better than any other given the woman’s gauzy, flowing garment of softest peach, her tumble of curls laced with ribbon—who lay in graceful repose on a silk cushion of gold-shot ivory, she walked to join him.
“We’re right below the dais,” she murmured.
Because that dais was set only a few feet above the rest of the floor, coming to just below her breasts, she could see across the sweeping breadth of it, see, too, the square of stone that was a different color from the rest. It was, she knew without being told, the place where the statue of a goddess—not a god, not in this place that sang of feminine power—had once stood.
“She is warm.” Raphael rose to his feet. “The Cadre of my mother’s time was wrong—she took her people into Sleep, not into death.”
Elena shoved her hands through hair that was frizzy with damp. “Raphael, this kind of power . . .”
“Yes.” Walking up the steps cut into the side of the dais and to the empty space she’d already noted, he stared down at the square imprint. “The populace of Amanat once had their own gods and goddesses, but when Caliane claimed it as her home, they became her people, their devotion complete.”
“Did she sing them to that devotion?” Elena asked, able to hear the soft breaths of the sleepers now that she was listening for it. It raised the hairs on the back of her neck and nothing was going to get those hairs to go back down—not until they were out of the unnatural grasp of this city frozen in time.
Raphael shook his head. “No. Amanat was hers from long before I was born.”
Elena thought of all she’d read about Caliane in the history texts, all Raphael had told her, remembered, too, that his mother had been called the Archangel of Grace, of Beauty. “The love always went in both directions.”
“Yes.” Crouching down, he touched his fingers to the square of stone that spoke of absence. “Illium.”
Elena began to circle the stone walls below the dais, searching for an entrance. Nothing, the gray walls seamless. Then . . . a tiny blue feather lying at her feet. Illium. Tucking the feather into a pocket, she focused on the wall directly in front of where she’d found it. She felt nothing under her palms on the first pass. Or the second. But on the third . . . “Raphael, I think there might be a seam here.”
He was beside her an instant later. “I played in this temple as a young boy—I may remember how it opens.”
“Here.” She stepped away to stand guard while he ran his fingers over the spot.
As she watched, he appeared to press down on specific areas of the stone, though she couldn’t differentiate any one section of the wall from another. But the instant after he lifted his hand, the stone cracked open with a groan that spoke of great age, releasing a puff of dust that had Elena coughing as she ducked to poke her head inside.
At first, she saw nothing, the area beneath the altar was so dark.
Then her nose picked up the wicked bite of some exotic liqueur. Lime, she thought, it had the tart sweetness of lime, kissed with a richer, more languid flavor. It was a scent she hadn’t realized she associated with Illium until that second. “He’s here.”
“Be ready.” A brightness of blue.
In the lingering flash, she saw Illium’s crumpled form in the corner, his head tipped against the stone wall, his wings crushed under his body. “What’s she done to him?”
“Go, Elena.” Taut words. “I need to remain here to ensure the door does not close.”
Blinking against the aftereffects of the blaze of light, she stepped down into the cavern—it went deeper than the floor outside, until even Raphael could’ve stood upright—and made her way through the dark space by feel, stumbling over Illium when she miscalculated. Please be okay. Crouching, she touched his leg, his thigh, his chest, then finally, found her fingers on his face.
“Come on, Sleeping Beauty. I can’t carry you out of here.” He was too heavy with muscle, and under no circumstances did she want Raphael to leave the doorway—it would snap shut the instant he did, of that she was as sure as she was of her own name.
No response from Illium.
Leaning closer, she gave in to the urge to press her cheek against his, trembling in relief at the warmth of his skin. “Illium, you have to wake up. I need you to protect me against Dmitri.”
A change in his breathing, fingers brushing against her hip, then ... “Liar.”
Thank God. She got to her feet, one of her hands around his. “Up, Sunshine, now.”
Illium mumbled something, but she could tell he was attempting to obey. He got himself on his feet after a few tries, but then all but collapsed against her. Bracing his front against her own, she let out an oomph before managing to manhandle him enough that she could wrap an arm around his waist, pull his own muscular arm over her shoulders.
“Walk,” she ordered, gripping at the wrist of the arm around her shoulders.