“Beloved” he’d called her, eyes dancing.
Those eyes had held hers as she stabbed a dagger into his heart. There had been no recrimination in their black depths, only piercing love and forgiveness. His last word had been a whisper. “Lijuan.”
That day marked her true ascension, when she became invulnerable.
Unlike Alexander.
“If you do not speak,” she said to Rohan, “I will annihilate what remains of this palace and of your squadrons, as well as the surrounding villages and towns. I will kill tens of thousands.”
Rohan’s eyes, a deep ebony rather than Alexander’s silver, glittered. “You are a monster.” The words were spat out, his pale brown skin hot with rage.
“I am evolution.” Gripping his neck while she hovered using her wings, she lifted him off his feet. She’d fed again in the inefficient fashion that nonetheless gave her a power boost, and now she burned with it.
Bound as he was, Rohan couldn’t fight her, but his eyes remained unyielding. “My people stand with me and my father,” he said. “All know that if you come to power, the world will drown in death.”
“The world will be purified.” All weakness burned away. “Speak, or die.”
“You would go to war with Favashi for this?”
“Favashi is young.” Now that she could feed again even in a limited fashion, Lijuan knew she could kill the much younger archangel should Favashi be so foolish as to get in her way. “Where is your father, Rohan?”
Alexander’s son, the babe she had once held, looked at her without flinching. “I am Rohan, proud son of the greatest archangel ever to live, and you are an abomination who will never break my will.”
“Insolent fool!” Crushing his neck until his head lolled forward, she dropped him to the floor. He’d live—he was a strong angel of enough age to heal those injuries.
“My men have sacked the palace but there is no sign of Alexander,” Xi told her. “If he is like Caliane and able to hide deep in the earth, we may not find him in time.”
Alexander loved his people. He loved his only son even more.
Lijuan’s eyes went to Rohan’s already healing form. Her lips curved. “Then we make Alexander come to us,” she whispered, and waited the minutes it took for Rohan to heal enough to open his eyes. “Your father will wake at reckless speed to avenge you.”
Her words made Rohan’s jaw go tight, but Alexander’s son didn’t beg, didn’t scream as her black knives plunged into him. He went to his death with the stoic and defiant pride of a true warrior.
Part of Lijuan could admire that, and had it been possible, she’d have ordered that Rohan be given a warrior’s burial. But it wasn’t possible—her black death had caused his body to disintegrate into ash of the same shade.
Rohan was gone.
The world screamed, lurching under Xi’s feet.
41
Naasir and Andromeda were out of bed and about to head out to speak to Tarek when the land bucked with violent fury. Struggling out of the small house, they went to their knees outside. The shaking seemed to go on forever.
“Naasir!”
Following her pointing finger, Naasir looked to the horizon.
Sand spouts burst out of the ground to spiral to the sky, burning a destructive path through the landscape, the lightning so electric and bright that it hurt the eye as it hit over and over and over again.
The shaking stopped with a spine-wrenching jolt, but the clouds above had turned a silvery black that boiled across the sky, turning morning once more into midnight. In the distance, the land cracked, the lava that poured out of it a molten and angry red that crawled across the ground at impossible speed.
Andromeda felt her heart slam into her ribs, but her fear wasn’t enough to make her miss a simple fact. “The village!” she yelled to Naasir over the sounds of the violence. “No lightning strikes within! No sand spouts!” Even the earthquake hadn’t collapsed any buildings.
“Inside!” he yelled and they both retreated.
Shutting the window to cut down the noise, he shoved a hand through his hair. “Something has angered Alexander, but even in his rage, he hasn’t forgotten the wing brothers who protected him these many centuries.”
“Alexander was meant to love his people.” Andromeda’s fingers trembled as she fixed her braid. “Do you think he’s killing them?”
“We’ll have to wait until after this is all over to find out.” Naasir suddenly hissed out a breath. “In protecting this village, he’s put a beacon right over it. Lijuan will know to head for the eye of the storm, will be aware Alexander must be nearby.”
Andromeda picked up her sword. “We should go, see how we can help the wing brothers.”
Nodding, Naasir opened the door again and they walked out into the fierce dust-swirled wind. It didn’t take them long to find the Brotherhood—they were gathered in the large central meeting hall. Since they’d spotted no one else on their way here, not even a face at a window, it appeared the noncombatants had already been moved to safety.
“These are the portents for which we were told to watch,” Tarek informed them. “But it was meant to begin far more gently and be a process that took a year.”
Andromeda considered if she should take another weapon from the wing brothers’ stockpile, decided on a relatively light crossbow. “The enforced speed of the Ancient’s waking means he’s going to be far weaker than he should be when he rises.”
Tarek’s hand fisted.