1
So long ago it is a lost memory . . .
Angels aren’t meant to die.
The words echoed over and over in Sharine’s mind as she stood at the burial site of her beloved Raan. She hadn’t known what he would’ve wanted because no one in angelkind prepared for death, and so she’d chosen his resting place according to all that she’d learned of him in their five decades together.
Such a short time.
She’d thought that he, older and wiser and gentle, would be by her side for an eternity. Her mentor in the art that was liquid flame in her blood had become her lover with an ease that seemed written in the stars, both of them more than content with their life together. She and Raan, they’d spent hours in the sunlight, alone with their canvases and their thoughts and their paints, yet together at the same time.
Angels aren’t meant to die.
Her fingers trembled, chilled and bloodless, as she brushed them over the small sculpture Raan had loved so much that he’d never parted with it; the favored piece now marked the location on this windswept part of the Refuge mountains where her Raan lay in eternal rest.
At first, when she’d woken next to him on that morning that still seemed a nightmare mirage, she’d thought that he had decided to go into Sleep, that deep rest of immortals who no longer wished to be part of the world. It was a thing done with intent, and her first response had been a razor-sharp stab of hurt.
She’d asked him so many times never to do that. She’d worried that because he was so much older than her, he’d want to Sleep and she’d want to stay awake and he would just leave her. But Raan had laughed his warm, calming laugh, and told her not to worry.
“Little bird,” he’d said, “why would I Sleep now when I’ve finally found you?”
So she’d been hurt and angry at the apparent broken promise. Then she’d touched his hand because even angry with him, she still loved him. His hand, gifted and strong, had been ice cold.
Her breath broken stalactites in her lungs, her blood crushed frost.
No angel in Sleep was ever that cold. Sharine knew that firsthand—she’d been a half-grown fledgling of eighty-five when she’d sat sentry at her parents’ sides as they chose to slip into Sleep. She’d watched the rise and fall of their chests to the final point of stasis, hoping they would change their minds and not leave her all alone, but they hadn’t.
“You’ll be fine, Sharine.” Her mother’s voice firm but her eyes tired. “You are an adult now.”
“We’ll see you when we next wake,” her father had added with a pat of her hand, but she could tell he was already gone, thinking of the rest he’d craved for endless years.
But long after they’d sunk deep into Sleep, they had been warm. Fifty years later, when she’d gone to their secret underground shelter to ensure no one had disturbed their rest, they’d still been warm. So she’d known that angels in Sleep didn’t go cold, didn’t have blood chill and blue.
She hadn’t needed the healers’ shocked gasps to confirm the truth.
Her kind and talented lover was gone.
Dead in the night, as he lay beside Sharine.
A thing so rare among angelkind that none of the healers in attendance had ever experienced the like. They’d had to consult dusty tomes, talk to older angels and archangels, until at last they found someone who remembered another case two millennia ago. Angels were immortal . . . but sometimes, the incidents so infrequent that they were forgotten between one lifetime and the next, an angel simply . . . stopped.
As if a long clock had finally run out.
The healers had told her all that and still she didn’t comprehend the way of it. Raan had been old, but nowhere close to the oldest of them. Many angels double or even triple his age walked the earth. But it was Raan who had stopped. Stopped as he lay in bed next to her, his life slipping away while she slept unconcerned at his side.
Had he choked for breath? Had he looked to her for help?
The questions tortured her as snow dusted her cheeks, stung her skin. She watched it settle gently over the sculpture. And she wondered if, in the centuries to come, he would be remembered by anyone but her. He had been a great sculptor and painter, but a reclusive one, not a man to have many friends. So perhaps it was his art that would be remembered and she thought he would’ve liked for that to be his legacy.
A sob rocking through her, she fell to her knees on the stony ground. “Angels aren’t meant to die,” she whispered, but there was no one to hear her.
The wind ripped the words straight from her mouth and smashed them against the mountaintop. Her wings—wings Raan had called a gift of indigo light—spread out on the snow and the stone, grew cold and numb, and her knees froze into position, but still she didn’t rise. Part of her kept on hoping that he would wake and tell her it had all been a terrible mistake.
She was only one hundred and sixty years old and the love of her life lay cold and dead. At that instant, the winds howling around her, she couldn’t imagine a more terrible pain.
Alone in the falling snow, she mourned.
Angels aren’t meant to die.
2
Three thousand five hundred years ago . . .
Sire, I have borne a son, strong and with such a voice to him that he keeps the entire Refuge awake! He will not flinch from anyone, this child of mine.
My eldest says that he has my eyes and my temper. The twins already believe he will follow their warrior ways, while Euphenia is the only one who can get him to sleep when he is determined to stay awake and roar out his battle cry.
His father is in astonishment at having helped create such a child. I tell him it will pass, and he will be a good father. He has a patience I lack—but this boy of mine will not be afeared of even his mother, this I know.
I will name him Titus.
—Letter from First General Avelina to Archangel Alexander
3
One month ago . . .
He couldn’t remember his name.
His lungs fought to suck in air, his vision blurred . . . and his wings lay heavy and useless on his back. Still he crawled forward, dragging himself out of hell and toward the sunlight.
His eyes fell on the back of his hand, on his formerly ice white skin. Skin he’d pampered and protected and examined with care in the mirror each day. Skin that had highlighted the intense topaz shade of his eyes. Skin that was now mottled with green.
He had to get out.
He had to find a healer.
But he was so weak. How would he . . .
Snatching out a skeletal hand with reptilian speed, he gripped the small creature that had scuttled across his path, had his teeth sunk into its small furred body before his conscious mind could process the decision. The creature’s furless tail whipped in panic, but it had little blood and died soon.