Oh, she did like him. She liked all of her people. Farah, so quiet and sage in her advice. Trace, erudite and silkily dangerous. Battle-worn Tanicia, who’d been at Sharine’s side from the start, when Sharine wasn’t sure what she was doing here. The only reason she’d even accepted the position was because Illium had taken her hands and said, “These people are hurt, Mother. You understand pain, and you understand how to be kind. That’s what they need.”
He could be so wise sometimes, her blue-winged boy who was becoming more powerful each time she turned around. Yet she would always remember him as the ungainly babe who’d wobbled the first time he took off from their kitchen doorway, straight down into the breathtakingly steep drop-off outside.
She’d had her heart in her throat every painful second, but she hadn’t gone after him. His father had been watching from below . . . and well, Aegaeon had still been a good father then, even if he’d already lost interest in her as a woman. He’d have caught their small and delighted boy if he’d tangled his wings and fallen.
But he hadn’t. Their baby had flown.
And he’d given Sharine wings when she was at her most broken, bringing her to this place where she was considered someone to come to, a person to trust. “I have confidence in your ability to handle anything that arises in my absence,” she told her three senior people, and saw their spines lengthen, their faces gain light from within.
“I will prepare tonight and fly on the wing to Titus’s court come morning.” She held up a hand when Tanicia’s eyes flared, her lips parting. “Raphael offered to arrange a ride in one of those flying metal contraptions, but I’m not that modern.” The idea of being trapped inside a tube of metal was not her idea of flight. “I also wish to make a survey of the landscape.”
Tanicia frowned, and Farah stepped from foot to foot. Surprisingly, it was Trace who inclined his head in defeat. “I wish you good journey, Lady Sharine.”
* * *
* * *
Dawn came on a caress of pink and light yellow across twilight gray skies.
Sharine’s maidens had argued for sending her things overland, but Sharine had no intention of risking her people for vanity. She’d borne their distraught silence as she made it clear she’d carry what she needed in a small pack that fit neatly between her wings. “No one is to send anything else after me.”
Such long faces they’d had, such bowed shoulders, but they had accepted her word. Now, she double-checked the pack she’d filled the previous night. She’d had such a pack as a young woman, but this one had been a gift from Aodhan. And Aodhan being Aodhan, while the pack was a golden brown suitable for the heat of Morocco, when examined more closely, it proved to be patterned with a design in the same color. Even in the simplest of things, her protégé couldn’t stop making art.
She’d taken time to think about what she might need and what she could borrow. Titus was a man who had many female warriors and staff, and while she was at the smaller end, she wasn’t so small as to make borrowing clothing or shoes difficult. In the end, the pack had ended up a weight she could easily carry for her entire journey.
As for her clothing for this journey . . . She’d always worn gowns of various kinds—simple patterns without embellishment, as well as more intricate pieces. Even with the latter, however, she was no fan of heavy enhancement, preferring beautiful fabrics and cuts. Still, since taking up her position in Lumia, she’d come to appreciate the versatility offered by the clothing worn by her warriors.
Now, she pulled on brown pants that hugged her legs, and a mid-thigh-length tunic in gray-blue with three-quarter-length sleeves. The tunic bore silver edging on both the sleeves and the bottom edges.
A gift from the Archangel of India when Sharine accepted the post in Lumia, the fabric of both the pants and the tunic included subtle shimmering threads. As well, the embroidery was imperfect—the kind of imperfect that spoke to an artisan’s personalized touch. It all sang to Sharine’s love of color, of art.
After dressing, she went to the mirror and considered the fall of her hair. She’d become used to wearing the gold-tipped black of it out for the most part, but today she picked up a hairbrush and ran it through the strands, then wove her hair into a braid that she tied off with a plain black tie.
She laughed at the face that looked back at her—with her hair thus, and dressed with simple practicality, she looked young and hopeful.
Immortality left its mark, but not always in the face or the body.
Sharine’s marks were all internal. Her face was that of the young woman she’d once been. A woman who’d been scared and anxious much of the time, a girl she wished she could go back and reassure.
Hair done, she went to sit on a stool near the doors that led out to her balcony, and pulled on socks, then boots. Her preference was to remain in sandals that she tied with strings up to her calf, but Titus was currently having to deal with hordes of reborn. Sharine needed footwear that wasn’t going to make her a liability should she end up in a fight.
Dawn sunlight fell on her wings as she sat lacing up the boots, and she looked across, imagining how she’d capture that tracery of light on a canvas. Falling into the strokes, into the shades of paint and how she would mix each to precise perfection.
The main part of her feathers would be easy enough—the intense indigo was familiar and a color she’d painted often back when Raan had her practicing portraiture by doing her own, but with that champagne-like shade dusted all over the filaments, it was so filled with light as to be almost impossible to capture. As well, the texture of the sun was further altering the—
“Sharine,” she muttered, deliberately breaking her gaze and turning her attention back to her boots. This was a truth she hadn’t shared with anyone, not even Caliane. The broken shards of her self hadn’t fully healed—every so often, her mind tried to spiral back into that shattered landscape where everything was soft and hazy and she didn’t have to think about pain.
It had been so easy to live inside its embrace, to do her art and not confront a life that had left scars so deep they could never be buffed out or erased. She’d been a coward and it was time she admitted that. Caliane might not see it that way, but Caliane didn’t have a son who’d had to parent his own mother.
Heart aching, she couldn’t help herself from picking up the device Illium had given her last time he visited Lumia. No, it hadn’t been the last time, it had been the time prior. He’d come alone then, and he’d nagged her until she sat down with him to learn how to use this device.
“It’s called a phone,” he’d told her. “A small version of the screen you use to talk to Raphael and Archangel Caliane.”
Sharine had never much bothered with technology—even the technology of the time in which she’d been born. She’d been far more interested in working out how to capture all the hues of the world. But, wishing to indulge her son and content to just be with him, she’d sat and listened.