Page 106 of Archangel’s Lineage

She held his gaze, not flinching from the primal power of him. “A gift of blood doesn’t mean a gush of blood. There’s no harm in trying my way before we have to stab Keir—we have enough minutes if we’re quick.”

The rush of agreement from the Cadre made her like the whole lot of them more.

Elena cut away Keir’s tunic on that, Raphael tore it into strips as fast as possible, and each of the archangels tied their parts of the Compass to Keir. Three more on his arms. Two strapped to his torso. The final two slid between the waistband of his pants and his skin.

Every single piece was flush with his skin... and Keir looked like he’d drunk radioactive mead, each vein and artery glowing and his eyes an eerie obsidian-blue. It was similar to how Illium had looked when power overwhelmed him... but not identical. Where Illium had screamed and burned as if being invaded by an alien force, Keir glowed, as if every cell in his body was its own stand-alone bulb.

He turned his hand palm up, then down, his wonder open as he said, “How very lovely.”

The earth trembled.

Riding the wave, he looked at Elena with sorrow profound in his expression. “It hasn’t worked, Ellie. I think—”

“Blood.” Elena folded her arms, once again holding the robe Alexander hadn’t actually dropped after all. “Prick yourself on one of those quasi blades.”

His sorrow didn’t fade, but he reached out with one finger and ran it across the sharp edge of a subcomponent. The dark “metal” that was probably made of the blood of the Ancestors morphed to glow as obsidian-blue as his veins.

“Well,” Keir murmured, and then, without hesitation, began to “blood” each of the other artifacts. He used a different finger each time, and both his hands bled with small cuts by the time he reached the last one.

He met her gaze, took a deep breath, and made the final cut.

58

Elena cried out, throwing an arm over her eyes as Keir exploded in a burst of obsidian-blue light that erased the world from sight.

She couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, her eardrums buzzing.

59

Illium and Aodhan were in the process of rescuing passengers trapped inside a derailed train when every vein in Illium’s body blazed gold. Fear was a metallic taste on his tongue, a silent scream on Aodhan’s face.

A flash of light that set fire to existence itself.

60

“Keir!” Elena screamed, but all she heard was her own voice. Archangel?

No response, but it didn’t feel like he was gone from inside her head—just as if he’d been muffled.

Blinking rapidly, she felt around with her arms, a sightless woman trying to understand her surroundings. And there he was, his fingers brushing hers. She’d know him anywhere, even in a place with so much light that it blinded.

He held on tight to her, but even when they were close enough that they should’ve been able to see each other’s faces, all she saw was a buzz of white. Panic tried to beat its shrill drums, but she focused on the feel of his hand, the anchor that told her this was real—as did the ground under her boots.

Whoosh!

The sensation was like that of a storm being abruptly sucked into the earth. Or how she imagined that might feel. A funnel of soundlessness that turned into a sudden piercing tone. Then... nothing.

She didn’t open her eyes, didn’t look at where Keir had stood.

“Hbeebti.” Raphael’s voice was still too quiet to her stunned hearing, but she grasped the wonder in it.

Raising her head, she sucked in a breath, her eyes widening.

Keir was... aflame. Consumed by a searing white fire that outshone the beams of the dawnlight that now fell on him. He was smiling, his head thrown back as he bathed in the inferno.

When the flames winked out without warning, he swayed from side to side as if drunk, then touched his hand to the skin of his forearm. “That was extraordinary.”

At which point, he collapsed.

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