Page 99 of Archangel’s Lineage

Horror roiled across the delicate bones of her face. “How are we meant to ‘slot’ these objects into place in a person?”

“A blood sacrifice?” Aegaeon cried out. “No! This is not our way, has never been our way.” He made as if to throw his piece of the Compass down to the ground... only it stayed in his hand.

This time, the silence was deafening.

“Fuck!” Titus’s booming voice. “I just tried it, too, and...” He held up the object.

Frowning, Raphael tried to put his blade back into the sheath on his upper arm. He was able to do so without problem. Seeing this, Elijah attempted to put his own into his thigh sheath. Again, a success.

“We aren’t permitted to lose these things once found,” Zanaya said, having already slid hers into a sheath visible below the shimmering green of the dress that hit her high on the thighs. “I did say they were cursed.”

Teeth gritted, Aegaeon shoved his into an arm gauntlet. “The hum is making my head vibrate to bursting. I’m going to fly if we’re to wait for the mortal you call consort, Raphael.”

His heart a booming echo in his ears, Raphael said nothing to Illium’s useless father. He spoke instead to another angel. Is it Elena? he asked Marduk. The base? Is that why she reacted to it? Because if it was Elena, then Raphael was ready to war with the entire Cadre and let the world crumble.

No one would be sacrificing his hunter.

Marduk’s eyes weren’t of an angel when he looked over, his mental voice as inhuman as his physical. No, the base never has a response to the subcomponents until the end, when they are all together in front of the base. Also, I do not believe Aegaeon has a bond of trust with your consort.

Relief and confusion crashed in a war inside Raphael. He’d been so quick to vow that he’d permit no one to touch Elena... but what about this unknown individual with no archangel in their corner?

He would not be a hypocrite, would not sacrifice a stranger but save his heart.

“What happens to the base?” he said out loud, halting the scattering of the Cadre.

Aegaeon was already gone, but the others froze in place.

“Do they die?” Raphael demanded, his wings pulsing with power. “Was Aegaeon right? Are we to purchase the safety of our world with the blood of an innocent?”

“I have been awake only once when the Compass had to be reset.” Marduk’s voice was a weight of crushed stone. “Then, it was a friend akin to me.” He gestured to the side of his body that bore the shimmering scales. “He lived to see another day.”

“But did he bleed?” Streaks of red on Elijah’s cheekbones, this general who had always, always valued honor. “Did he hurt?”

“Yes. He was glad to do so to save not just our people, but our world itself.” Marduk’s slitted eyes, from another time, of another being, held each of theirs in turn. “The choice cannot be yours. The choice must be theirs.”

Titus shook his head even as Raphael did the same. “Any being with honor will agree to it! That is no true choice!”

“Would you then strip their honor from them?”

The grim question silenced them all.

***

Icy winds ripped at Raphael’s hair and bit at his skin as he stood waiting for Elena by the only suitable landing strip near Caliane’s home—a thirty-minute flight on the wing. He was sick to his stomach in a way he couldn’t ever remember being. Because never before had he contemplated the deliberate harming of a being who’d done nothing to him or his.

He enfolded his consort in his arms the second she stepped off the plane.

“Raphael? What’s the matter?” Her hands stroking his back, her knuckles brushing the underside of his wings.

“I will tell you in the air.” It came out rough. “There’s no time to waste. The Mantle is mere meters from total failure and Marduk says there’s no coming back from that, no halting annihilation once it begins. We must reset the Compass before it fails.”

The wind made it difficult to get aloft, but once in the sky, it seemed to push them to move faster.

There was no more room to delay; he told Elena all of it.

His consort was quiet for long minutes before saying, I’d do it. So would you. Marduk’s right—we can’t try to protect a person who may not want to be protected. They’ll have family, friends, possibly even children they’d die to save. It has to be their choice.

Raphael forced himself to release fists he’d clenched without noticing. To buy the safety of the world by spilling blood? What barbarism is this?

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