Page 94 of Archangel’s Lineage

He rubbed absently at it. “I’ll go up,” he said, sounding distracted.

“Go.” Elena wondered if now he was close to it, he could feel the call of the ancient object.

She watched him take off, his body carved with the muscle of a warrior archangel. The large birds cleared a path for him, but didn’t startle or scare. To them, angels were simply bigger birds.

As he ascended through the core of the building, the deliberately broken floors and ceilings creating a spiraling wonder of dense, dark green peppered with unexpected bursts of color, Elena decided she’d look on the ground level. The Legion had often put their finds in an old iron chest they’d salvaged from the ocean.

She hadn’t touched it since the loss of the Legion. Neither had anyone else; everyone knew this was the Legion’s place and these were the Legion’s things. She might’ve taken charge of it, but the entire Tower watched over it. So it was no surprise to find the chest undisturbed.

Covered by vines, with grass and tiny pansies sprouting around it, it appeared an object lost in time. A grasshopper sat on top, its spindly legs carrying a body that was all but weightless.

“Sorry, buddy,” she murmured, and reached down to lift the lid.

Skittering away at her telegraphed movement, the grasshopper nonetheless didn’t go far. Instead, it perched on a glossy green leaf of the ornamental shrub next to the trunk, watching as she examined the items the Legion had considered treasures.

Her heart ached.

Right at the top lay an old throwing blade she’d discarded after the tip broke. Next to it sat the fragment of a gauntlet that she recognized as being part of a set Raphael used to own. She couldn’t remember when it had been damaged—perhaps even in the battle that had brought the Legion to them?

Eyes hot and throat raw, she touched her fingers gently to the items before taking them out with care and placing them on the grass one by one.

***

Raphael spiraled up through the internal forest the Legion had birthed. It was no longer he and his hunter alone who came to admire this green jewel—many in the Tower had asked permission to visit, and Elena had given that permission with generous warmth. The only rules were that visitors were to cause no damage, and that they had to add a plant to either the inside or the outside.

Many of the Tower staff and residents had gone far beyond that, with some spending hours a week tending to the gift the Legion had left in their wake. He was sure he’d seen Holly and Venom walk inside with a pomegranate tree a few years ago, and today, he flew past a tree planted on what had been the eighth floor, its branches heavy with the distinctive purplish-red fruit.

He felt the urge to pick one of the fruits, tear it in half, and feed the luscious seeds to Elena. But something else drove him farther onward, higher and higher, until he thought he’d exit into the sky... but then he found himself slowing until he halted about three floors from the top.

To his left grew a tree that had rooted itself to the remnants of a lower floor and had then been further attached to the wall by vines that entwined around its trunk. It arched one strong branch over his head, the light that fell through the leaves a lace filigree on his skin.

He turned his hand under it, entranced.

Archangel? Did you find something?

Spell broken, he looked down and spotted the white fire of his consort’s hair. No. Have you had more success?

No. Her mental voice held a thickness of emotion. Just pieces of them.

He almost dropped, went to her, but he had to go left, to the tree that grew in the middle of a high-rise in Manhattan. Landing on the jagged outcropping that was just barely big enough for the tree and the ferns around it, he looked for that which wasn’t natural.

But his eye kept going to a knot of vines.

Power that ripples through time, he reminded himself, and didn’t fight the urge. Instead, he knelt by the knot and reached out to separate the strands. The Legion mark sparked so bright a fire that he caught the light on the edge of his vision. Elena. Fly to me.

Her wings sounded behind him even as he tugged the vines apart without causing fatal damage. “There.” The metal glowed obsidian-blue, and when he retrieved it, it pulsed with a gentle warmth.

The hum he’d first heard when Alexander showed them his piece of the Compass started again, louder and deeper. “Another gift, hbeebti, for which we must thank the Legion.”

His consort’s eyes were wide as she took in the object. Holding her hover because there wasn’t enough room for her to land beside him, she said, “I see what you meant when you said it might look like a blade, but it’s not.”

“It comes from another time,” he murmured. “A time that had to end before ours could begin.”

Rising, he stepped off the ledge and handed the subcomponent to Elena as they both hovered with the leaves rustling overhead and birds circling to the sky. He wasn’t the least surprised to see an owl with feathers as white as snow perched on a small orange tree opposite them, its eyes a pure and shining gold.

Thank you, Lady Cassandra, he said, knowing she’d hear him no matter if she was falling deeper into her Sleep—her owl would carry his words to her. For this interference that might save our very world.

Her answer was distant and tired but clear. It’s not yet time for you to become the Ancestors. Not for eons yet.

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