Landing, Elena looked for signs of the blackness that had overtaken Raphael like a creeping poison. Caliane’s wings bore scars of the oily slickness, but ... “I think she’s got it contained,” she said to Illium.
“I am the most powerful of archangels,” said a voice of such faultless clarity that it almost hurt to hear it. “Lijuan is yet weak.”
Raphael’s mother’s eyes were as pristine a hue as his, a shade no mortal would ever possess, but there was something in them . . . something unknown and old, so very, very old. Stepping back, Elena stood, watching as Caliane flowed to her feet, elegant in spite of her injuries and torn clothing. Already, the scars of black were noticeably smaller.
The archangel’s eyes bored into her. “My son calls you his consort.”
“I am his consort,” she said, holding her ground. Caliane didn’t have the creepy Lijuan factor, and neither did she put out the bitch vibe like Michaela, but there was an alien quality to her, something Elena had never felt with any other archangel, no matter how old—as if Caliane had lived so very long, she’d become something truly other in spite of the fact that she continued to maintain a physical form unlike Lijuan.
Caliane raised a hand, flames of unexpected yellow green licking over her fingers, and Elena heard Illium unsheathe his sword in a shush of sound, knew he was going to move in front of her. “Illium, no.”
The blue-winged angel didn’t obey. “You told me to choose my loyalty, Elena. It is to Raphael, and you are his heart.”
Knowing she’d never be able to budge him, she instead took a step to the side so she could meet Caliane’s gaze. “He doesn’t want you to be mad.” She more than half expected a whiplash of temper—archangels did not like being spoken to in such a way by mortals, or angels newly-Made.
But Caliane turned her head, her hair lifting in the breeze. “My son.” Unbridled pride. “He is of Nadiel and I, but he is better than both of us.”
Raphael winged in to land in front of Caliane then, and Illium shifted aside enough that Elena was able to watch mother and son come face-to-face for the first time in more than a thousand years.
Raphael’s heart, a heart he’d thought had turned to stone before he met Elena, stabbed with daggers of pain at the expression of love on his mother’s face. It brought back memories that usually broke through only during anshara, the deepest of healing sleeps.
He remembered not simply that she’d left him broken on that forsaken field, but that she’d held him when he’d cried as a child, wiping away his tears with long, elegant fingers before kissing his face with tenderness that had made him throw his arms around her, hold her tight. “Mother,” he said, and it came out quiet, husky with memory.
Her responding smile was shaky. Reaching forward, she raised her hand to his cheek, her fingers cool against his skin, as if her blood had not yet begun to truly pump through her veins. “You’ve grown so strong.”
It was an echo of the dream, and it made him wonder what she remembered of it. “I cannot allow you freedom, Mother.” It had to be said, no matter that the boy in him was reeling in stunned wonder at having her so close, so very near.
Her hand fell off his cheek and to his shoulder. “I do not seek freedom. Not yet.”
Giving in to the need within him, a need that had survived over a millennium, he reached out and drew her into his arms. She wrapped her own around him, laying her head against his-heart, and for a frozen instant, they were nothing but mother and son standing beneath an impossible sky.
I was not meant to survive your father, Raphael. We were two halves of a whole.
The sorrow in her tone made him tighten his hold. He could not live.
His mother said nothing for a long, long moment. When she drew back, her expression was different, more formal. So, you have a mortal consort.
“Elena,” he said out loud, refusing to allow Caliane to shut out the woman who made the idea of eternity a breathtaking promise. He placed a hand at the curve of her back when she came to stand beside him, “She is no longer mortal.”
Caliane’s eyes moved from him to Elena and back again. “Perhaps, but she is no mate for an archangel.”
Elena spoke before Raphael. “Maybe not,” she said, “but he’s mine and I’m not giving him up.”
Caliane blinked. “Well, at least she has spirit.” Folding away wings she’d spread out after his embrace, she looked back at Raphael. “Even your blood carries the taint of your mortal.” With that, she turned and walked to the edge of the roof. “I must look after my people.”
“Your awakening changes the balance of the Cadre.” Lijuan was no longer the strongest of them all—and after her Sleep, Caliane was a complete unknown.
“Later.” She raised a fine-boned hand. “I have no wish for politics at present. However, make it known that this region is now mine.”
Since Lijuan wasn’t likely to return to face Caliane anytime soon, that claim would, Raphael knew, remain unchallenged. There is no way to know what she will do, he said to his consort. If I am to have any chance of killing her, it must be now.
Elena curled her hand around his. She’s done nothing as yet that another member of the Cadre might not have. The impact on you, Elijah, and the others was an unconscious effect, so you can’t blame her for that.
She attempted to harm you more than once.
I rest my case—even your Seven isn’t sold on me. I never expected your mother to welcome me with open arms.