Archangel’s Ascension (The Guild Hunter Series)

Raphael had blasted out the Land! order the instant he realized what was happening. Accidents did and could occur during an ascension, angels scorched out of the sky if they lingered too long after the energies spiked. Even major structures like the floating habitats would’ve been destroyed if they hadn’t descended and attached themselves to their allocated anchor points.

Illium couldn’t stop that. Neither could Raphael. The forces of ascension were their own.

His fingers curled into his palm as he stood on a skyscraper of black glass on the eastern edge of his city, a city he’d seen rise and fall and rise again through time. But today, even his beloved New York couldn’t hold his attention, not when Illium burned up in the forces that had once captured Raphael in their irreversible grasp.

He wondered what Illium saw, what he felt. He’d asked his mother about it once, asked Uram, too, and both their stories had been different from his own. Only on one thing had they all agreed: ascension made them other in ways incomprehensible but unequivocal.

Archangels weren’t extraordinarily powerful angels. They were whole different beings.

It’s Illium, isn’t it? Elena’s mental voice was strong, his consort no longer the just-born angel she’d once been.

Yes, hbeebti. The energies we believed had set him free were but waiting.

Grief and pride roared through him in an agonizing fury.

Grief that he would lose Illium from his territory, and that the boy full of laughter and joy he’d watched grow into a man of heart and honor would now have to tangle with the politics and power plays of the Cadre.

Pride because Elena’s Bluebell had not only survived but thrived after going through in the first five hundred years of his life more than most immortals did their entire lifetime. Illium had a spine so strong that nothing could or would break it, and a mind so intelligent that he could bend without considering it a blow to his power. He also had a heart that meant his rule would be honorable…would be glorious.

The rule of Archangel Illium would one day be legend; this Raphael believed with every fiber of his being. I always knew he’d fly high. In his mind ran a laughing little blue-winged boy shouting, “Rafa! Rafa! Watch what I can do!”

That time was gone forever now, Illium’s ascension creating a stark dividing line between past and present. From this moment on, the two of them would no longer be able to be in the same place for long periods without giving in to an aggression that couldn’t be controlled, for it was an impulse born of the physical changes in their bodies. An impulse linked to the energies of the world itself.

Raphael would never again go flying with Illium except when they visited each other’s territories. Illium would never again sprawl in an armchair in Raphael’s home and have a drink while Raphael did the same, their interaction having nothing to do with politics.

To be Cadre was to be a political creature.

I will miss him with my every breath, he said to his Elena, his throat thick and his heart aching as the golden sky cracked with a rain unnatural and unearthly in its jeweled beauty.

I want to hold him in my arms and protect him from the world of archangels, Elena confessed in a shaky tone. But I’m so fucking proud of him at the same time. He was fine with not ascending, never got annoyed with the idiots who whispered that he was a failed ascension, had the confidence to just shrug it off. He’s lived life on his own terms. Anger threaded her words now. The forces of ascension are ripping that away from him.

Yes. It is a paradox that in order to become one of the most powerful beings in the world, we must at the moment of transition be utterly powerless. Perhaps there was meant to be a lesson in that, but no archangel appeared to have learned it.

Our task now, he added, is to be his friends as we have never before been. Raphael lifted his hands, his palms and fingers coated with Illium’s golden rain, his skin a gloaming of mystery. You know we will lose them both? They were a pair, had always been a pair.

Illium and Aodhan.

Sparkle and Bluebell.

Archangel and Second.

I know. The rest of the Seven are going to be devastated.

I’ve been lucky beyond compare. He had to acknowledge that, had to focus on the gift and not the loss. No other archangel has had such a devoted group of warriors with him for centuries upon centuries. One or two, yes, but never an entire united group that functioned as a seamless unit. I’ll tell Illium to take others from my troops if it’ll give him a first court that he trusts. It wasn’t the done thing among angelkind, but theirs was no ordinary relationship. I will give him every advantage.

I always knew that, Archangel, said the woman who was the reason for his eternity. Tell Jason to spy extra hard on him until we know he’s all right, that he has good people around him.

Jason won’t need my instruction, Elena-mine. If I know him, he’s already putting the pieces in play.

Soft laughter wet with tears.

He swallowed hard, the lump in his throat a raw chunk of pure emotion.

Illium sucked the light back into himself with a sonic boom of sound, and when he landed, it was in front of Raphael. Cracks went out in every direction on the roof, as they stood, archangel to archangel.

That was how it always was when an angel ascended in the territory of another. They came face-to-face once the ascension was complete. Right after the war, it had been slender Suyin who’d stood shell shocked in front of not just him, but the rest of the Cadre, too—for the others had been near him at the time of her ascension. The white of her hair had been electric with a dark power that glittered like shattered gemstones and made her eyes glow from within.

“Raphael,” she’d said once they were alone, an echo of the power of ascension in her voice, “I am changed. I am become not what I once was. There is a violence within me that never before existed, and it is focused on you.”

At times, Raphael thought the enforced dynamic between archangels a thing perverse, one that wanted to urge them to war, but if that was what the voracious beast wanted today, it would be disappointed.

Raphael would not war with this boy become a man over whom Raphael had watched for centuries. A man who had stood with unshakable fidelity beside Raphael his entire adult life.

“Sire,” Illium said, his eyes shining with a power that would take time to settle, and the blue-tipped black of his hair crackling with fine threads of gold.

Raphael shook his head. “No longer that, Illium.”noveldrama

A jerk toward him before Illium stopped himself—but then Raphel saw the stubborn set to his jaw with which he was intimately familiar, and the angel with blue wings was hugging him with a tightness that would allow no retreat.

Having already thrown up glamour around them the instant Illium landed, so that no one could spy on this moment between an archangel new and his sire past, Raphael clenched his own arms as tight. “My pride in you is boundless,” he said, his voice rough. “You will be the best of archangels and I will be proud to call you my ally and friend.”

Illium’s arms tightened even further around Raphael, and there were tears in his voice when he said, “I will be your ally till the day my end comes, sire. This I promise on my blood.”

There was that stubbornness he’d first seen in the bright, intelligent boy who’d called him Rafa. “Never call me ‘sire’ in front of the others, Illium,” he said roughly after they pulled back and were face-to-face again. “Archangels are predators and you must be a predator among them.” He cupped the other angel’s face as he had when Illium was a child. “I know in my heart what you are to me, and what I am to you.”

A shuddering breath, before Illium inclined his head. “The glamour is up?”

Raphael nodded. “I can drop it—”

“No, let me do this one last time.” Then Illium went down on one knee after drawing his sword from the scabbard on his back and laying it across his knee. His wings were draped with precision for a formal bow, his head lowered, and his fist at his heart. “For all that you have done for me, for all that you have been to me, for all that you have taught me, there are no words enough to thank you, but thank you I do, sire.”

Raphael didn’t fight his own tears. “I will always be there for you, Illium. Never will I raise my hand or my sword against you, come what may. This is my promise.” Perhaps a rash one, but Raphael knew himself—if he ever hurt Illium, he would no longer be the man Elena was proud to call her consort; he’d have become a monster.

Eyes shining wet, Illium raised his head. “Never will you have to fear me as an enemy. This bond between us, it is forever. I will come to your aid should anyone dare raise their hand or sword against you.”

Raphael held out a hand.

When Illium took it and rose to his feet, they both knew it was the last time he’d ever call Raphael “sire” out loud. And the last time he would ever bow to another archangel. That was as it should be, his growth a thing of destiny.

“No tears,” Raphael said, and used his forearm to wipe off his own as Illium did the same. “You must now wear the face of an archangel to everyone but those you trust to the core of your heart.” He hated that he had to teach Illium to create a facade, when Illium was the most openhearted of them all.

Sighing, the blue-winged angel slid his sword into its scabbard, then placed his hands on his hips. “I really fucking hoped I’d avoided this whole ascension business.” A scowl. “Maybe I’ll just change the Cadre instead, si—Raphael.” A smile full of a wildness that was pure Illium.

Raphael had the sudden thought that the Cadre had no idea what was about to hit them. Laughing at the wild blue storm to come, he dropped the glamour as Illium rose into the sky to head in the direction of the Enclave.

Dmitri, he’s still our Illium. My trust in him is absolute. Though they all knew it already, he had to say those words now that Illium was an archangel. Dmitri would pass them on to Jason, Venom, Galen, and Naasir. Elsewise, the remaining members of his Seven would be torn between their loyalty to the both of them.

Dmitri’s voice was gritty in his mind. Fuck, I’m going to miss them.

Them, because they all knew where Illium went, so would Aodhan.

Now, Raphael watched Illium drop from the sky over the Enclave, and he wondered how it would play out…because for the first time in their entire existence, Aodhan and Illium were no longer equals in power.