Налини Сингх - Archangel's Sun

When the Hummingbird said nothing in response to his magnanimous gesture, he decided to take his leave. Could be this was one of those moments where she existed out of time. Though . . . for an ethereal being, her jaw appeared unnaturally rigid and he could swear that her shoulders were bunched.

No, he had to be imagining it; the Hummingbird was beyond such things. Beyond anger, beyond petty grievances. The Hummingbird was a being special and gentle, a being who needed care and was to be handled as you would a fragile, broken bird.

10

Sharine glared at the wide sweep of Titus’s back as he strode out of the room, shutting the door behind himself. It was as well that he’d left because she might’ve otherwise given in to the urge to pick up the small vase on the table next to her and throw it at his head. And what exactly would that have achieved? Nothing.

Titus—a warrior tired from constant battle—had done nothing but be kind and treat her as he no doubt believed she expected to be treated. As a fragile artist who needed beauty and softness around her and could not be expected to cope with harsh reality.

Well, was that not who you were for centuries?

It was a slap hard and stinging from a part of her that had woken when she’d woken, a part that was brutally honest and had no time for self-pity—or for misdirected anger.

Sharine winced.

How could she expect Titus to treat her as anything but a delicate, breakable butterfly when that was all she’d ever shown the world?

She and the Archangel of Africa hadn’t known each other when she was still herself—and even then, she’d been slightly out of time, a wounded bird who’d never quite found her wings. This Sharine, the one she was now, a mature woman shaped by loss and hurt and pain and anger and a fierce love for her son, she was someone Sharine herself was still getting to know. She couldn’t expect Titus to divine her new state of being.

Still, she scowled at the curvy velvet sofa, the lush bouquets of flowers, and—when she opened the wardrobe—the floaty and superbly impractical gowns within. Not only had a member of his overworked staff wasted time in getting all this together, it was clear that no one—from the archangel down to his most junior member of staff—expected her to dirty her hands.

Titus’s people were ready to take on another burden at a time when they needed every bit of help they could get. Making a sound low in her throat that startled her with its feral nature, she kicked the door of the wardrobe and was satisfied by the loud sound. Then she took off her backpack and removed the clothing items within.

Luckily, she’d stopped near a stream the previous night. She’d needed time alone, and so had stayed away from any settlement, but she hadn’t been foolish. She’d chosen an area with a wide-open landscape where nothing and no one could sneak up on her. While there, she hadn’t slept, for she’d done so the previous night and an angel of her age didn’t need as much sleep as the young. Instead, she’d simply rested her wings and done a few small chores. Including washing out her second set of clothing.

It had reminded her of when she’d first left her familial home. Most fledglings were nudged out of the nest at a hundred years of age. In mortal terms, angels were about eighteen in maturity and growth by then, ready to take up training or further studies or to go exploring.

Sharine’s parents had asked her to spread her wings when she was eighty years of age. “We’re old, child,” they’d said to her. “We want to make sure you are settled in the world before we surrender to the Sleep that whispers to us nightly.”

Back then, Sharine had been scared—and also ashamed of her need for them to stay awake. Today, she felt a hot burst of anger. She was older than they’d ever been, and she would never , in a million years, walk into Sleep while her son was of an age where he needed her.

Is that not what you did when you walked into the kaleidoscope?

Flinching at the cutting words from the same part of her psyche that had delivered the earlier slap, she shrugged off the wave of shame that threatened. All that would do was cripple her, make her useless. No, the time of shame was past; she had to stride into the future—and make people see her. See Sharine , and not the Hummingbird.

After stripping off her dirty clothing, she walked into the bathing chamber. It was as luxuriant as everything else in the suite, complete with scented soaps, plush towels, and other extravagances. She’d heard that Titus had a liking for art and soft, beautiful things—women included. From the look of him now, however, he wasn’t bothering with any of that. He looked exactly what he was—a warrior who had little time for fripperies while his territory was overrun with vicious reborn.

Teeth gritted, she bathed quickly then was annoyed at herself for automatically picking up the bottle of lotion afterward. But that was a habit too ingrained to shun and since his people had made the effort to provide for her with such care, she slathered her body in the silky cream scented softly with a flower she couldn’t name, before heading out into the bedroom and pulling on her blue-gray tunic and dark brown pants.

Having washed her hair the previous night, she simply brushed it out, then pulled it back into a tight tail at the back of her head. Again, when she looked in the mirror, she saw a fresh-faced young woman looking back at her. Only her eyes gave her away. They were old , telling of the life she’d lived . . . and not lived.

Gut tight, she turned away, her hand going to her right wrist, where she wore a bracelet that Illium had sent her from New York. It was made of platinum metal, each of the links slender but strong; the heart that hung from one end bore not her name but his. It had made her laugh, because of course her mischievous boy would do this. She wore the gift with pride, her son’s name, her son’s love.

She deliberately didn’t go up into the art room. It was an act of willpower on her part. Perhaps Titus had done her a favor there after all—he’d placed her drug of choice within reach and now she’d have to resist temptation each time she was in this suite, thus building her strength of will.

She’d spoken to Keir, an angelic healer, not long before she’d come to Lumia, right when she’d begun to find her way out of the kaleidoscope. It was Caliane who’d urged her to do so. “If I were badly wounded in battle,” her friend had said, “I’d seek a healer and feel no disquiet in doing so. A wound of the mind is no different.”

Keir had made time to spend near to an entire week with her. For some reason, she’d found herself telling the calm-eyed and slender healer all of it, digging right down to the heart of what Caliane had termed her wound.

“Aegaeon’s actions impacted on brutal past trauma,” Keir had said in his gentle way, this man who was one of the few in angelkind not very much taller than her own diminutive height. “Each event in our life leaves a mark—in your case, two critical events left deep fractures in the same part of your psyche. Those fractures compounded into a break when Aegaeon chose to take an action that I, as a man, as a healer, as a lover, cannot comprehend.”

Keir wasn’t one to exhibit intense emotion—at least to his patients. He tended to be a haven of calm. But his brown eyes had held a wealth of darkness when he’d said, “You retreated into what you knew best in order to heal. You can’t blame yourself for that instinctive action.”

Sharine accepted that Aegaeon had acted with unwarranted vindictiveness. To this day, she didn’t know why—as vulnerable as she’d been then, to charm of a kind she’d never experienced in her mostly solitary and quiet existence. Aegaeon had overwhelmed her; she’d wanted desperately to cling to him—and that was on her and the ghosts that haunted her—but in actual fact, she hadn’t .