Archangel's Prophecy (Guild Hunter, #11)

by Nalini Singh

little boy who had not yet suffered the three great tragedies that would shape him.

“Because you are becoming, too.”

Child of mortals. Vessel unawakened. You step closer to your destiny. For one must die for one to live.

Child of love. Child of grief. Child of courage. Watch for the broken blade. Watch for the mourner. He is your death.

We remember the snow. She loved the snow. She loved our first aeclari.

Mortal born. Mortal fall. Mortal heart. Ambrosia’s sweet kiss. Wings of dawn. Wings of night. This will be.

I will undo the universe for you.” Tear it to pieces, leave it as broken as his heart would be if he didn’t have Elena. “Tell Cassandra I don’t believe in the predestination crap, either.”

“This child of kin’s bloodline is mine. In this moment, and in this time, she is mine.”

For you alone cannot fight what she has become. The Cadre alone cannot fight the evil that Sleeps.”

The filaments from Elena’s chrysalis spread over him, cocooning him in a delicate blanket.

When the one who had sent disease to the aeclari’s city thought to grasp at this land, the archangel who laughed and made women smile massed his forces on the diseased archangel’s border and peace held.

The General who had once been the Mother’s sent his birds of prey and his wild cats to the city in a silent symbol of allegiance.

When the Queen, who mourned her daughter and looked at Raphael with hate but also sometimes with sorrow, told the Blade of the continuing strangeness in the land of the giver of death who Slept, he told her he would tell his sire.

“It’s not every day a man gives you his heart.”

Around them, the gray raged, reaching out grasping tendrils toward her. And he knew . . . he had to wake them up before the Cascade got what it wanted and consumed her. Even Elena could not battle forever. “How do I wake us?”

No power is worth you, Elena-mine. I would give up immortality for a single mortal lifetime with you.”

Her words were yet sounds being formed when he released every drop of the wildfire that was so bright and so beautiful and of them. And because his heart was more than a touch mortal, he told that energy to go to ground. Not to turn the sky into an inferno that erased hundreds of angels from existence, but to sear itself into the earth.

Wings of silver. Wings of blue. Mortal heart. Broken dreams. Shatter. Shatter.

Fragments swam in his blood, weaving their way through his entire system. A system devoid of wildfire. Devoid too of the golden lightning. Uncaring of the loss and of the agony in his chest, he opened his eyes . . . and looked into those of liquid silver.