They held on to each other for a long time before separating to dress after Naasir went and retrieved the second pack. “I hid our trails, too,” he told her once they were both in dry clothes. “Buried your broken feathers.” His eyebrows drew together. “How hurt are you?”
“Already healing—it hurt at the time, but the damage wasn’t major.” Leaving her still-braided hair as it was, Andromeda went to where the water had trapped the dead bugs against the rocks.
About to pick one up, she decided not to risk touching it with her fingers. Instead, she found two sticks and, while Naasir watched from a crouching position across from her, she used the sticks like chopsticks to pick up the insect.
It had a locust-like body and was a yellowish shade with faint blue-green markings—according to Naasir, since her own color perception was skewed by the moonlight. What she could see was that its wings were silver, a glittering shade as bright as Naasir’s eyes and hair. And those wings looked as if they were formed of thin, thin, pieces of metal.
“Not Charisemnon,” she whispered, feeling her eyes go huge.
“Alexander?”
She nodded slowly after checking the other winged bodies she could see. All had the same metal wings. More than one was crumpled from the impact against the rocks, making their composition even clearer. “It must be some kind of a defense mechanism to drive off the too-curious.”
“We said his name.” Naasir peered at the bug she held between the sticks. “He heard.”
It made sense. Alexander had been a master tactician after all. “If he is listening,” she said, having to fight not to whisper, “I don’t think it’s conscious. We talked about Lijuan’s plans during our walk in, about how we wanted to stop her, yet the defenses activated.”
“They may be driven by a primal part of the brain.”
“So more defenses could activate without warning.” She put three of the bugs in a small plastic bag that had held trail mix. “I hope they survive the trip. I want to show Jessamy.”
Naasir watched her store the insects in an inner pocket. “There is a silver lining to this.”
Seeing his laughing eyes, she knew the pun had been intentional. “Yes?”
“We’re definitely in the right place.”
Andromeda’s breath whooshed out of her; she’d been so focused on the minutiae that she’d missed the larger picture. “Yes.” She swallowed. “Should we tell Raphael?” If Alexander Slept below lava—whether true lava or molten metal—only another archangel could get to him.
Nodding, Naasir took out the phone he’d stored in the front pocket of one of the packs—he hadn’t wanted to risk losing it as he had his other phone during their escape from Lijuan’s citadel. She was almost expecting his harsh imprecation.
“It doesn’t work, does it?”
“It should work anywhere.” Naasir pressed something on the screen, tried again. “Dead.”
“Alexander’s done something.” She thought of the lack of photographs of Amanat, of Caliane’s sheer power. “It may not be on purpose.”
Naasir slid away the phone. “It doesn’t matter. If I don’t check in, help will arrive.” It was said with the confidence of a man who had absolute faith in his sire and his comrades. “We need to locate Alexander’s exact Sleeping place before then, so Raphael doesn’t have to be away from New York long.” He rose to his feet and held out a hand. “Let’s go annoy an Ancient archangel who has a distinct preference for age over youth.”
Smiling, Andromeda slid her hand into his and let him tug her up. “No one else I’d rather do it with than you.”
A wicked grin—followed by a mutter. “Stupid Grimoire book.”
31
Xi was amassing his troops on the outskirts of Rohan’s palace with the intention of taking it before Favashi was ever aware of the attack, when one of his commanders walked up to him with an urgent look on his face.
“What is it?”
“We’re hearing rumors of a swarm of insects above an oasis in the east, about five hours on the wing from here.”
Xi waited because the solid, stable man in front of him wouldn’t come to his general with such a thing unless it had a bearing on their proposed plans.
“Our closest operative in the area caught the report from an angel who was passing by. He admits he only glimpsed it from a distance in the moonlight, but he says there was something unnatural about the swarm—according to him, they were too perfectly in formation.”
It could, Xi thought, be a sign of Alexander’s awakening. It could also be a clever distraction or a moon dream on the part of the angel. This location still made the most logical sense, regardless of Raphael’s attempts to muddy the equation by putting the scholar on a jet to Michaela’s territory.
According to Xi’s people, the jet had been sitting on the tarmac since it landed, all doors closed. No way to know if the scholar and Raphael’s silver-eyed enigma were still inside. “Take half a squadron and check it out,” he said, on the small chance that his instincts had led him wrong.
After his commander gave a crisp nod and went to gather his soldiers, Xi turned his attention back to the matter at hand: how to get into Rohan’s home. Alexander’s son had grown into himself in the past four hundred years and he’d absorbed the lessons of his father.
Rohan was now one of Favashi’s most feared generals, having decided to give his loyalty to her when she became the Archangel of Persia. Prior to that, he’d technically been allied to no archangel and no one had challenged it, both because Rohan commanded the respect and affection of tens of thousands as a result of his bloodline, and because he was a powerful fighter and leader.