Illium nodded as a crisp morning wind brushed over their bodies like an affectionate pet, the world in front of them shaded in that cool color between gray and yellow that only exists in the moments when the sun has just begun to emerge.
“Once we take the nexus out of the equation,” Aodhan said, “so far all we’ve found are the odd starving reborn, bursts of trapped fog, and the toxic patches, but we know that Lijuan must’ve left more behind. She was arrogant but she was also intelligent. She didn’t hold on to her territory for millennia through blind luck.”
Folding his arms, the pale dawn sunlight welcome on his bare skin, Illium scowled. “I don’t know. She was a raving lunatic by the end even if she fooled most people into believing otherwise. She was greedy for power and certain that she could hold on to it. My opinion? Her Evilness didn’t have a backup plan.”
Lijuan had once been a respected archangel—Illium could accept that. He’d seen her from a distance more than once as a youth, witnessed how Raphael, Elijah, even Michaela interacted with her. As they would with a senior whose life and experience they held in value. But that Lijuan had begun to vanish long before her public descent into power hunger and madness.
It was Jason who’d said the latter to Illium, after the spymaster returned home following a postwar survey of China. Illium had ended up beside Jason while Dmitri, Venom, and Raphael looked over a map on which Jason had marked points of interest in Lijuan’s former territory.
New York’s damaged buildings spread out below them in a broken carpet of light, Illium had said, “How long do you think she was on this track? Lijuan, I mean. Her madness. Her fever for power.”
“Centuries.” No hesitation in Jason’s response, the pure black of his wings motionless and the curves of his facial tattoo standing out against skin that had lost some of its warm brown tones over the cooler months.
“The Cascade might have accelerated her descent,” Jason had explained, “but the more I look, the more I uncover of her belief in herself as a goddess. Prior to Caliane’s waking, she’d already begun to believe herself not just the most senior member of the Cadre, but the most powerful archangel of all time.”
Jason had paused, taking time to put his thoughts in exactly the right order. The spymaster didn’t waste words, but that wasn’t to say he didn’t have important things to say. Quite the opposite. When Jason spoke, Illium listened.
“If you look at the pattern of her senior recruits over the past half millennia,” Jason had told him, “they were all . . . damaged in ways that made them easy to manipulate. They wanted a path, a being in whom to believe—she used that need to feed her ego while turning them into zealous acolytes no longer capable of independent thought.
“The temples built to her, they didn’t emerge in the century past, or even in the past half millennia. Lijuan allowed her people to worship her long before that—such a desire strikes often in mortals, but most archangels don’t nurture it. Even Michaela nixed mortal plans for a temple to her—not ones to her beauty as exist now, but to her as a goddess.”
“You’ve surprised me with that one, Jason.” Michaela’s vanity was legend. “But then, she turned out a surprise all the way around, didn’t she?” The former Queen of Constantinople had fought with selfless courage in the war, even though she’d recently borne a child, could’ve been excused for taking a back seat.
“Archangels,” Jason had murmured that night, “have as many facets as a gemstone cut by a master artisan.”
“One of Lijuan’s was her comfort at being worshipped.”
“More than comfort, Illium. She wanted her people to view her as an omnipotent force. You could term that mere arrogance, but there were signs of a disturbed mind even then—such as the fact she collected unique pairs of angelic wings.”
“Yes, Ellie told me.” Illium’s skin had chilled at the memory. “She pinned dead angels up like butterflies.” Elena had warned him to never put himself in a vulnerable position with Lijuan. She’ll take you, Bluebell, pin you up on her creepy board.
Tonight, Illium reminded Aodhan of that—and of her other madnesses. “She thought the reborn were life.”
Aodhan stood unmoving, but the wind couldn’t stop itself from riffling his hair, the elements entranced by his beauty. A single butterfly as pale as snow landed softly on his shoulder. “Just because she was mad doesn’t mean she wasn’t also cunning and smart. She might be dead, but there’s a prickling in the air, a sinister energy that whispers at the back of my neck.”