Wiping off her tears with one hand even though her nose was already stuffed up and more tears burned in her eyes, Elena curled her hand around Raphael’s uninfected upper arm.
The Primary placed his free hand over Raphael’s heart. Raphael. Elena. Aeclari. We give you what is yours. It was his voice and it was the Legion’s voice, so many differing notes in the words, so many differing personalities, until it was a wild song.
A single organism with many parts.
She heard the one who’d been so fascinated by the velvety stachys byzantina she’d had in her greenhouse that he’d lit up at being offered a seedling she’d grown for him. She heard the one who’d been trying out different hues of skin on the back of his hand, to see if he liked one better than being gray. She heard the one who always turned up on this balcony at night, to say good night. And others, so many others, each a specific memory in her mind.
Elena.
Aeclari.
Raphael.
Aeclari.
It is time.
They hovered beyond the balcony in endless rows of silent wings. You are in our memory. The aeclari of the Death Cascade. The aeclari who . . . loved us.
This isn’t good-bye, Elena said in reply. It’s only until the next time.
You will always be our Legion. Raphael’s voice came on the heels of hers, each word potent. Remember this place. Remember your home.
Elena. Aeclari. Raphael. Aeclari.
Thousands of whispers, building in a crescendo until Raphael gasped as a jolt passed from the Primary to him—and down into Elena. Her back bowed, her veins lit from within and the stormfire in her wings turned into an inferno, though she’d received only a tiny percentage of the power that had punched into Raphael. She recognized this power.
It was of blood and of darkness, a red storm.
The first time, she’d taken it to be a thing that wanted to control Raphael, but now she understood. Blood was life as much as the earth was life. It was power rooted in the basest elements, to be shaped by the bearer.
Above them, the snow-heavy sky began to turn blood red in an echo of the bloodstorm that had terrified her what felt like a lifetime ago. Golden lightning cracked that bloodstorm, and in the midst of it, she suddenly understood. Knowledge poured into her, the knowledge of millennia kept by the Legion.
Her brain wasn’t vast enough to comprehend even a single mortal lifetime’s worth, but it didn’t need to; it only needed to comprehend small fragments. Somehow, the Primary had made sure those fragments were at the forefront of what he gave to her and Raphael.
We show, the Legion whispered. We show. We show. Mirrors. Aeclari are mirrors. Aeclari are life. Aeclari are the channel. Aeclari . . . we love you.
The last was said in a tone of surprise, as if they had never loved in all their millennia of existence. Then the Legion were gone, their bodies collapsing into dust, as they did when they died in battle, only to rise again. But this time, though both she and Raphael waited, they didn’t rise.
Elena’s hand trembled against her mouth, a sob catching in her throat.
The Legion were gone.
So was the black poison on Raphael’s shoulder, his wing, and on his rib cage. His eyes glowed from within when he turned to her, his wings limned with light. Closing his arms and wings around her as she cried for the ancient beings who might’ve just erased themselves from existence, he said, “Your eyes are liquid silver and fire dances under your skin. Your wings are full of so much lightning, you burn.”
His voice was rough and she knew he, too, mourned. It’s suddenly too quiet in my head. The Legion had become a part of them, a murmur that was there without being intrusive.
Mine, too.
They held on to each other as the pain settled into their hearts and bones, a memory that would never fade.
When they parted at last, Elena glanced down at her arm, saw the golden lightning. It broke her skin in a river of molten gold, only for the wound to seal up again and a different one to open. “It’s like what happened to Illium.” Too much power thrusting into his body, power that had been meant for Raphael.
Raphael ran the fingers of one hand over her forearm. “Yet he would’ve died had I not taken it, while you hold it with ease.” He pulsed with the intensity of what was inside him.
“You don’t feel as you did in the bloodstorm. A little like it, but not the same.” Not as distant, as devoid of emotion.
Yet above them, the sky swirled a dark red that bathed Manhattan in a macabre light.
“It is a power that is cold and dark and deep.”
“Like the ocean where the Legion sleep.”
“Yes.” He shot a bolt of light into the bloodstorm clouds. The sky erupted with gold, drowning Manhattan in brilliance for a long moment. “A small exertion given the power inside me—and the display may cause Lijuan to hesitate.”
Since he was still glowing like a lightbulb, she saw his point. “Energy’s already started to turn into wildfire.” It was the only way his body could’ve fought the poison.
Raphael nodded. “But even were I glutted with wildfire, I fear it would not be enough.” His face was lines of pure beauty, an archangel at the apex of his power. “She has risen again and again after feeding.”
“What the Legion showed us . . .” Her mind struggled to grasp the concept; she could suddenly appreciate the difficulty the Legion’d had in describing the phenomenon.
“It was a moment of blinding clarity,” Raphael said, “but now it slips in and out of my grasp like a half-remembered dream.”
Elena tilted back her head and took a deep breath of the cold air, on the theory that not thinking about it would bring the concept to the surface. “I feel so powerful.” Her skin continued to break open but nothing hurt; she felt better than she had in her whole life. “I think I’m drunk.”
“Would you like to send a fireball to the sky?” She heard the smile in his tone.
Dropping her gaze from the sky to him, this creature of power and beauty, she grinned past the anguish. “You’re still a little bit mortal.”
“I have pieces of your heart inside me, hbeebti. I will always be a little bit mortal.” He looked again at the bloody sky. “Blood is not evil. Blood runs in our veins. Blood is life.”
“They gave theirs so we could fight for ours.” She couldn’t look toward where the Primary had stood, the pain too raw and fresh.
“The Legion were warriors, Elena-mine, and they laid down their existence for their aeclari. We will honor that.”
Elena flexed her hands, focusing on the energy that lit up her veins and not on the loss that would hurt for a long time to come. “We better go see Dmitri, see if he knows anything more about that boom we heard.”