She thought suddenly of Laric, scarred by his time caught in a fire sky. She hoped he was deep in the infirmary far from any windows. And she hoped the flames didn’t bring nightmares to Caliane and Raphael.
As she got closer, she saw Aegaeon was right next to Neha, appeared to be protecting her so she could focus on her fire. In the orange-red glow, his wings appeared as pure blue as Illium’s. As she watched, he razed an entire squadron with a scythe of sea green power.
“At least the bastard is useful,” she muttered before firing a crossbow bolt through the wing of an angelic fighter who was about to thrust his sword into Andreas’s gut.
The squadron leader raised a hand in thanks before slicing out with his blades to remove the head of another winged fighter. Surrounded by battle, she couldn’t take even a second to search for Raphael in the sky, but she could feel him high above, exchanging blow after blow with Lijuan.
Lijuan, who could heal from any injury.
Fear tried to clamp its claws around her heart.
Gritting her teeth, she shoved it off, and fought on.
* * *
• • •
Sweat dripped down Raphael’s back, and dampened his hair. His wildfire was being rapidly depleted. He was going to need to draw from Elena again soon, but the second he did that, they were in the endgame. There was no more power after that and Lijuan appeared unstoppable.
He’d deliberately drawn from Elena before battle began—not the totality of what she held, but enough so their energies would combine to create the green-tinged wildfire. However, since feeding from two archangels, Lijuan seemed all but impervious to even that.
Not far in front of him, Caliane took a massive wave of poisonous strikes from Lijuan’s troops. His mother fell to a rooftop held by Raphael’s people, her wings badly mangled and her bones shattered.
Mother?
I will survive this, my son. But I am out of the battle. Her mind cut off on the heels of that statement.
Just as Lijuan went noncorporeal again. He’d done enough damage that she couldn’t seem to hold it for long, but even a second was too long. This time, she appeared close enough to Elijah to target him with her starlight obsidian.
The Archangel of South America couldn’t avoid it, but Raphael was close enough to slam wildfire into both him and Lijuan. Eli’s body jerked as the wildfire punched through to the poison in his system and began to fight it, while Lijuan’s eyes lit up with wildfire before she screamed and fired back at Raphael.
Galen caught Elijah as he fell, lowered him to a rooftop. A flash far below caught Raphael’s eye, Venom’s face outlined in heat as he blasted a flamethrower at a horde of reborn right on top of him.
Raphael had no time to check on Eli or help Venom—Lijuan hadn’t gone noncorporeal after wounding Elijah, and he blasted bolt after bolt at her. Her entire body burned the white-gold and blue of wildfire kissed with green, but she didn’t break apart. Instead, she ran from Raphael and directly toward Neha. The Archangel of India avoided her bolts, but her avoidance strategy put her under a massive hail of obsidian rain shot by Xi and another general.
Neha went down.
Aegaeon attempted to cut Lijuan with his sea-green scythe, but it only seemed to irritate her. He did manage to avoid being hit, which meant Raphael still had three other friendly archangels in the sky with him. Then a mind with a weight as heavy as Caliane’s touched his.
I am running out of power. Alexander, his words spoken in the instant between one attack and the next. I have never in all my existence come this close to the edge. Aegaeon will not admit it, but he must be the same.
Raphael got Lijuan once again, just as she readied herself to hit Alexander. Spinning around, she sent her power at Raphael instead. “You cannot kill me!” she roared as wildfire arced through her veins . . . and didn’t end her.
The hail of starlight obsidian she sent at him was a wall.
He threw up a wildfire shield but it threatened to buckle under the pressure almost immediately.
Archangel. Elena’s hand on his calf, the wildfire from her body entering his.
Using some of that power to dissipate Lijuan’s as Elena broke away to take position by his side, he saw the reason why he wasn’t under a secondary attack. A burst of violet energy had broken the sky to slam into Lijuan. A woman with hair of lilac, her gown pale green and her eyes impossible to see from here, was pounding Lijuan with blow after blow.
Another thinner figure joined her, and her eyes were visible to Raphael. What had once been brown was now liquid fire. As if the flame that had cleansed Favashi of infection had become part of her. Her Cascade-born power was rumored to be control over the winds, but it was liquid fire that she wrapped around Lijuan, trying to burn her down to the bone.
From the other side of the battlefield came another massive bolt of energy, this one holding the poignant beauty of the sea aurora.
Alexander fired at Lijuan at the same time, the silver of his wings brilliant in the blasts of energy lighting up the sky.
Raphael shot more wildfire at Lijuan, even as beside him, Elena used her crossbow to take down a flyer who’d come at them. He wanted to tell her to go back to a rooftop where it was safer, but no place was safe in war. And if this was the end, then they’d go into it side by side.
Then Lijuan managed the impossible and broke away from the combined attack.
Alexander fired after her.
Lijuan made an unpredictable move to the left.
Elena moved at the same instant to shoot out the wings of one of Lijuan’s generals who was raising his hand to fire at them.
The bolt of Alexander’s silver energy came straight at Elena.
72
Elena!” Raphael smashed into her, and the bolt hit him while the two of them were connected . . . but there was no pain. It bounced off him and as it did so, it changed form to become wildfire. White-gold and blue. Midnight and dawn.
Lijuan avoided that blow to rain down her own violence at him.
Even as he blocked it, Raphael’s mind was racing. But it was his consort who yelled, “A mirror that’s a channel! Tell everyone to throw their power at us!”
Raphael reached for his consort’s hand. “Hover,” he told her, knowing it would make them targets. But he also knew their people would protect them to the end. “Ready?”
“Always,” she said, as if they weren’t about to put their lives on the line.
Fire at me, Raphael told the surviving archangels. Do not hesitate! Fire at me!
It was Alexander who obeyed first, the metallic brightness of his wings flashing in the distance as he fired directly at Raphael. Then came Favashi, Titus, and Aegaeon. Cassandra and the sea aurora angel fired at the same time. Their combined power was a huge and old thing, and it stunned with its force. But Raphael and Elena stood firm under the barrage, and the mirror they became together bounced all the energy toward Lijuan.