Caliane’s sadness fractured in a waterfall of startled laughter. “Nadiel was so afraid of my wrath that he sent me buckets of flowers in the days before your arrival.” She still had her eyes on the portrait, but her next words were directed at Elena. “Our son had somehow gotten into a vat of tar. Nadiel managed to clean his skin and his wings but his beautiful hair was a lost cause.”
Elena grinned and glanced at Raphael. “I’m trying to imagine you as a kid and failing, despite that baby portrait in the door.”
“I can show you.” Caliane brought her hands together as if she were a young maid and not an Ancient; her smile was of pure delight. “I have portraits.”
“Mother.”
But both his mother and his consort were intent on ignoring him. Giving in to the inevitable, he trailed after them through another door. And into a room that had him groaning.
It was a lovingly lit gallery.
Of him.
As a naked babe in his father’s arms.
As an equally naked toddler caught climbing up the side of the house.
As a boy—with pants at least—trying out his wings.
As a fully dressed youth sitting beside his mother while she played the lyre.
And more, so many more.
“He would not sit still,” Caliane told Elena. “Sharine did most of these after managing a quick sketch while he was up to mischief.” She pointed at the painting with the lyre. “That one was the easiest. He liked to hear me sing and so he’d be quiet and in one place for that time.”
“This is amazing.” Elena had a hand pressed to her chest. “Can I take photos?”
“No.” Raphael glared at her. “Else I will contact your father and create a public gallery in the Tower of your childhood self.”
A narrow-eyed look from his consort. “Fine. Be that way.” She turned her attention back to the paintings.
Caliane held her wings with warrior strength, but her lips were soft and her face warm with affection as she told his consort the stories behind the paintings. Her memories were precise, detailed.
“Why didn’t I ever know about this gallery?”
Caliane laughed. “Ah, this is a thing for a mother. You were busy being a boy, a youth.”
Raphael found himself drawn to the single family portrait in the gallery: Nadiel stood with his arm around a young Raphael, while Caliane sat in front of them, but she was glancing back with a smile on her face, as if distracted by whatever the two of them had just said. Father and son were in the midst of a laugh Raphael could almost hear.
“She has such hands, Sharine.” His mother came to stand beside him. “Did I tell you that I visited her? She has settled well into her new role in Morocco.” A touch on his forearm. “That is a good thing you did, Raphael.”
“The Hummingbird was the best person for the task.” The Cadre had needed a neutral party to take over the running of Lumia and its surrounding village, and no one in angelkind had a bad word to say about the Hummingbird. “She is outside politics and alliances.”
“But for her son,” Caliane reminded him.
“Yes.” For Illium, the Hummingbird would do anything . . . but even Illium hadn’t been able to hold his mother fully to this world. The Hummingbird existed in one of her own; she was a broken instrument, a lovely shattered piece. Raphael had never seen so much of her work in one place—and in doing so, he mourned her all the more.
The woman she’d been had understood life and love, understood what it was to be part of the world. Part of a family. But the family she’d painted with such tenderness was now as splintered as the Hummingbird’s mind.
34
While Elena’s stormfire wings continued to attract attention in the weeks after their return to New York, Raphael’s consort got off much easier than expected—the entire world was watching China. Not because anything had happened, but the opposite. Gadriel had reported a sudden and eerie calm among the residents, including vampires formerly on the verge of bloodlust.
“Nothing I can put my finger on, but . . . my skin creeps.”
Other commanders had reported much the same.
That might not have been enough to keep the Cadre distracted had Michaela not caused short tempers three weeks later with her outwardly petulant refusal to attend any meetings of the Cadre, even via a screen.
“The birth was a difficult one,” Keir murmured when Raphael and Elena called to check on her welfare. “I tell you this only because she has authorized it—but it must remain between you and Caliane.”
“You have our word.” This was not a thing of games or manipulation.
“The babe is strong, healthy,” Keir told them. “Michaela recovers with archangelic speed but even that is not instantaneous after a birth.” The healer’s ageless eyes held theirs. “She will not move to the Refuge. She is convinced her child will be safer within the walls of this stronghold.”
Raphael saw no real cause for concern, not with Keir overseeing the newborn’s health as well as Michaela’s convalescence. “It’s unusual for a child to be raised outside the Refuge, but it’s not an unheard-of choice—I spent much of my time in either Nadiel’s or Caliane’s territories.”
At first, his world had been confined to the safe spaces behind the walls of forts and citadels. To a small boy with wings he could barely control, it had been a vast play area full of secrets and challenges. He’d grown under the watch of honed warriors and highly educated courtiers who’d taught him the responsibilities that came with freedom. By the time he grew strong enough to fly over the wall for the first time, Nadiel had gifted him his first sword, and Caliane had taught him how to fire a bow.
“I do not worry about the babe’s safety but its development.” Keir ran a hand through his hair in a rare restless gesture. “You attended the Refuge school for many a term, enough to make friends and to learn to be a child with other children. Jelena and Avi always took Tasha out of school at the same time Caliane did you, so the two of you could be playmates.”
Such wild games he and Tasha had played. Two small sun-brown angels left to run riot across a vast court. I wish Tasha had not been so foolish as to attempt to come between us, he said to Elena. You would be most amused at the stories we could tell together.
Give me a decade or two. Wings of storm and lightning brushed his in an electric caress. I might have calmed down by then and no longer want to fillet Ms. McHotpants.
As he fought his smile, Keir said, “Nadiel was more lax in such matters, but his citadel was home to the mortal children of his youngest vampire soldiers. You were never isolated. I fear this babe will be brought up in a pretty prison.”