When a young and slender warrior dropped next to her, his skin ebony, his eyes a pale brown, his hair twined into falling locs decorated with wooden beads, and his wings a spread of black dusted with green, she said, “You’re not with the squadrons?”
“I’m to be your guide here, my Lady Hummingbird,” he said with a deep bow, and though he attempted to hide his misery, he was too young—barely beyond a hundred if she was any judge—to succeed. “I am Obren, the newest member of the sire’s forces.”
And so he’d been given the unenviable task of babysitting Sharine. “Call me Lady Sharine,” she said first of all; she’d prefer Sharine alone, but knew the child would expire on the spot should she suggest it.
He already appeared a touch green around the gills at having to say her actual name. “Lady Sharine,” he croaked out at last.
“Is there any danger in my flying behind the squadrons?” She had no wish to be a distraction, but while she was tired, she wasn’t so tired that she couldn’t spend some time in the air getting a firsthand look at what was occurring. She hadn’t flown all this way to sit back and do nothing, and the first thing she needed was information.
Only then could she know what she might do to assist.
The boy’s head jerked up, his mouth falling open before he snapped it shut. “My lady, the sire was very firm in his order that you’re to remain within the bounds of the citadel.”
Deciding she truly would kick Titus at the first opportunity, Sharine smiled . . . and was rather delighted to see Obren blink. It appeared the steel growing inside her had shown on her face. “Titus is not my sire,” she pointed out with conscious gentleness, for it wasn’t this youngling’s fault that his archangel was a numbskull. “You can come with me or I’m happy to go alone.” They both knew he’d never attempt to physically detain her.
Gulping, he shifted on his feet. “If—if you stay in the air at a height beyond the reach of the reborn, then I can’t see the risk.” Another swallow. “The creatures have torn angels apart when those angels have been wounded and landed into a nest. The new variant work in packs and swarm so fast that if an angel is alone when they fall . . .”
Sharine touched the boy’s shoulder, overcome by maternal affection. “I’ll be careful. I have no desire to either distract the fighters or suffer such torture at reborn hands.”
Face pinched, but clearly knowing he had no choice, the boy said, “I will lead you to the right location.”
“I’ll tell Titus this was my decision,” Sharine assured him.
A glum look. “Oh, the archangel won’t blame me. He thinks I’m an infant yet, still wobbly on my legs.”
Hiding her smile, she said, “Let us fly.”
They took off together, and Sharine saw at once that she didn’t need a guide. Dust flew up into the air some distance beyond the city limits as Titus’s forces engaged with the reborn. As she flew closer, she also understood why there was so much dust—large swaths of grasses, trees, and other plants had been destroyed by angelic fire.
Today, the winged fighters were mostly staying above, firing down at the reborn using inborn angelic power—or weapons that spouted fire. Ah, those were the very weapons she’d seen in the cities on her way here. The vampiric fighters hadn’t yet reached the site, but she glimpsed several pairs of angelic wings on the ground.
Including Titus’s honey-gold and cream.
Heart thundering, she didn’t understand why he’d land into danger until she saw him throw a bolt of energy into a hole in a small hillside—a bare bump in the landscape. The power exploded the hillside, throwing out stomach-churning pieces of reborn flesh along the way. That was when she realized the use of the word nest was deliberate and specific. These creatures were clumping together under the earth.
“Tunnels!” Obren shouted, pointing down at a ripple of power traveling back along the way Sharine had flown. As if through a burrow.
Roaring, Titus lifted fisted hands.
The ground bucked, then cracked, exposing a long hollow stuffed with reborn. Some were dead, but too many were yet alive, their eyes red and their claws ripping into each other as they scrambled to escape.
Blood cold, Sharine turned to Obren. “How far do these tunnels go?”
Her young guide’s voice was shaky as he said, “This, we haven’t seen before, Lady Sharine. They make nests but they have never before created burrows. These could go underneath the barriers we’ve built to protect the cleared zones, all the way back into the city.”
Understanding his terror, Sharine thought quickly. “Titus and the squadrons are busy dealing with the reborn here.” This nest appeared to be massive. “Let us fly back toward the city and see if we can spot possible danger. We can also alert the vampiric teams as well as the guards left at the barriers.”
Obren fell in with her, a young soldier used to orders from a senior.
Sharine was no scout, but she had an artist’s eye and that eye caught on the slightly misaligned barrier to the northeast. Flying there on heavy wings, she met a nonplussed angelic warrior in the sky. “My lady,” the other woman began, “is there anything I—”
“The reborn are burrowing under the earth.” Sharine pointed down. “And this barrier is no longer flush to the ground.”
The warrior, to her credit, went on immediate alert. “I’ll have to request assistance and move the guard line back until it arrives.” Lines flaring out from her eyes, her lips pressed tight. “We have no one at the border who can bore into the earth with their power and I don’t think the weapons at hand will do so.”
Do you remember Akhia-Solay?
Memory whispered, Sharine’s fingers curling inward. Power, grown old and potent and stiff from disuse, heated in her veins. Her palm glowed champagne-pale.
“Tell your ground troops to move away from the barrier.”
Mouth falling open, the warrior angel stared at Sharine’s hand—then quickly snapped into action, yelling at her people to evacuate the danger zone. Sharine waited until they were just far enough, then released the power.
The resulting hole was only a fraction of the size of Titus’s but it was enough to reveal the tunnel beneath. The border guard and her people arrowed back at the reborn within, all of them shooting the weapons that spouted flame.
Sharine, meanwhile, stared at her hand.
Obren was doing the same. “I didn’t know you could do that.” It came out a whisper. “I was told the Hummingbird was an artist.”
“I’d forgotten,” she murmured, her mind using the unraveling skeins of memory to travel right back to the genesis of Sharine.
12
Eons Past
Papa! Papa! Look what I can do.” Light shot from Sharine’s small fingers to crack one of the stones that littered the wildflower-strewn mountainside. “See!”
Black eyebrows drawing together over his eyes, her father crouched down to touch the rock. He drew back his finger with a hiss, the pad of it red. Face falling, Sharine pressed her lips gently to it. “I kiss it better,” she said, having learned that from the mother of her friend who lived the next mountain over.
Her father didn’t smile, just took her hands in his and stared at her palms. But there was nothing there now, no hint of the pretty fire. “It’s inside me,” she told him, bouncing on her feet. “All fizzy and hot.”
Her father wasn’t like her friend’s father, who laughed and took her for rides on his back. Sharine’s father was old in a way that made her bones ache. She was too young to know how to put that into words, but she felt the weight of his age like a looming black cloud on the horizon. She knew he loved her—she felt that, too—but it wasn’t the same as how other fathers loved their children.
“We need to fly home to your mother,” he said in his deep voice, his eyes the same sunlight shade as her own but with streaks of brown.
Sharine wanted to play longer on this mountainside, with the sun shining so bright that the wildflowers appeared to glow, but she knew there was no point in arguing or dragging her feet. The last time she’d tried, her father had left her alone until she “came to her senses” and flew home. It might be fun to play alone here, but then she’d miss him and mama and go home and they’d be disappointed with her behavior.
Sighing, she flew up. She couldn’t fly as smooth or as straight as her papa, but she could stay in the air the whole way home now. Before, she’d used to fall, or have to rest. But her wings had become stronger over the past year, though she was still puffed, with her heart going boom-boom, when she landed in the stone courtyard of their home.
“Mama!” she cried as she ran inside, excited to share her new trick.
“Sharine, sweetheart, how often have I told you not to run?” Mama’s words were mild, the smile she sent Sharine’s way kind . . . and tired. Sharine’s mother was always tired. It was just the way she was—Sharine had no memory of a time when her mother wasn’t on the edge of exhaustion.
“Sorry,” she said with a smile and slowed down. “I showed Papa my fire. Can I have some food?”
Her mother’s sky-blue gaze went to her father, her golden hair rippling and the light purple of her wings restless, but they didn’t speak until after Sharine’d had her snack and was outside. But she was bad and she tiptoed back to near the window so she could listen. She knew she shouldn’t, that it was bad to listen in on other people, but no one ever had interesting conversations around her and she wasn’t a baby anymore.
“Her fire?” Mama murmured in her husky-soft voice.
“Yes.” Papa’s deeper tones. “She’s showing signs of an offensive ability. It may be that our daughter is destined to be a warrior.”
“I can’t believe it, not with how she loses herself in her art.” Sharine’s mother sounded as if she was smiling, and that was nice. “It’s apt to be a remnant from my mother. She served Qin until she decided to Sleep.”