Archangel's Enigma (Guild Hunter) by Nalini Singh
Prophecy
Zhou Lijuan stared into the large metal disk that hung on the far wall opposite her throne. It was a piece of art given to her by an admirer long, long ago. The admirer was lost in the mists of her millennia-old memory, but she’d kept the gift—there was something about the sleek shine of the disk, the way the carvings on the edges had been done with such delicacy, that spoke to her.
Even after thousands of years of having it in the throne room of her innermost stronghold, she found it fascinating. Perhaps because that disk reflected her as clearly as any mirror, and yet was not fragile. The metal disk might dent but it would never break. It had reflected her strength and ambition as a young archangel, wisdom and power as she grew older. Today, it showed her the ravages of war.
Many in the world still thought her dead and it suited her to allow them to believe such, so long as they kept their hands off her territory. Her generals were taking care of security, though she didn’t think even Michaela was arrogant enough to attempt an incursion. All feared her.
Good.
But for the fear to remain, they could not see the woman in the metal mirror. Not yet. That woman had hair of a familiar icy white; Zhou Lijuan had been born with hair as black as night, but the color had faded with the growth of her power, as if her strength had leached it all away. By the time she was a thousand years old, her hair was “white as snow.”
Her mother had said that to her and if she tried very hard, Lijuan could sometimes recall the face of the woman who had given birth to her. Mostly because she had bequeathed Lijuan her fine facial bones. The reflection in the metal had dramatic cheekbones that pushed against delicately translucent skin so thin it appeared it might tear with a touch. Thin blue veins pulsed beneath, but it was the red blood vessels around the pearlescent shade of her irises that caught the attention.
It was as if her irises were swimming in blood.
And they were—Raphael had hurt her. Her rage at that knowledge was a violent cold deep inside her body. No one hurt Zhou Lijuan. She would annihilate the upstart Archangel of New York for the insult, but first, she would make him watch as she enslaved his mortal consort. And for that, she needed to have patience, needed to finish healing, needed to finish becoming.
Because not all of her had regenerated the same as before Raphael tried to obliterate her from existence.
Lifting her hand with muscles that were weak and quivering, she examined her nails. They had grown back a gleaming ruby red and hooked over her fingertips like the talons of a great bird of prey. The incisors in her mouth, too, weren’t the same. Her other teeth were pure white, the incisors dark scarlet.
It was oddly beautiful. As befit a goddess.
Those incisors weren’t functioning yet, however. She’d attempted to feed on the glowing lifeforce of loyal subjects who wished to sacrifice themselves so their goddess could heal quicker and with less pain, but while her incisors appeared strong, they weren’t mature. She couldn’t penetrate the skin, and even when she used a knife to make the cut, she could suck up only a little useless blood, not the lifeforce of the sacrifice.
Agony burned her nerve endings every instant of every day.
Her bones ached.
Her wings couldn’t hold her aloft.
Only her mind was whole.
Laying down her fully regenerated right hand on the arm of the throne of jade carved with nightmares and dreams and considered a treasure among angelkind by those who had seen it, she focused on the kneeling form of the angel below the dais. He had his forehead to the floor, his wings held gracefully to his back. She couldn’t remember how long he’d been sitting there and she couldn’t quite make out his form with clarity.