“Even if they are Alexander’s guards,” Naasir said once there was no chance their voices would give them away, “they aren’t locked in time.” He’d seen electronics and caught sight of clothing woven in modern ways.
“They must leave the village and interact with the wider world to keep an eye on things that might affect Alexander’s Sleep.” Andromeda thought of Caliane again. “If I had to guess, I’d say the fruit and other trees we’ve seen, exist to provide a front, stop awkward questions about how the tribe survives. Alexander will have left them funds enough to sustain the entire tribe for untold centuries.” She bit her lower lip. “We didn’t see any wings. Alexander had very loyal squadrons.”
“Wings are highly visible,” Naasir pointed out. “Vampires, on the other hand, can quietly relocate with no one paying attention, so long as the vampire in question doesn’t hold a high-level position like Dmitri—or if his or her archangel is no longer in the world. Some do not want to serve any other.”
“You’re right.” No takeoffs or landings to draw attention to this place; just a quiet village held by vampires who had withdrawn from life after their archangel chose to Sleep, and those who were likely descended from vampire-mortal matings, or who were family by blood.
Only the deeply trusted must live here, for that was the only way a secret this big could be kept. If a child was brought up as a warrior among warriors, and told he watched over an archangel, Andromeda didn’t think that child would ever break the faith—for what greater honor was there in the world?
At that instant, Naasir once again lifted a finger to his lips. Andromeda went silent, ears straining, but she heard nothing beyond the normal noises of a moonlit night. A rustle of wind, the trees creaking slightly, the bark of another dog on the opposite side of the village. Naasir, however, remained on high alert as they continued on, his muscles bunched in readiness for an attack.
There was no attack. Not then. That came just before dawn, when the world was misty gray and they thought themselves safe. A crossbow bolt whipped by an inch from Andromeda’s face—would’ve been embedded in that face if Naasir hadn’t moved at the last second to push her out of the way.
Acting on instinct, she slammed behind a tree while Naasir dropped to the ground and crawled over to join her. “There are many of them.”
Andromeda pointed to the quivering crossbow bolt embedded in the trunk of another tree. It was black with distinctive silver etchings. Silver had always been Alexander’s color. “We’re friends!” Andromeda called out, going with her gut and judging these were Alexander’s people. “The enemy is coming!”
A hail of crossbow bolts was her answer. Pressing her back against the tree, her wings tightly curved in, she glanced at Naasir. “It was worth a try.”
His eyes gleamed as bright a silver as that on the bolts, but more liquid, more alive. Even as she admired the wild beauty of him, the part of Andromeda that made her a scholar was wondering at the color that marked Naasir. Silver was a distinctive shade in terms of angelic wings. Illium had fine silver filaments in his wings and so did some other angels, but Alexander alone had borne wings of pure silver.
There was a feather in the Archives that came from Alexander and it was a glittering shade she’d seen in such concentrated form on no other living creature but Naasir. Not even on Rohan. Alexander’s son’s wings were a paler silver at the top that flowed into a charcoal gray; he’d inherited his coloration from both parents.
Where had Naasir inherited his coloration? If someone had Made him, if there had even been an ordinary Making involved in his case, was it possible Alexander had something to do with it? But if that was true, why would Naasir have grown up in Raphael’s stronghold?