“An unavoidable side effect.” The general stopped without warning. His eyes were unblinking when they met hers. “Any one of the Cadre would have meted out a punishment as severe for such betrayal. Heng was a trusted member of the inner court.”
Thinking once again of the vampire in Times Square, Andromeda was forced to nod. And Raphael wasn’t the only other archangel who’d delivered pitiless justice. Astaad had once staked a duplicitous angel in a pit filled with poisonous beetles whose bite caused flesh to necrotize, and left him there for an entire month. As for Michaela, she’d ordered every part of an angel flayed off piece by piece, including his eyelids . . . and by the time the task was done, the angel had started regenerating enough that the cycle could continue.
A shiver crawled up Andromeda’s spine.
“I take your point,” she said to Xi through teeth that wanted to chatter. “Our world is a harsh one.”
Xi started walking again. “Immortality equals arrogance for many.”
Andromeda wondered that he didn’t see the irony of his own statement. Lijuan was unquestionably the most arrogant of all the archangels. She believed herself a goddess and perhaps she was: a goddess should be able to give life, and Lijuan had created a whole new entity.
Simply because the reborn were ugly mockeries of life didn’t change the fact that Lijuan had the ability to alter the very nature of mortals and immortals both.
This time when Andromeda entered the throne room, the guards closed the doors behind her, cutting off all evidence of the outside world. Watching Andromeda and Xi walk toward her, Lijuan glanced at Xi, clearly speaking to him as an archangel could with those she chose.
Whatever his report, it seemed to satisfy the Archangel of China.
Andromeda had braced herself for Lijuan’s attention, but the touch of those bloody eyes still caused her primitive, survival-driven hindbrain to attempt to take over.
“Now, scholar,” Lijuan said. “You’ve had a night to sleep on your decision. Will you share your knowledge of Alexander?”
Unspoken was the silent threat that if she didn’t, she’d suffer a fate similar to that of the unfortunate angel in the courtyard. “My Lady,” she said, “it is difficult for me to break my vows when it comes to those who Sleep, but I believe you are right. The Sleeping ones need to wake to help steady the world.”
“Tell us,” Lijuan said.
Cold perspiration threatening to break out over her skin, Andromeda lowered her gaze, as if in deference. “All my research suggests that he would trust his Sleep to Titus.” The friendship between the Ancient and an angel who had once been a child in Alexander’s court was legendary.
Lijuan’s eyes grew sharp. “Yes.”
Andromeda pushed on. “The difficulty is in pinpointing the exact location.” Titus controlled the sprawling landscape of southern Africa, the line that separated his lands from Charisemnon’s cutting the continent in half. “However, after reading through all known records of their friendship, I believe he must lie beneath or within Mount Kilimanjaro.”
Lijuan smiled right as her face took on that impossible, haunting beauty. And for a moment, she was piercingly young. “I remember the stories of what those two did on Kilimanjaro’s peaks.” Her laughter was light, carefree. “A young and headstrong Titus once challenged Alexander to a climbing contest and beat him. At which point, they challenged one another to climb down in the dark.”
Andromeda was astonished at the warmth in Lijuan’s tone. It was as if she was a different woman. And the history that was her memory . . . Andromeda would’ve been no kind of historian if she hadn’t been drawn by it. “Did you know Titus as a youth, my Lady?”