Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 118699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 593(@200wpm)___ 475(@250wpm)___ 396(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 593(@200wpm)___ 475(@250wpm)___ 396(@300wpm)
As with his own lands, the heat of the day was an uncomfortable pressure at present, the early part of night far preferred. He’d ended up overheated and enervated when he’d raced to Zanaya’s home after the skies sickened—and he’d been in the cold air of the clouds, high above the scorching glow of the earth.
“We should walk the night marketplaces when all is calm,” he said to his consort. “Act as we did when we loved in the streets of what is now old Marrakech.”
A startled huskiness of laughter. “Will you buy me trinkets for my wrists and ears again, lover?”
“I already have, Zani. But I intend to hold them hostage until you’re next in my territory.” Glancing down, he wasn’t the least surprised when those who spotted Zanaya against the night sky jumped up to wave, their grins obvious even from such a distance. The bows that followed were deep, and reverent, her people already in love with the Queen of the Nile.
More settlements than not already flew her flag, the colors of her reign violet and black. From the homemade nature of those flags, Zanaya hadn’t sent out a mandate. No, this came from the hearts of those she ruled. “You are beloved.”
“No, lover, I am new.” A quiet power to her. “Your young friend did much to lay the groundwork, but he’s right in saying the people believed he continued to feel more loyalty to the south. Now, those same people pin their fragile hopes on me, look to me to heal what Charisemnon broke.”
Always, she’d seen with a painful clarity.
“The people of neither your lands nor mine are ready for another war,” he said at last, thinking of all those he’d lost to Sleep or to tortured nightmares. “I can say the same for the rest of the world without fearing I speak a falsehood. Some of the structural damage has only recently been fully repaired—and a number of young immortals who were wounded yet struggle through their healing.”
Ofttimes mortals didn’t realize how long it could take a young immortal to recover from the worst injuries. Yes, an angel could grow back an arm or a leg, but it wasn’t a thing done without pain and suffering. Yet he could see it from the mortal side, too—after all, the mortal fighters who’d lost limbs in the war would never regrow them, would live their lives in a body forever altered.
“War is never good for anyone.” Potent emotion in each and every one of Zanaya’s words. “All it leaves behind is carnage of the body and fractures of the mind.”
“Yes,” he said, awash in memories of the rows of immortal and mortal dead, of the angels who’d fallen to Lijuan’s black fog, of the vampires who’d lost their lives on the cusp of freedom after their mandated century of service, of the children Lijuan had turned into a piteous plague . . . and of the piercing cries of the survivors.
Parents. Lovers. Children. Friends. Comrades.
War spared no one.
“I don’t believe it.” Zanaya came to a hover in the air, above a tree under whose wide canopy slept a family of cheetahs, their bodies curled and tails flicking as they dreamed. “The general is agreeing with me when it comes to war?”
Halting across from her, hands on his hips, he dipped his head a fraction. “I’ve witnessed too much suffering to see battle as a thing glorious anymore.” Always before, he’d focused on strategy, on the mechanics of war. This time around . . . “This war wasn’t ‘clean’ in any sense. Lijuan crossed lines that should never be crossed, and she made us all her accomplices.”
So long as he lived, he’d never forget having to cut down child after reborn child. Their blood had stained him, would forever haunt him. “And so long as war exists, there will be those who fight in a way that is without honor. Better then, to have a world without war.”
Softness in her expression, she said, “If only it could be so, lover,” before they both swept down and over lands bathed in the light of a fertile moon, round and heavy.
His consort, his Zani, led him eventually to a landing spot on a grassland that appeared to go on for miles, interrupted only by the majestic form of a single baobab tree in the distance. Its smooth trunk was a heavy weight of thickness, the thin branches high above crowned with leaves.
When he folded back his wings and turned, however, he saw another stand of trees in the shadows of the opposite direction. More akin to a small wood or nascent forest. He guessed it had grown up around a source of water.
It was toward those trees that Zanaya walked. He strolled with her, content to be in this time and place with her while a nocturnal bird rode the drafts above. Not an owl from the form and size. Likely a nightjar.