Archangel's Resurrection, page 1
PRAISE FOR ARCHANGEL’S LIGHT
“Longtime fans will be delighted by the torturous pining in this slow burn.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Singh . . . masterfully balances the love story with the complex paranormal plot. Fans will be delighted.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Exquisite. There is no other way to describe Archangel’s Light, a book for which fans have been clamoring for years. . . . Master storyteller Nalini Singh is at the top of her craft with Illium and Aodhan’s story—a book rife with loyalty, friendship, loss, unbreakable bonds, and LOVE.”
—Harlequin Junkie
“Nalini Singh remains at the very top of my auto-buy list, she just dazzles me with every new release. Archangel’s Light is so well done, all at once moving the series plot arc forward, while taking readers on a journey through the past, and building a believable romance between two beloved characters in the present.”
—Smexy Books
“A tense, emotional, and fantastic story, revolving around the disaster from the deceased archangel, and the impaired relationship of two people we have always loved. . . . As in just about every book I read from Nalini Singh, I could not put this book down.”
—The Reading Café
“A fascinating read. . . . Fans will love it!”
—Fresh Fiction
“A love story that will touch the heart of every reader [who] delves into it. . . . A GOLD STAR of a read!”
—Addicted to Romance
Berkley titles by Nalini Singh
Psy-Changeling Series
Slave to Sensation
Visions of Heat
Caressed by Ice
Mine to Possess
Hostage to Pleasure
Branded by Fire
Blaze of Memory
Bonds of Justice
Play of Passion
Kiss of Snow
Tangle of Need
Heart of Obsidian
Shield of Winter
Shards of Hope
Allegiance of Honor
Psy-Changeling Trinity Series
Silver Silence
Ocean Light
Wolf Rain
Alpha Night
Last Guard
Storm Echo
Guild Hunter Series
Angels’ Blood
Archangel’s Kiss
Archangel’s Consort
Archangel’s Blade
Archangel’s Storm
Archangel’s Legion
Archangel’s Shadows
Archangel’s Enigma
Archangel’s Heart
Archangel’s Viper
Archangel’s Prophecy
Archangel’s War
Archangel’s Sun
Archangel’s Light
Archangel’s Resurrection
Thrillers
A Madness of Sunshine
Quiet in Her Bones
Anthologies
An Enchanted Season
(with Maggie Shayne, Erin McCarthy, and Jean Johnson)
The Magical Christmas Cat
(with Lora Leigh, Erin McCarthy, and Linda Winstead Jones)
Must Love Hellhounds
(with Charlaine Harris, Ilona Andrews, and Meljean Brook)
Burning Up
(with Angela Knight, Virginia Kantra, and Meljean Brook)
Angels of Darkness
(with Ilona Andrews, Meljean Brook, and Sharon Shinn)
Angels’ Flight
Wild Invitation
Night Shift
(with Ilona Andrews, Lisa Shearin, and Milla Vane)
Wild Embrace
Specials
Angels’ Pawn
Angels’ Dance
Texture of Intimacy
Declaration of Courtship
Whisper of Sin
Secrets at Midnight
BERKLEY ROMANCE
Published by Berkley
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
penguinrandomhouse.com
Copyright © 2022 by Nalini Singh
Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.
BERKLEY is a registered trademark and Berkley Romance with B colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
Ebook ISBN: 9780593198179
First Edition: October 2022
Cover art by Tony Mauro
Adapted for ebook by Molly Jeszke
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Contents
Cover
Praise for Archangel’s Light
Berkley Titles by Nalini Singh
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
The First Ending
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
The Beginning
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Cascade
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Desolation
Chapter 30
The Last Ending
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
About the Author
Immortality is a gift incandescent.
Immortality is a curse obscene.
—Unknown scholar
The First Ending
1
Lijuan, Archangel of Death and Goddess Over All, gloried in the howl of her power as battle raged around her, Raphael’s once-glittering city now broken and scorched. Impudent child. He should’ve listened to Lijuan, listened to his goddess! She’d told him what to do, had attempted to guide him. But no, he would make the wrong choice. He would choose to tie himself forever to a mewling mortal.
It mattered naught that his consort now bore wings and other trappings of immortality. She was nothing, a worm to be crushed under the boot, as Lijuan had once crushed her own worm. Because worms dug inside you, creating runnels and holes. Weaknesses. Fractures. Vulnerabilities.
Raphael had all of those. And today he would pay the price. They would all pay.
She laughed at the temerity of the archangels who’d gathered into an alliance against her. Together, they thought they could defeat her. When all they’d done was made things easier for her by congregating in one place. They might’ve been the apex predators on the planet once, but Lijuan alone held that throne now.
They were nothing but her servants.
Ignoring the chaos all around her, she scanned the area until she pinpointed the archangel she most wanted to remove from the equation. There she was. Small in stature, with skin “like the night, eyes that held the stars, and hair of violet moonlight”—or so she’d been described by the idiotic poet who’d written a scroll devoted to Zanaya, Queen of the Nile.
Lijuan had researched Zanaya as part of her investigation into all possible Sleepers who might prove a problem in the future . . . but she’d paid a little extra attention to the so-called Queen of the Nile. Not because she was more of a power than the others, but because Zanaya had managed to obtain the one thing that Lijuan had n ever been able to capture: the love of Alexander, Archangel of Persia.
Oh, he’d been kind to Lijuan, had told her that she was too young and that perhaps after another seven thousand years, they could come together. Only later had she realized that he’d simply been letting her down with kindness—by then, she’d seen true passion in a man’s eyes, had understood with bitter clarity that what she’d seen in Alexander’s had been . . . gentle, yes. Twined even with affection. But passion? No. Not even the merest inkling.
Why her and not me?
A gnawing question inside her ever since she’d learned of Zanaya and Alexander’s history. Because that’s how most ancient scrolls were written—with their two names linked. As if they were so much a unit that it was understood that should Zanaya walk the earth, Alexander would belong to her and no one else.
Rage burned through Lijuan.
How dare he choose this mere archangel in place of Lijuan, who was a goddess? How dare he still look at Zanaya in a way he’d never once looked at her! She shouldn’t have noticed how their glances met, shouldn’t have noticed anything beyond what was necessary to win this war, but she had—and the reminder of her pathetic past self enraged her.
Fueled by the lifeforce of those who’d sacrificed themselves to their goddess, she turned noncorporeal . . . and then she flew straight to the archangel who mocked Lijuan with her very existence. Lijuan had no weaknesses. After she killed Zanaya, she’d take care of Alexander. She’d consume them both, and once they were inside her, she would control them.
Zanaya never stood a chance.
Appearing behind her, Lijuan sank her fangs into the archangel’s neck, and drank of her life. Those fangs usually only emerged in angels during the Making of a vampire, but Lijuan could call them up at will. Yet another sign of her difference from these creatures who sought to humble her.
Sudden savage winds whipped at Lijuan’s hair as Zanaya called up her power, the archangel’s body twisting to respond to the attack, but it was a futile effort. Lijuan had swallowed up too much of the potent power that made up a member of the Cadre, and Zanaya was fading, fading.
Lijuan’s rage, however, oh, it continued to scald.
Because it did, she made a critical error. She eased her iron control on the vicious power which made her a goddess—and created a leak. A whisper of her own power flowed into Zanaya, a gift of which she was utterly unworthy. But no matter. Zanaya was dead anyway. At least now, Lijuan knew not to get so entranced by the refueling process that she lost her grip on the screaming endlessness that was her glory.
Sated for the moment, she dropped Zanaya’s shriveled corpse and turned noncorporeal once more. There would never again be a scroll written that paired Zanaya with Alexander.
What a terrible shame that their love story had come to such an inglorious end.
Her lip curled when she saw golden-haired and silver-winged Alexander race to catch his lover’s desiccated body before it could shatter against the earth. What a fool he was; so unworthy of the goddess she’d become. How odd that she’d once wanted him. Now, all she wanted was his death. His end. Nothing could exist in this world that reminded her of personal failure.
She was a goddess. She. Did. Not. Fail.
2
Alexander saw Lijuan attack Zanaya.
Fighting to get to her, he witnessed Zanaya’s wings droop, her body go limp.
But her mind, it was yet functional, yet held enough power for her to reach out to him along a pathway so old that it was part of his most elemental being: Xander . . . kill me. She must be sto—
Even had he the heart to follow her whispered plea, it was too late. Lijuan went noncorporeal again, dropping Zanaya from the sky. And his Zani’s wings were crumpled, her body dropping, akin to a broken bird’s. Zani! Zani!
Silence, nothing but silence from his quicksilver lover with her wicked tongue.
He caught her before she could hit the hard earth, his Zani, her spirit so bright and beautiful. Making a hard turn in midair, he arrowed his way toward the Tower infirmary. “Hold on, Zani. Hold on!” It was an order, but she was beyond hearing him.
Her body was a whisper, so light that it was as if she were made of air. Her skin had turned to paper, the flesh of her curves just gone and her skin cold, so cold. Cradling her as close as he could while not hurting her, he kept on talking to her, kept on trying to make her respond. But all he heard was a silence without end.
Then, and through all the hours that followed.
“You promised you’d speak to me after the battle,” he whispered to her after they’d vanquished the monster Lijuan had become, and he carried Zanaya’s broken body to Cassandra’s fire.
The seer of legend had promised to hold her safe.
Again, his Zani, who’d never hesitated to speak around him, said nothing. Her silence was a wound bigger than any other she could’ve inflicted on him.
He pressed a trembling kiss to her lips, and it tasted of the salt of his tears. “I can’t exist in a world where you do not.” He’d only lived this long because, no matter his anger at her, he knew that she Slept whole and unharmed. “Come back to me, my Zani.”
Silence.
Until the very moment when he forced himself to give her into Cassandra’s embrace. The seer’s lilac hair was licked by the gold and orange of the enormous, impossible fissure deep into the earth above which they hovered, and the seafoam auroras of her haunting—haunted—eyes were tender, her arms careful as she cradled Zanaya against the floating softness of her gown.
“You will care for her.” It came out an order.
Cassandra didn’t tell him he had no right to give her orders. Gaze lost in the terrible gift that drove her to a madness that had her clawing out her eyes when she could no longer stand it, she said, “Alexander, Archangel of Persia, Child of Gzrel and Cendrion, before you lie two paths.”
Her tone was eerie, echoing as if spoken in a great chamber.
Gut tight, Alexander clenched his fists. It took everything he had to keep his tone civil. “I don’t wish for blurry prophecies that could mean anything and need to be interpreted. I want to know if Zanaya will rise and when.”
Cassandra looked down at the body in her arms, a body she’d already wreathed in her flame. “This I do not know.” Her face was soft now, her voice softer. “But I know this, Alexander, this is an ending . . . but it isn’t the last ending. That, too, will come. Choose with care, for it will be the forever last.”
Then she was gone, taking with her his Zani with her brilliant spirit and warrior’s heart.
His own heart broke.
Always, no matter what, he’d known she would return. He’d been nursing a grudge against her for millennia, getting ready to have the fight that he was owed. He’d known she’d laugh at him for refusing to let it go, but then she’d have fought with him. After which, they’d have ended up in each other’s arms. That was how it was meant to have been; that was the future for which he had waited for so long.
This . . .
Pain a raw knot inside him, he didn’t know how he made it through the time that followed. He felt glued together by nothing but his own will when he finally returned to his territory. Once in his lands, he went not to his fort, but to an isolated ridge of mountains where no one could hear his heart splinter.
Wings flared out, he screamed out his grief and his rage till it brought him to his knees, but still the wound inside him continued to bleed. He’d survived the loss of Zanaya before, but then, it hadn’t been a true loss. He’d known that she would rise again, that her timeline would cross with his again.
He no longer had that surety.
His Zani might Sleep forevermore.
Alexander screamed again, and his pain turned the mountain molten, a river of gold and silver and rarer precious metals that crept down every crack and seam, where they’d freeze at some point, a sculpture of astonishing beauty carved out of Alexander’s grief.
3
Cassandra twisted and turned, unable to settle into rest.
The flames in which she slept were comfort, barriers against the slipstreams of time that showed her too much. But she could only fully escape those slipstreams when she was in a deep and true Sleep. And that she couldn’t fall into when she had within her care angels who were a sprawling weight of power and history.
