Archangel's Sun

you?"

 

So she'd been hurt and angry at the apparent broken promise. Then she'd touched his hand because even angry with him, she still loved him. His hand, gifted and strong, had been ice cold.

 

Her breath broken stalactites in her lungs, her blood crushed frost.

 

No angel in Sleep was ever that cold. Sharine knew that firsthand-she'd been a half-grown fledgling of eighty-five when she'd sat sentry at her parents' sides as they chose to slip into Sleep. She'd watched the rise and fall of their chests to the final point of stasis, hoping they would change their minds and not leave her all alone, but they hadn't.

 

"You'll be fine, Sharine." Her mother's voice firm but her eyes tired. "You are an adult now."

 

"We'll see you when we next wake," her father had added with a pat of her hand, but she could tell he was already gone, thinking of the rest he'd craved for endless years.

 

But long after they'd sunk deep into Sleep, they had been warm. Fifty years later, when she'd gone to their secret underground shelter to ensure no one had disturbed their rest, they'd still been warm. So she'd known that angels in Sleep didn't go cold, didn't have blood chill and blue.

 

She hadn't needed the healers' shocked gasps to confirm the truth.

 

Her kind and talented lover was gone.

 

Dead in the night, as he lay beside Sharine.

 

A thing so rare among angelkind that none of the healers in attendance had ever experienced the like. They'd had to consult dusty tomes, talk to older angels and archangels, until at last they found someone who remembered another case two millennia ago. Angels were immortal . . . but sometimes, the incidents so infrequent that they were forgotten between one lifetime and the next, an angel simply . . . stopped.

 

As if a long clock had finally run out.

 

The healers had told her all that and still she didn't com