Guild Hunter 05 - Archangel's Storm

had spent the morning collecting information from quarters closed to others, and now landed in a farmer’s fallow field, heading to the shade cast by a hut likely used as a resting place during the planting season. He needed the whispering silence to think, to put all the pieces together.
    The fact was, though he’d said nothing to either Venom or Mahiya, he had the amorphous feeling that Mahiya was the key. But while she’d had relationships of some kind with both Eris and Arav, nothing significant connected her to either Audrey or Shabnam. Yet, his instincts persisted—as if he’d seen or heard something he hadn’t consciously understood.
    Frustrated, he took out his phone, deciding to pursue the answer to another question.
    “Jason.” The warmth of Jessamy’s smile traveled through even the tiny screen. “It’s good to see you.”
    “And you.” It was Jessamy who had first helped him remember what it was to be a person again.
    Standing outside the place where he’d watched the baby angels go to learn things, he waited for the last lingering student to disappear before he slipped inside.
    The woman within looked up, her eyes gentle with a kindness that wasn’t pity. “I have something for you,” she said, as if she’d been waiting for him, as if she knew he’d been listening to her lessons from the shadows for many days.
    Walking over, she handed him a set of hard books with big letters on the pages. “To help you remember.”
    He touched the cover, turned the pages.
    He’d once had books like this, had read them over and over even after he was alone, but then they’d crumbled, and after a while, he’d forgotten he was supposed to know how to read. Until today, when Jessamy’s newest lesson had turned a key in his mind, unlocking the sound of his mother’s voice as she taught him his letters.
    Taking the books, he left without a word.
    It had taken him months to break his silence, but Jessamy, with her wise eyes and kind heart, had never pushed, always left him room to breathe. Now, he said, “I have a question for you.”
    A tilt of her head.
    “You know Lijuan has evolved, and Raphael has gained a new ability. There are now signs that something may be happening to Titus, though I cannot yet say what.” The warrior archangel’s people were fiercely loyal, and Jason’s spies had only been able to ascertain that Titus was battling an illness. As archangels did not get sick, Titus must be undergoing a transformation of some kind.
    Neha’s ability to wield ice wasn’t public knowledge, thus he couldn’t speak of it without breaking the blood vow, but he had further evidence of a Cadre-wide phenomenon. “You remember Astaad’s erratic behavior.” The archangel had beaten one of his beloved concubines to a pulp, when he was known to be indulgent with his women to the point of spoiling them. “What I’m hearing is that he’s stabilized and may have gained nascent abilities over sea creatures.”
    Jessamy’s expression was thoughtful. “At the time, his behavior was explained by the disruption caused by Caliane’s awakening.”
    “The awakening of an Ancient is nothing to ignore,” Jason said, thinking of the lost city of Amanat risen in a place far from its origin. “But could Caliane’s awakening have been
triggered
by a more dominant force?” Lijuan’s dark evolution had predated Caliane’s waking by mere months, both events shifting the course of the world’s history.
    “There’s no—” Jessamy went silent. “Wait.”
    When she returned, it was with an old bound book she held with such care, it was clear it was fragile. “This history mentions an event called the ‘Cascade’ and states: ‘And the archangels were not who they should be, and bodies rotted in the streets, and blood rained from the skies as empires burned.’”
    Expression solemn, Jessamy glanced up. “This Cascade was over twenty-five thousand years ago. I’ll begin to search the archives for further information, but though her exact age is disputed, I believe there is one archangel awake who would’ve experienced it firsthand.”
    Caliane.
    Ending the call soon afterward to make another, he rose on a flight path toward the fort, aiming for the office Rhys kept near the barracks that housed most of the guard. The other man was overseeing a training exercise from his balcony, but he had the forensic reports.
    “Nothing we didn’t already know,” he said to Jason. “There was no finesse, no