Archangels ascension, p.1
Archangel's Ascension, page 1
part #17 of Guild Hunter Series
Praise for Archangel’s Lineage
“With Nalini Singh’s dazzling descriptions of a world in turmoil hurtling toward disaster, and the beings who are tasked with saving it at the possible expense of their own lives, Archangel’s Lineage was absolutely breathtaking.”
—Harlequin Junkie
“Nalini Singh does…action-suspense with character and world background development all blended so well. The ‘villain’ was no person to fight, but the story was as riveting as ever…. Another abso-fab entry in the series that fans will devour.”
—Caffeinated Reviewer
“This series as a whole is one I find myself thinking about constantly…. The world and characters Nalini has written for this series are captivating and unforgettable. The world-building alone for this series is top-notch. I have no idea how Nalini keeps up with it, but she is absolutely a genius at writing series like this one.”
—A Book Lovin’ Mama’s Blog
“For an amazing, fun, heart-wrenching, heart-pounding read—get your hands on Archangel’s Lineage.”
—Fresh Fiction
“Nalini Singh continues to amaze us with another fantastic addition to this series…. As [with] just about every book I read from Nalini Singh, I could not put this book down.”
—The Reading Cafe
“Fast-paced, the story keeps you on your toes.”
—The Good, the Bad, and the Unread
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
Resonance Surge
Primal Mirror
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
Archangel’s Lineage
Archangel’s Ascension
Thrillers
A Madness of Sunshine
Quiet in Her Bones
There Should Have Been Eight
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
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Copyright © 2025 by Nalini Singh
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ISBN 9780593550038
Ebook ISBN 9780593550045
Cover art by Tony Mauro
Interior design adapted for ebook by Cora Wigen
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pid_prh_7.1a_151176520_c0_r0
Contents
Dedication
Today
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Yesterday (Seven Hundred Years Ago)
Chapter 3
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
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Today
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Yesterday
Chapter 33
Today
Chapter 34
Yesterday
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Today
Chapter 37
Yesterday
Chapter 38
Today
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Yesterday
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Today
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
About the Author
_151176520_
For Illium and Aodhan
Adi and Blue
Sparkle and Bluebell
Today
1
Illium swept past the sleek skyscraper that pierced the white clouds of an early spring day, so close that his wing threatened to brush against black glass tough enough to withstand an angelic strike. It made sense that the innovation had come about in New York—born in the mind of a mortal who had been “sick and tired” of angelic battles leveling his beloved city.
No building, not even the most reinforced, would survive should an archangel turn their ire on it, but archangels had armies for a reason. War was fought on many fronts, and that mortal, his name and history immortalized in the records kept in the Refuge, had given New York a critical advantage: its buildings would not fall easily in any engagement, would instead provide cover for counterstrike after counterstrike.
As it was, in the hundreds of years since the invention of this new material, New York had come under only the mildest of attacks—in all cases as a result of Illium’s asshole of a father being pissy that his son would rather serve another archangel. But even Aegaeon hadn’t had the heart for a true war, so New York hadn’t fallen again since the end of the War of the Death Cascade. But why be stupid and arrogant? Better to build ever tougher.
A tall woman with striking facial bones ran to a window of the skyscraper to wave at him. He dipped his wings in acknowledgment. She’d worked in that corner office for half a decade, was a senior associate as of two years ago, and her face still lit up every single time he flew past. Because she was family. Part of the clan that Catalina and Lorenzo had created when they fell in love countless mortal lifetimes ago.
The most extraordinary thing of it all was that his beloved friends’ little bakery in Harlem had survived the inexorable passage of time. The home of the city’s famous angel-wing alfajores thrived still in that old building where the recipe had first been born—a building that had never lost its warm heart, no matter h ow often it’d been repaired and renovated. Because every generation of Catalina and Lorenzo’s family birthed a passionate baker who wanted to carry on their legacy.
Illium had purchased the entire block piece by piece to ensure the little bakery would always have a home, that it’d never be forced out by progress or simple change. Harlem might morph and alter around it like a chameleon forever in flux, but even when that part of the city had gone dangerously gray for a period, become the haunt of vampiric excess and mortal pain, no one had dared come for the bakery.
The entire city knew that it sheltered beneath wings of a vivid, unmistakable blue veined with fine filaments of silver.
Using those wings to ride the air currents coming off the ocean, Illium flew through the crisp bite of spring. It whispered of snows not long past, was even more acute in the fine mist that kissed his skin as he rose through the clouds to fly at a higher elevation.
Other skyscrapers speared through the clouds around him, and lush floating habitats appeared to sit atop the puffy white, but none came close to the soaring wonder of Raphael’s Tower. The tallest point in the sky at any given time, built to offer clear lines of sight in every direction, it, too, had undergone many an iteration over the passage of time, but always, always it had been a beacon of power and light. No black glass for the Tower, its body a steel gray that glittered with metallic highlights. The windows were reflective at the top levels, the levels that would be the most important in any battle, and they intensely annoyed Illium the man, who was as curious as his pet cat.
First General Illium, however, well understood their facility and had been part of the team that had designed the Tower when it came time for a new build. He’d also made sure the entire building was technologically connected in ways unlike that of any other archangelic stronghold in the world. The one thing that had never changed, however, was the waterfall of railingless balconies from which angels took flight.
He caught sight of a pair of wings opening up in flight just then. Feathers the shade of dark mahogany, hair a touch lighter, the flight form of a warrior.
Andreja.
Seven and a half millennia of age or so—she’d forgotten her actual birthing day eons ago—she wore the amber of an angel far younger than her. She, who’d vowed never to lock herself to one lover. But even tough and battle-scarred Andreja wasn’t proof against Laric’s patient determination. When she’d told the healer he was too young to tie himself to her, he’d simply waited her out.
“He asks me every time he clocks up another century—and reminds me that we’ve clocked up another century together,” Andreja had complained to Illium. “Man is relentless.”
Illium’s lips curved at the memory; he knew all about quiet, relentless types. He also knew that Andreja had been so terrified of commitment because of how much she loved Laric; she’d been scared he’d fly away after he was healed of his own terrible pain. But Laric was like Illium: they loved deep and true only once…and for always.
Sweeping down through the clouds with his own lover’s smile in his mind’s eye, he dropped to the first set of nonreflective windows, got a wave from a passing vampire with hair of liquid jet that reached her lower back.
Her black bodysuit boasted a jagged cutout over the shoulder and upper chest area that peaked at one shoulder, and her boots had chunky heels of clear glass so high that he had no idea how she walked so effortlessly in them. While her hair had been black this past century, Holly’s eyelashes changed color with the day and her mood.
Venom green, came the laughing comment into his mind before he could ask the question, Holly’s ability at mental speech excellent. Not every vampire developed that ability, but Holly had been Made by an archangel. An insane one, but one of the Cadre nonetheless.
I’m feeling mushy in love today. She blew him a kiss before vanishing around the corner.
Three floors farther down, a wing of angels took off, with Sameon at the head. Illium would recognize those brown wings tipped with black anywhere, as he would Sam’s intense style of flight. The angel of some seven hundred years of age—give or take a few decades—had learned under Galen, but he was a much more contained flyer than the Barbarian—a direct contrast to his openhearted personality. Should the Tower hold a popularity contest, Sam would win.
Everyone loved the dark-eyed wing commander and loyal member of Elena’s Guard.
Today, Sam took his wing out over the glass and metal of the city and toward the crystalline blue of the water. That hadn’t changed, either—the glass and the metal that was New York. Different, yes, with more skyway bridges, the subways sleek with self-driving transports, and the buildings and floating habitats designed to be full work-life environments, including sprawling internal gardens brought about by the quiet influence of the Legion’s green legacy.
But the soul of the city?
It beat loud and clear in the traffic that buzzed along the streets, and in the distinctive yellow color of the autonomous cabs. The technology could’ve long ago moved into private vehicles, but while vehicles with the option for autonomous operation were popular—with the driver in control of switching it on or off at will—there’d been no demand for fully self-driving cars after a few unfortunate incidents where the safety features had caused the vehicles to come to a halt due to sensing “pedestrians.”
Said pedestrians had been frothing-at-the-mouth vampires driven by bloodlust who’d smashed into the vehicles and made a meal of the hapless passengers.
Turned out mortals could have immortal memories when it came to fear. Didn’t matter how the manufacturers tried to push upgraded vehicles they promised wouldn’t turn their drivers into sitting blood banks; no one was buying.
Illium, lover of tech though he was, couldn’t blame them.
Flying cars, of course, had never stood a chance in a world populated by angels, the risk of collisions too high.
He grinned as, just then, he spotted two street vendors yelling at each other across a busy avenue, no doubt complaining about patch poaching. The cabdrivers might have been superseded by technology, but the people were still there—and they were still New Yorkers. Hot dog stands, coffee carts, vendors hawking tourist tchotchkes, the colorful parade continued unabated.
All that had changed was the way of it: the stands and carts were flight capable these days—the sole land vehicles that had an exception to the usual flight rules, but only to claim or leave their assigned spots on rooftops and in habitats. They also had a ponderous maximum speed, and were limited to highly specific pathways at assigned times of the day.
No one wanted a hundred superpowered carts blundering about in angelic airspace.
“Markets have existed since time immemorial,” his mother had said to him during one of his visits to Lumia, as the two of them walked the bustling lanes of the local market accompanied by a gaggle of children who adored Sharine, the Hummingbird. “I cannot foresee any future in which they die a total death.”
Neither could Illium. The age of online convenience had been followed by a return to open-air markets—the young rediscovering that which their ancestors had disavowed—until the world now stood at a midpoint that had held stable for two hundred years.
One of the vendors saw Illium just then. The man’s top half was painted a vivid glowing pink, his bottom half apparently clothed but who knew. Illium was all for self-expression but he’d never been tempted by the trend for paint-closets that decorated their users each morning. At least the Tower had put a “must wear actual physical underwear” law in place.
The painted man lifted up a hand in a wave before going back to his argument.
“Aren’t you afraid that being so friendly with the mortals will make them no longer respect you?” a much younger Sameon had asked Illium after the then-youth was first stationed to the Tower, his dark curls atumble and his brown eyes painfully sincere. “You’re the only battle commander I know who has mortal friends, and smiles more often than he scowls.”
