by Nalini Singh
“Yes.” Walking closer, Noel took a seat beside Fen, Mimosa purring against his skin. “I think,” he said, his gaze on the angel who even now tugged at things deep inside of him, “you need to send Amariyah from this court.”
A quiet sigh, a weathered hand clenching on the cane. “She has ever had a jealousy toward angels that I’ve never understood. She is a beautiful woman, a near- immortal, and yet all she sees are the things she can’t have, can’t do.”
Noel said nothing, because Fen spoke the truth. Amariyah might see herself as an adult, but she was a spoiled child in many ways.
“I sometimes think,” Fen continued, “I did her a disfavor by asking Nimra to take my years of service into account as part of my daughter’s Contract. A century of service might have taught her to value what she is— for the angels value it.”
Noel wasn’t so sure. He’d seen Amariyah hold up a cup of coffee in front of Violet only the day before, tell the little maid that it was cold, then pour the liquid very deliberately onto the floor. There had been other acts when she thought herself unseen, and then the conversation tonight. The selfishness in her nature seemed innate, as immutable as stone. But whether it had turned deadly remained to be seen.
“Yours was a gift of love,” he said to Fen as Nimra rose from her investigation of the plants, looked over her shoulder.
It was familiar now, the way his skin went tense in a waiting kind of expectation at the touch of her gaze. They hadn’t made physical contact again since that walk in the garden, but Noel was discovering that, doubts about her true nature or not, his body was no longer averse to the idea of intimacy. Not when it came to this one woman.
He’d never had an angelic lover before. He wasn’t pretty enough to be pursued by those angels who kept harems of men, and he was glad for it. On the flip side, most angels were far too inhuman for the raw sexuality of his nature. Nimra, however, was like no other angel he’d ever met, a mystery within an enigma.
He’d seen her in the gardens more than once, her fingers literally in the earth. Once or twice, when he’d muttered something less than sophisticated under his breath, her eyes had sparkled not with rebuke, but with humor. And now, as she circled the pond to come to stand with her hand on Fen’s shoulder, her hair tumbling around her in soft curls, her expression was curious in a way he found unexpected in an angel of her age and strength.
“Are you seducing my cat, Noel?”
He stroked his palm over Mimosa’s slumbering body. “It is I who have been seduced.”
“Indeed.” A single word twined with power. “I see the women of the court are quite taken with you. Even shy Violet blushes when you are near.”
The little maidservant had proven to be a fount of information about the court when Noel tracked her down in the kitchens and charmed her into speaking with him. He’d already pushed the other two servants down the list of suspects after a subtle investigation— utilizing his access to Tower resources— had revealed no weak points in their lives that could make Sammi or Richard vulnerable to being turned, or signs of any sudden wealth. And after his discussion with Violet, he was certain beyond any doubt that she’d had nothing to do with the attempted assassination, either. Unlike Amariyah’s faux guilelessness, Violet’s was very much real— in spite of the ugliness of her past.
A runaway from a stepfather who had looked at her with far too much interest, Violet had collapsed half- starved on the edge of Nimra’s estate. The angel had been flying over her lands, seen the girl, carried her home in her own arms. She’d nursed Violet back to health and, when the teenager shied at the thought of school, hired a tutor for her. Though Nimra expected no service from one so young, the proud girl insisted on “earning her way” with her duties in the mornings, the afternoons being set aside for her studies.
“I adore her,” Violet had told Noel with fierce loyalty. “There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for Lady Nimra. Anything.”
Now Noel looked up. “Violet is more apt to ambush me on a dark night, if she considers me a threat to you, than flirt with me.”
Fen cackled. “He has the right of it. That child worships the ground you walk on.”
“We are not gods, to be worshipped,” Nimra said, a troubled look on her face. “I would not wish it of her— she needs to spread her wings, live her own life.”
“She’s like a rescued pup,” Fen said, coughing into a trembling fist. “Even if you cast her out, send her into the world, she’ll return most stubbornly to your side. You may as well let her be— she’ll find her own happiness faster if she’s able to do what she can to ensure yours.”
“So wise.” Nimra made no effort to assist the old man as Fen struggled to get to his feet.
Help, Noel understood as he rose as well, would neither be welcomed nor accepted.
The walk back was slow and quiet, Nimra’s wings brushing the grass in front of him as she walked arm in arm with Fen. Strolling along behind them, Noel felt content in a way that was difficult to describe. The humid Louisiana night, the air filled with the sounds of frogs croaking and leaves rustling, Nimra’s soft voice as she spoke with Fen, it was a lush sea that embraced him, blunting the raw edges within, the parts yet broken.
“Good night, my lady,” Fen said when they reached the small, freestanding cottage that he shared with Amariyah. To Noel, he said, “I’ll think on what you said. But I’m an old man— she’ll go when I am no longer here in any case.”
Nimra’s wings made a rustling sound as she resettled them before joining Noel to return to the house. Skirting the main rooms in unspoken agreement, they turned toward her personal wing— Noel’s room was next to her own, the area private. “Amariyah may have her faults,” Nimra said at last, holding out her arms when Mimosa stirred again, “but she does love Fen.”
Noel passed the cat over with care.
Purring happily in her mistress’s embrace, Mimosa returned to her slumber. Noel did up a couple of the buttons on his shirt but left the rest undone, the night breeze languid against his skin. “Did you know that Asirani is in love with Christian?”
A sigh. “I was hoping it was an infatuation, would pass.” She shook her head. “Christian is very rigid in his views— he believes angels should mate only among our own kind.”
“Ah.” That explained the intensity of the angel’s response to Noel. “It’s not a common view.” Especially when it came to the most powerful vampires.
“Christian thinks angel- vampire pairings are undesirable, as such a pairing cannot create a child— and we have so few children already.”
Noel thought of the angelic children at the Refuge, so vulnerable with their unwieldy wings and plump childish legs, their trilling laughter a constant music. “Children are a gift,” he agreed. “Is it something you—” He stopped speaking as Mimosa made a tiny sound of distress.
“My apologies, little one,” Nimra said, petting the cat until it laid its head back down. “I will not squeeze you so tight again.”
A chill speared through Noel’s veins. When Nimra didn’t say anything else, he thought about letting it go, but the slowly reawakening part of him insisted on engaging with her, on discovering her secrets. “You lost a child.”
It was the gentleness in Noel’s voice that tore the wound wide-open. “He didn’t have the chance to become a child,” Nimra said, the words shards of glass in her throat, the blood pooling in her chest as it once had at her feet. “My womb couldn’t carry him, and so I lost him before he was truly formed.” She hadn’t spoken of her lost babe since that terrible night when the storm had crashed against the house with unrelenting fury. Fen had been the one who’d found her, the only one who knew what had happened. Eitriel had left a month prior, after stabbing a knife straight into her heart.
“I’m sorry.” Noel’s hand on the back of her head, strong and masculine as he stroked her in much the same way he’d stroked Mimosa moments before. But he didn’t stop with her hair, moving his hand down to her lower back
, careful not to touch the inner surfaces of her wings— that was an intimacy to be given, not taken.
He pressed against the base of her spine. She jerked up her head, startled. Instead of backing away, he curved his body toward her own, Mimosa slumbering in between them. He had no right to hold her in such a familiar way, no right to touch an angel of her power… but she didn’t stop him. Didn’t want to stop him.
It had been a long time since she’d been held.
Laying her head against his chest, the beat of his heart strong and steady, she lifted her eyes to the silver light of the half- moon. “The moon was dark that night,” she said, the memory imprinted into her very cells, to be carried through all eternity, “the air torn with the scream of a storm that felled trees and lifted roofs. I didn’t want my babe to leave me in the dark, but there was nothing I could do.”
He held her tighter, his arm brushing against her wing. Still he didn’t withdraw, though all vampires were trained to know that angels did not like their wings touched except by those they considered their intimates. Part of her, the part that held the arrogance of a race that ruled the world, was affronted. But most of her was quietly pleased by Noel’s refusal to follow the rules in a situation that wouldn’t be served by them.
“I had no children as a mortal,” he murmured, his free hand moving over her hair, “and I know it’s unlikely I’ll ever have them now.”
“Unlikely, but not impossible.” Vampires had a window of opportunity of roughly two hundred years after their Making to sire children, those offspring being mortal. Noel had been Made two hundred and twenty- one years ago. She’d heard of one or two children being conceived after that period of time. “Do you wish to sire a child?”
“Only if that child is created in love.” His hand fisted in her hair. “And I do have children I consider family.”
“Yes.” The thought of children’s laughter dancing over the moors eased the ache in her heart. “I think I should like to spend time with them.”
“I’ll take you if you want,” he offered with a laugh. “But I warn you— they’re a wild, wild lot. The babes are likely to pull at your wings and expect to be cuddled on the slightest pretext.”
“True torture.”
Another laugh, his chest vibrating under her cheek.
“You do not sleep, Noel,” she said to him after long, quiet moments held against the steady beat of his heart, that big body warm around her own. “I hear you walking in the hall.”
The first night, she’d wondered why he didn’t leave the wing and head out into the gardens. Only later had she understood that he was acting as what she’d named him— her wolf. Any assassin would have to go through Noel to get to her. Though she was the more powerful, his act had left her with a sense of trust that the Midnight had stolen from her.
“Vampires need little sleep,” he said, his voice distant, though he continued to hold her.
She knew that wasn’t the reason he stalked the corridors like a beast caged, but decided to keep her silence. Too many lines had already been crossed this night, and there would be consequences, things neither one of them was yet ready to face.
It was the next day that Nimra’s heart broke all over again.
She was in the library, working through her contacts for hints about who in her court might have links to someone who could access Midnight— a fact she’d checked earlier without result, but that Noel had requested she recheck, in case anything new had floated up— when Violet ran into the room. Tears streaked the girl’s face. “My lady, Mimosa—”
Nimra was running around the desk before Violet finished speaking. “Where?”
“The garden, by the balcony.”
It was a favorite sunning spot for the aged cat. Sweeping through the hallways, Nimra ran out onto the balcony to find both Noel and Christian crouching at the bottom of the steps. Noel had his arms full of something, and Nimra’s heart clenched at the realization of his burden, her sorrow tempered only by the knowledge that Mimosa had lived a full and happy life.
Then Christian saw her and rose into the air to land on the balcony in front of her. “My lady, it’s better if you don’t—”
Nimra was already rising over him, her wings spread wide, her sorrow transmuting into a strange kind of panic at his attempt to stop her from going to Mimosa. When she landed opposite Noel, the first thing she saw was the limp gray tail hanging over his arm. “I am too late…”
A weak meow had her jumping forward to take Mimosa from his arms. He passed the cat over without a word. Mimosa seemed to settle as soon as she was in her mistress’s arms, her head lying heavily against Nimra’s breast as Nimra hummed to her. Five quiet minutes later, and her beloved companion of many years was gone.
Fighting tears, for an angel of her power and responsibility could not be seen to break, Nimra raised her head, met blue eyes gone flinty with anger. “What do I need to know?”
6
He nodded at a piece of meat sitting on the ground beside where Mimosa had liked to soak up the sun. “It’ll have to be tested, but I believe it was poisoned.” He brought her attention to where poor Mimosa had thrown up after chewing on the meat. “Violet.”
The maid ran down with a plastic bag. Taking it, Noel bagged the meat. “I’ll handle it,” he said to Violet when she went to take it from him.
Nodding, the maid hesitated, then ran back up the steps. “I’ll make my lady some tea.”
No tea would calm the rage in Nimra’s heart, but she wouldn’t taint Mimosa’s spirit with it. Holding her dear old pet, she turned to walk in the direction of the southern gardens, a wild wonderland that had been Mimosa’s favorite playground before age clipped her wings. She was aware of two deep male voices behind her, knew Noel had won whatever argument had taken place, for he appeared at her side.
He didn’t say a word until Christian landed beside him with a small shovel in hand. Grasping it, she heard him murmur something to the angel before Christian left in a rustle of wings. She didn’t make any effort to listen to their conversation, her attention on cradling Mimosa as gently as possible. “You were a faithful companion,” she told the cat, her throat catching. “I shall miss you.” Some— mortals and immortals alike— would call her stupid for bestowing so much love on a creature with such an ephemeral life span, but they did not understand.
“Immortals,” she said to Noel as they neared the southern gardens, “live so long that we become jaded, our hearts hardened. For some, cruelty and pain are the only things that engender an emotion.” Nazarach, ruler of Atlanta and adjacent areas, was one such angel, his home saturated with screams.
“An animal is innocent,” Noel said, “without guile or hidden motivation. To love one is to nurture softness within your own heart.”
It didn’t surprise her that he comprehended that quiet truth. “She taught me so much.” Nimra stepped through the curved stone archway that led into the concealed gardens Mimosa had adored. She heard Noel suck in a breath when he glimpsed the tangle of roses and wildflowers, sweet pecan and other trees heavy with fruit, pathways overgrown until they were near impassable.
“I didn’t know this existed.” He reached out to touch an extravagant white rose.
She knew he felt not shock, but wonder. Like the young kitten Mimosa had once been, Noel carried a touch of wildness within him. “She will enjoy being a part of this garden, I think.” Her throat felt raw, lined with sandpaper.
Noel followed her in silence as she walked through the tangled pathways to a spot under the sheltering arms of a magnolia that had stood through storm and wind and time. When she stopped, he hefted the shovel and began to dig. It didn’t take long to dig deep enough for Mimosa’s body, but instead of nodding at her to lay her pet down, Noel went to the closest bush heavy with blooms. Plucking off handfuls of color, he walked back and lined the bottom of the tiny grave.
Nimra couldn’t hold back the tears any longer. They rolled down her face in silence as Noel went back
two more times. When he was done, the grave held a velvet carpet of pink, white, and yellow petals, soft as fresh- fallen snow. Going to her knees, Nimra brushed a kiss to her pet’s head and laid her down.
The petals stroked against the backs of her hands as she lifted them out from under Mimosa. “I should’ve brought something to wrap her in.”
“I think,” Noel said, showering more blooms over Mimosa, “she would prefer this. It is a fitting burial for a cat who loved to roam, don’t you think?”
She gave a jerky nod and reached back to tug out several of her primary feathers. “When she was a kitten,” she told Noel, “Mimosa was fascinated by my feathers. She would attempt to steal them when I wasn’t looking.”
“Was she ever successful?”
“Once or twice,” she said, a watery laugh escaping her. “And then she’d run so fast, it was as if she were the wind itself. I never did find where she hid my feathers.” With those words, she placed the primaries beside Mimosa before blanketing her in another layer of petals. “Good- bye, little one.”