“I won’t do anything to harm Aodhan.” Illium looked over Raphael’s shoulder into the room where Aodhan lay, then back at Raphael. “I want to torture and kill her.”
“No, Illium.” Raphael gripped the side of the young angel’s face. “Your job is here. It is the duty and the pleasure of your archangel to take vengeance.” He pushed Illium toward the room. “Go. And know this—she will suffer.”
Another angel might’ve argued with Raphael, but Illium and Raphael had a bond different from the one Raphael had with any other of his people. Where Raphael saw Aodhan as a warrior first and foremost, it wasn’t the same with Illium. For him, Illium would forever be the little boy he’d cradled in his arms after Aegaeon’s cruel departure, the child to whom he’d given his first sword, the youth who’d run to him in breathless excitement after he gained a place in a junior squadron.
Today, Illium’s eyes glittered, but he nodded, trusting Raphael to do what he would’ve done had he had the chance. He need not have worried. Raphael’s anger was of an archangel’s—nothing could match it.
Keir, he said, touching the mind of the senior healer. I interrupt only to say that every resource I have is at your disposal. If you need something me or mine can’t provide, tell me and I will obtain it.
I know, Raphael. But while we’ll do all we can, this battle will, in the end, be fought by Aodhan. A pause before he said, We must amputate what remains of his wings. They are rotting into his back and will only harm him at this point. Do you give permission as his sire?
Raphael didn’t point out that Aodhan’s parents were alive and awake. Aodhan had handed Raphael the power to make such decisions when he signed onto his team. Yes, you have my consent.
Better to do it now, while Aodhan was so weak he was unlikely to notice. By the time he recovered enough to do so, his wings would be in the process of growing back. Can you tell me anything of what was done to him?
I need more time to examine him, but I can tell you that his wings were clipped. An icy calm to Keir’s mental voice. The damage to the section that should hold his primary feathers isn’t a result of rot. I can see the wounds where his tendons and bones were severed—there are scars that say it was done over and over again.
Raphael could feel the glow coming off his wings begin to intensify, forced himself to get it under control. The instant you know more, tell me. I don’t care if you discover it while it is the darkest hour of night.
I will do so. Now go, leave me to my work.
Before he exited the Medica, Raphael made sure to tell Illium what was about to happen to Aodhan’s brutalized wings. Don’t try to stop the healers. This is necessary for Aodhan’s healing—and you know Keir will do Aodhan no harm.
The young angel’s response was calm. If he wakes and panics, I’ll remind him that I all but lost mine when I was far younger than he is today, and my wings are now so glorious others are jealous. His attempt at humor was shaky at best, but that he was trying was a good sign.
Illium would hold for Aodhan. As long as Aodhan needed, Illium would hold.
Raphael left not for his stronghold, but for the home of the enemy. Dmitri was waiting for him outside, on the wide stone path that led to the main doors. Others who belonged to Raphael guarded the entrances to the property.
“It’s done. Elijah’s people have disowned both of them,” his second said. “She”—Dmitri turned and spat hard onto the path—“is in an upstairs room with Galen standing guard. He didn’t want to risk that she’d take the coward’s path out. He threw that pathetic piece of shit Bathar in with her.”
Suicide was difficult for angels who weren’t incredibly young, but it could be done. “Good.” He put a hand on his best friend’s shoulder, squeezed. “Will you take the task of informing Aodhan’s parents?”
Raphael would normally pay them that respect, but Menerva and Rukiel were frightened of him. Not so odd if you considered that many people were frightened of archangels, but he found it strange when their son had never been scared in his company.
“Yes.” Dmitri’s hand fisted at his side, his jaw working.
“He is strong, Dmitri. He will return and he will be as powerful as always. Remember that.”
Neither one of them brought up the little boy who hadn’t survived abduction and torture, the little boy whose sobs and cries for his papa haunted Dmitri, but the ghost of little Misha stood between them—as he lived in the nightmares that haunted Dmitri hundreds of years after Misha had turned to dust.
Misha. Caterina. Ingrede.
Aodhan would not be another name to add to that litany of loss and grief.
Dmitri’s hand flexed, then curled inward again. “What will you do to her?” His eyes glowed with a red tinge—it was the first time in centuries that Raphael had seen his friend and second so close to bloodlust. Dmitri’s control over his vampiric urges was legendary.
“What she deserves.”
Dmitri didn’t question him further; he understood Raphael better than any other person walking this earth, and so he knew that the vengeance Raphael took would be appropriate to the crime.
Waiting only until his second had left to inform Aodhan’s parents, Raphael considered Lady Sharine. Jessamy, he said, reaching out to the kind angel of whom Illium’s mother was fond. Have you seen Lady Sharine today?
I’m with her now. Dmitri told me something was happening, that I should shield her from any news until you came to her.
Of course Dmitri had done that; that was why he was Raphael’s second. Because a second had to think for himself, do things without being ordered to do so. And because a second had to understand his archangel’s heart.
She’s quiet today, Jessamy continued. She’s painting while I sit with her and read.
Raphael considered which action to take first, decided on vengeance. Only once that was in play would he be calm enough to talk to Lady Sharine. To her, he would give a full accounting, nothing left undone. Can you stay with her awhile longer?
I’ll stay as long as needed, Jessamy said, her mental voice as gentle as her physical one. Rafa, is Aodhan home? It was a measure of her emotional state that she’d called him Rafa. These days, though she was the beloved of one of his Seven, she tried her best to remember his status as an archangel—rather than as her former troublemaker of a student.
Raphael felt no anger at the familiarity; he never would, not toward Jessamy. Yes, he’s home. But he’s hurt. I will have to break the news with care.
I will be a wall against all others, Jessamy promised.
Leaving her that trust, he strode toward the small stronghold. Trace, a vampire known for his suave ways and mild manner, stepped aside from the door he’d been guarding. He said nothing as he pulled that door open, but his eyes held the same red tinge as Dmitri’s.
All of Raphael’s people were angry.
Raphael had no need to ask for directions to Sachieri and Bathar. He could feel Galen’s rage like a beat in his veins. To his right hung the terrorized silence of a huddle of staff. Members of Galen’s squadron watched them with merciless eyes. Those eyes didn’t move off their quarry even when Raphael entered the space.
Leaving the warriors to their duty, he flew up to the mezzanine, then walked to the room that held the two people who had dared take one of Raphael’s own.
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Galen’s pale green eyes flashed when he saw Raphael, his anger a flame as fiery as his hair.
Go, Galen. Watch over Lady Sharine with your Jess. Ensure no one gets to her.
I would see him.
Don’t get in Keir’s way—and, Galen? Be ready. They hurt him.
A curt nod and Galen was gone . . . but Raphael saw the shine of tears in the weapons-master’s eyes as he left. Raphael knew the angel’s huge heart was full of rage, Galen the most volatile of the six men he trusted most. Jessamy would help him find ease
. Protecting Lady Sharine would further that aim.
He shut the doors behind Galen, then turned, looked.
Sachieri, she of the golden curls and sky blue eyes, sat on a heavy wooden chair, her arms twisted behind her back and tied tight. Her legs were tied as fast to the legs of the chair, each ankle secured with a separate rope. She was dressed in a gown of silken white that flowed like ice water, except where it’d been caught by the ties around her ankles. The cream hue of her skin bulged red-black around the ties.
No doubt, her wrists were as bruised.
The gag around her mouth dug into her skin and her eyes beseeched Raphael to set her free. She couldn’t touch his mind however, was too weak—and even had she not been, no one could touch an archangel’s mind that he did not permit.
Ignoring her for the time being, he glanced at the second prisoner.
Bathar had been hog-tied and left on the floor, discarded angelic trash. He was a follower, always had been. That Sachieri was behind Aodhan’s imprisonment wasn’t in question, but that didn’t make Bathar any less guilty.
Pulling over another chair, Raphael sat down in a spot from where he could see them both—and where they could see him. “You took one of mine,” he said with utmost calm. “What I will do to you in turn will make you forget that you were ever sentient beings, your minds and bodies a ruin.”
He used the barest flick of power to burn the gag from Sachieri’s mouth.
She began to babble at once in that pretty, high voice she used to make herself appear small and weak. Girlish. “I’m so sorry, Archangel Raphael! I didn’t want to do it, but he made me!”
Bathar bucked in violent protest, making stifled sounds behind his gag.
“I didn’t know he needed light to survive!” Sachieri continued. “If I had, I’d have made sure he had more! I tried to help him!”
Raphael smiled, and both angels went silent, the blood draining from their faces. “You do not need your mouths for me to learn what occurred. I’m considering obliterating your lower jaws to stop the whimpering and the lying and the begging.”
Silence now, huge eyes.
He went into their minds without warning. Small, weak, covetous minds. He saw that Aodhan had been Sachieri’s obsession, an obsession that caused an ugly jealousy in Bathar. Sachieri had driven the crime, yes, but Bathar had participated to the fullest extent.
He saw, too, how the two weak angels had captured Aodhan in the first place. Brave of heart and kind of character, he’d gone to help her as Sachieri feigned distress—a desperate broken-winged angel stranded on an isolated stretch of land between two courier waystations. They’d stalked him long enough to know his favored flight path on this route, had been willing to try again and again until they succeeded.
Bathar, concealed in a hide that made it impossible to spot him from the air, had shot a heavy-duty crossbow bolt into Aodhan’s throat the instant he landed. In the interim, Sachieri had retrieved the crossbow on which she’d been lying, and followed that first devastating blow with one to his heart, while Bathar shot another two bolts into his wings.
The wounds—especially the heart-wound—had been enough to weaken him for the next assault: the total removal of his heart. An angel could survive that, especially an angel of Aodhan’s age, but he couldn’t regrow his heart and fight for his freedom at the same time.
It was while he was unconscious that they’d clipped his wings and put him in a box of cold iron that they’d then had a squadron of their staff fly home. Raphael made note of each and every one of those faces, for they, too, would pay. The squadron had landed twice during the journey, so Sachieri could brutalize Aodhan’s healing heart.
Once at the stronghold, they’d taken the iron box inside via a wall from which the bricks had been removed. They’d then rebricked it, and flooded the room . . . and the box.
A badly wounded angel couldn’t heal while his body fought the urge to drown. As an archangel, Raphael would feel no ill effects from being immersed in water—his cells had developed past that point. But Aodhan was only a few centuries old. He’d have been terrorized, his lungs searching for air and finding only water.
Too old to die and too young to survive without unrelenting agony.
Raphael’s eyes went to Sachieri’s chest, to the oval-shaped locket of bright yellow gold that sat against the lush cream of her skin.
Rising, he ripped it from her throat, leaving behind a line of wet red.
When he opened the locket, it was to reveal a single tiny feather of glittering diamond light. He slapped her with the back of his hand, so hard that blood flew out of her mouth, and bone cracked. Then he went to her coconspirator and broke one wing in a single movement.
A muffled, high-pitched scream, Bathar’s eyes rolling back in his head.
Returning to his seat, with Aodhan’s feather held carefully in hand, Raphael continued to trawl through their memories. Keir, he said when he realized the pattern of injuries, Aodhan’s heart has been removed at regular intervals. They allowed him to heal just enough that he’d remain conscious, but never enough to become strong enough to fight them.
It would’ve also left him too weak to slip into Sleep—not that Aodhan would’ve made that choice. In his situation, with Sachieri and Bathar slavering for his responses, it would’ve equaled suicide. And Aodhan would’ve never given his captors the satisfaction of thinking they’d broken him to the point of fatal surrender.
That explains the scarring I’m seeing, Keir replied, his voice curt in the way of a man who was busy doing another task. Angels don’t scar this way. Find out what they did to his skin and wings to make them rot. Immersion in fluid alone—even long-term immersion—doesn’t do this to our bodies.
Recalling Sachieri’s babbling at the start, Raphael dug through her mind for proof. He needs sunlight, Keir. Needs it in a way the rest of us don’t. He fought the urge to fly to the Medica, cradle Aodhan in his arms and fly him high up into the atmosphere, until not even a cloud stood between him and the sun.
As for Sachieri and Bathar, they’d figured out Aodhan’s need by a process of trial and error when his wings began to deteriorate. So, every six months, they’d torn down the brick wall to drag him out into the sunlight. Not enough to make him strong. Barely enough so he wouldn’t die.
Of course we wouldn’t know that, Keir muttered. Why would we? Our Sparkle has always had the sun on his skin. I’ll make sure his room is full of direct sunlight.
Raphael didn’t pass on the rest of what he’d learned: that the two evil cowards in front of him had used Aodhan’s weakened state to touch him in ways abhorrent and unwanted.
That healing would have to come after the physical. And it would take a lot longer. Because while Aodhan was affectionate with those he loved, he was exquisitely private with everyone else. He took care with even the most inconsequential touch. Perhaps because all his life, people had wanted to touch him, tried to touch him.
Aodhan valued his ability to decide who he wanted that close.
Sachieri and Bathar had stolen that choice from him, stolen it in a way that made Raphael’s hand glow, his need to annihilate them almost overwhelming. Almost. “Oh, I’m not going to kill you,” he said when a wet patch spread on the front of Bathar’s pants, and Sachieri began to snivel and plead all over again.
He smiled again. “First, I will ask master artisans to build an iron box for each of you, lined with spikes and infested with spiders and biting insects, so that you can never rest, never not be touched.” As they hadn’t permitted Aodhan to escape their touch. “They will crawl into your mouths, set up home in your orifices, dig their teeth into your eyeballs.”
Sachieri threw up.
Ignoring the stink of it, Raphael continued. “Then I will bury those boxes so far beneath a weight of soil and stone that only an archangel will be able to retrieve you. And I will retrieve y
ou. I don’t intend for you to fall into a stupor and miss out on the experience of being buried alive.”
“Please!” Sachieri screamed, her beauty lost in a tracery of burst veins and smeared cosmetics. “We’re sorry! He’s so beautiful! We just—”
Raphael flicked out a hand and her lower mouth and jaw broke apart in a splatter of blood, bone, and flesh. Her head dropped. He raised an eyebrow at Bathar, then burned off his gag with a carefully modulated use of archangelic power . . . just enough to sear off the first layer of his skin. “Would you like to speak?”
A convulsive shake of his head, his eyes all but bulging out of his head as he fought not to scream at the agony around the red flesh of his mouth.
“A good choice. Now, to wake your lover.” Raphael dug his fingers into her mind, wrenched her out of the peace of unconsciousness.
After he had the full attention of her bloodshot, terror-filled eyes, he tapped a finger on the arm of his chair, Aodhan’s feather still curled safe in his other hand. “You took Aodhan from us for six hundred and ninety-nine days.
“Now, I’m not so severe that I’ll make you serve a year for each day.” A small smile of apparent boredom. “That would be tedious after a while, as you’d be so insane you wouldn’t understand what was happening.”
He spread out his wings, folded them back in. “And it would be a merciless thing to offer you no hope of survival. So I will say . . . one year for each month. Twenty-three years is not so long in the scheme of an immortal life.”
Gratitude in two pairs of watery eyes.
Raphael leaned forward. “After those years, if you are yet sane,” he said softly, “I’ll put you both in the same box—wooden this time—so that you’ll have company as I take you to an island far from all else, and set you aflame.”
It took a long time for an angel to burn to death, especially if the fire was set to be a slow, slow torment of embers. “I will only scorch you for the first week, sear you for the second, then burn you down to ash over the next seven days. A mere three weeks, then death. Is that not merciful?”
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