by Nalini Singh
Elena clenched her abdominal muscles. “Do it.”
All the air rushed out of her a heartbeat later. Directly in their line of sight and not ten meters away hovered two familiar faces. “Bluebell.” A whisper. “And the Primary.” Both looked a touch worse for wear, but otherwise fine. At that instant, they appeared to be arguing—as much as the Primary argued with anyone.
Beyond them hovered countless more wings of Legion-gray . . . silhouetted against the skyscrapers of Manhattan. “Can you ask about Montgomery and Sivya?” Their butler and cook were the most likely to have been in the house when it exploded.
Raphael spoke mentally to Elena’s Bluebell on the heels of Elena’s request. Illium. He, too, needed to know this answer.
The blue-winged angel’s head swung toward them. His eyes scanned the skies in a futile search—Raphael and Elena were invisible inside the glamour.
Sire?
Raphael saw the angel swallow hard even from this distance, his body held with a rigid stiffness.
Elena and I have returned, Raphael said, for he would not draw out his people’s pain. Montgomery and Sivya?
Safe. Illium shuddered, every muscle in his body seeming to unlock. We cleared everyone within a large radius and your home was already a no-fly zone with heavily patrolled borders. There should be no casualties.
Raphael passed on Illium’s words to Elena. A shimmer of wet on her irises. Squeezing her eyes shut, she spoke in a voice thick with unspoken emotion. “I’ll take that as a win.”
“As will I.” They had not risen on the cold bodies of others, had not stolen life by sending others into the abyss.
Sire, what should I do now?
Raphael had never heard Illium sound so uncertain, so shaken. Watch over this chasm until I can return to refill it. The sides looked to have been forcefully compacted by his power. The hole should fill if he could collapse those walls.
Jason is in the city. Illium’s eyes still searched for them, though he was well aware of Raphael’s ability to create glamour. Together, we can take care of it.
“Your Bluebell needs to see us,” Raphael murmured to Elena. “I will ask him to come to the Tower.”
“I’d need to see us, too, if we got eaten by a chrysalis then exploded our house.” The strands of her hair waved around her face in the gentle but crisp wind, the tiny feathers glittering a touch in the sunlight.
Illium’s face was stark with need when Raphael spoke the invitation, but he was one of Raphael’s Seven for a reason. Squaring his shoulders, he said, I will wait for Jason and collapse the hole first. Should I do a run inside to retrieve anything salvageable?
This was why the blue-winged angel was one of Raphael’s most trusted people. He had courage and intelligence both. No, Illium, on second thought, you and Jason should stay away from the chasm. I do not know if any remnants of Cascade-born power linger within and how those remnants will react to anyone but Elena and me.
Raphael could survive even if buried under tons of rock and dirt infused with wild Cascade energies, but Illium was too young. Keep watch until I return. Then we will go to the Tower together.
Sire. Ellie . . .
She is the Ellie you know. Her physical state would matter as little to Illium as it did to Raphael.
Raphael spoke next to the Primary. He had no need to announce his and Elena’s return—it had taken about thirty seconds after they’d exited the hole, but the Legion were once again a murmur at the back of his mind. He knew his consort heard them, too, for they were as much hers as his.
Raphael. Aeclari. Elena. Aeclari. We waited! You have come!
“Whoa.” Elena winced. “I think they’re trying to whisper, but seven-hundred-and-seventy-seven whispers pack a punch.” But despite the barrage of noise, her lips curved. “It’s good to be home.”
Elena. Aeclari. Raphael. Aeclari.
What do you need?
We are your Legion.
Help Illium maintain a watch over the chasm, Raphael ordered.
He directed his next words to the Primary and Illium both. Contact me at once should the chasm change in any way. Do not go any closer than you are now.
Sire. Two minds, two very distinct mental voices, the rest of the Legion fading away to a background murmur.
Raphael flew toward Manhattan, angling his flight so that the wind of his passage blew Illium’s hair off his face. The angel’s startled laughter held a sharp edge. The kind of edge that came from relief so visceral it was painful.
Cupping his hands to his mouth a second later, the blue-winged angel yelled out, “Ellie, I saved your crossbow!”
In Raphael’s arms, Elena’s face cracked into a grin so broad that it lit up the cold places inside him. As long as she existed, he would always be a little bit mortal, but he would have to be careful with this Cascade-born power. It continued to fight to manipulate him, continued to attempt to push him into a coldness that would make the most cruel, heartless decisions seem tenable.
“That is true love if ever I heard it,” he said to his delighted consort.
“I’m going to kiss him when I see him next,” she vowed.
“I suppose as he is so loyal I shall resist the urge to smite him.”
Elena’s laughter wrapped around him as the two of them flew across the choppy waters of the Hudson. As they did so, he spoke to the others of his Seven who were within his mental reach: Dmitri, Jason, Venom.
A dark-haired form appeared on a high Tower balcony moments later. Though he was but a pinprick from this distance, Raphael had no doubt at all that it was the vampire who had walked by his side for a millennium: Dmitri. His friend and his blade.
Your suite is ready. Dmitri’s voice was as hard as stone. Keir is in the city, as is Nisia.
Send both to meet us. He understood the hardness in his second—Raphael had been the same when he’d found Dmitri again after his friend had been abducted and tortured and broken in a way that had forever changed him. Some emotions were too big to show. They had to be contained in a tight fist lest they crush you.
Raphael—how bad is it?
When Raphael repeated Dmitri’s question to Elena, she snorted. “Tell the Dark Overlord that we’re breathing but also glowing. And if he tries any scent games, I’ll sharpen my toothpick arms and stab him with them.”
Lips curving, Raphael passed on the message.
I see the white-haired bad influence is still with you. Despite the cutting words, Dmitri’s tone had begun to unbend, as he permitted himself to believe in their return.
Jason’s voice was the next in Raphael’s head. Sire. Do you wish a report?
And that was Jason, loyal to the bone but unable to speak of emotions to anyone but the woman he loved. Soon. For now, handle the borders. I’m guessing the explosion was spectacular. It may attract attention.
The explosion lit up the sky across the entire city, Jason confirmed. Lady Caliane sent her best squadron to New York to help protect our borders. I will join them with a Tower squadron.
Venom’s voice slipped into his mind in a sinuous flow. Sire. It has been too long a wait.
The vampire with the eyes of a viper was often considered sophisticated and urbane—but Venom’s voice held no sophistication then, was open in a way Raphael knew the vampire was to only a rare few. He responded without words, with the kind of mental contact only an archangel could make.
Even as he did so, huge winged birds took off from the roof of a skyscraper below them.
“Raphael, are those condors?” Arching her head over to the side, Elena blinked. “I swear I just saw a jaguar sunning himself on a roof.” She rubbed at her eyes.
Raphael had caught the same fleeting impression of a pelt of spotted black and gold; halting in the air, he turned to check.
He and Elena stared at the splendid beast together. As if sensing them, it rai
sed its head and yawned, exposing a set of gleaming canines.
“This land will soon be far too cold for such creatures,” Raphael murmured.
“No, see—someone’s set up heat lamps for it to sit under.” As the beast lazily shifted its tail back and forth, Elena whispered, “Don’t look now but there are a bunch of pumas over on that other roof.”
“Elijah.” An archangel who had once been a general in Caliane’s army, and who could call birds of prey as well as large cats.
“He must’ve sent them to help protect your territory while we were lost in weird-ville.”
“Not the first thought that would come to the mind of another archangel,” Raphael murmured. “Yet I find I agree with you.” Perhaps it was the droplet of humanity in him, or maybe it was the relationship he had built with the Archangel of South America, but he didn’t believe Eli would attempt to annex his territory.
He resumed his journey to the Tower.
10
Venom stood waiting beside Dmitri now, his body held in that languid way that was natural to him—but there was nothing languid about the youngest member of Raphael’s Seven. He was coiled as tight as Dmitri. That no one else waited on the balconies told Raphael that—excepting the healers—his men hadn’t informed anyone else of their return.
He swept by deliberately close to the balcony, much as he had with Illium. They held their feet under the buffeting, their heads angling up as if following his flight path onto the balcony that led to his and Elena’s Tower suite.
The doors stood open, Keir and Nisia on the other side.
“Can I reach out and poke Nisia?” Elena whispered, even though her voice would not escape the power of the glamour. “Will she feel it?’
Lips curving, Raphael said, “You remain sore about what Nisia said to you?” She had never actually finished telling him about that conversation, but it wasn’t difficult to imagine Nisia making Elena an unwary victim of her somewhat sharp sense of humor.
“Maybe. Just a little.” Teeth biting down on her lower lip as they passed the healers, she stretched out a hand to tap the exposed part of Nisia’s collarbone.
The healer jumped, her hand rising to her chest and her simple gown of midnight blue swirling. “Ringworms,” she said very precisely in the aftermath, sending Elena into a paroxysm of laughter.
Raphael had to make himself let her go. Laying her down on their bed, he forced himself not to help as Elena pushed herself up into a seated position and began to tug the sheet up over her body. Wounded or not, his consort remained a warrior and that was how he’d treat her.
“Psst.” Elena pointed at the wardrobe. “Pants, Archangel. Only I get to admire that delicious view.”
Raphael raised an eyebrow, his lips tugging up slightly at the corners; in truth, he’d forgotten his own state of undress in his concern over her. “I live to obey, hbeebti,” he said, and found a pair of dark brown pants he often wore while sparring with Elena or his Seven.
“Ask me some day about a time more than a thousand years past when I was in a company of warriors who wore only paint on their skin when they went into battle,” he said afterward.
“Pictures or it didn’t happen,” she said, a little breathless as she finished tucking the sheet under her armpits.
He laughed, and he’d have thought that an impossibility only moments earlier.
Behind them, Keir and Nisia had shut the balcony doors, now pulled blackout curtains across them. Elena and Raphael rarely made use of those. Most often, the doors were shielded only by curtains of gauzy white. No one in the city was suicidal enough to land on this balcony and attempt to stare inside, but Raphael appreciated the healers’ care. Elena would choose when she wished to show herself—no one would steal that choice from her.
Nisia turned on the lights.
The bright light threw Elena’s emaciated form into sharp relief, too many shadows and hollows in her. Gut clenching and shoulders knotted, Raphael had to fight to keep his voice steady. “Ready?”
“They’ve both already seen all there is to see, so yeah, let’s do it.” The pragmatic words of a warrior, but her gaze was soft when it met his—vulnerable in a way she showed no one else in the world. “Come here first.”
Her hand was warm on his cheek, her kiss fierce. “I know I look like a bag of bones, but I’m me and we’re together.” Words that dared him to do anything but believe. In her. In them. “We’ll write our next chapter the way we want it—and we’ll keep on kicking destiny’s ass.”
He took another kiss, his hand fisted in her hair and his tongue aggressive. But when they parted, he was the one who felt owned. Branded.
Rising, his hair falling over his forehead, he said, “Not one chapter. Many.”
A quick grin. “A freaking tome,” she vowed. “Oh, and can you find me a phone? If I don’t call Sara, she’ll scalp me. Beth, Eve, my grandparents . . . Raphael, I have so many people in my family now.”
“Not one of whom will begrudge you the time it takes to have this consultation.” With that, he stepped back and dropped the glamour.
Keir and Nisia were seasoned healers who had seen much over the millennia of their existence, but both sucked in an audible breath at first sight of Elena and Raphael. Keir, his dusky face ageless, pressed his lush lips together and bent to kiss Elena gently on the forehead. The golden brown of his wings shimmered under the overhead lights.
Nisia, meanwhile, raised an eyebrow. “You haven’t been drinking my potion, I see.”
“I dunno.” Elena shrugged. “Maybe it’s internal parasites.”
Snorting, the healer shook her head. “It is good to see that being encased in a chrysalis hasn’t done anything to dent your winning personality.”
“Well, Elena.” Keir sat down on the bed on one side, the black silk of his hair cut in layers that brushed his jaw. “You are always my most interesting patient.”
“Hey, Raphael’s glowing like a lightbulb and his eyes are gold lightning.”
“In archangels, such strange things are expected.”
A gentle knock came on the door then, and Raphael realized Dmitri had told another person of their return. Opening that door without exposing Elena, he took in the tray in Montgomery’s hands. The vampire wore a black suit over a crisp white shirt, was as cool and collected as always . . . and the tray, it trembled.
“Thank you, Montgomery.” Raphael accepted the tray piled with food and drink. “My apologies for blowing up the house you kept so beautifully.” Neither Elena nor Raphael were of the kind to infuse a house with small domestic touches that turned it into a home—that was Montgomery’s domain.
A shaky smile. “I have three warehouses full of treasures. Now I will have room to display them.”
Setting the tray aside on a table inside the door, Raphael stepped out and then—for the first time in an eon—wrapped his arms around Montgomery. The vampire who was his butler had been a contained man from the first, not one to give in to displays of emotion. But today, he wrapped his arms around Raphael in return and held on with strength that would’ve surprised those who saw only his elegant surface.
Neither one of them said anything, and when they drew apart, Montgomery’s features were set in their usual composed lines and his hands no longer trembled. “I didn’t know if food was needed, but you always eat after anshara and that is the closest thing to this I could imagine.”
“It is needed. Tell Sivya to prepare Elena’s favorites.”
“She has already begun.”
Stepping back into the bedroom, Raphael nodded at his butler before shutting the door. When he turned, it was to see that Elena had a healer on either side of her, the two frowning as they checked her over using both their healing abilities and medical instruments pulled out of large open cases on the floor.
“Oh man that smells good!”
Plac
ing the tray on his consort’s lap, Raphael went to step outside to speak to Dmitri and Venom before he flew to Illium, but Elena glared at him. “You need to eat, too.”
To his shock, he realized he did. As long as an archangel ate now and then, he didn’t really feel hunger except in exigent circumstances; today, it gnawed at him. He sat down on the bed, and suddenly the huge span was full of wings. Keir and Nisia were being scrupulous about holding theirs close to their bodies, but there was only so much they could do.
“There is no need to waste your energy on proper etiquette,” he told them. “Neither Elena or I will consider it a trespass should you brush our bodies.”
Nisia gave a small nod of acknowledgment, while Keir allowed his wings to ease a fraction.
Leaving them to their work, Elena and Raphael ate with a determined focus that had the tray cleared within ten minutes. Raphael looked to Elena. “More?”
She patted the sheet over her dangerously concave stomach. “Don’t know where it’s going, but yeah.”
He wasn’t the least surprised to open the bedroom door and find a fresh tray waiting. After the two of them had demolished the food on that, Raphael ran his eyes over his consort. “You’re not glowing as much.”
She examined the skin on the back of her hand. “I think you’re right.” Then it was his turn to be scrutinized. “Your eyes are beginning to show hints of blue.” She held out her arm when Nisia requested it. “Go, find out if Lijuan got dead while we were dozing.”
“You are an eternal optimist.” He rose off the bed, but didn’t leave. Hbeebti.
It’s all right, Raphael. Eyes that had settled into a luminous silver at the edges bleeding into gray, with the faintest hint of blue nearest the pupil, held his. Now that the first shock is past, I can handle the examination of my back, the tattoo.
No. Raphael would not budge on this. It happens now, while I am here.
His hunter gave him a lopsided smile. Yeah, fine, I’m freaked. “I need you to examine my back now,” she said to the healers. “I have a very strange tattoo.”
Neither Keir nor Nisia argued.