by Nalini Singh
“I’m going to hit you in a second.”
A wicked grin before he put his arms around her . . . with conscious care. Elena told herself to be patient; she’d be careful, too, if a friend came back looking sixty-eight percent dead.
Good thing he hadn’t seen her at ninety-three percent dead.
“I brought you a present,” he said when he drew back. Stepping out, he returned with her special lightweight crossbow.
“Eeee!” Elena made grabbing gestures.
Laughing, he placed it in her hands. Then he proceeded to crash onto the sofa beside her and raid the fresh tray of food Montgomery had left for her. His wing brushed her side, warm and heavy. An intense happiness uncurled deep within her. This was normal, her friendship with Illium an easy thing that didn’t stand on ceremony.
As he ate, she petted and stroked her beloved crossbow.
It didn’t surprise her that Illium didn’t mention her lack of wings—he probably assumed they’d grow back, as was usual with angels who lost their wings in accidents or otherwise. Stomach tensing, she decided to let that subject lie for now.
It didn’t strike her till five minutes later that a person who couldn’t fly didn’t need a specialized crossbow. The blow hurt. Fuck that, she thought furiously. Deacon handmade this crossbow for me and I love it. No goddamn Cascade was going to steal that joy from her.
Another thought blindsided her a second later. “Hey, hold on! Did you go inside the house to get this?” Her heart was ice.
“Uh-huh,” Illium said from around a mouthful of tart.
Putting the crossbow aside with slow deliberation, she turned and grabbed the front of his sleeveless leather tunic. “Let me get this straight. You went back into a house that was about to blow up just to retrieve my crossbow?”
“I saved Aodhan’s painting, too,” said the blue-winged demon she was going to kill the instant she was strong enough. “Oh, and the jeweled blade the sire gave you.”
“He’s going to murder you, too.”
Illium shrugged muscled shoulders. “Worth it.”
“Nothing is worth your life!” Releasing his unrepentant form, she picked up the crossbow again. “I should shoot you with this.”
Instead of another infuriating riposte, he leaned in close. “Ellie, will you be all right?”
She heard the tremor in his voice, saw the pinched look in his eyes, her Bluebell who had grieved so long for his mortal lover. He didn’t forget the people he claimed—and he hurt for an eon if they were lost.
Raising one hand to cradle the side of his face, she said, “I came back from the dead, didn’t I? Twice.” The first time, she’d fallen in Raphael’s arms, her back broken and her consciousness fading. “My track record’s pretty good.”
Illium bowed his head, let her run her fingers through the blue-dipped black silk of his hair in soothing strokes. Outsiders might see them interact and believe it an omen of betrayal but those outsiders knew neither her heart nor Bluebell’s.
Illium chose to serve Raphael, his fidelity to his liege beyond question. He coveted nothing of Raphael’s and had been devastated when it appeared he might ascend early and have to leave the Seven. Elena still worried about that. He was becoming more and more powerful, but he wasn’t ready for the Cadre, wasn’t tough enough to withstand their brutal politics.
Today, he smiled at last and returned to the food.
“You want to know who asked after you?”
“I can guess.”
“Not all of them you can’t.” A gleam in his eye. “The man who sells bagels on the roof and has a little sister who he brings to work sometimes.”
“Piero?” She thought back to the last bagel she’d shared with the former petty criminal, the one where she’d lost three feathers: shimmering indigo and dawn, midnight black, charcoal gray with indigo at the edges.
Her heart had broken a little more with each one.
Ridiculously touched by the idea that Piero had worried about her, she said, “How is he?”
“Doing a roaring business, but he asks every angel who drops by his stand for news of you. Go say hello to him when you can.”
“I will.”
“Your father came, too.”
Her spine turned into an iron rod. “Jeffrey in the Tower?” She’d expect frogs to fall from the sky first.
“Wasn’t a doppelganger, I promise. I even asked Dmitri if he was breathing and looked human.”
Elena couldn’t find the words to reply. She was just glad she’d called Jeffrey.
“He cares about you, Ellie.” An odd tone to Illium’s voice. “My father . . .” A rough exhale. “Never mind.”
The comment broke through her paralysis. “What is it?” Illium never talked about his father.
He just shook his head today, too. “Jeffrey’s here and he cares enough to keep track of you.”
At least he stuck around.
Elena had spoken those same words or similar enough plenty of times. She’d loved her sparkling, effervescent mother so much. So had Jeffrey. Marguerite had always been the laughing, loving heart of their family, sunshine bottled up in a delicate frame, her love for her husband and daughters worn on her sleeve. But, when the worst had happened, that love hadn’t been enough to convince her to fight to hold on to life.
She’d forgotten Jeffrey and Elena and Beth in her grief over Belle and Ari. Elena’s final memory of her mother would always be a swinging shadow on the wall, a high-heeled shoe abandoned on tile. Marguerite had chosen to leave them. Jeffrey had chosen to stay. At times, it was that painfully simple.
16
The skies above Manhattan were night-dark by the time Raphael landed on the balcony outside his and Elena’s living area. Warm light poured out through the glass, welcoming him home. His consort was ensconced on the sofa, lovingly polishing what looked to be a well-used set of throwing knives.
Looking up from her task, she raised an eyebrow. Why are you standing there staring through the glass like a creepy stalker?
He felt his lips twitch. I was simply admiring my consort. Entering, he walked across to press a kiss to her nape. “Where did those come from?”
“Deacon used my old throwing blades to get the weighting right for my new ones. He kept the old ones in storage for reference. Sent them over today to keep me company while he forges new ones.” She played a blade through her fingers with a dexterity he wouldn’t have expected so soon after waking. “I told him to send the bill to you.”
“Excellent. Even the greatest weapons-maker alive is not permitted to give my consort blades.” It was a promise between them now, his insistence on being the only man who ever gave her a blade. “Do I see a blue feather lying over there?”
“Illium visited.” She scowled as he came around the sofa to take a seat on the coffee table in front of her, his wings spread out behind him. “That idiot flew back into the house to grab my crossbow, the jeweled blade you gave me, and Aodhan’s painting.”
Of course Illium would’ve saved that precious piece of art. “He’s an incredibly fast flyer.”
“Don’t tell me you’re not furious with him for taking the risk.”
“It would do no good. Your Bluebell will never be sorry for what he did.” Lighthearted and joyous, Illium rarely turned intractable—that didn’t mean he wasn’t stubborn. “I’ve known him from the day he was born. When he decides a course of action is the right one, no one can make him repent—as a child, he’d take punishment for such things but would not say sorry.”
“Ugh.” She dropped her head back on the sofa, the fine strands of her hair spreading out across the velvet gray. “So, how was it? Your flight. Smite anyone while being Scary Raphael?”
He’d known she’d guess why he’d been absent so many hours. “I came close with one senior angel who allowed matters to slide while I was gone. No excuse exce
pt ennui—I’ve demoted him and that area of the territory will now be handled by a vampire of Dmitri’s age who normally works under Nazarach.”
Elena shivered at the name of the Atlantan angel. She’d never taken to Nazarach, considering him cruel beyond anything which could be justified. As an archangel who needed strong angels he could trust to do their jobs controlling vampires, Raphael had a different point of view, and the two of them had agreed to disagree on the issue.
“Did you fly as far as Atlanta?”
Raphael nodded. “It took far less effort and time than I expected. These wings are fast even now they’re no longer aflame.” Then he told her the most intriguing thing. “I was nearly in Atlanta when we spoke of Elijah’s condors.”
Elena’s mouth fell open. Shutting it on a snap of sound, she shook her head hard. “You’re telling me I made contact with you across multiple states?”
“Your voice was crystalline.”
“I wonder how far we could stretch it.” He could see her hunter’s mind working furiously. “Big advantage in a hostile situation.” But though her words were practical, positive, and her body looked more substantial than when he’d left, he felt her inside him, tasted her sorrow.
Elena had cherished her wings, the gift of the sky one she’d never taken for granted. They’d often gone for long flights for no reason but that she wanted to fly. She’d told him her ten-year flight plan was to learn all of Illium’s tricks so she could play them back on the blue-winged angel.
He went down on one knee in front of her. With her knives in her lap between them, he took his consort’s lips in a kiss that was a kick to his heart, a wrench to his soul. My Elena. The only woman who would ever live inside him in this way.
Her neck was painfully slender under his palm as he slid his hand around to her nape, her skin yet holding a faint glow. But the arms that came around his neck were fierce and tight and he found himself shifting his embrace to hold her harder, closer . . . until a deadly sharp point jabbed him in the gut.
Breaking the kiss, he looked down at the weapons in her lap. “Some men would consider this a very bad sign.”
“Good thing you know better, Archangel.” Kisses along the side of his face as he emptied her lap of the knives, then pushed the blanket aside to lift her up into his arms.
As he carried her into their bedroom, he said, “Keir will scalp me for this and I will let him.”
Elena’s eyes glowed silver as she brushed her mouth over his. “I need this more than I need medicine or food or air.”
Placing her on the bed, Raphael stripped off his clothes with warrior efficiency. The faded and well worn-in items fell to the floor in a careless pile as his consort watched him; her gaze held a hunger that went far deeper than the flesh. Its twin gripped him by the throat. Between them pulsed the clawing need to reclaim the bond the Cascade had attempted to break.
When he came over her, his wings spread out on either side above them, she sighed and pressed her palms to his chest. “Sometimes, I convince myself I’ve imagined exactly how magnificent you are, then you walk into a room and boom, there I fall all over again.”
Raphael couldn’t speak, his need a voracious storm that threatened to crack his skin, spill out into the world. He kissed her instead, pouring all his love, all his terror into it. Her hold possessive and without boundaries, she took every ounce, demanded more. When power began to crackle under his skin, the golden lightning fighting the reins, he wrenched those reins with brute force.
“Whoa.” A single word whispered against the dampness of his lips, Elena’s hands stroking down his shoulders to his biceps.
Glancing down, Raphael saw his chest fissured by golden energy. “I have it leashed.” It came out cold, deadly.
“There you go, being all sexy Scary Raphael again.” Elena traced a line down his cheekbone and her finger came away painted by lightning that twined around the digit before sinking into her skin. Shivering, she wrapped both arms around him and tugged his head back down.
Carnal heat burned out the cold, engorged his blood vessels, made his skin gleam with sweat. If you were not yet healing, I would be a brute. Claim her so deep and hard that he’d leave an imprint inside her nothing could erase.
Raphael. Elena arched under the raw sexual words from her archangel, surrounded by the crackling violence of his power. It was in the burn of his kiss, the rough heat of his skin, the electric blue of eyes once more shot with lightning.
Does it hurt? Those eyes were icy, almost cruel.
No.
They fell into each other, no more thoughts of power and chaos or anything else outside them. She didn’t know when her clothes came off, only that Raphael’s skin brushed hers, his hands stroking down her body. She felt no heavy pressure however, knew he had to be worried about crushing her. It wasn’t an issue she’d ever before encountered—in bed, there were no boundaries between them.
Clarity came, with it an acute sense of anger, because this was an actual problem. She stood on her anger hard before it could rise to the surface, but when they broke the kiss this time, Raphael’s eyes blazed the blue at the heart of a flame and his chest heaved. “Come up with a solution,” he said instead of just breaking things off—that would’ve hurt.
As it was, she kissed him hard before saying, “I have to be on top.”
He flipped their positions . . . and she saw that her body was covered with tendrils of golden lightning that had fallen from him. His entire body, in turn, was riddled with cracks of gold.
Fisting one hand in her hair, he hauled her down for a kiss.
Breathtaking power in his every heartbeat, in his every touch. White fire licked over his wings once more, fell on her body when he curved his wings around her. His unhidden possessiveness undid a knot inside her she hadn’t even known had formed: the icy fear that without wings, she was no longer the woman with whom Raphael had fallen in love.
Stupid. Her archangel had chosen her when she’d been a breakable mortal. Theirs wasn’t a love that was brittle and conditional. It was forever and it was brutal in its need. No matter their physical state.
He thrust his tongue inside her mouth, molding her breast with one hand. She moaned and gripped at his hair, rubbing her body against the sleek muscle of his. She was covered in so much of his power at this point that she could no longer tell when it sank into her. It was electricity over her skin, living electricity that tasted so deeply of Raphael that she had no compunction in laying herself bare to it.
A moment to gasp in a breath, Raphael’s voice harsh as he said, “Does it disconcert you? The lightning?”
And she realized the same stupid fear gnawed at the deadly archangel who held her. “If you’re into a mildly glowing skeleton,” she said against his kiss-wet lips, “I’m into a sexy archangel painted in lightning.”
Their next kiss was a slow and erotic thing infused with piercing love. When Raphael nudged her into the right position, she held her breath and sank down on him. Her inner flesh was slick with need and swollen with arousal, her hands braced on his chest, his holding her hips. It was a tight slide but she didn’t take it slow—she couldn’t, not the first time. Her pelvis met his, his cock held possessively inside her.
She shuddered in a relief so deep that it brought tears to her eyes.
Raphael sat up, cradling her against him as she straddled his body. They pressed their foreheads together, Elena’s fingers brushing his jaw and his hand stroking up her spine. “I love you until I can’t breathe.”
“It will only ever be you for me, Elena. I am yours.” His wings came around her, enclosing them in a cocoon of white-gold energy so brilliant that the only other thing she could see was the violent blue of his eyes.
They began to move together. Far slower and with more care than they’d ever before done, but this wasn’t about wild sex. Their need was far more visceral.
When tears rolled down her face, Raphael kissed them away. And when he buried his face against the side of her neck and squeezed her painfully tight, she stroked his hair and kissed his temple and whispered that they’d make it, that nothing would tear them apart.
When the wave broke, it did so in a blaze of white-gold that caused dazzling afterimages behind her eyes. Holding on to her archangel, Elena allowed his power to burst into every cell in her body. Fear had no claim on her anymore.
Not here. Not with her archangel.
Cold Cascade power or not, no part of Raphael would ever hurt her.
Lightning cracked her skin and exploded from her pores.
17
The Legion
The Legion saw searing light pour out of every window of the Tower suite that was the aeclari’s and they saw angels all over the city land on any available surface. High on the Tower, the Blade ran inside from where he’d been standing on the balcony, and the Viper ran in with him.
In the streets, mortals looked up, and froze.
But the Legion didn’t rise, didn’t head to the Tower. Instead, the Primary stretched his mind and spoke to the Blade. Stop.
No response, but thirty seconds later, the Blade returned to his balcony. Hard, dark eyes landed on the Primary—who had flown on silent wings to crouch on the edge of that space.
“Why?” the Blade asked, a device in his hand that the Primary had learned was used for communication. Others in the world did not speak to their brethren as the Legion did. Others were not always together even while alone. It was a difficult thing for the Legion to grasp and had been since their inception.
The Primary considered his words. “Elena and Raphael are not afraid.” That which tied the Legion to the aeclari had become stronger in the aftermath of their return. The Primary could not hear their thoughts and did not know what they were doing, but he felt a visceral peace at this moment, a sense of acceptance without boundaries.
He understood joy in its purest form.
He struggled to put this knowledge into words for the Blade, who was as loyal to the aeclari as the Legion. Then he understood. “They are home.”