by Nalini Singh
11
The hairs on the back of her neck stayed stiff as they exited their suite.
As they'd already noted, the walls had a seamless sameness that sought to deceive the eye and confuse the mind, their color that of the sand-colored stone mined from the nearby mountains, the doors set into those walls identical. Technically, it was soothing and lovely, but . . .
"It's like being in a horror movie," Elena muttered. "Like those scenes where a victim runs frantically down hallways in a hotel where everything's the same and there's no way out."
"What's a horror movie?"
Elena grinned at Aodhan's question. "I'll show you once we get home." Only after the words were out did she realize she didn't know which horror might be Aodhan's own. Raphael, you're going to have to vet the movies.
First you throw bread at my head and now you expect me to be a movie critic, was the outwardly haughty response, but he brushed his fingers against her own. It is to your honor that you care for his heart. I will tell you what he can and cannot bear.
The eerie sameness underwent a dramatic change once they hit a set of external corridors, the breathtaking scenery beyond Lumia framed by delicate stone archways. From this vantage point, it was possible to see all the way to the mountains over which they'd flown, nothing in between but wildflowers, and, closer to the peaks, the dark shapes of trees designed to survive in this arid landscape.
"The patterns are astonishing."
Elena and Raphael both turned to face Aodhan.
Clearly reading their total lack of comprehension, he smiled that quiet smile that had been known to cause both men and women near enough to glimpse it, to faint. "Look." He went close to a wall, traced lines on it.
It still took Elena well over a minute to see what he was pointing out, the impressions on the stone were so fine. And then she saw them everywhere. Intricate, delicate patterns covered the walls, the arched ceiling, the floor. "Wow." She literally pressed her nose to a wall in an effort to see exactly how the patterns had been created. "Are they all different?"
"No, not on the walls at least," Aodhan said. "They repeat within each hallway, changing only after a turn or once we pass the entrance to another hallway."
Raphael ran his own finger over the stone. "A meditation aid possibly?"
"I'm obviously not mentally enlightened enough for this place." Elena followed one intricate line with her eye, wondering at the patience it had taken to carve it out with such fine delicacy. "I would've never seen the designs on my own."
"Then I, too, am not enlightened enough, Guild Hunter."
"Of course not. Why else would you have had the bad form to fall in love with a mortal? Philistine."
Raphael's laugh had Aodhan's lips curving into a deep smile that was so rare, it made Elena's heart miss a beat. "It is less enlightenment and more a matter of artistic training," he said. "Once you see it, you can't miss it."
Hunkering down, his wings a graceful sweep on his back and the hilts of his dual blades drawing her eye, he traced near-invisible designs on the floor. "I think it's a map, a way to navigate Lumia." He touched his fingers to the nearest wall. "I haven't decoded the map as yet, but what I do understand leads me to believe the walls may open in places."
Elena whistled, crouching down opposite him to examine the lines. "No wonder the Luminata can swan about like ghosts." As if they could walk through walls. "Good way to put people on the back foot."
"I'm beginning to believe the Luminata enjoy holding knowledge above others," Raphael said as they rose to explore further, the three of them walking side by side with Elena in the middle. "They have always been secretive to the extreme."
"Things rot in darkness," Elena muttered, but even as she spoke, she knew she was probably being unfair--her life colored her view. Just because the Luminata were a little weird didn't mean they were in any way dangerous. "Aodhan, you think you can fully decipher the map?"
He nodded, the crushed diamonds that appeared to coat the strands of his hair catching the sunlight coming in from the outside to throw flickering light on the walls. "It appears to have been designed for ordinary angelic senses, rather than for those with extensive artistic training and an inborn spatial sense."
"I see."
Aodhan looked so discomfited at Raphael's toneless response that Elena elbowed her consort. "He's messing with you, Aodhan," she said, having glimpsed the laughter very well hidden in the blue.
The angel created of light glanced from one to the other before his expression warmed, his own smile open and unexpected and--Wow. Sparkle is freaking gorgeous. She'd always seen his beauty, but today, she truly understood why people coveted him.
When he is not broken, Raphael said, he is a shooting star caught midfall.
The sadness in Raphael's tone had her weaving her fingers through his. He's coming back, she reminded her archangel. And he's powerful enough to kick serious ass. No one will break him again.
Raphael's fingers locked around hers. After he was released from the Medica, Aodhan made it clear he wanted to be alone. We honored his wishes at first, but when we realized he was turning recluse, we tried everything in our power to pull him out of the abyss. All of us. Including Galen.
He'd turn up at Aodhan's isolated home and refuse to leave until Aodhan sparred with him. In the end, Aodhan gave in and turned up to sessions at the weapons salle just so Galen would leave him alone otherwise--in the worst period, it was often the only time he stepped outside his home. They sparred nearly every day during Aodhan's residence at the Refuge. It was always without any physical contact, but the social contact forced Aodhan to stay in the world at least partially.
Yes, there was a hell of a lot more to Galen than Elena had ever realized during her time under his instruction. If Aodhan was forced to hold his own against Galen for two hundred years, then he's probably far more well trained than pretty much everyone else in the Tower. Raphael and the others, they had to set him free.
"Aodhan," she said aloud. "Raphael just told me that Galen stalked you for two hundred years."
"Galen is like a storm that you either battle, or surrender to," Aodhan said. "And if you surrender because you do not care, the storm just gets stronger and stronger until the howling threatens to drive you insane and you must pick up the sword just to get a little peace."
Elena's shoulders shook at the bone-dry recitation. "Get flattened a few times?"
"Until I resembled the food your little hunter sister likes. Pancakes."
A snort threatening to escape as she gave in to her laughter, Elena wiped her tears away. "But here you stand."
"Galen would accept nothing less." With that simple statement that held deepest respect, Aodhan paused, stared at the floor for three long seconds before nodding and carrying on.
Right when she thought he was done talking, he touched a hand to the dual blades he wore. "Galen gave me these when he deemed me fit for battle. My originals were . . . lost."
Elena had no need to ask when or how, not with the shadows in Aodhan's eyes and the sudden tension in Raphael. "Damn it," she muttered sulkily, kicking at the floor. "Galen never gave me any weapons."
Shadows fading, Aodhan's eyes filled with a rare light. "It took me a hundred years of daily sparring to earn these. You have time yet."
"Perhaps we should go to the Refuge if you are so eager to see Galen," Raphael murmured.
"I warned you about that sense of humor, Archangel," Elena said darkly while Aodhan struggled to hide a smile.
They walked for an hour but didn't get anywhere near the library, where Jessamy had told Elena she'd find the historical archives; neither did they discover what had happened to the art. Back at their suite, Aodhan sat down and began to draw out the designs so they could all learn the map.
His hand moved strong and sure, the lines that flowed from his pen without flaw.
"This should give us a good start," he said after he was done. "To get back to the suite if you get disoriented,
follow this symbol in this grouping." His eyes met Elena's, shattered pieces of green and blue glass spiking out from a jet-black pupil. "There are further symbols I don't yet understand. We will explore Lumia together, unearth their secrets."
Elena nodded, hoping once again that hidden within Lumia would be some small piece of knowledge that might solve the mystery of her ancestry. And if it felt as if she was searching for a way to find her mother through time . . . was that such a terrible thing?
*
"I want to shower," Elena said after Aodhan left to return to his own room until dinner. "I feel dusty from the flight over the mountains." Despite his consort's words and though she'd already removed her weapons and boots, she hesitated to undress.
Raphael held out a hand.
When she took it, he led her to the bathing chamber and shut the door. There was no shower, but someone had already partially filled the large stone bath with cold water, minerals swirled into the clear liquid. It was a normal angelic courtesy to ensure guests didn't have to wait too long for their bath to fill.
Finding the handle--old but functional--that made the hot water start to gush out from a spout in the wall, Raphael turned it on.
By the time it filled to the top, it would be the correct temperature.
Then he threw his glamour around them both; they were now effectively invisible from any eyes that might seek to watch. His instincts didn't prickle in this particular space in the suite, but regardless, no one was going to see what was his and his alone to view.
"Did we go poof?"
Cheeks creasing because she did that to him, made the capacity for fun come alive inside him, he nodded. "But you must stay close to me for the glamour to encapsulate you."
"What a terrible, terrible hardship." Turning, she lifted her hair off her neck, exposing the soft skin of her nape. "Can you unbutton me?"
There were only two buttons, one each at the top of her wings, the dress designed to be pulled on from the bottom, with wings sliding into the slits created for them, then the dress buttoned into place at the top. Raphael knew that because he'd watched his consort dress, seen her pull the fabric over the black lace panties she wore underneath.
There was no bra, the support built into the dress, so when he undid the buttons and she began to slither the dress past her hips, he, of course, had to curve his arms around her body and cup her breasts. "Just helping keep them in place," he said, kissing her neck.
Husky laughter. "You really are a very helpful lover." Another push and the dress pooled at her feet.
He kept on kissing her neck, his hands bluntly possessive on her breasts.
Shivering, she leaned back into him, raising her arms to loop them around the back of his neck. "You make my bones melt."
He smiled against her skin, moving one of his hands from her breast, down the sleek, strong curve of her abdomen, past her navel, and into her panties. She gasped at the sudden intrusion, her breath coming in rapid pants as he used his fingers to bring her to the edge, her delicate flesh slick under his touch.
Holding her there, he said, "Turn your head." His voice was gritty.
She angled her head to him, met his kiss with primal hunger--and he pushed her over. Body arching as the shudders of her release rocked her, Elena never broke their kiss. And when her eyes opened, they danced with wildfire. "Raphael." A lazy, sated smile. "You're better than a shower. Way better."
And he smiled again.
Scooping her up into his arms, he placed her in the bath, which was nearly full, then stayed right next to her as he undressed. His arousal was heavy and thick, and when he stepped into the bath after shutting off the water, she flowed onto his lap, her arms around his neck and her wings half floating in the water.
This kiss was sweetly tender, two lovers who had total trust in one another taking a moment out of time. Sliding his hands down the sides of her body, he lifted her, brought her down. Had Elena not wanted him to do either, she'd have made it clear. But she smiled against his lips, and when his cock nudged at her heat, she put her hands on his shoulders and bore down.
His back was the one that arched this time, his throat the one that was kissed, his body the one that was petted and caressed. She moved on him slow and sinuous, the sleek muscle of her flexing under his touch. But there was only so much an archangel could take. Holding her hip tight with one hand, his other hand gripping her hair, he took over their intimate dance.
And his consort with the wildfire eyes, she smiled a wicked smile and leaned in to kiss him deep and hot and without restraint as her body clenched around him in a tease that could have only one end. As his spine locked under a slamming kiss of desire sated, he felt the Legion mark go active, felt his wings turn to white fire.
They wrapped around his hunter until the two of them burned up in the heart of flame.
12
An hour after their shared bath, a towel-clad Elena had dried her hair using the dryer Montgomery had packed. As shown by the electric lights in the suite and in the hallways, Lumia had undergone a certain level of modernization at some point, so there had been an electrical outlet his hunter could use for the dryer.
That done, and still protected by his glamour, Raphael seated on the edge of the bath only inches from where she stood in front of the bathroom mirror, he watched her slip into one of the more formal gowns Montgomery had packed for her. She'd made him go out and fetch the gown, saying she felt "creeped out" dressing or undressing in any other room in the suite.
He'd gathered his own clothing at the same time, changed into it before settling down to watch his consort.
It hadn't been a difficult task to find any of the items, since Montgomery packed in a pattern with which Raphael was long familiar after having the butler so long in his employ. Their baggage had arrived while he, Elena, and Aodhan had been exploring Lumia, having been flown in from the airport by a small unit of the Luminata's angelic guard carrying a net for that purpose.
No one had touched it since then, as per protocol.
Archangels might be used to staff, but they were also used to privacy.
The gown Montgomery had packed for tonight's formal dinner was in a shade of midnight blue and it had two wide pieces of fabric that came over Elena's breasts before gathering at her waist and flaring out into a skirt that frothed around her feet.
The back was open but for the fine straps that held the top together--and the long line of the spine knife Elena had slipped into a decorative black and gold metal sheath. Because of course, he'd had to go retrieve her weapons before anything else. She wore the harness below the dress, not because it equaled a more aesthetically pleasing appearance, but so no one could tear it off her without first tearing off her dress.
"Priorities," she'd said to him when he questioned the dangers of having the leather and metal rubbing against her skin. "And Deacon lined the leather of the harness, so I can wear it against my skin without issue."
That lethal blade wasn't her only weapon.
She wore a gun in one thigh sheath, a hunting knife in the other. Both of which she could reach for through invisible slits built into the froth of her gown's skirt. All of Elena's gowns had such adjustments.
Raphael was pleased.
He didn't want the spine knife to be her only choice: guns might not kill strong angels, but a bullet shredding flesh would hurt even the most powerful angel at least a little. It'd give her a second or two to get into a better defensive position should all hell break loose. "You can reach your gun?"
Elena had it in her hand almost before he saw her move.
A sharp grin, then she lifted her bare foot and placed it on his thigh. Circling her ankle with one hand, he watched her hike up her dress to put the gun back into place in the sheath she wore on her upper thigh. "Montgomery makes the tailor do mock-ups of my gowns and I move in the mock-ups to make sure the adaptations work."
Sliding his hand up the smooth skin of her thigh, Raphael made himself a promise that
he'd be the one taking off the sheath tonight. "I have your blade."
He allowed her to slip away her foot, then rose to close and buckle up the soft leather straps of the sheath on her upper arm. That sheath glittered with jewels, the buckles brilliant gold. The hilt of the blade itself was as encrusted with jewels, a suitable "show" weapon for an ordinary consort.
Elena wasn't ordinary.
And the blade he'd given her could separate a wrist from an arm without the least problem. "Will you wear your hair sticks?" Jason's princess had given the weaponized sticks to Elena, and Raphael had brought them in with the gown.
In return for Mahiya's gift, Elena had gifted the other woman a crossbow commissioned for the princess that was designed to support her personal style. According to Jason, Mahiya used it every day, not wanting her skills to become rusty.
"Yes," Elena said. "I want to have my hair up so the long knife on my back is visible. The sticks give me another hidden weapon." She twisted up her hair with quick, practiced hands, slid in the sticks to hold the twist in place.
Willing to step out of the bathroom and the shield of glamour at last, she padded to their bedroom and found a case of cosmetics before returning to the bathroom. "This should only take a couple of minutes."
Raphael loved watching Elena ready herself to head out into the world--even more, he loved that while she could spend ten minutes getting the position of a weapon just right, it really did only take her a minute or two to "paint her face" as she put it.
"It's a weapon, too, you know," she said as she focused on dusting her eyelids with finely shimmering color. "The face, I mean. Distraction and obfuscation. Took me a while to understand that."
Raphael admired his hunter-consort's wings of midnight and deepest blue and dawn and so many shades from black to white gold. "Michaela is an expert at it." The other archangel had long ago learned to use her extraordinary beauty to blind others to her power and ambition.
"Yeah, she's good." Elena picked up a small flat disk that she opened to reveal some kind of hard-pressed powder. "Sara's been helping me learn 'next level' stuff--beyond my usual routine."
"I would not think the head of the Hunters Guild would care much for such niceties."