Archangel's Heart

by Nalini Singh

  "Titus in a library?" It would be like finding Elena in one, to be honest. Titus was far more at home with a weapon, his body in motion.

  "It is not his normal habitat, it is true." Hannah laughed. "But there is a display of ancient knives on one wall that should be of interest to him."

  That answered the question of where at least some of the Gallery's weapons collection was displayed. "Promise me you won't go if you can't get Titus to come along."

  "I promise," Hannah said, a soft curve to her lips. "You know I am older and stronger than you?"

  "Yes, but you don't have a killer instinct." For better or worse, Elena did. Perhaps she'd been born with it, or perhaps it had come to life in the months and years after the brutal murder of Elena's sisters, when Elena learned that, sometimes, to fight a nightmare, you had to become an even more dangerous nightmare.

  Leaving her fellow consort, Elena considered their next move. It was Aodhan who said, "Your advice to Hannah was sound."

  Her lips kicked up, the ache of memory retreating to the background in the face of the current reality. "And I should follow it?"

  "It would be prudent."

  "We should get back to Raphael anyway, see if he's dug up anything." And so she could make sure he wasn't planning to head out into the murderous lightning that pounded Lumia.

  *

  As it was, things had come to a dead end with the investigation.

  None of the Luminata were talking and none of the Cadre who now knew of the incident--Raphael, Elijah, Neha, and Titus--could justify more extreme methods of questioning, as that would violate boundaries so important it might tear a permanent rip into the fabric of angelic society.

  Returning with Raphael back to their suite, a suite guarded by Titus's escort--who left on their return--Elena saw that Ibrahim was breathing easier. Laric sat beside him, his shoulders bowed and his hood tugged forward to shadow his face, but his hands gently ministering to the badly wounded angel as he did what he could despite his lack of training.

  That was when she remembered. Archangel, I have to tell you something about Laric.

  Raphael's expression grew progressively darker as she shared the story of the deadly fire that had consumed the sky, catching a young angel in it.

  I didn't know there were any collateral victims, he said afterward, and I don't believe Mother does, either.

  I don't think many people do. Elena wove her fingers through his. If he wants to leave Lumia, we can offer him a home, right?

  A wild blue inferno met her gaze. Such a soft heart you have, Guild Hunter. Yes, we can offer this healer a place, but he will still have a hard life. Many immortals are unforgiving of physical imperfections.

  The words echoed Aodhan's earlier ones, and they weren't cruel, simply factual. I know, she said. But I think if we can give Laric a place where he can grow strong inside, he might do much better than he's doing here. He's buried himself alive.

  Jaw held in a grim line as an impossibly desolate shadow passed over his face, Raphael nodded before returning his attention to where Aodhan had gone to stand by Laric. The angel's hands moved quickly. The smaller, slighter healer moved his scarred hands in turn, their conversation apparently intense.

  That was when Elena noticed that Laric's wings were much smaller bumps beneath his robe than they should be. Her eyes burned at the realization that the fire had done catastrophic damage to his wings, too--and yet he had the heart to heal others still. That was far more luminescent, in her mind, than anything else she'd seen in this place.

  Swallowing the response, she went to sit by Ibrahim, gently touching her fingers to his hair. It was tightly kinked and so soft. "Come on, Ibrahim," she whispered. "Don't let the bastards get you down."

  The biting wind kissed her mind, touched with the salt-laced air of the sea. Aodhan asks us to come close.

  When they joined Aodhan on the other side of Ibrahim's supine body, the angel spoke in a soft voice. "Laric says there was something beneath the Gallery once."

  The silent healer nodded from where he stood beside Aodhan.

  "He never went there, assumed it was for storage of unwanted things. He only has a vague memory of the trapdoor in the Gallery itself, but he remembers a door set into a wall near the Gallery entrance, which was sometimes open and from which he could see a flight of stairs."

  "The stairs would have to be impossibly steep, given the description Elena has given me of the Gallery," Raphael said.

  "Laric only caught a glimpse, so he cannot say."

  Blood pumping hot and dark under her skin, Elena looked at the healer. "Can you lead us to that door?"

  He seemed to start at being addressed directly, but his hands began to move. Aodhan translated. "Laric wishes to stay with Ibrahim, in case he falls out of anshara and is in pain, as sometimes happens, but he can give us instructions."

  Raphael looked to Elena as Aodhan got those instructions. "I think we should wait until after the bell for the Luminata's nightly contemplation. That time is sacred enough to them that Gian asked the Cadre itself not to disturb it."

  It was difficult to make herself wait when instinct was screaming at her that something monstrous lay beneath Lumia, but Elena nodded. It made sense to wait until the brothers had all scurried back into their rooms, leaving the hallways clear.

  Thunder crashed outside seconds later, so loud it vibrated through Elena's bones. Eyes locking with Raphael's, she reached for his mind. You are not going out there.

  He cradled the side of her face, just shook his head, the midnight strands of his hair framing a face of blinding power. And she knew. If that was the only choice, then Raphael would make it. Because he was an archangel. He stood a chance of survival even in the midst of the aberrant Cascade-born storm. If Lumia collapsed and the lightning hit her or Aodhan, they'd die.

  Body rigid, she threw her arms around him and just held on tight.

  It was twenty minutes later that Cristiano came by with a note for Elena.

  The librarian insists he destroyed the book, that it was a "worthless item that should've never been" in the Repository of Knowledge. I don't believe him, but I can't call him a liar to his face without causing grave insult that the Luminata may use to stir up trouble, for we both know the world needs no more chaos right now. I will, instead, keep scouring the shelves in case they have forgotten something else.--Hannah

  It wasn't what Elena wanted to hear, but at the same time, the librarian's caginess lent further weight to the fact that Hannah had inadvertently stumbled upon something important. Sliding the note into a pocket in an instinctive effort to keep it safe and away from prying eyes, she forced herself to leave Raphael--who was chatting to Aodhan--and went to sit next to Laric.

  "Do you want to stay here?"

  When the healer froze at her question, she simply waited. You didn't push a broken, scared bird. That would just make it attempt to fly away. It was at least two minutes later that he finally lifted his hands, dropped them again to glance over at Aodhan. But the member of the Seven wasn't looking this way, his concentration on his low-voiced discussion with Raphael.

  Elena looked around, grabbed a notepad off a nearby side table, and gave it to Laric along with a pen, before retaking her seat. He held the pen oddly and she realized the scarring on his hands made it difficult for him to write smoothly.

  He could, however, still write.

  When he handed the pad back to her, Elena saw he'd written the words in painstakingly formed English: There is nowhere else where I will be left in peace.

  Frowning, she said, "Do you want that? Isn't it lonely?"

  The healer said nothing for a long time. Then he wrote again: People are cruel.

  Young, Elena remembered, he'd been so very young when he'd been injured. Regardless of his physical age, he was still that boy inside who'd been rejected by his lover, then looked on with pity and maybe even distaste by the immortal world. Still . . . "Do you know Jessamy?"

  An immediate nod,
those scarred hands writing carefully on the page: She is strong. I am not strong.

  "I don't think you've ever given yourself a chance," Elena murmured and, acting on instinct, placed her hand on his shoulder.

  He went stiff before slowly relaxing. But he didn't pull away. That's what she'd thought: this boy wasn't like Aodhan, who'd shunned touch. People had simply stopped touching him. "Think about it," she said. "There are a lot of unusual things in New York--you won't stand out as much as you think."

  Grinning, she said, "The other day, I saw a man dressed as a chicken walking with a briefcase. He kept looking at his watch as if he was late."

  His surprise was such that she almost caught a glimpse of his face before he angled it so the shadows of the hood concealed him, clearly practiced at the maneuver. Picking up the notepad, he wrote: Angelkind does not want its mistakes out in the world.

  Anger burned Elena's blood, but she couldn't tell him that wasn't true. Even Jessamy had said something similar.

  "Watching one archangel execute another in the skies of New York," Jessamy had murmured, "is a far different case from seeing an angel with a malformed wing." A soft smile that told Elena the other woman was at peace with who she was. "One is an otherworldly thing beyond mortal ken, the other far too close to their own reality. Angelkind cannot ever afford to be that real, Elena. It would shatter the foundations of the world."

  On the heels of that memory came that of Raphael's bloody story about the angels who'd wanted to rule without any archangelic oversight.

  We live in a world of predators and prey.

  And the consequence of seeing an angel with a "mortal" ailment could be thousands, tens of thousands, of mortals dead after some idiot decided they could take on the angels and win.

  Because mortals could never win.

  Gritting her teeth, Elena narrowed her eyes. "There must be a way," she muttered. "There's always a way. We just have to figure it out."

  Laric appeared to be staring at her. What he eventually wrote on the notepad made her grin. "Yeah," she said, "I'm not like other angels. I'm a hunter angel." What the hell--people were already using that term. She'd just co-opt it. Then she'd make Demarco and Ransom and all her other hunter friends who insisted on wearing the ridiculous hunter angel T-shirts, bow down to her in homage.

  The idea made her want to laugh, regardless of the brutal storm outside and the subtler malice within Lumia. "Hunters are a different breed."

  The healer didn't respond, but she could feel him staring at her again. "Did you ever try to get your scars excised?" she asked. "Adult angels have an incredible healing ability from what I've seen."

  Laric's hand moved slowly across the page. The scars are impossible to cut through.

  Elena tried to process what he was telling her, considered the amount of energy that would've been released at the violent death of an archangel. There'd been no similar blowback when Raphael executed Uram, but those two had extracted a hell of a lot of power from their environment, then expended it during their fight, Manhattan a war zone. Badly damaged high-rises and a burned-out electrical network had only been the start.

  And in comparison to Caliane's and Nadiel's battle, Raphael's and Uram's fight had been between young "pups," as Alexander was wont to say.

  Nadiel had been younger than Caliane, but not young. The amounts of energy involved . . . It must've seared the scars so deep into Laric's body that they went to the bone itself. Raphael, do you think you could try your ability to heal on Laric once you're back from China? Not before. Not when they had no idea of what he might face there.

  I've been considering how best to utilize it.

  Elena met those eyes of endless blue, of an archangel whose heart was no longer in any danger of turning cruel.

  He spoke again, the cool winds of him a caress across her senses. We will not abandon him, Elena. Aodhan says as you did--that Laric is dying slowly here. A dangerous pause. The boy is afraid of being shoved out for interrupting the "serenity" of this place with his scars, so he rarely ventures out now.

  That idea didn't just magically appear in his head. It had been planted there by men who searched for luminescence in unkindness. "You've done an amazing job with Ibrahim," she said aloud to Laric and it wasn't just talk--Ibrahim was breathing easier, his color better. "Especially since you've only had a little training."

  Laric wrote again on the notepad. The damage is not so bad. He will heal. He seemed to accurately read her shock at that description of Ibrahim's injuries, because he added, No signs of weapons being used. Nothing to cause damage deep on the inside.

  The hairs stood up on Elena's arms.

  38

  Taking the notepad, she walked over to show it to Aodhan and Raphael. "Fists and kicks, that skews personal to me."

  "Someone in a rage." Aodhan's voice was quiet but his shattered eyes were shards of ice. "As the sire said, he had to have been kicked after he was down; fists alone wouldn't have collapsed one side of his body or pulverized his arm."

  A rustle, Laric coming to hover awkwardly nearby.

  When Elena waved him closer, he came. It was only once he was part of the circle that his hands began to move. Aodhan watched, his face increasingly grim. "He says he's certain it wasn't undirected rage--the injuries are too closely grouped for that. One side of Ibrahim's body was targeted. Particularly his arm."

  Elena stared at the ground with a scowl, trying to focus her thoughts. "Why that arm?" She raised her head. "I mean, I could understand targeting both arms if it was about him giving us the map, or if it was punishment because he touched something out of bounds, but one arm?"

  "Not something." Firelight flickered on the top arch of Raphael's wings, and then those wings were white flame.

  She heard Laric suck in a breath, stagger back a step, but when the fire stayed confined to Raphael's wings, he came back in a show of unexpected courage.

  "You touched Ibrahim on that arm."

  She stared at Raphael, his words vibrating inside her skull. "That doesn't make sense. I belong to you. Everyone knows that."

  His smile was coolly satisfied, his wings flickering back to normal as quickly as they'd switched to flame.

  Making a face at him, she said, "And you belong to me, Archangel." She gave him a smug look of her own.

  Laughing, he put a hand over his heart. "I would wear your brand on my skin, Elena-mine. Even if it meant searing it anew each day when I woke."

  "Ahem." Elena pointed to the wing that bore the bullet scar. "You already wear my mark, Archangel."

  He unfolded his wing, smiled in open satisfaction. "So I do."

  Laric had been turning his head back and forth as they spoke.

  Elena could all but feel his flabbergasted surprise at the conversation. Apparently, everyone expected archangels and their consorts to walk around being otherworldly and powerful, not act like the lovers they were. Though, at least with Elena, there was an expectation that she was apt to be a little odd, since she'd once been a mortal.

  It was Hannah who held the capacity to surprise the heck out of everyone: Elijah's consort was nowhere near as flawlessly ladylike as even Elena had once believed. If she'd really thought about it, she'd have realized the truth long before she and Hannah became friends. No artist ever walked in a straight line. And no warrior as powerful and as intelligent as Elijah would so deeply adore a woman who was a graceful ornament.

  "Regardless of the fact you are mine," Raphael said, folding back his wing, "it is too much of a coincidence that Ibrahim was beaten so badly within hours of interacting with you in a way that, to a jealous eye, would've been unacceptable."

  "If you're right, then they must hate you." Her knife was in her hand between one breath and the next, the hilt a familiar hardness. "Whoever it is must want to annihilate you." She bared her teeth. "Good thing you're an archangel."

  Raphael's responding smile was as lethal. "Yes. As I do not believe this is one of the Cadre, I am in no real danger."<
br />
  Glad her lover was such a tough and dangerous opponent, Elena put both hands on her hips. "I agree--I don't think anyone in the Cadre is carrying a secret torch for me," she said dryly. "Which leaves one of the guards or escorts or the Luminata. I know who I'd bet on."

  A sudden thought had her focusing on Laric. "Did you ever see a woman here who looked like me? It would've been decades ago. She had hair like mine, skin a little darker."

  Instead of moving his hands to answer in the silent tongue, he took the notepad and wrote out his answer. No. But I have heard rumors of a woman with moonlight hair who threatened Gian's luminescence with her seduction.

  Elena hissed out a breath. "Everything I've learned so far says this woman loved her husband, was true to him. She wasn't having an affair with anyone, much less Gian."

  Elena.

  She met Raphael's eyes, forced herself to breathe. She loved her husband, Raphael. Like he was her stars and her moon. And she loved her child enough to run to protect her.

  People make mistakes. He held her gaze. I'm not saying she betrayed her mate, but she was involved with Gian in some way. We must not dismiss the possibility out of hand. Aloud, he said, "Everything points to Gian."

  Elena nodded. "There's a chance it's a loyal flunky, but my money is on Gian." Those eyes that watched her, the lies he'd told, the G in the book of bad love poetry Hannah had found. "Can we move on him?"

  "I can kill him now," Raphael said flatly, his eyes metallic in their coldness.

  "And it'd cause all kinds of political issues." Elena put her hand on his forearm. "No, we get evidence no one can dispute, then we confront Gian." You don't need more problems with war hanging on the horizon.

  Laric was writing again, held out the notepad a moment later.

  "Well fuck," Elena muttered, turning the notepad to Raphael and then Aodhan. On it was written: Gian's closest ally in Lumia is a tall and thin man named Gervais. Like a shadow, he does what Gian does.

  "Not the lover but the man who coveted what the lover had?" Raphael's eyes remained cold. "Possible."

  "Whether it is Gian or Gervais," Aodhan said, "a man who would beat someone so badly for the 'crime' of having Elena touch him, this to me speaks of obsession."