by Nalini Singh
He had no memory of stripping her bare, but she was naked in his arms, all skin of dark gold and a determined strength. Her hands were on his own skin, his clothing abandoned. Covering her in angel dust, the intimate erotic flavor in every kiss, he captured her moan with his mouth and wrapped her up in wings of white fire that would never burn her.
Rubbing up against him, her nipples hard points, she whispered his name.
He spoke into her mind. Yours, he said, always yours.
They fell on the bed together, wings and limbs entangled. Her eyes reflected back the glow pulsing off him, luminous in their inhuman beauty, but the ring of silver that was a promise of her growing immortality, it hadn’t returned.
Her fingers in his hair, her mouth on his throat, she wrapped her legs around his waist. “Love me, Archangel.”
Raphael surrendered to his consort and to this coupling as rawly physical as it was imbued with a painful love he hadn’t understood until he met Elena. Hope, fear, need, the hunger to cherish, the twist of the heart when she laughed. His eternity was encapsulated in Elena’s not-yet-fully-immortal body. She was so easy to break, his consort, so easy to damage.
And she kissed him like the warrior that she was.
Raphael stroked her with rough hands, molding and shaping her breasts until her spine arched, a needy sound emanating from her throat. He kissed his way down her throat, lower, lower, and he made her scream his name while her fingers clenched in his hair.
She was quivering in the aftermath, her skin shiny with a light layer of perspiration and her breathing ragged, when he shifted position to brace himself over her. She stroked his chest with lazy fingertips that moved down to grasp his rigid cock.
Muscles stone, he gritted out, “I have no patience today, Elena.”
Slowly spreading her thighs, she guided him to the dark heat of her. “Me, either, Archangel.”
Her hands came around to his back on that husky admission—and he pushed into her. The musk of her was a deeply private caress against his senses, her nails sharp bites that anchored him to the physical even as dangerous archangelic energies seethed inside him. Their eyes locked as he sank home, and in the luminous gray, he saw forever.
Legs around his hips once more, she held him possessively tight as he began to move. All at once, it wasn’t enough to be braced over her. He lowered his body to hers but wrapped both arms around her upper back so he wouldn’t crush her. As close as two people could get, not a breath between them, they loved until there was no fear, no pain, no prophesied death, only Raphael and Elena. An archangel and his consort.
* * *
• • •
“You’re not glowing anymore,” his consort pointed out when she’d caught her breath.
The two of them lay together in bed, Elena on her front on one of his solid-once-again wings, Raphael on his back. She’d spread one of her wings over him, and he ran his fingers over her feathers, checking for any sign of weakness. “Good. I’m not used to having no control over my physical reactions.”
“Oh?” An arch sound. “I could’ve sworn you were swept up in uncontrollable passion not so long ago.”
“This is not a time to tease, Elena.”
Of course she just leaned over and kissed him on the jaw. “It’s exactly the time.” But her gaze was solemn. “You shouldn’t have produced ambrosia, should you? It’s only ever meant to be produced once, to turn a mortal into an angel.”
“That is the legend, but we have precious few facts.” No one, not even the oldest angels who walked the world, could remember the last angel-Made, it had been so long ago. The only thing that had survived was the legend of ambrosia. “It might be that the transition requires multiple doses.” Raphael traced the perfect beauty of a feather that graduated from deepest blue to violet.
Elena frowned. “Stage one, stage two, and so on.” Propping herself up on one elbow, she considered it. “I could see that. All my weird issues could’ve just been a signal that we were nearing the deadline for the next dose.” A dazzling smile. “At least we know your body will produce it when the time comes. No panic before dose three.”
Raphael couldn’t stop searching for the silver in her eyes. “What happened today?”
She told him all of it . . . then blinked. “Raphael”—her fingers spread on his heart—“you were two hours away. How are you here?”
31
“I have no answers for you, hbeebti. As I had no answers the day I caught Illium out of the sky.”
“Yeah, you were too far away then, too, but you got to him in time.” Elena bit down on her lower lip. “But that was across the city and this . . .”
Raphael continued his careful investigation of her wing. “If I have gained a new Cascade-born ability tied to speed, it is a valuable one. Unfortunately, I have no knowledge of how to access it.” When he attempted to focus on what had occurred so he could re-create it, all he got was a turmoil of emotion and blinding power.
“I knew only that you needed me and I was too far away.” He’d reacted with anger and determination. “I pushed myself faster and faster, and then I was lightning stretched across two universes.”
Elena listened with silent attention, her hair a glorious tumble over her shoulders.
“It felt for a single endless instant as if I was in two places at the same time. My position when you contacted me, and here, at the Tower. Then the two ends crashed into one and I dropped out of the sky to land on our balcony.”
“Like a rubber band stretched too tight snapping back together.”
“An apt description.” Bracing one arm under his head, his other one on her wing, he tried to think through the entire happening again but his brain saw only chaotic flashes, as if the speed of it had been too much for his mind to process. “My skin was afire when I landed—no pain, but a searing heat.”
“Kinda makes sense, if you went supersonic.”
Raphael began to reply when his attention was caught by a glimmer on her shoulder. He’d almost missed it because it was the same shade as her hair, but when he reached out and picked it up, it came away with ease. Long, silken white strands that floated against his palm.
“Am I shedding?” Elena said, tugging at her hair as if to check on its health.
“Elena, this isn’t hair.”
Frowning, she leaned in to pick up the delicate strands from his hand. “It looks like the lint that’s infested my clothes.” Her face went motionless, her breathing too quiet. “It was never lint, was it?”
“I don’t know what it is, but this morning I dropped off a sample at our labs for testing.”
Lines formed on her forehead. “So?”
“No answer yet.” And no return of silver to her irises. “Let’s go speak to them now—but first, hbeebti, you must look in a mirror.”
She noticed the change at once. “Shit.” Her fingers rose as if to touch her eye, dropped before she made contact. “I guess we wait and see. Maybe the ambrosia takes time to reboot me for stage two.”
Raphael glanced out the balcony doors as they went to leave their suite. A number of the Legion sat outside, watchful gargoyles whose huge mind had amplified Raphael’s senses when Elena called out to him. Stay with her when she leaves, he ordered, because he knew his hunter and the demons that haunted her.
“I need to look in on Harrison, too,” she said right then. “And I’ve been trying to track down that Jade guy I told you about.”
Raphael cared nothing for her brother-in-law when the unpredictable changes in her had him by the throat, but some battles had to be fought. Elena had to keep this monster from her sister’s door, had to save Beth as she hadn’t been able to save Ariel and Mirabelle. You should speak to Dmitri. If Jade is any kind of power, Dmitri will know his whereabouts.
No response from Elena, though she did raise her fingers to her temple and r
ub it absently.
Raphael stopped. Hbeebti, do you hear me?
Halting, Elena turned to face him, and he cursed himself for a worry that had no cause . . . then she said, “Raphael? What’s up?”
“Elena, I want you to send me a mental thought.” She’d developed the ability to speak to him on the mental level far faster than anyone had expected, and now the steel and wildfire of her was a familiar presence in his mind.
She’d braided her hair after showering quickly, and the single plait swung a little as she tilted her head, her expression acute. “I just did.”
“I heard nothing.”
Elena’s throat moved as she swallowed. “No silver in my eyes, and now I’ve lost mental speech.” Pressing her fisted hand against the center of her chest, she took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. “But my wings work and feel fine. This could be a normal part of my development.”
“I don’t care about the silver or the mental speech.” Raphael cupped her face. “I care about what they say about your immortality.” No matter how they worked it, how they justified it as a part of her development, she was steadily going backward.
“No signs of forward momentum, huh?” she said, as if they’d spoken mind to mind after all.
Elena had always understood him, even as a mortal with too much courage and not enough self-protective instincts. At times, he thought he’d fallen for her that first day on the roof, when she’d closed her hand defiantly over a blade, her blood dripping to the floor.
“I have asked Keir to journey to New York. You will cooperate with him and Nisia.” It came out an order.
Rather that bristling, his fiercely independent warrior shook her head. “I don’t think they’ll be able to do much. Right now, with all records of previous angels-Made lost, I may as well be one of a kind.”
Unique beyond compare.
Words spoken by a fascinated Alexander. The Ancient still had trouble with the concept of a mortal turned angel, though he, too, had heard the legend of ambrosia.
“Come on, let’s go find out about the lint before I run down Jade.” Firm resolve in Elena’s voice.
No, his warrior would not sit and wait for events to overtake her. “We’ll speak to Lucius on the way, get him to run tests on your blood.”
“Yes, good plan. Maybe he can figure out what the ambrosia’s doing to my insides.” She held up another strand of the gossamer “lint.” “Just saw this on my wrist. No idea when it appeared or if it was caught in my clothes already and got shaken loose when I put them back on.”
Raphael said nothing, but three minutes later, he watched Lucius draw Elena’s blood, and he told the angel with wings of softest yellow exactly what he wanted him to check. “Focus on any changes. You have the results from Elena’s blood over the years.” Taken by the healers as part of routine checkups to monitor the progress of her immortality. “Find out if anything has altered.”
Lucius bowed his head. “Sire.”
“Compare my blood against mortal, vampire, and angel exemplars, too,” Elena said, her jaw set. “No point avoiding the truth if I’m regressing.”
Their next stop was Nisia’s office.
“I’ve just received the results,” the senior Tower physician said when Elena held out the gossamer strands in a wordless question. “It is a natural byproduct of some process in your body.”
“Like hair or nails?” Elena dropped the strands into a sample receptacle Nisia held out.
“Yes. Its structure comes closest to hair, though its tensile strength is far weaker.”
“Am I going to turn into Elena Haireaux?”
“At this stage, there are no indications the material is adhering to your skin. My working theory is that it is a waste product—your body discarding that which it does not need. But it’s a theory only, with no proof.”
“That is not a satisfactory answer, Nisia.” Crackling with ice, Raphael’s voice created frost in the air.
Elena shot him a scowl, her thoughts written on her face. Stop bullying Nisia for what she can’t control.
Clenching his jaw, Raphael wrenched himself back from the edge. Elena was right; Nisia had done nothing to earn his anger. “You have the apology of your archangel, Nisia.”
A wideness to the healer’s eyes he’d rarely seen, she was so competent and self-assured. “There is no need, sire. I am as frustrated as you.” Picking up a medical device, she pressed it to Elena’s heart.
It was merely the first test.
Heart, lungs, muscles, bones, Nisia ran Elena through the gamut.
“Can I fly safely?” Elena asked that question in a calm tone, but Raphael could feel her need to fly as a second heartbeat.
“Your wings are in perfect condition and your bones no longer have the tunnels,” Nisia said. “I see no reason to ground you.”
Leaving Nisia to continue her work, Raphael’s hunter walked with him to the privacy of the balcony outside the infirmary. “Do you have more archangel business today?”
He couldn’t smile at her reference to their earlier play. “Partway through your tests, Dmitri informed me of a kiss of vampires in an area some distance from here who appear to believe they are out of the Tower’s sights.” He could send Illium or Dmitri to remind the vampires of the fallacy of their thinking, but an archangelic reminder would reverberate through the entire territory, nipping any other such erroneous thoughts in the bud.
“Go,” Elena whispered.
“Elena.”
“I know. I’ll land if I feel the merest twinge.” Elena placed her hands on his chest, her expression strong and her words a promise. “I would never make you watch me fall out of the sky.”
Closing his hand over her wrist, Raphael bent his head so their foreheads touched. There they stood for long minutes even as the snow began to fall and the Legion landed all around them.
32
Elena watched Raphael soar into the sky, the snow melting against her skin. She knew exactly how hard it had been for him to leave her; she fought the urge to fly to him, stick close. Never, as an adult, had she been so deeply afraid. Not even when she fell the first time.
Then, she hadn’t understood what she and Raphael could be together, hadn’t tasted the full glory of a love that was her breath and the reason for her being. Hadn’t lived with an archangel who loved her more than eternity.
Her eyes burned.
A flutter of snow and silence, vast numbers of the Legion rising from this balcony and from rooftops across the city to fly in the same direction as Raphael, an eerie gray wave whose voices no longer whispered in her head. The Primary, however, still waited for her—and she wasn’t so arrogant as to shrug off the escort. “I have to check on my brother-in-law, then I’ll be out and we’ll fly.”
No movement, the living gargoyle waiting patiently.
She checked her phone as she made her way quickly to Harrison’s bed in the infirmary and saw a message from Ashwini. The hunter and Janvier were in the Quarter, running down the exact depth of the relationship between Lee and Kumar, Blakely and Acosta. We’re also taking another stab at the drug angle, talking to people in the gangs to see if there are rumors of a hit.
The pragmatic nature of it all, the banal predictability of evil, was an antidote to the mystery of her transition. I’m going to chase down Jade, she wrote back, then made herself add, Dig about Harrison, too, in connection with the others. It made her sick to her stomach to consider that Beth’s husband might’ve been a party to rape, drugs, death, but the questions couldn’t be left unasked.
Her brother-in-law himself could tell her nothing; he remained unconscious.
Your sister was here earlier today, Laric shared in the silent tongue, his hands flowing with subtle grace. She said she told their little girl that her father had gone away for a while for business.
“Good on Beth. No
point in Maggie seeing him like this.” Elena placed her hands on her hips. “She’ll be mad at him for leaving without saying good-bye, but she won’t be afraid.” And Maggie was secure enough in her father’s love that she wouldn’t consider it an abandonment.
I think so, too, Laric said. I know little of children, but I believe, once he wakes, it will not be a hard thing for him to mend the small anger. To root out fear is sometimes impossible.
“You’re certain he’s going to recover?” Harrison’s skin was bloodless.
Laric touched her gently on the arm to get her attention on his hands. Jason’s blood has had enough time to bond with Harrison’s own, and it has restarted that which stopped in Harrison. He will heal.
Switching to the silent tongue herself, because she needed the practice, she said, How long before I can talk to him?
She thought Laric might’ve smiled at her awkward movements. It was one thing to be fluent at “listening” to the language, another to speak it. The gestures were subtle, small, the curve of a little finger able to alter the entire meaning of a sentence.
He is no longer in an imposed coma but in a more natural unconscious state. The healer made sure the blanket over Harrison’s body was neat and tidy. Nisia says we cannot predict when he might wake—it will depend on his own body’s healing capacity.
Nodding thanks at Laric for the information, Elena stepped out to check in with Vivek. “Any news on Jade?”
“I was just about to call you.” Vivek’s voice hummed with the thrill of the hunt, his hunter-born instincts riding him hard. “Your man Jade’s shed his old skin and set himself up under his two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old real name, Jadchenko Simnek, and yes, that was a bitch to track down.”
Elena’s own instincts hummed. “Damn, you’re good, V.”