by Nalini Singh
It was an irrefutable truth. Elena was now Raphael’s greatest weakness, a living, breathing piece of his heart, but with none of the brutal strength at the archangel’s own command.
However, that wasn’t the only truth. “She is good for him.” Jessamy welcomed the subtle changes in Raphael. Before Elena, she had watched him become harder, colder, more remote as the centuries passed—until she could barely see the young archangel who had once told her there would always be room at his Tower for her. “She makes him happy.”
Galen snorted, saying nothing, but she’d been with her barbarian lover for over four hundred years, wasn’t so easily put off. Ducking under his arm to force him to stop the cleaning process, she said, “Just like I make you happy,” his naked upper body warm against her. “And I’m not exactly the strongest person in the Refuge.”
“There is no comparison,” was Galen’s growling response, eyebrows drawn together over eyes of a stunning pale green she found ever more beautiful as the years passed. “You are Teacher and Historian, an integral and irreplaceable part of our people. She is a mortal with wings—what does she contribute?”
Jessamy poked him in the hard ridges of his abdomen. To hear him speak, you’d think he had no heart, when she knew her Galen had the biggest heart in the world—and the most loyal. “You,” she said when he winced, “were once a babe who wobbled when he flew—”
“No,” he interrupted with a thoughtful frown, “I do not think so. According to the weapons-master with whom I trained, I came out of the womb with a knife in one hand and a crossbow in the other.”
Lips twitching, Jessamy ran her fingers over the silken inner surface of his right wing, the caress one she knew he’d allow no other. “You must give her a chance to grow, to become who she is meant to be. You know Raphael would not take a weak woman as his consort.”
“Simply because she was a skilled hunter does not make her ready for life at an archangel’s side.”
Galen did not lightly use the word “skilled”. Realization dawning in her veins, Jessamy leaned back against his arm so she could look into his face. “You think she has real potential. That’s why you’re being so tough on her.” When he didn’t answer, she said, “In fact, I think you might even like her a little.”
Another scowl, strong hands on her waist as he set her bodily aside to pick up the sword he hadn’t finished cleaning. “She shot Raphael.”
“I once threw an inkwell at your head.”
Sword cleaned, he slid it away in its bracket on the wall, then did the same with the other weapons on the table. “You missed.”
“So if I had hit you, you would still be carrying a grudge?” she asked, watching his body flex and move as he put the weapons in place.
“Do you believe I am not?”
Laughing, she cupped his face to draw him down into a sweet kiss that rapidly turned wild and hot as Galen took control, his big hands pressing her against his aroused body, his mouth demanding she open her own.
“If that is how you carry a grudge against me,” she said, chest heaving when he finally set her free, “I will have to remind you of the inkwell incident more often.”
His smile was quiet, the glint in his eye very Galen. “Let’s go dancing.”
She knew exactly what he was talking about, and it had nothing to do with the kind of dancing one did on the earth. “I have less than an hour,” she murmured, rising on tiptoe to kiss the hard line of his jaw.
“I can be quick.” He dragged her out of the weapons salle by the hand. “I’ll take care of you tonight. Really, really slowly.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck as, one muscular arm tight around her waist, he rose into the air with a single beat of his powerful wings. “You are a terrible man,” she said, kissing the temptation of his throat as soon as they were high enough up to be private. “You know what it does to me when you say things like that.” Earthy and raw, he had the ability to curl her toes and make her feel a sensual temptress both.
Galen’s responding laugh was wicked, the dive he plunged them into breathtaking. Screaming with the wild pleasure of it, Jessamy tumbled with him into the gorge that cut through the Refuge, rose back up. They passed a flash of distinctive blue on the updraft that had to be Illium...and then they were falling in another steep dive, Galen peeling off into a small fissure that was a fracture emanating from the main gorge, before winging his way to the sky once more, the Refuge lost in the distance.
Her hair whipping across her face and her skirts tangled around her legs as he flew with a power and a confidence that had her holding on with only one arm, certain of her safety, Jessamy ran the knuckles of her free hand down his abdomen. “Where will we dance?” Privacy wasn’t hard to find in these mountains, the behemoths that surrounded the Refuge often shrouded in curtains of thick mist. Below, there was nothing, no sign of civilization, no villages, the mountainous land having belonged to angelkind for an eon.
“Right here,” he said, and they dropped without warning into a massive gorge so dark and deep that no light penetrated in the place where they danced.
Each touch was magnified in the darkness, each whisper a rough caress. Galen was as fast as he’d promised—but he took very good care of her. He always did, her lover who knew her body as well as any weapon in his arsenal. As she knew his.
“Admit it,” she said afterward as they lay in the dark at the very bottom of the gorge, the softest sand beneath their bodies and the nearby sound of water over rocks a quiet music.
One arm wrapped around her as she lay half-on, half-off his body, her left wing brushing his chest, Galen said, “What?”
When he began to caress her wing, she just snuggled in deeper into him. Once, at the dawn of their courtship, she’d been shy of such a touch when it came to her twisted wing, but it was impossible to be shy about anything with Galen; he made no bones about loving her exactly as she was. After four centuries, centuries that had passed in a heartbeat, she knew she could come to him broken in every way, and be certain of his love. Though he would no doubt also yell at her for getting herself hurt.
“That you see potential in Elena,” she said with a smile. It was his protectiveness that had sent that inkwell sailing at his head. Not that the lesson had had any effect.
“She didn’t crumble today. She’s not pathetic,” was the harsh response. “I may be able to beat her into shape as a passable fighter.”
Coming from Galen, that was high praise indeed. “I should warn you, I think Elena and I are going to become friends.”
“Don’t ask me to go easy on her.”
“I won’t.” She understood what so many didn’t, what Elena herself might not yet understand—that Raphael’s consort needed to realize her potential as quickly as she could to survive in the immortal world into which she’d been thrust. “I know you can give her tools that’ll help her live long enough to become who she’s meant to be.”
Sitting up after another caress, and taking her with him, Galen said, “Let me get you back to the aerie so you can change before your class.”
As they landed on the stone pavings in front of their clifftop home, the edges overflowing with flower pots rife with color and scent, he said, “Don’t think I’ve forgotten you missed your defensive training class yesterday. We’ll be doing it tonight.”
Kissing him until his hands slid down to squeeze her lower curves, she murmured, “Let’s skip the lesson tonight.” He was as tough on her as he was on any one of his students; the only difference being that their lessons were always held in private—and she could sometimes distract the weapons-master in ways unavailable to others.
“Jess,” he murmured, eyes gleaming, “we’ve been training together for many years. When was the last time you talked me out of a lesson?”
“A decade ago,” she said immediately, “after I met you at the door wearing nothing but one of your feathers on a tie around my neck.”
His body responded to the reminder, but his
eyes narrowed. “Don’t even think about it. I want you to keep your skills fresh—the world has always been a dangerous place, but it’s becoming even more so.”
Jessamy, too, had felt the gathering shift. It had been heralded by an angel with a mortal heart and where it would go, no one knew. The only thing of which Jessamy was certain was that whatever the future held, she’d walk into it with her weapons-master by her side—and, since he’d made sure she was an expert in it—a crossbow in her hand.
Copyright © 2013 by Nalini Singh
Knives and Sheaths
Author’s Note: The original version of this short story was meant to be a scene in Archangel’s Storm, but I deleted it in an earlier draft and the information shared here about Lijuan eventually became part of chapter 8 in the book.
However, I thought the scene offered a nice glimpse of Elena and Raphael’s relationship, so I decided to edit and extend it into a short story. I hope you enjoy!
Knives and Sheaths
By Nalini Singh
Hanging up the phone after getting some further details from Jason about the developing situation, Raphael turned to where his consort stood on the other side of the private office attached to their Tower suite. She was currently sliding knives into the special forearm sheaths she used for the most lightweight of her blades, a scowl on her face.
“Damn it.” Pure aggravation. “I really need to replace these—this side’s threatening to fray right off.”
“Deacon would not do such shoddy work,” he murmured, naming the weapons-maker so respected that he handled commissions from immortals around the world, his waiting list extending years into the future. However, regardless of the incentives offered, Deacon’s first loyalty was to the guild of hunters of which he had once been a member.
Elena colored. “I’m too embarrassed to ask him to make me new ones—I bought these on a whim from a weapons-maker in Turkey. I feel like I cheated on Deacon.” Ripping off and throwing the sheaths on the bed, she put her hands on her hips. “So, Lijuan’s up to her old tricks?”
“It’s not so surprising—she believes herself beyond even the Cadre.” Raphael had once thought Lijuan right, but now he’d seen her wounded, knew the other archangel could be stopped.
Elena reached back to redo her braid with quick, competent hands, one of which bore a healing knife wound she’d sustained during a training session. It would be gone within the next two hours, her strength growing at an unexpected rate—but then, his consort had never once done the expected.
“You’d think after seeing the results last time, no one would volunteer to become reborn,” Elena said, her eyes filled with memories of the horrific night in the Forbidden City when a dead woman had jerked back to shambling life in front of them. “She has to be coercing them…” A shake of her head. “No, most of her people treat her like a goddess, so I can believe they’d sacrifice themselves to her vision, even knowing the horror. She could conceivably build an army.”
“Yes.” It was a future that could not be permitted to come into being, for Lijuan’s reborn were a plague. “Jason’s information is that she’s only making one or two at a time before executing her creations—but we cannot stop monitoring her.”
Braid done, Elena picked up the inferior knife sheaths and chucked them in the trash, putting her throwing knives onto a table with the mournful look of a woman being parted from the most precious of jewels. “No, and not only because of the reborn—Lijuan isn’t going to be satisfied until you’re dead.” Her irises gleamed metallic silver around the rims, immortality having taken a stronger hold on her in the preceding months. “And I won’t be satisfied until the bitch is boiling in her own blood.”
Raphael raised an eyebrow. “I would say you’ve been spending too much time with Dmitri were he here.”
“No, that’s all me,” she said with a smile that was a blade to his heart, it cut so deep. “She tried to hurt you, and she’ll keep on trying to hurt you because she knows you have the potential to destroy her. I don’t intend to sit back and let her, archangel or not.”
A warrior, he thought, his wings unfurling, that was who he had taken for his consort. “If you will permit,” he said, “I would assist you in your task. Lijuan cannot be allowed to blanket the world with her perversions.”
His consort’s face dissolved into laughter before she reset it into a suitably haughty expression. “I do permit.” Walking across to join him where he stood with his back to the plate-glass window that looked out over the steel spires of Manhattan, she ran her fingers across the inner surface of his left wing. “Your wings…the gold filaments aren’t like before. It’s as if each has been coated with finely crushed glass, until it glitters like living flame.” That she found him beautiful was an unspoken kiss.
“It is a time of evolution. Now we must wait and see if another Lijuan is born amongst the Cadre.” He rubbed his finger over the arch of Elena’s own wing, felt her responsive shiver.
“Enough talk of Her Grand Evilness and her nefarious plots.” Wrapping both arms around his neck, his hunter dressed in black leather and armed to the teeth but for her bare forearms, said, “Kiss me, Archangel.”
I am but your slave. He caught her laughter in his mouth, felt it in his veins, the passion between them a smoldering flame.
Pulse a drumbeat when they separated, she parted moist lips to say, “You’re lethal.”
He smiled and knew it held the arrogance of deadly power—it was who he was, what he needed to be to rule. But his consort was not a woman to be scared by such a thing, and she demanded another kiss before stepping back, cheeks flushed and breath shallow. “No melting my bones. I have to go haul three baby vamps off their asses and back to their angel.”
“I sense a note of disgust.”
“I’m one of the most experienced hunters in the city, and Sara puts me on babysitting detail—I’d think it was a conspiracy, but turns out a whole group of baby vampires got it into their heads that they need to ‘rebel against the hierarchy’.” A snort. “Ransom’s got two on his list today, and Ashwini’s bringing in three.”
“It’s astonishing,” Raphael said, moving to the sprawling breadth of his desk, “how people do not find such a cause until after they have been Made.” The lure of almost-immortality was a drug, but the reality was a hundred years of subservience to the angels, and that reality could have a bitter taste.
“Buyer’s remorse doesn’t negate the Contract.” She rubbed absently at her forearms. “I should be back in three hours tops, since none of my targets appear to be geniuses. Do you have time to spar with me? With Dmitri, Venom, and Jason all gone, I’m losing practice time.”
“I need to meet with Nazarach,” he said, speaking of one of the powerful angels in his territory, “but Janvier has settled in and should have some time, so speak with him when you return.” According to Dmitri, the younger vampire was the dirtiest street-fighter the leader of Raphael’s Seven had ever met. He’d be able to assist Elena increase her arsenal of tricks, give her further tools to survive the immortal world. Come here, Consort.
Giving him an arch look, she sauntered over. “You summoned?”
He opened the small box sitting on his desk and brought out two butter-soft knife sheaths meant for her forearms. “I cannot have you out in the world without your blades.”
“Raphael!” Gathering up the gifts, she made feminine sounds of pleasure he usually only ever heard as she lay sweat-slicked and naked in their bed. “This is Deacon’s work. Oooh, they feel…” Doing up the buckles, she slid in the knives and shivered.
“Careful, Elena. I may decide you enjoy those sheaths far too much.”
Grinning, she twisted and pulled out the blades in a quick draw, testing positioning and tightness. “God, Deacon is talented.” She slid the knives back in a second later, and spun into his arms with the lithe grace of a fighter, her smile fading into an intensity of emotion so raw, it was a stormcloud over her irises.
“
You know me.” Her fingers brushing his cheek. “You see me.” Thank you.
He brought her closer to his body, her weapons hard edges against him. “You are extraordinary.” And you are my consort. Mine to know, mine to see.
Lips curving, though the intensity didn’t abate, she rose up on tiptoe and whispered, “Knhebek, Archangel,” the emotion in her a vivid wildness as she spoke words of love in the language that meant so much to her. Knhebek.
Copyright © 2012 by Nalini Singh
Zoe’s Workshop
Spoiler Warning: This short story is set after Archangel’s Legion (Guild Hunter #6), and contains spoilers for that book, so if you haven’t yet read it, save this story to read afterward.
Author’s Note: “Zoe’s Workshop” is part of my ongoing series of shorts about the everyday lives of my characters, away from the darkness and intensity of the main storylines. I love visiting with them, and I hope you do, too. :-)
Characters: Sara (former hunter, now Guild Director), Deacon (formerly a hunter charged with bringing down rogue hunters, now weapons-maker to mortals and immortals both), Zoe Elena (Sara and Deacon’s daughter).
Zoe’s Workshop
By Nalini Singh
Sara stretched awake cocooned in luxuriant warmth. Stretching out her hand toward Deacon’s side of the bed, she found the sheets cold. Her heart skipped a beat, her mind jerking to full consciousness as her lashes snapped open. For a single, terrible second, fear tried to grab hold of her in its ravenous teeth, but she fought the darkness with the practice that came with two weeks of doing the same.
The war was over. Her family was safe, happy, back together in their home.
Heart rate slowing, she took a deep breath...and felt her smile reappear, little bubbles of starlight in her veins. She could smell the bitter, delicious promise of coffee in the air. Below it lingered the buttery scent of the waffles Zoe loved, waffles that Deacon alone could make to Zoe’s satisfaction. Sara had tried once, received a terrible review. Laughing at the memory of their little girl’s face as she took her first bite, Sara pushed off the feather comforter Deacon must’ve pulled over her when he left to take care of Zoe.