by Nalini Singh
Rubbing a fisted hand over her heart, she said, “Can I ask you something?”
“Ellie.” His fingers brushing lightly over the back of her wing, careful to avoid the sensitive zones, but an intimacy nonetheless. “When have we ever been so formal? Ask.”
“Why have you never resented me?” It was a question for which she’d needed an answer since the day she’d learned about his past. “Resented Raphael?”
Illium had been punished with the loss of his own mortal lover centuries ago, after he broke the greatest taboo of his race and spoke angelic secrets in her ear. Erasing the woman’s memories of the blue-winged angel and all he’d told her, Raphael had also stripped Illium of his feathers, grounding him until the wounds healed. Even when he could fly again, there was no surcease; he’d had to keep his distance, eventually watch his former lover fall for someone else, live her life without him.
Golden eyes shadowed with old sorrow, Illium withdrew a small metal pendant from the pocket of his jeans, the surface worn smooth by centuries of handling. “When did Raphael tell you our secrets?” he said, not having to explain to her that his lover had given him the pendant.
Her heart ached at the sadness he ordinarily hid beneath a stunning joie de vivre. “As we fell,” she whispered. “Raphael told me as we fell.” Everything within her rebelled against the agony linked to that fragment of time—not of the flesh, for her broken body had been beyond that, but of the soul, because Raphael was dying with her.
“On the eve of what he believed would be your death and his.” Putting away the pendant, Illium shook his head, the blue-tipped black strands of his hair kissing the sides of his face. “I had no such excuse. My lover was young and headstrong, and angry that I kept secrets from her. I couldn’t bear her remoteness . . . so I told.”
A sad, rueful smile that spoke of the besotted youth he’d been. “I’m certain other angels have told their mortal lovers over the centuries, the secrets going to the grave with those men and women, but I told a girl who could not keep her silence, who began to whisper hints to others in her village.”
This time it was Elena who touched his wing, the silken silver-blue a living piece of art beneath her fingertips. “I’m so sorry.”
“No angel can afford to break with such ease,” Illium continued, “and though I loved her with all of my being, I also knew her down to the soul, knew she didn’t have the will to hold secrets within. Raphael was right to punish me.”
When he spread his wing and lifted his arm, she went, hugging him with the embrace of a friend, was hugged in turn, his grip so fierce she knew he fought not to splinter under the deluge of memory.
“The Sire,” Illium said, his chest rising against her in a long, jagged breath, “was wounded at what he had to do. I could see it, feel it, and it is the greatest shame of my life that I drove him to the point where he had no other option.”
Of everything he’d said, that was the least expected, but Illium wasn’t done. “If only,” he said, “I’d come to him as soon as I realized my mistake in telling, he would’ve quietly erased her memory of angelic secrets, warned me not to make the same mistake again, and I would’ve been free to love her. But I didn’t and he could not help me once others learned of my transgression.”
Elena’s heart twisted as she understood at last. Ruthless he might be, but Raphael protected those who were his own. For him to not only be unable to do that, but to actually be forced to cause harm instead, would’ve exacted a terrible price. Especially when it had been Illium, son of an angel who had both Raphael’s respect and his love: the Hummingbird, someone he treated with heartbreaking gentleness.
“Whatever price I paid,” Illium said into the quiet, “he paid it twice over.”
Hurting for the loss that defined the blue-winged angel to this day, and the circumstances that had led to it, Elena leaned back, raised her hand to touch his face, and found herself hesitating.
“Be careful with Illium, Elena. He’s vulnerable to the humanity you carry within.”
The echo of Dmitri’s voice, sin and seduction and violence, the vampire’s expression unexpectedly serious as he cautioned her about Illium not long after her return to New York.
“It’s all right, Ellie.” A lopsided smile, Illium’s body heat pressing against her own. “You are the Sire’s and I would tear off my own wings before I would break that trust.”
Dropping her hand, she took a step away, putting more distance between them. “I don’t want to cause you pain,” she said, affection intertwined with worry. Her worry wasn’t only for how he reacted to her, but also the fact that he continued to mourn a woman who’d turned to dust centuries ago, having forgotten she’d ever been so unbearably loved.
When Elena had been human, she’d sometimes wondered how mortal-immortal couples handled the aging of one, while the other appeared as young as the day they’d first met. Never once had she considered that if the love was true, the pain would be endless for the one left behind. “You have enough hurt inside you already.”
“The only thing that’ll hurt is if you allow my mistakes to damage our friendship.” A slow smile that painted over the sadness, eyes of liquid gold backlit with wickedness. “Shall I tell you about my lovers so you don’t feel sorry for me?”
She cocked her head. “In the plural?”
“I wouldn’t want to give anyone the wrong idea.” Tugging playfully on her braid, he headed for the door. “The blood pickup team has arrived.”
The vampiric team, gloved up and masked, made quick work of clearing the fridges. Locking up after them, Elena got a quick lift from Illium and angled her wings toward the Tower. Regardless of her personal anger with Raphael, they were and would always be a unit when it came to protecting their city, and she wanted to update him on the Blood-for-Less situation, as well as find out why he’d left the site of the five vampiric deaths so precipitously.
The light-filled column of the Tower a cold burn in front of her, she reached out to make certain he was inside. Raphael?
The answer came immediately, but it held the slight remoteness that denoted a certain amount of distance. There is a situation, Elena. Michaela is here.
15
Raphael didn’t shift his eyes off Michaela as he instructed Illium to lead Elena to Gable House, the place the female archangel had taken in the short term. He’d left the house of disease as soon as one of his far advance scouts had spotted her flying into the territory, and made the long flight to escort her—a gesture she’d seen as welcome, but that he’d done to make certain she brought no army.
She hadn’t, her escort consisting of a single angelic squadron and a vampire, the vampire catching a lift with the angels by way of a light carrier designed for that purpose. Had Michaela been in distress, or in fear of an imminent assault, he’d have waited to have this discussion, but dressed in a green catsuit that hugged her curves, she moved with opulent sensuality, her actions designed to remind him she was considered the most desirable woman in the world.
Raphael would rather sleep in a pit of venomous snakes than with Michaela.
He had, however, allowed her time to rest and have a meal after her journey, for he would not harm the babe in her womb. “I’m glad you had the sense not to impinge on my home,” he said now.
An insinuating smile. “It is an inconvenience not to use my own property, but I know you’re protective of your little mortal—and Riker has a taste for her. It would’ve been impossible to stop him from crossing the woods to get to her had we been neighbors.”
Riker, Raphael thought, wouldn’t touch Elena. Last time he’d come close to her, Raphael had simply ripped out his heart and left him twitching on the earth. Should Michaela’s pet vampire have forgotten that lesson, Raphael would be happy to teach it again—this time, with a permanent conclusion. “Do not bring Riker into my territory again unless you want him dead.”
“Oh, Raphael, I didn’t mean to make you angry.” All but purring, she went as if to
place her hand on his chest.
He gripped her wrist before she could, her bones slender under his hold, and, driven by instinct that said her every word was a honeyed lie, activated his healing ability. Knowledge poured into him, of Michaela’s physical strength, of the sickening acid-green taint she carried within as a result of the day Uram had cracked her rib cage open to play with her blood-slick heart . . . of the emptiness in her womb.
Releasing her with enough force that she stumbled back a step, he said, “Do not cross more lines than you’ve already done by entering my lands without invitation. I am not yours to touch.” Only a single stubborn, intelligent, and dangerous woman had that right.
A tightening of lush brown skin over the blades of her cheekbones, rejection anathema to a woman used to being worshipped by the male sex. “I thought to plead my case in person.” Tilting her head to the side, the glossy black curls of her hair shining with bronze highlights, she placed her palms flat against the concave slope of her abdomen. “I thought you, of all the Cadre, would show kindness to a woman with child.” Her tone altered, became huskier, her dawning smile painful in its apparent tenderness. “You watched over the angelic nurseries as a young man. I have ever respected that about you, Raphael—your willingness to protect our most precious treasures.”
Raphael wondered if Michaela was so used to manipulating men that she simply didn’t understand he couldn’t be molded to her requirements with sweet words buttressed by an undertone of sex. “I am no longer a young man,” he said, seeing her eyes narrow at the continued ice in his tone, “and you have come perilously close to a fatal breach of the rules of Guesthood.”
Dropping her hands, she turned in a dramatic sweep of shimmering bronze, her wings arcing gracefully over her back. “You are being cruel.” Vivid green, her eyes were sheened wet when she turned to face him once more. “I ask you for sanctuary and you want me to play with formalities? You know I lost a child! I cannot lose another.”
For an instant, he almost believed her, thought that perhaps she’d miscarried the embryo and “forgotten” the knowledge in her agony . . . but then she betrayed herself, her lips curving up the slightest fraction at his hesitation. The feline smugness of her answered his final questions, told him he had no need to be gentle. “Enough of the charade, Michaela.”
“Charade? You mock me!” A thin ring of acidic green pulsing around the richer hue of her irises, an unmistakable physical sign of Uram’s influence. “I am vulnerable; you are strong. I ask for your help! Where is the charade?”
Allowing his own power to rise, he felt his wings begin to glow. “You carry no babe.”
Silence, her shock morphing rapidly into fury. “An accusation of deliberate falsehood! You incite a war!”
• • •
Golden light filled the wide mullioned windows of the graceful house where Illium indicated Elena should land.
“Pretty hunter, I’ve missed you.”
She hissed out a breath, blades falling into both hands as she recognized the blond vampire who’d shaped the simple statement into a threat, the bones of his face refined to an unearthly beauty that made it clear he was far beyond a hundred years of age.
The last time she’d seen Riker, he’d been pinned to the wall of the house next to their own, a torn-off chair leg through his throat and blood dripping down his temples. Today, Michaela’s favorite guard bared his teeth at her in a feral grin that was nothing natural, nothing sane, then waved his arm toward the front door in mocking welcome.
“My mistress flayed the skin off my back and made it into a purse.”
Hairs rising on her nape at the memory of the way he’d made that admission with the same creepily fixed smile, Elena tightened her grip on the blades. “I see you’ve healed.”
A lascivious stroke of his tongue along his upper lip. “I’ve been waiting a long time to be alone with you.” His eyes flicked over her head just as she heard the cold whisper of sound that was Illium unsheathing the sword he always carried along his spine, the weapon hidden by a glamour that spoke to Illium’s growing power.
“Go,” he murmured, then raised his voice. “I’ll watch Michaela’s rabid dog, put him out of his misery if he proves troublesome.”
Riker’s eyes glowed bloodred, his fangs flashing, but he kept his distance when she walked past him and through the front door. Raphael, how bad is it?
Michaela is not with child, has likely never been with child.
I can’t believe she used the memory of her own dead child in a scheme. Sickened by the callousness of such an act, she followed the sound of a raised voice to the large but otherwise unremarkable central core of the house. Raphael stood in the center, Michaela a few feet from him.
The female archangel’s exquisite skin, the color of coffee swirled with milk and dusted with gold, was flushed, as if as a result of passionate argument; her body the epitome of female perfection in the emerald green catsuit that caressed every curve and valley.
Raphael answered whatever it was Michaela had said just as Elena took the first step toward him. “It’s not a lie you can hope to maintain—so unless you do wish a war, cut your losses and leave.”
Shooting Elena a dagger-sharp glare, Michaela said, “Look, your pet has arrived,” the words saccharine-sweet. “Has she learned to sit and beg on command yet?”
Elena made her tone just as sweet as she played a throwing knife over her fingers. “No, but my aim’s even better now.” It might’ve been petty, but she enjoyed seeing the fury in Michaela’s expression at the reminder that Elena had once buried a blade in her eyeball.
“Don’t.” It was a soft warning from Raphael as Michaela raised her hand, her fingertips crackling with dramatic green.
A ball of angelfire formed in Raphael’s palm.
“I don’t know why you’re so amused by the creature.” Michaela closed her fingers. “But I suggest you teach it manners.”
Bristling, Elena nonetheless realized Michaela wanted an excuse to hurt her, and held her silence as Raphael spoke in a tone that could’ve drawn blood. “I judge it’ll strain your squadron to make the return journey at once, so you may remain as a guest until midnight. Any later and I’ll consider it an act of trespass.”
Brushstrokes of violent red across Michaela’s cheekbones, the sign of emotional intensity only serving to highlight her incredible beauty. “One day,” she purred, “one day you’ll understand what you reject this night, and then you will beg for my favors.”
Can I stab her?
Only if she is still here after midnight.
• • •
Neither one of them spoke again until they landed on the lawn of their own home. In the short time that Elena had been inside Gable House, night had begun to give way to day, and across the river, Manhattan was wrapped in soft, swirling gray, the lights in the high-rises muted.
“I want you to keep a discreet watch on Michaela and her people,” Raphael ordered Illium, the blue-winged angel having flown back with them. “It’s almost dawn, so you can go alone, but check in with Aodhan every ten minutes.”
“Sire.” Illium lifted off with a bare rustle of sound, the silver-blue of his wings swallowed up by the gray as he ascended above the cloud layer.
Wings brushing the dew-laden grass, Elena paced across the lawn. “Was it just me or was the Bitch Goddess ‘off’ tonight? She had this odd jerkiness to her movements.”
“Uram’s taint.”
Elena’s gorge rose at the thought of Michaela’s former lover, the insane archangel who’d left a trail of mutilated and bloody bodies in his wake . . . including Jeffrey’s mistress, that pitiable, pale copy of Marguerite. Ripped-off limbs thrust into screaming mouths, rib cages torn open to reveal glistening entrails, bodies hung and bled, Uram had committed atrocities Elena hadn’t even imagined possible.
“Uram tore out her heart,” she said, recalling her horror at the gaping wound, “left that glowing red fireball in her chest. Direct contact.” T
he only other person to have such intimate contact with Uram, and survive, was Sorrow, and she’d undeniably come out of it altered on a fundamental level.
The young woman wasn’t human any longer, but neither was she a vampire; she’d starve without blood as she’d starve without food. Then there was the would-be assailant twice her size whose neck she’d snapped in a self-defensive fugue. Now in training to learn how to consciously manage her strength and speed, Elena knew Sorrow was also under constant watch for signs of the same murderous insanity as her “blood sire,” the term one she’d heard Dmitri use.
It infuriated Elena that the gutsy young woman couldn’t escape Uram, but Sorrow wasn’t the issue right this instant. “What if Michaela refuses to leave?”
“Then I’ll force her out.”
Guilt gripped her in its bony hands. If Michaela had gained an offensive power in the Cascade, any battle would be a treacherously uneven one for Raphael.
“I would wash off the night, Elena.” Raphael turned toward the house.
Stomach in knots, her earlier anger at him buried under the chilling reminder that she might just have killed him, she went in silence.
Shutting the bedroom door behind them, Raphael walked across to open the balcony doors, letting in the cold morning air. “Come here, Guild Hunter.”
“What is it?”
“I would like to know”—his tone a serrated blade—“why my consort is keeping secrets that make her fly into herself.”
She flinched, stepping past him to stand on the very edge of the balcony. “I’m angry at you, for what happened with Ransom.”
“You might be angry, but you understand the decision.” As ruthless an answer as the way he’d dealt with Cici. “That isn’t what you’re keeping from me.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Now, you lie to me?” Cold, deadly, each word honed as bright as sword steel.
Spinning to face him, she fisted her hands. “Stop trying to intimidate me—I’m your consort.”