by Nalini Singh
Andromeda’s pulse pounded. “Yes, exactly.”
“Head to Kilimanjaro,” Lijuan ordered Xi. “I will decide our next course of action once you either find Alexander, or clear the region.” Blood-drenched eyes held Andromeda’s again. “While Xi is gone, you will write down every other possibility, no matter how small.”
Only one answer was safe. “Yes, Lady Lijuan.”
“I will send advance scouts today, make preparations to leave on the next dawn.” Xi’s wings caught the golden lamplight as he resettled them in what Andromeda knew wasn’t a restless move but that of a warrior who wanted to ensure his wings didn’t cramp. “We must take extreme care. Titus has ramped up his security since the rise in hostilities with Charisemnon.”
The general glanced at Andromeda, the intensity of his gaze a glistening black blade. “You are certain Kilimanjaro heads your list?”
You have secrets. You wear another skin, too.
Andromeda clung to the memory of Naasir’s words, to the skin of an intimidated and scared scholar that was her shield. “Yes.”
Lijuan leaned back on her throne, her body translucent. “Remember this, scholar.” Words that echoed with so many screams, Andromeda’s eardrums threatened to bleed. “If I find you have lied to me, Heng’s punishment among the hounds will appear as nothing.”
Andromeda bowed her head. “Lady, you must understand I can offer no certainties.” No one could. “I am but an apprentice.”
No answer, and when she looked up, Lijuan was gone. As if she’d turned into her noncorporeal form. Even as Andromeda’s breath caught at this evidence of Lijuan’s “evolution,” she wondered if the choice to become noncorporeal had been a conscious one. It seemed to her that Lijuan had simply been too tired to hold the physical manifestation of her form.
“I hope for your sake that you do not lie.” Xi’s voice was a scalpel.
“I would be a fool to lie.” She was proud her voice didn’t tremble. “There is nowhere I can go to escape punishment.”
13
Naasir entered citadel territory after nightfall.
Jason’s spies in the villages that lay directly below the flight paths to that citadel had confirmed that Xi and his squadron had flown in at dawn the previous day. They’d been carrying an unknown burden in a sling.
Andromeda.
A growl built in his throat at the idea of Andromeda trapped and treated like prey.
But his anger turned into a teeth-baring smile the next second. Because Andromeda wasn’t prey. However, she was smart enough to fool Xi and Lijuan into believing such, so that she’d be left alone to think up an escape. Gritting his teeth at the realization she might try it before he was there to help watch her back, he continued to lope through forests in the shadow of mountains, just another shadow among shadows.
The sky hung low and sullen above him.
It was in the last patch of forest before the grasslands that Jason had told him surrounded the citadel that he caught the ugly, rotting scent that denoted the presence of the reborn. He hissed out a breath. The world believed Lijuan’s infectious creations erased from the earth, but clearly, she’d managed to save this nest. To survive, the reborn must’ve been allowed to feed on mortal or immortal flesh—or had been fed.
Naasir wanted to kill each and every one, but Andromeda was waiting for him.
An angry, rumbling sound vibrating in his chest, he avoided the creatures—not difficult given their stench to his sensitive sense of smell—and made his way to the grasslands. Those grasslands were a good precaution by Lijuan’s generals, ensuring a direct line of sight for the sentries.
Too bad the grasses had been allowed to grow to knee-high. That was plenty long enough to hide Naasir’s form, such grasses an environment which part of his nature knew how to utilize instinctively. He reached the outer wall of the citadel without being spotted. From there, it wasn’t difficult to avoid the vampiric guards, but it did take precise timing to make sure he remained unseen by the winged squadron.
He could smell rain on the winds. That could be an asset or it might be a threat. It would depend on the skills of the woman with secrets who smelled like his mate. The heavy cloud cover was an undisputed gift, hiding as it did the light of the moon. Naasir could use the moon’s light to his advantage, his body a rippling ghost, but Andromeda’s lickable, honeyed skin would’ve been spotlighted by it.
Prowling along the edges of the wall, he watched the guards, listened to their conversations, and when one of them went to answer the call of nature just as the sentry in the sky angled off in another direction, he slipped over the wall right under their noses.
Cunning and stealthy and unseen.
Reminding himself of Jason’s words, he spilled no blood and left no trace of his presence as he went over the second wall and jumped down into the inner courtyard. He landed in an easy crouch on the cobblestones, his bare feet absorbing the impact through his entire body without giving him a hard jolt.
Slightly spoiled meat and blood and the ugly miasma of fear.
A predator at home in the moonless night, he made his way toward the tainted meat that must’ve been lying in the sun for hours. It was alive, he realized as he got closer. Alive and marked by the scents of multiple dogs. Feathers told him the meat had been an angel before being fed to the dogs. It was now in pieces, though the head remained attached to the gleaming, exposed spinal cord.
Either exhausted or simply weak, the meat was motionless but for a closed eyelid that flickered in a rapid pattern—as if the angel was dreaming. His other eye socket was a gaping hole clotted with viscous fluid that had either dried in the sun, or was a result of his body attempting to regenerate itself.
Brutality didn’t interest Naasir; he’d seen more than one pitiless punishment over the centuries and he wasn’t going to judge this one without having the details. What did interest him was the scent that lingered around the man.
Andromeda.
She’d been here recently. Why?
He looked at the meat again and had the thought that maybe the woman who smelled like his mate might have a soft heart. From the position of her scent, he could tell she’d stood or sat close by the head, possibly in an effort to provide what comfort she could.
Deciding he liked the idea of a mate who had a soft heart, he tracked her scent into the citadel. Seeing an angelic courtier up ahead, he jumped up to the ceiling and held himself there using his claws to hook into the ridged detail. He dropped down as soon as the courtier was out of earshot and continued to track the delicious, unique scent of his warrior-scholar.
There were many overlapping trails; Andromeda had clearly been exploring the citadel with a view to escaping. But Naasir’s senses were acute and he had no trouble pinpointing which scent was the freshest.
Sliding behind a wall to avoid a guard, he found himself trapped between two oncoming individuals, one from either direction. He didn’t waste time, went up to the ceiling again. No one ever looked up. You’d think angels would, but inside their homes, they never did. It was as if their wings blinded them to the fact that there were other ways of going high than just flying.
Moving across the ceiling using his clawed hands and feet to get a grip, he was careful not to dig so deep that his passage created dust or fine curls of whatever it was that made up the ceiling. It amused him to go right over Philomena’s flame-red head. He wanted to pounce on her and go “Boo!” but he’d save that for another day.
Tonight, his priority was Andromeda.
Climbing the top part of a wall and around a corner, he froze in a pool of shadows.
Xi.
According to what they’d learned during the battle above and in the streets of New York, Xi was only violently powerful when Lijuan fed him power, but that didn’t change his tactical mind and military training. He was dangerous and Naasir respected him as another predator. If Xi hadn’t been fighting for the other side, Naasir would’ve invited him over for a drink and talked
to him about tactics.
Now, he stayed motionless.
Xi paused right under where Naasir was hooked onto the wall, the general’s attention caught by a vampire who’d emerged from another corridor. “Yes?”
The slender male bowed deeply. “The scholar has returned to her room. She sat with Heng until he lost consciousness again, and she told him stories of fantastical beings.”
Naasir grinned. He’d been right; she had a soft heart.
“Such gentleness is to be expected of a scholar,” Xi said at the same instant. “Do you have anything further to report?”
“It appears from her movements that she is searching for a way to escape the citadel.”
“Unsurprising,” Xi responded, no irritation or anger in his tone. “Show her to the library tomorrow. That will distract her and give her another outlet for her frustration.” Xi paused. “Be careful with her.”
Naasir heard the same thing that had the vampire bowing deeply again: a faint thread of possessiveness. It appeared Xi found Andromeda attractive. Naasir wanted to rip out the angel’s throat for that, had to dig his claws deeper into the wall to keep from acting on his instincts. If Xi thought he could court Andromeda, he knew nothing.
The general was too civilized for her. Xi didn’t understand secrets, didn’t understand that Naasir’s scholar was a sword dancer who liked fighting and whose blood ran hot. That secret truth in mind, he held his strained position for an entire minute until after the vampire and Xi both disappeared. Only then did he drop soundlessly to the stone floor and prowl along Andromeda’s scent trail.
There were fewer guards in this wing. Naasir understood why—situated in one of the corners of the citadel, it gave the illusion of freedom because of the number of windows and doors, but the outside was heavily guarded. Andromeda was smart not to have tried to escape from this direction. If she’d gone to ground, she’d have been run to the earth by the hounds that Naasir scented below. If she’d gone up, she’d have been shot down by the squadrons above.
The dogs could prove a problem if the rain didn’t come. Naasir could handle them, but it would be an annoying distraction, and there was a risk that someone paying attention would work out that the dogs were whimpering away from a certain point with their tails between their legs.
Reaching the door beyond which he could scent Andromeda, he listened carefully, heard nothing. He smiled and, instead of turning the knob, scratched lightly on the carved wooden panel. It was pulled open from within mere heartbeats later. Hauling him inside with a grip on his olive green T-shirt, Andromeda shut the door with conscious quietness.
Her cheeks were marked by hot red spots when she turned to face him. “What are you doing here?” she said, the pulse in her neck thumping.
He wanted to kiss her, but he satisfied himself with what was left on the tray of food placed on a side table. “Rescuing you.”
* * *
Andromeda’s mouth fell open, her brain struggling to comprehend what she was hearing. Naasir had come after her. Right into the heart of the most dangerous territory in the world. “Did Raphael send you?”
Naasir finished off the meat she’d left on her plate and shoved back the silver hair that had fallen over his face while he ate. “I didn’t need to be sent,” he said, a low growl to his tone. “But the sire is helping me rescue you. Jason is here.”
“The spymaster?” Legs shaky, she sat down on the bed. “You both got in?” She couldn’t imagine how; she had a headache from trying and failing to work out a successful escape route. “No one’s meant to have ever infiltrated the citadel. How did you do it?”
Naasir came to crouch in front of her. Reaching up, he flicked her nose. “It wouldn’t be a secret if we told you and you wrote it down in your history books.” Rising to his haunches, he leaned in close to her face. “Don’t put this in your books.”
“I won’t,” she whispered, fascinated by this wild, utterly beautiful creature who had come to rescue her.
She wasn’t a woman who touched easily, having been rarely touched herself, but she found herself reaching up to cradle his cheek with one hand. Turning his head, he rubbed himself against her. His skin was smooth, without stubble, and the contact sent a shiver over her; when the sleek strands of his hair ran across the back of her hand, she wanted desperately to weave her fingers into the thick silk.
“Later,” he said, his eyes heavy lidded. “First we have to escape.” He rose, held out a hand.
Taking it without hesitation, she allowed him to haul her up, hope and excitement bubbling inside her. “Wait,” she said when he would’ve headed to the door. Retrieving her knives, she dug out and unrolled a drawing of the citadel Suyin had surreptitiously made for her, then told him about a gate the architect said she’d hidden in the outer wall. “I don’t think she’s lying.”
Naasir folded the sketch and put it into a pocket of his khaki-colored cargo pants. “I’ll tell Jason, but we’ll escape another way.” He took her hand again after she transferred both knives to one hand.
She stood stubbornly in place. “What about Suyin?”
Naasir looked back at her, silver eyes glinting. “It’ll be difficult enough to get you out—we can’t take another person.”
“She’s my friend.” Andromeda was willing to take the risk that Lijuan’s niece was no spy but another captive. If she was wrong, she’d live—or die—on that mistake, but she couldn’t walk away; the memory of Suyin’s sorrow would haunt her always. “She’s been held prisoner for thousands of years.”
A harshly primal sound rumbled out of Naasir’s chest. “Where?” he asked, the grit in his tone making it an erotic kiss over her skin.
Fighting back a responsive shiver, she described the location of Suyin’s suite.
“Go to her,” he told her after she was done. “Walk there as if you can’t sleep and want company. Wait for me inside her quarters.”
About to step out, she turned back to him and smoothed out a wrinkle she’d made in his T-shirt when she pulled him inside. The instant she’d heard that scratch, she’d known. “Thank you for coming for me.”
Naasir’s smile was feral. “I’m going to find the Grimoire, so be ready to rut with me.”
That quickly, her fear at what they were about to attempt melted into flustered heat. “Keep your mind on escape.”
“I am. I’m looking forward to my reward.”
Coming from another man, those words might’ve made her uncomfortable, as if he was trying to put her in his debt. From Naasir, the statement was so honest, so open that she was only flattered, her blood hot. “I’ll see you soon.”
“Go.”
She stepped out of the room and, leaving the door open, began to stroll to Suyin’s suite. She knew she was being watched, but she didn’t look around, focusing her attention on the artwork on the walls.
Suyin was awake.
“I rarely sleep,” the other woman told her from her favorite sofa, an odd scent akin to seared flesh lingering in the air of the room.
Skin creeping at the realization that something horrible had occurred since they spoke just three hours earlier, Andromeda zeroed in on the new lines around Suyin’s mouth. She went to kneel by her friend, took Suyin’s slightly clammy hand in her own. “You’re in pain.”
A faint smile. “Xi came after you left. He believed my wing was regenerating too fast, so he ordered it be excised to the inner curve.”
Hands fisted and teeth gritted so hard a muscle jumped in her jaw, Andromeda checked the freshly cauterized wound. The pain had to be excruciating. Knowing there was nothing she could do about that now, she swallowed her rage and took in Suyin’s ethereal white gown. “Do you have a tunic and pants like mine?”
Suyin’s pain-dulled expression sharpened. “Yes, but if you’re planning an escape, don’t try to take me. I’ll only hold you back.” Bright, wet eyes. “My aunt won’t kill me—I’m family after all.”
Andromeda squeezed Suyin’s hand, the
bones so fine, the skin delicate. “I won’t go without you.” She put steel in her tone. “So you must change because if you don’t, your dress will hamper your movements.”
Suyin’s lips trembled, but her words held a resolute strength. “I have only one wing, youngling.” She patted Andromeda’s cheek with her free hand. “I treasure your loyalty, but I won’t take advantage of it. I cannot fly, will be but a burden.”
“We won’t be flying,” Andromeda said, thinking of the wild creature she’d left in her room, the one who’d come into enemy territory for her. For her. “We’ll go as the tigers go.” It was the first image that came to mind when she thought of Naasir: a tiger, deadly and stealthy.
“Tigers?”
“You’ll see. Now change.”
Suyin didn’t argue any further, though her expression made it clear she thought this a foolish risk. Disappearing into another part of her suite, she returned dressed in dark blue leggings paired with a tunic in a slightly paler shade of blue. She touched her hand to the deep brown scarf with which she’d covered her hair. “I wore the darkest things I could find.”
Thunder rolled across the sky just then, right before rain began to fall outside in a hard beat. “The dogs can’t track in this,” Andromeda said with a teeth-baring smile. “We’re clearly meant to escape tonight.”
The words had barely left her mouth when Naasir slipped into the room. Eyes huge, Suyin’s hand lifted to her mouth as Naasir took her in and said, “You have one wing. Does it affect your balance?”
The blunt question made Suyin blink and blurt out an answer. “Yes. It’ll also drag me down should I need to run.”
Naasir’s eyes met Andromeda’s and she felt her entire body tense. Looking to Suyin, she knew Naasir’s silent solution was the right one, but it would brutalize the other woman when she deserved so much better.