by Nalini Singh
But beautiful as he was, that wasn’t her primary focus at this instant. “You do heal fast.” There were no scars, no sign that he’d come to within inches of being burned alive. “Does anything hurt?”
“No.” Shifting on his heel, he took her shoulders and ordering her to face the window, examined her wings with slow, methodical care. “Parts of your wings have been scraped down to the tendon.” The growl was deep. “Be careful when you sleep.”
Andromeda nodded, able to feel the stretching, throbbing pain that denoted healing tissue.
“Your feet?”
“Healed.” Usually, all energy would be directed to the wings, but her body had clearly decided the feet were a minor enough wound to deal with quickly.
Getting into bed, she lay on her stomach. When Naasir slipped in beside her, she lifted her wing to put it over him. He petted her gently over the uninjured sections. “Can I have one of your smaller feathers when it sheds? Don’t pull it out.” The last was an order.
The gritty roughness of his voice made her toes curl. “The one under your index finger—I can’t feel it.” An angel’s feathers were another organ in a sense, the awareness of them bone-deep. “I think it’s detached.”
Naasir touched it with care, and when it slid away, he took it and, getting out of bed, went to their single surviving pack. He returned with a fine strip of rawhide in hand, the kind men sometimes used to tie back their hair. As she watched, he sat on the bed and tied the feather neatly to the rawhide, then wove the strip of leather into a thin braid on one side of his head, tying it off with a clever twist at the end.
“There,” he said with satisfied pleasure, and turned over onto his stomach beside her.
Heart so melted it was just this warm thick honey in her chest, she draped her wing over him once again. “You need to feed.”
“I’ll drink the rest of the bottle.”
Andromeda ran her nails over his nape, to his heavy-lidded groan. “Drink from me. I ate well.” She slid the wrist of her other hand under his mouth when he lifted his head.
His soft, astonishing hair brushing over it, the damp strands a cool caress, he pressed a kiss to her pulse. It jumped. Nostrils flaring, he licked over the skin but didn’t bite. “One day, I’ll sip from you while my cock is snug inside your tight sheath, and it’ll be slow and deep and long.”
Breathing suddenly became a difficult task.
“But on this night, your body needs all its energy to heal the damage to your wings.” Another kiss, this one so tender, it made her lower lip quiver and her eyes well.
How could she possibly survive five hundred years without him?
39
Andromeda woke to the crash of thunder. Naasir was already awake. Lying on his back, one of his arms curved around her as she used his shoulder for a pillow, he was petting her wing as he watched the lightning storm beyond the window. The strikes glittered as bright as Naasir’s hair, no rain to soften their harsh brilliance.
“How long did we sleep?” she asked, snuggling closer to the furnace-like warmth of his body.
“It’s early morning.” A boom of thunder almost drowned out his words.
“I’ve never seen the sky that color.” A dark, roiling purple that threw shadows on the earth and sparked with shards of lightning. “It’s beautiful.” As wild as the chimera who held her so affectionately. “This must be the same storm that’s already covered the rest of the world.”
“I didn’t say anything in front of Tarek, but Raphael can fly above lightning.”
Andromeda’s eyes widened. “Yes, no archangel should’ve had any problem avoiding it.” Yet, unless something had changed in the night, neither Raphael, nor Lijuan, nor Favashi had made it here. That wasn’t coincidence. “It’s said that when an archangel ascends, the world changes in inexplicable ways. It might be the same for the waking of an Ancient.”
“This lightning isn’t normal,” Naasir agreed. “Caliane’s waking was violent, but not to this extent.”
“Alexander was a general, Caliane an angel known for her grace and her song.”
“She’s also a trained warrior who rose to protect her son,” Naasir reminded her. “I think the Cascade must be getting stronger.”
Hairs rising on the back of her neck at what that might mean, Andromeda shivered. “The good news is that I don’t think Lijuan would risk her noncorporeal form to a strike.”
Naasir’s chest rumbled under her hand. “Perhaps the storm will do the world a favor and burn Lijuan from existence.”
Both of them conscious such a gift was unlikely, they lay in silence until Andromeda said, “Do you remember being two before you became one?” It didn’t seem wrong to ask about that here, not with the ferocity of nature so close.
“Yes. The human boy played with the tiger cub.” His words held a smile. “They were best friends in a place with no other living beings but Osiris and the wolves he kept as pets . . . and when Osiris forced them into one, the friendship between boy and cub kept the chimera I became stable.”
Six thousand dead. The cub and the boy could’ve been two more casualties . . . and she might’ve never known Naasir.
Violently repudiating the thought, she listened to his heart, and she reminded herself he was very much strong and alive.
“The two parts didn’t fight for supremacy but worked together for survival,” he added, his arm tightening around her. “It’s why my form isn’t twisted or crippled. And now, there is only one. I am me. I am Naasir.”
The simplicity of his declaration made it all the more powerful. “Did you choose your name?” There was no doubt in her mind that even if Osiris had called him by a name, it wasn’t one Naasir would’ve kept.
“No,” he told her. “Dmitri gave it to me, in honor of a friend who perished in a battle where he saved Dmitri’s life.” Unhidden emotion in his tone. “I’m proud to bear it, to know Dmitri always believed I would do justice to such an honorable name—and that I would be strong enough to make it my own.”
“No one can dispute that,” Andromeda said. “You are Naasir, a legend across continents and through time.” Under her hand, she felt the formation of a layer of fur so fine and so soft that she couldn’t see it, only feel the texture. What she could see were the tiger stripes on his skin. Rising on her elbow beside him, she whispered, “I am so happy to know you.”
He bared his teeth at her. “What secrets are you keeping from me?”
“I’ll tell you after the dinner at my parents’ estate. You’ll still come?” The question held an edge of desperation she hoped he didn’t hear.
“I’ve been thinking of a gift for your parents,” he said in response, his tone solemn. “When I was in New York, I saw a television show about dolls that look human and are fully anatomically correct. They would be the perfect tireless concubines.”
Snorting with laughter, she tried to appear stern. “Don’t you dare.”
His grin was unrepentant. “I gave Ellie a carnivorous plant. She liked it.”
“Should I be jealous?” She’d heard how he spoke about his sire’s consort—with admiration and affection both.
Quicksilver fast, he tugged her down with a grip in her hair, holding her so close that she could count each individual lash over his eyes. “Elena is Raphael’s consort and a sparring partner for me.” His voice had fallen into the guttural range. “She is not you. No one will ever be what you are to me.”
Her heart broke. Into a million tiny pieces.
40
Lijuan arrived at Rohan’s stronghold long after she should have. It infuriated her that the unmistakable sign of Alexander’s awakening had forced her to ground herself for long periods; instinct had whispered that those silver lightning strikes could do serious damage to her yet healing body.
It appeared Favashi, too, had been delayed, for Rohan had no archangelic backup.
Good. Also good was the fact the swiftness of the storm indicated Alexander was forcing himself to wake
at rapid speed; he’d be weak, while she could feel her strength returning to her with each hour that passed. Even her wings now felt strong enough for short flights. And, unlike Raphael, Alexander wouldn’t have developed any defenses against her black rain—if she could hit his heart, she could kill him.
The best option, however, remained to execute him before he rose.
Lijuan wasn’t about to discount Alexander until he was dead.
She spoke to Xi from her chair inside his battle tent. “You need to break this siege.” Lijuan could use her abilities to turn the tide, but that would mean dipping into her power reserves. “Rohan is not his father and you’re a seasoned general. Why is this taking so long?” The lightning was dangerous but it was no longer constant.
“Rohan is better prepared and has a larger number of troops garrisoned here than reported by our advance scouts—I believe he had warning.” Despite the fact he’d been fighting for hours, Xi’s expression was as cool and intelligent as always. “He’s also improved the palace with new technologies that are hindering our troops. The passion with which he fights appears to confirm that Alexander lies within.”
“Yes. The boy was always devoted to his father.” Lijuan considered her options, decided the expenditure of energy was justifiable; the earlier and faster she got to Alexander, the easier it would be to kill him.
Waiting only until her strength was at full capacity—though that capacity was paltry in comparison to what it would be once she healed totally—she rose into the air during a break in the lightning, and blasted the palace with her black rain. The attack vaporized part of the buildings, creating a large gap in Rohan’s defenses. Leaving Xi to take advantage of that, Lijuan invaded the palace in her noncorporeal form.
She escaped a lightning strike by mere millimeters.
It was a waste of precious energy to maintain her noncorporeal form when the palace was a ghost town, everyone at the defenses, but she had no legs and using her wings would attract too much attention.
She saw no signs of Alexander’s presence. Even when she sank below the earth, she sensed nothing of the silver-winged Ancient. Rising to the surface just before her noncorporeal form solidified humiliatingly into flesh and blood on the tiled floor of the palace, she knew there was only one option.
Because Zhou Lijuan did not crawl.
Before she could order Xi to bring her a sacrifice, her eye fell on an old retainer shuffling along a back passageway. Snapping out her wings to sweep through the wide corridors designed for angels, she grabbed him in silence and, cutting his throat with his own ceremonial knife, lapped at the blood that bubbled up. It was a poor substitute to directly sucking up his lifeforce, and blood tasted vile to Lijuan, but it transferred enough of his life energy to her that she was temporarily rejuvenated. If she felt weak again, she’d take another life. There were always warm bodies available to a goddess.
Ready for this to end so she could concentrate on her healing, she waited for the lightning to stutter, then rose above the palace and blanketed it with her black rain. Xi, find Rohan. I want him alive.
In took another forty minutes and two more inefficient feedings before Xi succeeded in overwhelming the defenders, and captured Alexander’s son. The palace lay half in ruins by then, Rohan’s fighters mostly dead, along with a large number of noncombatants who’d been hiding in a room that had fallen under Lijuan’s archangelic power.
Lijuan hadn’t done the latter on purpose—a goddess didn’t worry about weaponless ants—but neither did she feel any guilt. Rohan should’ve surrendered the instant he saw he was up against an archangel. He had to have known there was no way he could win.
Yet, even now, when he stood in the charred ruins of what must’ve been his great room, his hands bound behind him and his wings half cut off and cauterized by fire, while she sat on a chair in front of him, Alexander’s son was defiant.
“I do not know where my father Sleeps,” he said with an insolent laugh. “Do you truly think he would be so foolish as to leave the information with his son? It would make me a target. Neither would he remain in this territory, which is the first place a stupid enemy would look.”
“Do not forget you speak to an archangel,” Lijuan warned him. “And swallow your lies, for we both know your father loved his people and would not leave them.”
Lijuan had long thought that love a foolishness on his part. Raphael shared the same failing, as did Elijah, Titus, and Astaad. Even Neha, for all her ruthlessness, would shed her own blood to protect her people. Lijuan wasn’t so sure about Favashi, and Michaela put herself first, as had Uram. Charisemnon alone, of them all, thought like Lijuan.
To be an archangel was to be a god. Lijuan cared for her people by making sure they were safe and that they had enough to eat, but she did not love them. She would use them in her wars as necessary. They were disposable. More would spawn and fill the world.
Alexander hadn’t thought in such a way. He’d created orphanages in his land that still provided shelter and education for urchin children to this day. He’d been so proud of those homes and of the schools he’d founded. “Every child in my land,” he’d said to her once, his hands on the railings of the top balcony of this very palace, “will have the chance to become better than a lost piece of flotsam on the street.”
She’d laughed and shaken her head. “You are a fool, Alexander.” The amused, affectionate words of a friend. “Mortals are born and die in a mere glimmer of time. What use is it to waste your resources and your emotions on them?”
Alexander, his golden hair afire in the sunlight, had smiled. “Did you not admire the tapestry in the hall? It was designed and created by a mortal. The work of a lifetime and more beautiful than any such work I’ve seen completed by immortal hands.”
Laughing again at how neatly he’d trapped her, Lijuan had conceded the point that very occasionally a particular mortal had his or her value. Most, however, were nothing. Insects to step on.
She hadn’t put it that way then. Only a thousand years into being an archangel and she’d been . . . soft. And for all their disagreements, she’d still admired Alexander, hadn’t wanted to disappoint him. But that time was long gone. She now saw him for the weak creature he’d been, driven by emotion and heart rather than the cold pragmatism of a god. That would be his downfall.
“You know something,” she said to the son Alexander had shown her when Rohan was a mere day old.
Lijuan had congratulated him, but in that tiny, squirming bundle she’d seen only a chink in his armor, a living vulnerability. Lijuan had long ago killed the mortal who had made her heart stir, and who could’ve become her own living vulnerability had she not taken preemptive action. Chaoxiang had been as dark as Alexander was fair, and he’d laughed as much as Raphael’s blue-winged commander did now.
“Beloved” he’d called her, eyes dancing.
Those eyes had held hers as she stabbed a dagger into his heart. There had been no recrimination in their black depths, only piercing love and forgiveness. His last word had been a whisper. “Lijuan.”
That day marked her true ascension, when she became invulnerable.
Unlike Alexander.
“If you do not speak,” she said to Rohan, “I will annihilate what remains of this palace and of your squadrons, as well as the surrounding villages and towns. I will kill tens of thousands.”
Rohan’s eyes, a deep ebony rather than Alexander’s silver, glittered. “You are a monster.” The words were spat out, his pale brown skin hot with rage.
“I am evolution.” Gripping his neck while she hovered using her wings, she lifted him off his feet. She’d fed again in the inefficient fashion that nonetheless gave her a power boost, and now she burned with it.
Bound as he was, Rohan couldn’t fight her, but his eyes remained unyielding. “My people stand with me and my father,” he said. “All know that if you come to power, the world will drown in death.”
“The world will be purified.” All w
eakness burned away. “Speak, or die.”
“You would go to war with Favashi for this?”
“Favashi is young.” Now that she could feed again even in a limited fashion, Lijuan knew she could kill the much younger archangel should Favashi be so foolish as to get in her way. “Where is your father, Rohan?”
Alexander’s son, the babe she had once held, looked at her without flinching. “I am Rohan, proud son of the greatest archangel ever to live, and you are an abomination who will never break my will.”
“Insolent fool!” Crushing his neck until his head lolled forward, she dropped him to the floor. He’d live—he was a strong angel of enough age to heal those injuries.
“My men have sacked the palace but there is no sign of Alexander,” Xi told her. “If he is like Caliane and able to hide deep in the earth, we may not find him in time.”
Alexander loved his people. He loved his only son even more.
Lijuan’s eyes went to Rohan’s already healing form. Her lips curved. “Then we make Alexander come to us,” she whispered, and waited the minutes it took for Rohan to heal enough to open his eyes. “Your father will wake at reckless speed to avenge you.”
Her words made Rohan’s jaw go tight, but Alexander’s son didn’t beg, didn’t scream as her black knives plunged into him. He went to his death with the stoic and defiant pride of a true warrior.
Part of Lijuan could admire that, and had it been possible, she’d have ordered that Rohan be given a warrior’s burial. But it wasn’t possible—her black death had caused his body to disintegrate into ash of the same shade.
Rohan was gone.
The world screamed, lurching under Xi’s feet.
41
Naasir and Andromeda were out of bed and about to head out to speak to Tarek when the land bucked with violent fury. Struggling out of the small house, they went to their knees outside. The shaking seemed to go on forever.