by Nalini Singh
* * *
• • •
Elena opened her eyes in a familiar kitchen, the warm smell of baking in the air. Smiling, she ran her fingers along the counter and called out her sisters’ names as she walked toward the back door. The grass outside shimmered emerald under a soft sun, Marguerite’s flowers bobbing prettily in the garden she’d planted a month earlier.
Elena had helped. She’d dug her hands into the soil and carefully placed each small seedling. “Will they flower soon, Maman?” she’d asked.
“Yes, these ones will.” Marguerite’s fine-boned face was shaded by the large white hat she always wore in the garden, but Elena had heard her smile. “They are pretty things that grow quickly and only last one season, but ah, such joy they give us for that season, non?”
Elena, her own hat on, snug and dirty “gardening” sneakers on her feet, had nodded. “Yes, this garden is pretty.”
“A fleeting, bright beauty.”
Beyond the garden, at the back of the yard, Elena saw a woman sitting in the swing Elena’s papa had created using a plank strung with ropes to the branches of a big tree. The woman’s legs were long, the dress that covered her body a gown of frothing pale green that licked around her ankles.
Elena had never seen such hair: waves of purest lilac that fell down her back like water, arresting against the woman’s pearl white skin. Her wings were lovely arcs of violet so deep it was blue, and her eyes . . .
“Why can I see your eyes?” Elena crossed the grass to sit on the swing that had appeared beside Cassandra. Though they had met only in thought, she had no doubts that this was the Ancient cursed with the gift of foresight. And she felt no surprise that Cassandra was here, in this place that was Elena’s pocket of memory.
Those eyes of an extraordinary and unexpected seafoam green that bled into indigo with edges of clear-sky blue turned incandescent with the light of Cassandra’s smile. Twin auroras of breathtaking beauty.
“This is your dream, child, and it appears you do not wish to see blood.” A deepening of Cassandra’s smile. “I have not seen the serene and the peaceful through my eyes for an eternity. I had forgotten such hues existed.”
Elena kicked off the ground to swing gently beside Cassandra. The skirts of the Ancient’s dress rippled in the wind as they swung. Her own legs, Elena saw, were clad in black hunting boots and black pants. “I thought you went to Sleep?”
“I did, but still I dream.” A sigh. “I wish I did not, but the dreams are so vivid they disturb my rest.”
“Your voice is different.” Young, without the weight of incredible age.
“This is a young place.” Hands clasped around the ropes of the swing and bare feet held off the ground, Cassandra looked around. “Happiness lives here.”
“Yes.” Elena nudged aside the nagging feeling that the happiness wouldn’t last, that the sunshine would soon be clouded. “Did you just come to visit?”
Cassandra stopped swinging and gave her a strange, thoughtful look with those eyes so lovely and haunting, strands of her hair flirting with her cheek. “I have not just visited anyone for . . .” Her hands tightened on the ropes.
“You don’t have to remember,” Elena reassured her. “Sometimes, I don’t like to remember.” Shadows danced in the kitchen windows, and Elena told herself that was her maman, moving about as she made Elena’s favorite cookies. Or maybe it was Belle grabbing a soda after her dance lesson. It might even be Ari, come to find a snack. That was all. Nothing else. Nothing dark.
“It has never been the remembering that is the problem. It is the seeing.” Despite the lonely darkness of her words, Cassandra began to swing again. “I came to give you a gift, prophecy of mine, but I find it difficult to form the thought. Most of me is Sleeping.”
“I’m resting, too,” Elena shared, suddenly certain of that. “My wings are nothing but color and hope.” Her back felt empty, a needed weight missing. “Do you think I’ll fly again?” In the dreamscape, the potent emotion of the question was a distant cloud on the horizon.
Lilac hair streamed behind Cassandra as she pushed herself higher and higher on the swing. She didn’t answer for a long time, but that was all right, because Elena was swinging, too. It was on a whoosh back that she heard Cassandra call out, “We are flying now!”
Elena laughed and kicked her feet even harder.
And she forgot that Cassandra was in her dream for a reason.
14
Coming awake on a yawn, Elena rubbed knuckled fists over her eyes. “As far as my dreams go,” she muttered to no one in particular, “that one wasn’t too weird at all.”
A rustle that sounded like wings settling. But not angelic wings. The sound was too small. She lifted her lashes and found the room draped in the deep orange-gold light of late afternoon or very early evening. Someone had pulled back the blackout curtains but left the gauzy curtains as they were.
Those curtains were moving in the wind, the balcony doors having been cracked open. The latter couldn’t have been for long because the room was nice and warm . . . but it had been long enough for a snow-white owl to wander inside. It stretched its wings again before looking at her with eyes of shining gold.
It looked so real, not an illusion at all. When it walked back out through the doors, the curtain draped over its body. She saw it sweep away into the sunset light, silent and lovely. A second owl joined it moments later. Beautiful, unearthly creatures who’d never done her harm, but who’d been harbingers of so much pain to come.
I came to give you a gift.
Elena gasped in a breath; she’d inadvertently held her breath since her first glimpse of the owl. “Thank you,” she whispered; she knew how much Cassandra loved her owls.
No ancient mind in her head, not even a faint sign that Cassandra had heard.
Oddly disappointed, she sat up properly . . . and saw the crutches leaning up against the bedside table. “Nisia, I love you.” It had to be the Tower healer who’d thought of that; she’d been around Elena enough not to expect good behavior. Sans crutches, Elena would’ve probably settled on crawling to the facilities.
She did not need an audience while she did her business.
Too much the hunter not to understand her body, however, she spent several minutes stretching in bed before she slid her arms into the crutches, took a firm grip on the handles, and got herself up. “Woohoo!”
Unfortunately, her celebrations proved premature; her knees began to crumple the instant she tested putting weight on her legs rather than the crutches. “Okay, then, no miracle cure.” She hadn’t expected one, but a girl had to try.
At least her arms and shoulders were working well enough to utilize the crutches. She managed to close the balcony doors and reinstate the thicker curtains, then get herself to the bathroom and do what needed to be done. The lure of the shower was too much to resist so, after a moment’s thought, she turned on the water, then sat down in the huge shower cubicle designed for wings.
She shampooed her hair half expecting the teeny feathers to fall off, but nope, they stayed happily attached to the strands on her head. Truth be told, she was kind of fond of those feathers. They were a marker of survival as far as she was concerned. It felt luxuriant to put conditioner in her hair, then run a loofah over her skin after she lathered it with a special macadamia oil-infused soap that she’d bought from a stall in Times Square before everything turned to custard.
“I’ve been in a chrysalis for months,” she muttered. “I deserve fancy soap.” The scent of the soap, the heat of the water on her skin, it was pure heaven, but her muscles were quivering by the end.
Not in the mood to be hauled out naked even by Keir and Nisia, she congratulated herself on having had the foresight to put several towels right outside the shower. After switching off the water, she grabbed the top towel from the pile and dried off her hair and most of her body wh
ile still seated.
She then spread the used towel on the floor of the cubicle so she wouldn’t slip as she got to her knees, grabbed the crutches from outside the door, and hauled herself to her feet. The maneuver left her breathless, her huge heart pumping double-time, but she wasn’t sorry in the least.
Her next achievement was to get her skinny ass to the glass shelf on which she kept her pampering supplies. Managing to grab a thick tube of body lotion using her teeth, she carried it back to the bed. Not elegant but it got the job done.
Collapsing onto her back on the bed, she gave herself a good few minutes to recover before she sat up and, switching on a bedside lamp, began to work the body lotion into her skin. She examined her body with a critical eye at the same time. Her skin continued to glow, but it had quieted down to a significant extent. Looked like the glow-in-the-dark phase of her life was on its way out.
Eerie inner luminescence aside, her skin was its natural hue—a dark gold that came to her via her grandmother’s Moroccan heritage—but it appeared fragile, her veins dangerously visible. In better news, her bones did appear to have a normal heft and strength to them. She’d ask Nisia to check for tunnels or hollow patches but right now, her bones looked to be the strongest part of her body.
After finishing with the body lotion, she touched her face, found sharp cheekbones, and jawbones defined enough for the runway, but it felt like her skin was stronger there. “Let’s hope that means good things for the rest of me.” Recovered enough to attempt a bit more bad behavior, she made her way to the closet and snagged the summer pajamas Sara had given her for her last birthday.
At least not all her clothes had been destroyed.
The bottoms of the pjs were pink and white striped shorts with white lace trim, the top a silky-soft pink T-shirt with a scooped neck and a white print—the silhouette of two angels kissing in the moonlight. Elena loved it, not just for the design but for the softness of the fabric. It’d also work to give the healers access to her body while keeping her from flashing the world.
She wasn’t even going to try for a bra. Neither Keir nor Nisia would even notice she had breasts unless those breasts started sprouting tendrils or spontaneously grew two nipples each. Grinning, she took the clothes back to the bed, and got dressed sitting up.
Next, she sent a message to Nisia alerting the healer she was up: no sense wasting time. The more calories they could get into her, the faster she’d be back to full strength. Then, phone gripped in her teeth, she hobbled her way to the living area. Archangel? She reached out with her mind as her ass hit the sofa cushions, the compulsion to ensure Raphael was okay not one she could fight. Not this close to their return.
The salt-laced sea crashed into her mind, the feel of Raphael a touch distant. Elena-mine.
A movement outside the uncurtained balcony doors caught her attention before she could reply. Her eyes widened. Birds in the sky, but non-creepy. An important fact. Condors. Three of them sweeping and dipping just off the balcony.
Even though she was still breathless from the trip to the living area, she got up and hobbled over. She knew the temperature outside was liable to have dropped, but she opened the doors nonetheless so she could watch the birds without the barrier of glass. Not that she was stupid about it. She stayed firmly in the doorway, a good distance from the open edge of the railingless balcony.
Are the birds doing anything of note?
Raphael’s voice was stronger and more resonant now; he had to be heading back toward Manhattan.
I think they’re leaving. The three birds she’d seen had just joined a much larger group. A massive vee of them, heading south. The sight of so many birds of prey together was beyond majestic.
I have spoken to Dmitri, Raphael said after a short pause. He tells me the pumas and other large cats are also departing the city.
Elena shivered as the wind blew her hair off her face, but she stayed in place, her gaze on the departing wave of birds. Elijah must’ve gotten word of Raphael’s return, was retreating from his fellow archangel’s territory before Raphael had to ask. A friendship between two archangels would always be a finely balanced thing—there was too much power involved for it to be otherwise.
The condors a distant blur now, she turned and got the doors closed with creative use of her crutches. Right as Nisia walked through the door. “Of course you are not resting like a sensible being who just emerged from a chrysalis,” the diminutive healer muttered, her ankle-length gown a dark blue that Elena hadn’t properly noticed before. As always with Nisia’s work clothes, it was simple but beautifully stitched.
“In my defense,” Elena said, “I appear to be the first non-insect to emerge out of a chrysalis, so I figure I get to make my own rules.” She got her butt on the sofa cushions again—not exactly gracefully, but hey, she hadn’t done a face-plant. That counted as a win in her book.
A thought struck her. “Unless . . . do creatures other than insects make chrysalis-like things? Chance I’m going to grow a chitinous shell or the wings of a butterfly?”
Nisia listened to her heart using a prosaic stethoscope. “Butterfly wings are a ridiculous idea. Do you know what size they’d have to be to have any hope of holding up the weight of an adult angel?”
Scowling at whatever Elena’s mega-heart was doing, she picked up Elena’s wrist to check her pulse. “A hard shell, on the other hand, might be an excellent safety measure for a consort who keeps breaking herself. Also, why do you believe I know anything about what makes a chrysalis and what doesn’t?”
“Because you are a font of endless knowledge, my dear Nisia.” Keir walked in with a smile, his body clad in flowing pants of chocolate brown and a tunic in a similar shade. It sounded so dull, but nothing was ever dull on Keir. He was a beautiful man, and one with an inner peace that made it seem as if he’d been born hundreds of millennia ago rather than only three.
“See,” she said to Nisia, “even Keir expects you to know everything.”
Harrumphing in a way only Nisia could, the healer continued her examination while Keir set up the IVs. As they worked, Elena admired Nisia’s wings—dark gray with white spots, she’d never seen them up so close. “Your feathers are so pretty.” Far more delicately beautiful than she’d ever realized.
Glaring at her as if she’d offered a mortal insult, Nisia stuck silvery things to Elena’s temples that led to a machine Keir had pulled out of another room. Then she pressed the stethoscope to Elena’s chest again. “Your heart is behaving oddly.” The healer sounded irritated. “It’s beating in a rhythm that’s not yours.”
“Huh?” Elena scratched her head, the damp strands of her hair cool against her skin. “How can you tell?”
“You’re a hunter. Surely you know mortal and immortal hearts beat in unique rhythms.”
“I mean, yeah, vampiric hearts can slow down to the point of almost not beating, but Raphael’s heart feels pretty normal to me.” She’d fallen asleep more times than she could count with her head on his chest, the steady beat of his heart lulling her into a deep rest.
“It may seem similar,” Keir murmured, “but there are minor but telling variations. The older the angel, the less power the heart needs to exert to keep the body functional. Prior to being encased, your heartbeat was close to a mortal’s.”
“Is my heart beating like an archangel’s now?” She couldn’t see a downside to that.
“No, not quite.” Nisia scowled at another device in her hand. “It’s beating as if you’re a three-hundred-year-old immortal rather than one barely born.”
“Her own cells must be merging with Raphael’s donated heart,” Keir murmured to Nisia. “The innate structure of her, her DNA, is yet morphing.”
The two switched into another language, the back and forth rapid.
“That’s another thing,” Elena interrupted when the discussion showed no signs of ending. “Why
did my body accept the heart? What about donor rejection, all that stuff?”
Both healers stared at her. It was Nisia who said, “You were encased in a chrysalis like a giant insect and you’re worried about tissue rejection?”
“I’m just saying.”
“It was ambrosia that made you an angel,” Keir reminded her. “Ambrosia that came from Raphael.”
The pieces clicked. She and her archangel, they’d always been two parts of a whole. Settling back with a deep sense of rightness inside her, she stopped interrupting the healers and concentrated on zapping the IVs dry.
“I spot no signs of a chitinous shell,” Nisia said at one point. “It appears only your head is hard.”
Elena grinned. “Takes one to know one.”
Keir snorted a laugh—the first time Elena had ever heard him make such an inelegant sound.
Nisia was still glaring at him when the two left a half hour later. Elena wanted to go visit Tower friends, drop by the Legion’s green skyscraper, but even she wasn’t insane enough to attempt any of that in her current state. So there she sat with a blanket over her legs, mentally cursing the Cascade using blue words in multiple languages.
A knock on the door.
15
Come in before I die of boredom!”
The face that peeked around the door was thinner than when she’d last seen it, but as ridiculously pretty. She held out her arms. Illium came inside in a rush, his eyes brilliant with emotion, but halted a foot in front of her. “Will I break you?”
“I’m going to hit you in a second.”
A wicked grin before he put his arms around her . . . with conscious care. Elena told herself to be patient; she’d be careful, too, if a friend came back looking sixty-eight percent dead.