by Nalini Singh
Elena’s need a wild thing, Raphael’s touch earthy and physical.
Skin, I need skin. She pulled at the zipper of her jacket, de—
A stab of heat in her arm, cruel enough to have her breaking their kiss. Her hair tumbled around them, her clothing askew. But her eyes were on the arm she cradled to her body. “It burns.” The shocked words slipped out past her guard . . . because this was Raphael.
Face set in brutal lines, he gently pushed up her jacket and T-shirt sleeve at once, the glow of his power lighting up the dark below the surface of the ocean. In that glow, she saw that her flesh was translucent, her bones morphing shape. A scream built inside her . . . and the illusion faded. “Did you see?” she asked through a throat gone raw. “My flesh was see-through.”
“No, I see only inflamed skin.” Raphael brushed away the piece of lint that stuck to the cut that continued to throb. “Describe what you saw.” Healing power sank into her, power that tasted of her archangel.
Exhaling shakily in the aftermath, perspiration chilling on her face and the back of her neck, she stared at the spot where the cut had been and told him all of it. “I’m changing somehow. Becoming, the Legion said. Maybe my brain’s trying to make sense of it and short-circuiting.”
“Perhaps, and perhaps the ancient being who speaks to you has encroached into your life while asleep.” His voice was frigid, emotionless. “Does the injury feel better?”
“Yes. No more pain.” Only echoes of it, serrated pieces of metal twisting under her skin.
Raphael’s face went impossibly more emotionless, the Legion mark on his temple ablaze and his wings pure white fire. “Home, hbeebti.”
“Home.” Elena closed her arms around him, a crushing suffocation in her lungs.
* * *
• • •
The house was lit up in welcome. Someone had even strung fairy lights amidst the trees and along the rooftop. “Those weren’t there before,” Elena whispered, a pressure behind her eyelids, a pounding at her temples, and a sense of wrongness in her limbs. As if her bones had truly changed shape.
Raphael didn’t speak.
Instead of turning toward the house after they landed, Elena stood toe to toe with her archangel. His fury was a living thing between them, his power crackling the air and dancing along her skin.
Spreading out his fiery wings, he closed his hands over the top arch of her own wings and stroked down firmly.
She shivered and nuzzled his throat. “Activate the glamour.”
“You need to speak to a healer, then go to sleep.”
“What I need is you.” The wrongness faded, her skin settling back on her bones. “I won’t let anything, even the Cascade, steal us from one another.” Thrusting her hand into his hair, she kissed him until he was no longer stone, until he was her Raphael again, her archangel who feared for her as he’d never feared in his life.
Red flushed his cheekbones, his pupils dilated when they came up for air. White fire and feathers, his wings shifted from one to the other in a pulse timed to his heartbeat. “We are wrapped in glamour.” He pulled off his tunic to reveal a sculpted chest that made her want to bite.
So she did.
He laughed and bit her back oh so lightly on the curve of her neck, his hand possessive on her breast. “Clothes, Elena,” he ordered with another bite, another squeeze of her swollen flesh.
Barely able to wait, she stripped off her jacket and dropped it to the snow, then placed her various knife sheaths, assorted other weapons, and the crossbow onto the protective leather. The rest of her clothes disappeared in a flash. “I must love you a great deal, Archangel,” she pointed out as an icy wind brushed her bare skin. “It’s freaking freezing.”
“I’ll take care of that,” Raphael said before leaping with her into the sky.
Limbs interlocked and minds entwined, flesh against flesh, warrior to warrior, they danced that most intimate, erotic dance.
He kissed her mouth, her neck, her breasts.
Nipples hard against the beauty of his chest, she petted him everywhere she could reach, her lips determined to cover every golden inch of his body.
His hands were rough with need, with fear.
Her fingernails were claws as she fought to cling to their future.
Thighs quivering and body liquid, she pressed wet kisses along his jawline high above the Hudson River. “Inside me, Raphael. I need you inside me.”
His hand squeezing the curve of her flank where she had her leg wrapped around his waist, the Legion mark on his right temple glittering diamond-bright . . . and his stone-hard cock thrusting into her with an earthy passion that had nothing of distance or otherness in it.
Her body clamped around his as a cry left her throat. Mine, you are mine.
Eternity, Elena, that is what you promised me. His mental voice was ragged, his body possessive and primal in her, around her. I will never release you from that promise.
They clung, two lovers in freefall.
The waters of the river closed over their heads, a dark blanket.
Wrapped around him in every way, Elena whispered, Knhebek, Archangel, and the words of love held her every fear, her every hope, her very soul . . . even as her forearm began to burn and the vein at her left temple felt as if it would burst.
* * *
• • •
Raphael sensed his consort’s excruciating pain even as their bodies rocked with pleasure. It was instinct to drench her in his healing energy. Paltry though it was after his earlier usage, more a false promise than a truth, Elena trembled around him on a shudder of relief before she surrendered to the incandescent energy between them.
Her eyes glowed at the end, the rim of silver dazzling . . . only for it to flicker and fade out like a candle extinguished by a sudden wind.
Back bowing as his own pleasure broke on a cresting wave, Raphael couldn’t hold on to the image, and when he looked at his hunter again, she was smiling softly, her body languid and her eyes boasting the rim of silver that spoke of her growing immortality. He ran his hand over her back, kissed her temple, used his free arm to hold her close to his warmth.
Hair wild silk against his skin, she made a near purring sound, so strong and alive and vibrant in his arms.
And being hunted by forces Raphael wanted to annihilate out of existence. “Home?”
“Mmm.” A nod, followed by the grumble of her stomach.
No annoyed huff this time, his consort too lazy-limbed in the aftermath of their loving. Bringing them out of the river, he carried her to the clifftop on which stood their home.
“Hey, wait!” Jolting out of her heavy-lidded laziness when he strode past the pile of their clothing, she said, “My crossbow! My knives!”
Taut as he was with a worry that went down to the immortal cells of his body, Raphael felt his lips kick up. “Ah, now I see your priorities.”
“No funning, Raphael.” A heavy scowl as she twisted to look over his shoulder at the pile retreating into the distance. “Archangel.”
Placing her on her feet inside the doorway of the study entrance, he said, “Stay out of the snow. I’ll retrieve your precious jewels.”
She was dancing on her feet and rubbing at her arms and legs by the time he returned. “Glamour, quick,” she ordered. “I don’t want to flash Montgomery.” A shudder of horror.
Raphael was an archangel, feared no man, far less his own butler. But there was an innocence in sneaking out of the study like misbehaving youths, the laughing glance Elena threw him over her shoulder stirring a part of him that awakened only for her.
The house was warmly lit at this pitch-dark time before dawn, but of Montgomery, there was no sign.
“He has a wife now,” Raphael murmured with a stroke of his hand up Elena’s bare flank. “I’m sure he’s engaged in far more pleasurable matters th
an in rising predawn to wait for us.”
“Hush.” Elena threw him a quelling look. “I can’t think about Montgomery that way. As far as I’m concerned, he sleeps in his suit.”
“Sivya may have some disagreement with a husband who is never naked.”
Elena put her fingers in her ears. “La-la-la, I can’t hear you.”
Holding on to the simple joy of this instant when they’d set aside the problem of the dangerous changes in Elena, Raphael teased her with heavy strokes of his palm across her wings as they went up the stairs. His warrior threatened to kick him. He pressed a kiss to the dimple at the base of her spine.
She pounced on him the instant they were behind the closed doors to their suite.
Weapons and clothes dropping to the floor, they tumbled onto the bed in a warm tangle of limbs, their wings wrapped around each other.
“I love you too much,” she said without warning, her smile wiped away. “What if one day something happens to you like what almost happened to Harrison yesterday?”
He brushed back the strands of her hair that stuck to her cheeks, living pieces of gossamer crackling with life. The strands clung to him. “I am difficult to hurt.” He didn’t have to say the rest, didn’t have to point out that she was the one who threatened to break him.
Swallowing hard, she caressed her fingers down his cheek then gave him a concise summary of what had happened to her while they’d been apart. The watching owls, the horrific pain in her left temple, the continued problems with her wings . . . and the voice in her head. “Describe it to me again,” he ordered.
She twisted up her face. “Old, old, old. Older than Caliane. Than Alexander.” Biting down on her lower lip, she considered it. “A female energy. No sense of overt threat, but the words she says, Raphael. ‘You must end for the other to live.’ That’s not exactly a warm and fluffy bedtime story.”
Shifting so that he was braced over her, his wings blocking out the night and offering her a canvas for fingers that painted affection over him, Raphael forced his brain to think. Raw archangelic power was no use against a foe unknown and unseen. He must be intelligent, fight with will and knowledge. “We will speak to Jessamy. The words are in the pattern of a prophecy. It could be that such a prophecy was recorded in our histories.”
“But if the speaker is an Ancient among Ancients . . . Age and time eat away at even great civilizations. Libraries are lost, entire histories erased.”
“Yes, but angelkind has living histories, whose memories simply need to be mined.” Even then, the task might be impossible—he knew of no angel older than five hundred thousand years who was awake. Their forebearers Slept an endless night, immortals who wished no more to walk the earth. “We must ask.”
Elena nodded. “Never know what someone’s great-uncle Bert might remember.”
The joke fell flat, both their hearts beating too fast. Raphael almost wished Lijuan would rise again. She, even in her deadly and dreadful “evolution,” was a foe he understood and could battle.
Having his hands tied while Elena hurt . . .
“Enough of this.” His consort placed her palms against his glowing wings. “You don’t have to save me, Archangel. We are us. That’s how we fight this. Together.” One hand against his heart. “You’re a little bit mortal and I’m a tiny bit immortal. We did that to each other. We created the wildfire. We beat Lijuan. We’ll beat this together. The one thing we won’t do is surrender who we are to this menace.”
Yes, she was magnificent, his warrior consort. She was also right. All their greatest successes had come when they acted as one. He would do well to remember that. “As you say.”
“I do so say.” She poked a finger to his chest. “Also, we’re both covered in angel dust.”
Bending his head, he licked the tip of one breast. She shivered.
The result was inevitable.
Afterward, her skin gleaming with a layer of perspiration mingled with angel dust and sleep not yet on her mind even now so close to dawn, she rose from the bed to raid the table on which Montgomery and Sivya had laid out a feast of covered dishes before they retired the previous day.
One of the two had also placed a heating device on the table. A microwave, he recalled, that was what it was termed. On the microwave was a note in Sivya’s hand that she’d be happy to rise to prepare fresh foods whenever Raphael and Elena returned home, but Raphael knew his hunter would never think of intruding on the couple’s sleep for such a small matter.
“Those two would keel over stone-dead if they knew what I used to eat as a mortal at the end of a long day in the field,” she said as she put a full plate in the microwave. “This kind of a spread would’ve been beyond my wildest dreams.”
After the food was ready, she filled a second plate with cold items then came back to sit on the bed facing him, her right wing lying heavily on his thigh as he remained on his back in bed.
“Tell me about your day and I’ll tell you about Nisia’s warped sense of humor,” she traded.
“You are too late, hbeebti. I learned of Nisia’s leanings when she solemnly told my three-hundred-year-old self that I had a growth on my back that was for life but should cause me no harm. I spent days twisting around to try to find it.”
Elena paused with a slice of pie halfway to her mouth. “What was it?” Wide eyes.
23
“You have the same growth.”
Elena twisted instinctively before groaning. “Wings? She was messing with your head the whole time? God, she’s diabolical. What did you do to piss her off?”
“Broke my bones once too often trying to gorge-dive.” He’d been much younger, with weaker bones, the gorge that bisected the Refuge a massive crack in the mantle of the earth. “But I will tell you about my day and then you can tell me how you discovered Nisia’s sadistic streak.”
He plucked a grape off her cold plate, bit into the tart sweetness of it. “Jason found me before he left to return to his princess. We had a long discussion.”
“About Favashi, I’m guessing.” Finishing off her pie, Elena fed him another grape.
Raphael accepted the gift. “She appears to be gathering a much bigger standing army than she’s ever before had.”
“China’s bigger than her previous territory.” Getting up off the bed with hunter fluidity, Elena refilled her hot plate. “Maybe she thinks she needs more people?”
Her left wing was dragging on one side.
A primary feather, shimmering dawn and white-gold, floated to lie on the carpet as he watched.
His gut tensed. Losing a feather so significant for flight was not a common thing.
Elena’s gaze followed his when he didn’t respond, the bones in her face standing out against her skin. But when she looked to him, it was with challenge and a furious will to fight.
We are us . . . The one thing we won’t do is surrender who we are to this menace.
Wrenching his eyes off the feather on the memory of her words, he spoke to her as his consort and the most integral piece of his existence.
“The problem,” he said, “is that Favashi’s army is not spread out across the country as it would be if she intended to use it to maintain order. It is gathered in one place, and though Jason has no specifics as yet, he’s heard whispers that she is thinking of conquest.”
Elena resettled on the bed. “Conquest?” Her voice rose. “She barely has China under control.”
Stroking his fingers over her thigh, he attempted to send more healing energy into her body, but the well had run dry. “I’m not saying any of this makes sense,” he said past the ball of cold rage in his chest. “Regardless, Dmitri spent much of the day ensuring there are no holes in our defenses. We will be ready, should she cast covetous eyes toward this territory.”
“Wouldn’t it be more logical for her to target the territory closest to her?�
�� Biting into a small pastry that crumbled buttery flakes onto her plate, she made a humming sound in the back of her throat.
Even in the depths of the rage that surged past his resolution to search for a solution together with his consort, Raphael’s body stirred. “If Favashi dares look to India, she will have a war on her hands—you said it yourself, Neha can be a warrior goddess when necessary.” He brushed off a piece of soft white lint on her thigh.
“I can’t figure out where that’s coming from,” Elena muttered. “My clothes maybe got laundered with a tissue. Stuff’s everywhere.”
Keeping one hand on her thigh, Raphael folded his other arm behind his head. “Favashi will alienate the rest of the Cadre if she tries anything against another territory, no matter whose. She already has one of the biggest landmasses on the planet despite being the newest member of the Cadre.”
“You know,” Elena mused, “it’s like an ancient Egyptian curse”—wiggling her fingers as if casting a spell—“anyone who becomes Archangel of China will go batshit crazy.”
“The angels who ruled Egypt were often melodramatic, but yes, it appears so.” He hoped for Favashi’s sake that hers was a small madness brought on by the sudden ascension to such a huge territory—because there was no way she could win against the rest of the Cadre. She was no Lijuan, who had evolved into a truly immortal terror who appeared impossible to kill.
The war when Lijuan rose again would forever scar the world. She wouldn’t wake sane, as Caliane had done. No, Lijuan had gone to ground to bloat herself with power.
Her rising would augur a new Dark Age.
Perhaps the darkest since angelkind’s first death and the birth of vampires.
Favashi, however . . . she risked annihilation by her fellow archangels should she truly be planning to encroach on the territories held by the rest of the Cadre.
“Enough of Favashi’s descent into megalomania,” he said. “Tell me what you discovered today.” He understood the history that drove her to try to protect her sister by solving the mystery of Harrison Ling’s attempted murder, but still had to bite his tongue from telling her she needed to be concentrating on her health and the changes going on in her body.
