by Nalini Singh
Another time, Raphael might’ve used the knowledge of Galen’s contradictory actions to nudge his weapons-master into laughter, for they were not simply liege and warrior, but today, tension knotted his tendons and crackled through his veins, his eyes drawn toward Sara and Deacon’s home. He hadn’t realized how often he and Elena spoke mind-to-mind until he could no longer reach the steel and wildness of her.
Reminding himself of the silent message she’d given him about this night, he took a sip of the twenty-five-year-old Scotch that Galen had brought as a gift. It had no impact on his archangelic system, but the complex and smooth taste was pleasing. “Did you notice anything else while you were in the region?”
“Yes,” Galen said, his eyes on a small squadron of angels silhouetted against the glittering nightscape of Manhattan, on their way to relieve the guards at the lava sinkhole. “Lady Caliane says that a number of vampires and angels previously resident in China have resettled in Japan.”
“Is Favashi playing power games?” If so, it was an act of true madness. Caliane was an Ancient content with a tiny territory and who’d offered Favashi her assistance. A young archangel struggling to enforce her rule over a large territory could ask for no better ally.
But Galen shook his head. “Caliane’s people weave like smoke through the landscape, and, per their reports, these new residents are scared, their only aim to move out of Favashi’s sphere of influence.”
Raphael knew a significant number of strong angels and vampires who’d once served Caliane had quietly resettled in Japan after fulfilling their obligations under any contracts they’d signed in her absence. An archangel’s madness could be forgotten with far more ease by her warriors and courtiers than by the son she’d left broken and bleeding on a lonely field far from help.
“Leaving aside the age and strength of those who oversee various parts of Japan for my mother, Caliane is far more terrifying in power than Favashi.”
“But Lady Caliane is gentle with the people under her care,” Galen said, for he had only ever known this Caliane. Raphael’s weapons-master had not yet been born when Caliane’s madness painted Raphael’s world in pain. “Her punishments can be harsh, yes,” Galen continued, “but she only ever metes them out when the crime deserves it. She does not seek to seed fear in the veins of those who call her their liege.”
That, too, was true. Prior to her madness, Caliane had run a stable and peaceful territory renowned for its art and its scientific discoveries, her court a place that often hosted other archangelic guests. “Elijah has told me of empty towns and villages, where it appears the residents abandoned their lives and left without warning.”
“Such can’t be explained by the immigrants.” Galen’s brow was heavy. “Their numbers are limited—and it’s not poor mortal or vampiric villagers who have moved in. These are people with wealth and power enough to get out without being noticed.”
Jason, he said to his spymaster. Will you join us? He had no interest in Favashi’s games right now, not with one of Elena’s feathers lying healthy and shedded in his pocket, but those games could not be ignored.
Archangels who destabilized could take down millions with them.
When Galen filled in Jason—Raphael had already told him of Elijah’s news—the spymaster said, “I will return to that corner of the world.” His face gave nothing away. “I focused on gaining as much information about her army as I could. Clearly there are more shadows I need to penetrate.”
“You have just come home after a long sojourn, Jason.” His spymaster had walked alone for hundreds of years, even in the midst of the Seven, his aloneness a ghost he couldn’t shake. It had taken a princess from Neha’s court to pierce the veil.
“Mahiya will understand.” Light and shadow played over the curves and dots of the tattoo that marked his face. “Whatever is occurring in China, it could have implications for the entire world.”
“Elijah’s consort is reaching out to Favashi,” Raphael told Galen, having already shared the same with Jason. “Her goal is to get an invitation to visit Favashi’s court. Should Hannah succeed, she and Elijah would be right in the heart of Favashi’s territory.”
A cascade of whispers at the back of Raphael’s mind, hundreds of bat-winged beings settling on the buildings around the Tower, hundreds of gargoyles peering at them in interest.
“Sire.” Venom came to stand with Raphael as Galen and Jason stepped away to talk. “I know they are your Legion, but they are also creepy as hell.”
“That is very amusing coming from you,” Raphael said to this member of his Seven who enjoyed using his slitted viper’s gaze to disconcert and, at times, frighten.
“But there’s only one of me—imagine over seven hundred vampires with viper eyes staring at you.”
“You make an excellent point.”
Beside him, his eyes unshielded among friends, Venom raised his glass toward the Primary, who’d landed directly across from them. “Would you like a drink?”
Taking his words as an invitation, the Primary came to crouch on the small wall that edged the roof. When Illium walked over with a tumbler full of amber liquid, he took it.
As they watched, he sniffed it several times then drank the entire thing down in a single movement. Placing the glass on the roof wall beside him afterward, he said, “This is a thing I have tasted before.” As if he’d logged the experience against the millions of memories in his mind.
With that, he opened his silent wings and flew off to join his brethren on the buildings around the Tower. All those buildings were considerably shorter, but the attraction for the Legion was clearly the Tower roof.
They were there two hours later, when the night sky began to crack with gold. The lightning was silent and uncanny and beautiful. The white-gold filaments in Raphael’s wings vibrated in time with the strange lightning . . . and the sky, it was golden fire.
The thought raised every hair on Raphael’s arms. He’d last seen a sky full of golden fire as a youth, when Caliane executed Nadiel. The death of Raphael’s father—of an archangel—had released energy so violent that it had scarred Laric through time.
His mind reached out, searched. Elena.
Silence.
A searing star above him. All that golden lightning coalescing into a single spot directly above Raphael. Flaring out his wings, he flew up while ordering the winged members of his Seven to stay down. This, he knew, was not a thing that could be dealt with by angels.
It was a thing for an archangel.
But as he flew up, he turned in the direction of the rooftop that belonged to Sara and Deacon, and though his hunter was too far for him to see, he knew she’d taken off and was flying toward him. This was not a thing for angels, only for an archangel . . . but he waited for her to make her way to him.
Aeclari, sang the Legion. Aeclari.
Then she was there, breathless and with her gray eyes stark against the lightning-lit dark gold of her skin.
Taking her into his arms, he said, “Close your wings, hbeebti.”
She did so without hesitation, her trust a gift.
Holding her close, he lifted them both into the burn of light.
It cascaded into him in a thousand tiny lightning bolts that sparked through his skin and wings. Elena, though she was pressed against him, was touched by none of it. He was the lightning rod and the energy knew to come only to him.
His hunter traced a jagged crack in the skin of his upper arm. It was what had happened to Illium when the Cascade shoved him full of power too huge for his body. Unlike with the blue-winged angel, Raphael was in no danger of being overwhelmed or killed. “It causes me no pain.” As one fracture healed, another appeared. But his cells were absorbing the power as rapidly as it jolted out of the sky and into him.
He felt full to the very edges of his wings by the time the storm ended.
Elena stared at his face, her eyes a mirror of the incandescent light. “It’s beautiful in an eerie way,” she murmured. “Your face is covered with fine lightning-bolt cracks that glow with power.” She raised a hand to his skin but didn’t touch. As if afraid of hurting him.
He moved his face so that her fingers brushed his jaw. “There is no pain,” he repeated. “The power simply needs time to be absorbed into my flesh.”
When Elena drew away her hand, her fingertips glowed with light. Rather than seeking to sink into her, however, that light flew back to him, golden dandelions against the night. Undaunted, she brushed her fingers over his arm where the light glowed through the cracks in his skin. That light reached out and twined around her hand, crawled up her arm.
Raphael watched ready to intervene, but at no point did it merge into her skin.
Instead, after a moment, it drew back toward Raphael.
“This energy is too strong for you,” he told his hunter. “It is archangelic and it stretches my power to places unknown.” He could feel himself changing on the most basic level, his cells altering shape. It had happened once before, but this . . . it was bigger, the changes deeper.
A fine tension in Elena’s features. “So much power, Raphael.” She spread her fingers over his heart. “Promise me you won’t stop being a little bit mortal.”
Closing a hand alive with golden lightning over hers, he spoke an unalterable truth. “My heart will always be a little bit mortal, this I promise.” He could feel the wildfire born of them both concentrating around the organ, as if protecting it from the surge of Cascade-born power, protecting the small vulnerability Elena had introduced into his archangelic body.
“This new power will soon learn that some things are set in stone.” Right now, it was a thing without shape, unimprinted by any living being.
It was pure, raw energy.
Elena’s pupils flared. “The voice told me of a gift and that it wasn’t meant for me,” she whispered, her free hand caressing the side of his face. “It must’ve meant it could only be handled by an archangel.”
Cupping her cheek, Raphael lowered his head to claim a kiss that glowed with light. Her lips were rimmed with it when he drew back, but again, the energy returned to him after a moment.
He tried to funnel the energy into her through his healing ability.
“Raphael.” A gasp. “Pinpricks all over me. Sharp, hard.”
He stopped his attempt, coldly enraged at being given such power but being helpless to protect his warrior. “I was seeking to use the new power to fix the unknown problem with your feathers. This energy is pure; I should be able to reshape it as I wish.” Including changing it into a form that healed. “I wasn’t attempting to give you the pure power—that’s too violent, would kill you. I was filtering it through my ability to heal.”
“Oh,” Elena whispered. “This is the gift . . . and it’s not mine.” A crooked smile. “Don’t you see, Archangel? I’m too mortal now. My body can no longer absorb any immortal energy. Even Nisia failed this afternoon—digesting archangelic energy is far beyond my grasp.”
They stared at one another, the truth of her words a slap. “That is impossible,” Raphael ground out. “You have wings.”
“A slowly failing relic of my brush with immortality.” Somber knowledge on her face. “We can check with Lucius, but I know. I’m weaker again, my body is having trouble supporting the weight of wings, and I can’t heal even a hangnail.”
Raphael realized on a roar of rage that his new power could only hurt her, hurt the one being in all the universe whom he never wanted to hurt. Lightning cracked the sky again, his power threatening to break the universe.
36
Elena gripped his hair and hauled his face to her own, pulling him back from the edge of the abyss. “Don’t you dare give in to the darkness,” she ordered. “This energy is yours. Shape it to your will. Don’t let it shape you.”
And he saw at last what she already had—if he wasn’t careful, the Cascade surge would alter him to its own design. “No one,” he said coldly, “manipulates an archangel.”
Elena’s smile was fierce, his consort well aware he wasn’t speaking to her. “The voice said the second marker is a painful rebirth . . . and isn’t it strange, how the power surge occurred when Jessamy is in the city? Do you think this energy could heal her?”
“If it is a marker—”
Elena pressed her fingers to his lips. “We fight destiny other ways. We don’t attempt to nullify this marker . . . and it’s only a marker. Whether it takes place or not, events continue.”
Raphael fought his black rage to say, “I will wait for you and Jessamy to return.”
“Laric is in the city, too.” She frowned. “He qualifies as well as her, if I’m reading the prophecy right.”
“I’ll speak to him.”
“What about Vivek?” she asked, and he could feel her hope.
“This power is too strong. It would burn out a vampiric body.” Raphael tried to think of others, not only of her. “He will recover, Elena. Unlike with Laric and Jessamy, all Vivek needs is time.”
“Yes, you’re right.” She claimed a kiss, as was her right as his lover and consort. “See you soon, Archangel.” Grin wild, she brushed her hand over the mark on one side of his temple, the mark of the Legion. “And after, we’ll plot how to foil destiny and a prophecy spoken by an archangel who saw me at the dawn of time.”
A small cloud of light glowed through her own clothing before he could release her for flight. It came from the spot where she’d felt the pain in her chest, but this time, she didn’t collapse.
“Whoa.” Unzipping her jacket, she pulled up the top she wore underneath to expose that patch of skin. It was the merest pinprick of smudged light, and it settled into her skin even as they watched, but what it left behind was a small darkness in the shape of the Legion mark on his temple. But where his mark crackled with light, this one absorbed it.
“Huh.” Elena stared at it. “Ask the Legion if they know what this is.”
When Raphael did, the ancient beings said: A dark mirror. Whispers in his head, the Legion in conversation. Not our mark. Your mark. It is a mirror. A sense of a huge mind straining. Aeclari are . . . mirrors. They are more. But they are also mirrors.
Raphael’s heart accelerated. After sharing with Elena their first piece of concrete information about what aeclari meant, he asked, Is this as it should be?
No, came the storm of voices. The mirror should not be dark. This mirror is wrong. Agitation in the Legion mind. This becoming is wrong.
Elena’s face stilled when he repeated that unequivocal response. “A mirror,” she whispered. “To reflect power back to you, maybe magnify it?”
He thought of how the wildfire came from both of them, and said, “Perhaps.”
“It explains why all my problems are concentrated on the left.” She touched her fingers to his right temple. “Mirror images.”
Raphael wasn’t thinking with enough clarity to have seen that. His head rang with the Legion’s cry that this mirror was wrong, Elena’s becoming was wrong.
“But this mirror absorbs light,” she said, her brain working better than his. “And my body isn’t magnifying your power, it’s just rejecting it. It makes no sense.”
Comprehension cut through the chaos and he understood what the Legion were telling him. “This mark”—he ran his fingers over the lightless black of it—“is a brand. Mine on your flesh.”
Scowling, Elena tugged and zipped her clothing back into place. “Fucking Cascade needs to learn I’m not a cow, to be branded. And what’s the point anyway, if I’m mortal?”
“This isn’t over yet.” Raphael kissed her hard. “I will find a way to erase the brand.”
A smile full of teeth, followed by a kiss as possessive as his own. “On the other hand, I suppose it�
�s fair, since you wear mine.” Her gaze went to the starburst pattern on his left wing, where she’d shot him once. “And look, we screwed up the mirror image thing there.”
In her wild smile, he found reality again, the Cascade-born power no longer swamping his senses. He had it held tightly in his fist now, under his control and beyond the Cascade’s ability to shape. “I suppose you will say you shot me in preparation for this moment.”
She laughed, the rising night winds whipping her hair from its braid to stream around them. And in her face, he saw bones too close to the surface once more, saw too the small break in the skin of her neck that hadn’t been there when she first flew to him.
And when Elena fell from his arms with a sound of joy to flare out her wings, two feathers of indigo blue fluttered silently to the earth.
* * *
• • •
“Will you tell me what you saw up in the sky with Raphael?” Jessamy asked Elena as they rode up in the Tower elevator. “I won’t put it down in any official record until you tell me it’s time.”
“Yes,” Elena said, her throat rough. She’d never forget the heartbreaking rage in Raphael’s eyes when he realized he couldn’t heal her. Fuck fate! She refused to sit back and let the Cascade screw up her archangel into some twisted bitterness haunted by watching his consort die mortal and wingless.
It is foretold, child, whispered the old, old voice in her head. One must die for the other to live.
Elena stared into the endless golden eyes of the owl that hovered in front of her. Why can you talk to me when Raphael can’t? Is it because this is a waking dream?
He is altered, as you are altered. You must . . . A deep stirring. But you do not have time. One must die. You must die.
Yeah, well, I’m not convinced on the whole predestination thing. Forget one to die for one to live. I and this unknown other will both live.
The owl tilted its head to the side. Child of change. You alter the fabric of the universe. A sense of waking in the voice that was Cassandra’s, an old being disturbed in her Sleep. You rewrite time.
