by Nalini Singh
The ring of silver molten around her irises, the bones of her face strong and exquisitely unique, she parted her lips on his name just as another message touched his mind. So quickly, the moonlit night was no longer a place of beauty but a reminder of the putrid darkness that slithered on the outskirts, waiting to ravage and violate.
24
“Keir has returned.”
An immediate change in Elena’s expression, his consort shelving their personal discussion for one that affected their people.
Gathering her into his arms, he flew them directly to their suite, having made sure Keir was assigned the suite next door. When they walked through to Keir’s living area, it was to find the healer staring into the cold fire, his eyes grim.
His report was deadly in its familiarity.
“The disease destroyed the victim’s internal organs.” Keir’s jaw strained white with the force of his emotions. “As with the others, the sores were a secondary effect. It is categorically the same infection, and, given the lack of further victims and the fact of her humanity, I agree she was meant to be the carrier.”
Keir rose to pace across the room, his anger vicious in a way Raphael had never before seen, his wings held so tight to his back it had to be painful. “The only good news is that while the infection was identical to that found in New York,” the other man continued, “it was appreciably weaker to the senses that make me a healer. Had Kahla not already been compromised, I believe she and any of those who fed from her may well have made a full recovery.”
“Even Lijuan,” Raphael said slowly, “cannot create reborn after reborn with no rest in between. Doing so causes their infectiousness to decline.”
Keir paused in his pacing. “Jason has been spending time in interesting places.”
It was what his spymaster did best.
“If we’re right,” Elena said, from the armchair into which she’d curled, “and the disease maker’s run out of juice, that means New York and Amanat are both safe, at least for the short term.”
“We cannot predict how long it’ll take for the architect of the disease to recharge,” Keir murmured, “but I think it will not be soon. He or she has done too much too quickly.” Pausing, he stared at the carpet before raising his head. “I cannot say this without any doubt, but I believe the Falling was caused by an attempt to seed the sky with a disease targeted at angelkind, as this bloodborne disease is targeted at vampires.”
Raphael had thought as much, the risk to his people one he had to find a way to negate. “The energy expended in that attempt would also explain why the disease maker is exhausted after creating only two carriers that we know of.” Seeing the healer sway slightly on his feet, he said, “Rest now, Keir.” Do not let the rage eat away at you.
Keir glanced up. Now you quote my own words back at me.
They were wise ones. Said to the angry, broken youth he’d been. “We’ll leave you in peace.”
The healer’s expression remained tense, but he was no longer pacing when they walked out the door. Leaving Elena getting changed in their suite, Isabel on watch outside, Raphael flew to his mother. He knew she wouldn’t be asleep—angels so old as Caliane slept but rarely and the two of them needed to talk; not only as mother and son, but as archangels who might soon be drawn into a global war.
“I’m not ready for war,” she said, as they walked through the quiet corridors of her home, her arm tucked through his, her wing a warm weight against his own. “My power has returned, my people are strong again, but my spirit? It wants only peace.” She smiled and it was a creation of sadness. “I’ve fought too many battles. Now I feel only the driving need to enshield Amanat and wait this out.”
Raphael couldn’t blame her for that choice. “You should protect your people. They are yet babes in this new world.”
Eyes so similar to his own, yet with such age, such pain, such loss in them, met his. “You are the babe of my body, Raphael. I will not abandon you as I once did.” Steel in the blue. “My resources are yours. I will not permit your city to fall.”
“Mother.” He held her against him, continually surprised at how small she was, for she had always loomed larger than life in his memories. “I’m no child, and if you divert your resources to New York, you know Lijuan will attack and destroy Amanat.”
Drawing back, she took his arm again and led him toward the wide stairs to the roof, her voice unyielding. “What use is my city if my son is dead?”
Realizing he wouldn’t win this battle if he spoke as a son to his mother, he spoke as one archangel to another. “Victory in New York will be meaningless if Lijuan gains a stronger foothold in this part of the world.” Amanat’s simple existence was a symbol that Lijuan was not as all-powerful as she would have the world believe.
“And if you move your people to protect them,” he added, “thus abandoning your city, it’ll be viewed as a capitulation.” In wars between immortals, perception could often be everything. “Those who might now be undecided on a side will begin to see her as the true power, once it becomes known she drove you from your city.”
The elegant lines of her face exposed by the way she’d pinned her hair into a loose knot, Caliane pulled away to walk to the edge of the roof. “I’ll be making a choice, not being driven anywhere by that repugnance who styles herself an archangel.”
“That isn’t the story she’ll tell, nor the one people will believe.” When there was only silence from Caliane, her feathers limned with power against the starlit night, he reminded her of the one fact against which she couldn’t argue. “We cannot know how long the coming wars will last, and we cannot coexist in the same territory, Mother, not for anything beyond a short term.” It was the reason the members of the Cadre were separated from one another by water and land, their powers too violent to permit long-term proximity.
There were two known exceptions to that rule. The first was pregnancy—had Michaela truly been with child, he could’ve offered her sanctuary, for the vulnerability that came with carrying a child would’ve dampened the effect. The second was love of the kind shared by Caliane and Nadiel, their deep emotional bond somehow ameliorating the effect. Michaela and Uram, by contrast, had never lived together, their love affair conducted over short periods of intense intimacy, followed by weeks of distance.
An adult child fell into neither exception. “I would end up viewing you as a threat, and you would feel the same about me, our instincts driving us mad as we fought the urge not to kill.” It was a prediction borne out by angelic history. “You need to maintain and hold this territory.”
“I could cross over and obliterate Lijuan’s stronghold while she is gone, take her territory.”
“Her stronghold is deep in the heart of her territory and you went into Sleep with two squadrons alone.” Strong and skilled men and women, but a tiny number nonetheless. “While you fly into her territory, her commanders will send squadrons to destroy Amanat. You must think of all the permutations of any action you take.”
Wings rustling, Caliane turned to face him, her expression softer . . . bleaker. “When did you stop being a boy and become a man so used to the ways of politics and power?”
“I was always going to end up here.” The child of two archangels, one an Ancient, could have little choice in the matter, power fused into every cell of his body.
Poignant emotion in her eyes, she flared out her wings and, stepping off the edge of the roof, made a silent descent to the street below. “Walk with me through my city,” she said to him when he followed, “and tell me of your foolish but brave consort.”
It was the first time she’d ever acknowledged Elena as his consort without his prompting. “You must first tell me your decision on matters of war.”
“You are right in all you say, and I cannot permit my love for my son to blind me to that.” Fingers brushing his cheek. “Do not fail, Raphael. I have outlived my consort. I cannot outlive my son.”
“Should I fail,” he said, instead of m
aking a promise that might prove false, “you’ll be the only one who remains who might defeat Lijuan. You cannot abrogate that responsibility.”
“Can I not?” Cool arrogance. “I see you believe you can make decisions for another archangel.”
He laughed as the night winds played with the wintery white of his mother’s simple gown. “I learned how to be a ruler by watching you.”
A scowling maternal look. “Always, you were able to get your own way by giving me that smile.” Sighing, she led him to an enclosed private garden he knew she’d created for her maidens, the air perfumed by the riot of flowers that fell from the temple balconies that surrounded the space. “Your Elena, she has no sense of her own mortality.”
“She is a warrior.” One with a human heart. “As with all warriors, fear is a tool she uses to her advantage.”
“Tasha is a scholar and a gifted warrior, yet Avi and Jelena tell me you didn’t pursue one another beyond a single summer. She would’ve made you a perfect consort.”
“Would you have your son in a polite political alliance?”
Taking a seat on a stone bench overhung with yellow roses turned silver by the moonlight, Caliane shot him an exasperated look he well remembered from boyhood scrapes. “Stubborn child.” Sighing again, she said, “Come, then. Tell me why you love this once-mortal enough to defy the world. I would hear the story of your courtship.”
Coming to sit with her below the roses, he braced his forearms on his thighs and said, “It began with a bloodborn angel and ended in ambrosia.”
* * *
Too wired to sleep in spite of the late hour, Elena talked Isabel into a sparring session in the private courtyard of the house occupied by only Raphael, Elena, Keir, Naasir, and Isabel. The other angel was good, but Elena more than held her own.
“I think I’ve become soft in this position.” Isabel wiped the sweat off her brow. “Galen will have my head when I rotate back to the Refuge.”
“He’s a tough bastard,” Elena agreed. “But since I’d be dead without the lessons he beat into me on a daily basis, I can’t curse him too loudly.”
Isabel stifled a laugh, and the two of them separated to shower, with Naasir taking over the watch. Conscious Caliane would want to spend as much time with Raphael as possible, Elena didn’t wait for him before going to bed, her body happily tired. She expected a total knockout . . . but it was as if the nightmare visions knew she was alone, vulnerable.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Elena’s wings kept dragging through the congealed blood no matter how hard she tried to keep them raised off the slippery tile, the white-gold tips turning a muddy rust. “Belle? Belle, where are you?”
Her oldest sister crawled to her from behind the counter, her blood-soaked fingers leaving darker streaks on Elena’s wings as she tried to grab on. “Ellie, my legs hurt.”
“Wait, I’ll help you get up.” She slipped in the liquid that smelled so wet and metallic even as she spoke, landing hard on her back, her wings crushed between her body and the tile in a tangle that wrenched at her tendons.
Gritting her teeth, she managed to get onto her hands and knees, but her body kept sliding backward, the kitchen floor suddenly a slope. “I can’t reach you.” Her voice was that of the child she’d been, the girl used to having two older sisters who told her what to do when she wasn’t sure. “Belle! What should I do?”
But Belle couldn’t speak anymore, her head separated from her body, her beautiful long legs in pieces. Sobbing, Elena tried to find Ariel. Ari would know what to do; Ari always knew.
Heart pulsing in her mouth, she glimpsed her sister’s slender fingertips behind the chair, began to claw her way forward. She knew it was Ari, because Ari had just painted her fingernails a shade she called “nude”—the color wasn’t her favorite, but it was one that didn’t get her in trouble at school. “Ari?” She reached out to touch Ari’s hand. “Belle’s hurt. She’s really hurt. We have to help her. Ari?”
She was holding her sister’s hand. It had been torn off at the wrist.
* * *
Raphael walked into the suite at dawn to find his consort in bed, her body rigid and her hands fisted. Immediately putting his hands on her shoulders, he shook, knowing she needed to be wrenched out of the vicious grasp of nightmare. “Elena, wake!” Elena!
A jerk of her head, but she didn’t wake. Tugging her toward him with a grip in her hair, he kissed her, kept kissing her until he felt her nails dig into his arms, her body losing that ugly nightmare tension. The sob that tore from her when he broke the kiss had him crushing her close.
“I hate this,” she said, after the storm had passed and they sat on the edge of the bed staring out at the approaching dawn. Her voice was flat, near defeated, unlike the woman he knew.
Not closing the distance she’d put between them because he sensed she wasn’t ready, her hands white-knuckled on the edge of the bed, he kept his eyes on the clean line of her profile. “You’re having far fewer nightmares than you did when we first met.”
Jaw clenched, she stared down at the carpet. “And I still wake up like that, terrified out of my skin.” A throb of anger beneath the defeat, his Elena rising through the battered and bruised places in her soul. “When does it stop? When do I get over it?”
Judging she wasn’t willing to listen to reason—she might not even hear him in her current self-punishing mood—he rose. “We’re not scheduled to leave for two hours.” He could not be seen to be racing back to New York. “We have time for a sparring session.”
She didn’t get up. “I had one with Isabel last night.”
This, Raphael realized, was even more serious than he’d believed. Elena never turned down a chance to spar with him—he was one of the few people who pushed her to her absolute limit, uncaring of the risk attendant in causing even unintentional harm to the consort of an archangel. To him, the inevitable bruises were acceptable if the lesson would help her stay alive.
Picking up her favorite blades, he threw them at her. Hands snapping up, she caught both. “I said”—spoken through gritted teeth—“I don’t want to.”
“And I say you’ve sulked long enough.” He stripped off his formal wear and pulled on a pair of pants suitable for sparring.
Eyes of silver-gray slitted in frigid outrage. “I just dreamed I had my sister’s severed hand in my own. Sorry if that inconveniences you.”
Raphael shrugged and very deliberately used the one thing he knew would infuriate her enough to cut through the apathy. “I’ll see if Tasha is up for a session, then,” he said and reached for the doorknob. “Be ready to leave in two hours.”
The knife quivered to a stop on the doorjamb an inch from his face.
25
Not saying a word, and aware of Elena swearing behind him as she rushed to pull on clothes, he walked out and down the steps into the courtyard. When she emerged a couple of minutes later, it was in khaki cargo pants and a specially designed black tank that took her wings into account. Like his, her feet were bare, but she had knives while he was unarmed.
A fair balance, given his extreme strength and speed.
When he made a “come on” gesture with both hands, Elena narrowed her eyes and threw one of those blades at his face. He was distracted just enough by the unexpected act that she almost swiped him with the second blade as she came in low. Grinning, he avoided the strike with a twist that slapped her with his wing.
It wasn’t meant to hurt, only to distract in turn, but Elena had learned from their past sessions, and turned with him, going for his wing with the blade in her grip. His consort had a tendency to make mistakes when angry, but not today—he’d succeeded in angering her to the point where she fought with icy fury.
Barely avoiding the sharp bite of metal, he used his wings to lift himself a foot off the ground in order to avoid a kick. “A little slow, hbeebti.”
She smiled at the taunt . . . and threw the second blade directly a
t his wing. Positioned as he was, he couldn’t avoid it in time and it pinned his wing to the wall of the house. But he was an archangel, had it out a split second after it went in, his body ready to handle her secondary attack.
“You now have no knives,” he said, exhilaration in his blood as he parried her fists and kicks. Elena couldn’t truly hurt him, not yet, but her fighting style was unique, one she’d created as she reworked her hunter training and adapted Galen’s teachings to take her personal strengths and vulnerabilities into account. And because she hadn’t been an angel all her life, she didn’t know she wasn’t supposed to be able to do certain things, so she just went ahead and did them.
That element of surprise made each session as fun for him as it usually was for her.
Now she came in close . . . and suddenly had two more knives headed straight for his neck. Blocking them using a maneuver he’d learned from Alexander before the other archangel started to view him as a threat, he bared his teeth. “That’s cheating.”
“Oh?” A saccharine-sweet smile. “Didn’t realize we were playing fair.” Another fury of blades, their bodies moving with a speed and a ferocity that had drawn an intrigued audience of three—Keir, Isabel, and Naasir. All watched from the balconies that ringed the courtyard and someone clapped when Elena managed to swipe his forearm, drawing blood.
Ignoring the cut, he touched the tip of the knife he’d pulled out of his wing to her cheek to register a hit. He made sure it didn’t break skin, for his passionate, beautiful lover didn’t heal as fast as he did, but she made no effort to hide her fury that he’d gotten so close. Twisting out of reach before she could take advantage of his proximity, he moved to come at her from behind.
She threw the knives over her shoulders without turning.
Startled by the unexpected tactic, he almost took one in the chest, only his agility saving him from a wound that would’ve taken at least ten minutes to repair. Turning the instant the blades left her hands, Elena swept out with a kick to capitalize on his shaky balance, but she’d forgotten her wings.
