Archangel's Storm gh-5

by Nalini Singh

  “I was too young at the time to remember it myself,” Mahiya said from where she stood with one hand on the doorjamb, “but I’ve heard it whispered of by others. However, she didn’t repeat the punishment once his wings grew back . . . and I think she regretted ever having done it.”

  Love, Jason thought, could be the most debilitating of weaknesses.

  “Jason, I’m sorry I scared you, son. I did not mean to rage.”

  Walking further down the balcony, he took in the windows along the inner wall, each created with ten red and green pieces of stained glass. The individual pieces were squares roughly the size of his palm, the effect delicate against the stone of the palace. The glass was echoed in the doors that stood open to reveal a bedroom that appeared to occupy most of the second level, its inner walls gently curved to embrace the central core of the palace.

  A magnificent chandelier poured muted, flickering light from the ceiling. Its crystal sconces cradled a thousand candles, many of which had burned down, else the light would’ve been sharper, brighter. “Eris didn’t care for modern things?” he asked the woman who’d entered the bedroom from the corridor.

  “No, he just preferred candlelight in his private chambers.”

  Which meant the room downstairs had acted as his receiving area. “How many guests was he permitted?”

  “It depended on Neha’s mood.” An answer that said much about Eris’s existence. “Never any women aside from Neha and myself. Even the servants who worked in this palace were all male.”

  For a man who had been a favorite of women, it would’ve been akin to having a limb amputated. “Do you think the rule was observed?”

  “I think Eris did not have any wish to anger Neha further.”

  That didn’t answer the question, and the way Mahiya had subtly angled her face away from the light as she spoke told him she knew more than she was saying.

  The stealthy hunter in Jason rose to full wakefulness.

  6

  “A leopard, as they say,” he murmured, his mind working at the question of Mahiya’s true loyalties, at whose secrets she kept, “does not change its spots.” Eris had never been good at self-denial where women and sex were concerned.

  An adoring conquest looking up into the face of the golden god who was Neha’s consort, her eyes blazing with shy desire.

  Jason had witnessed that particular scene approximately a century and a half after Neha’s marriage, during a ball given by the archangel Uram. At the time, he’d put Eris’s responding smile of sensual invitation down to male vanity, never considering the other man might ever actually accept such an invitation.

  Yet Eris had needed to have his ego stroked enough that he’d fathered a child upon the sister of the woman he’d sworn to honor. Jason didn’t fool himself that Eris had loved Nivriti—the man had been a narcissist, had cared about no one but himself. And in spite of his trespass, he had survived. What was there to stop such a man from taking another risk and seducing a lover within the walls of his luxurious prison?

  “Tell me,” he said, pinning Mahiya with his gaze, “Did Eris have a lover?”

  Mahiya had avoided his earlier question, having realized far too late that she’d betrayed a knowledge and a curiosity beyond the woman she was meant to be. Her only defense for the unprecedented failure was surprise—it had been so very startling to speak to someone who watched her without judgment or pity, and who did not divine a lack of understanding simply because she chose to keep her silence . . . but of course he wouldn’t. Jason was a man who guarded his words, yet she had not a single doubt that his intelligence was a piercing arrow.

  Now, looking into eyes a deep, impenetrable brown that stripped her to the bone, she realized it was too late to put the mask back on.

  Jason had already seen her.

  There was a strange exhilaration in showing her true face. “I have no proof of a new infidelity,” she said, “but there were times of late that I caught a certain musk in the air.” A woman should not know such things about her father, but Eris’s only claim to paternity had been through their shared blood.

  “You didn’t tell Neha.” It wasn’t a question.

  Mahiya held that dark blade of a gaze. “I would not be the messenger who bears such tidings.” Neha would’ve struck her down, ended her for it. “You’re welcome to attempt it.”

  His response to the challenge was a calm “Let us see if it proves necessary.”

  The exhilaration in her bloodstream slowly turned to ice as she watched him explore every inch of the palace that had been Eris’s home. She knew his reputation, but it was only now, after witnessing his thorough, meticulous search, that she realized the exact level of Jason’s skill, his dedication . . . and understood that none of her plans would come to fruition should he decide to pledge his skills in service to Neha.

  Gritting her teeth to fight a shiver, she realized the sands had just begun to fall with increased speed through the hourglass. The Seven were meant to be an impregnable unit, immune to enticement from others in the Cadre, but Neha had had a glint in her eye that said she held an ace. If she did . . . Mahiya and her traitorous intent had to be long gone before Jason accepted the archangel’s offer.

  Heart thudding hard enough to bruise against her ribs, she shut the door on those thoughts lest they betray her, and followed Jason into a large bathing chamber below the level that held the receiving area. Curls of steam rose from the clear water. “This was meant to be turned off,” she said, sensing the fine tendrils of hair at her nape beginning to curl from the humidity. “I’ll take care of it after we leave.”

  Not responding, Jason began to walk the edges of a bathing pool so large, it could’ve easily accommodated five adult angels. Ancient by design, the chamber had been put in when the palace was constructed for Eris’s incarceration, and he’d made good use of it. Many a time when she’d been sent by Neha to see if he needed anything, it had been to find him lounging in the bath.

  “Has Neha not slit your throat yet?” A bored sigh, his wings spread as he leaned against the edge, arms lying on the painted tiles carried from Italy by angelic couriers. “A pity.”

  The stab of memory wasn’t enough to distract her from catching the subtle twist of Jason’s hand as he slipped something into his pocket. “What’s that?”

  No surprise or guilt on his face. “I assume this is Eris’s?” he said, retrieving the object.

  Walking to stand nearer to him than she had till then, she examined the thick gold ring set with tanzanite, dangerously conscious of the penetrating intensity of the spymaster’s eyes. “Yes.” Only centuries of practice kept her voice from cracking under the silent, inexorable pressure. “Not a favorite, so he may well have forgotten it here.”

  Jason placed it in her hand. “I would not want to be accused of stealing.”

  Mahiya felt color tinge her cheeks at the gentle, lethal words. “My apologies. I didn’t mean to imply anything of the kind.” What she’d meant to imply was that he was hiding something from her. That, she couldn’t permit.

  “Look at her, Eris. She has your father’s eyes—they are so unique.”

  Words Neha had spoken in a venomous murmur when Eris angered her a century ago. By that time, Mahiya had already been well aware of the single reason for her continued existence. However, Eris was now a corpse who could no longer be tortured with the serrated knife that was the presence of his illegitimate child, and Nivriti lay dead in some forgotten grave, her flesh rotted to dust and her bones bleached white.

  The only one left who’d be pained by the mere sight of Mahiya . . . was Neha.

  Mahiya had to keep the archangel from remembering that as long as possible. She was almost ready to escape the fort. Almost. But almost wasn’t good enough when an archangel hated you with a spite that had survived three centuries, a spite that was a caustic flame dipped in poison. The only purpose she currently served was in keeping watch on Jason. The instant she failed in that task, she’d join her mot
her below the earth, the maggots feasting on her flesh.

  Jason said nothing to her apology, shifting to walk back out and upstairs to the main door. He didn’t shorten his stride to accommodate her, and she found herself almost running to keep up, the neat folds of her sari flaring out in front of her. Breathless, she wondered if he sought to humiliate her before the guards. If he did, he’d be in for a long wait—the guards had seen her in far more humiliating positions.

  The crack of a whip.

  Fire on her back, sticky liquid trailing down her broken flesh.

  Jason came to a sudden stop ahead of the still-closed doors, his voice shattering the memory of the punishment meted out to her in Neha’s inner courtyard, the whip wielded by the Master of the Guard.

  “My rooms?” he asked, his voice so pure, she found herself wondering, not for the first time, if he ever lifted it in song.

  “In the palace across the courtyard,” she said, barely managing to keep her wing from sliding across his as she halted her own forward momentum.

  Jason was not a man any woman would touch without invitation.

  Now, reaching out, he opened the door and waited for her to exit. Courtesy, she thought—he’d given her his back earlier, had clearly written her off as a threat. She was too practical to be insulted. If Jason wanted to hurt her, she could do nothing to stop him. Hundreds of warriors, angelic and vampiric, might live in the fort, but the only offensive or defensive training Mahiya had came from what she’d been able to glean by covert study of their training sessions.

  And no one, not even a woman determined to protect herself in any way she could, could learn to be a master fighter simply by watching, then attempting to copy those movements in the privacy of her bedroom or up in the isolation of the mountains. However, to ask for help would be to pay a price she couldn’t ask anyone to pay.

  Her first fledgling friendship as an adult—two hundred years ago—had resulted in the angel in question having both his arms and his wings excised for an outwardly unrelated offense. Mahiya would never forget the way his blood had coated the stone of the warriors’ courtyard, darkening the granite to near-black even as his screams echoed off the walls of the surrounding barracks.

  Mahiya had understood the brutal lesson, had never again attempted to build bonds with those in the fort, until many believed her a creature of conceit. Better that than to have their screams ringing in her ears as that young angel’s did to this day, though he was long healed.

  “No one ever sees Jason coming. No one.”

  The overheard words reverberating in her mind as she reached the courtyard, she heard him say something to the two angels at the door before he reappeared at her side. She glanced at his wings as they crossed over to the mountainside palace, expecting to see them silvered by the waning moon as were the black filaments in her own wings, but there was only darkness at Jason’s back—if she hadn’t known him for an angel, she’d have thought the spymaster a vampire.

  Blinking, she stared, though it was a rudeness. “How do you do that?”

  He didn’t ask her to explain what she meant. “A natural gift honed by time.”

  Conscious that this predator—fascinating and darkly intriguing—was deadlier than any other she’d faced save Neha, she walked up the steps of the palace where Jason would stay for the duration. Though it wasn’t overtly guarded, only a fool would assume it wasn’t under constant watch.

  When she walked through the open doors and turned to welcome Jason inside, he paused. “You live here.”

  “Yes.” And had done so since she returned from the Refuge school, but it wasn’t home and never would be.

  Soon, she promised herself, soon I will have a home where I will be safe, free from Neha’s bitter hate and the shadow of a father who didn’t know the meaning of fidelity.

  Lowering her head in an apparent gesture of subservience lest Jason see too much, she said, “I’ll show you to your room.”

  He followed her upstairs and into the sprawling room that overlooked the courtyard. Once, that had been the room she’d shared with Arav, believing herself loved. Desperate for happiness, she hadn’t wanted to see the truth until it slapped her in the face.

  “You have been a most amusing diversion.” A laughing, condescending pat on the cheek at her bewildered expression. “And rather delightful. But Neha has approved my territorial proposal, and I’m afraid I must return to my lands and cease partaking of your pleasures.”

  That heartbreakingly young, naïve girl was long gone, but Mahiya refused to allow the poison of Neha’s hatred to infect her—she knew full well Arav had only used her as he had because he’d divined her pain would please the archangel. That was a stain against his honor and said nothing of Mahiya’s own. She would love again, and she would love with all her heart, living her life in a brilliance of hope and joy.

  “Will you be needing anything?” she asked the spymaster, who, feminine instinct whispered, was far more dangerous to her than Arav had ever been.

  “No.”

  Stepping back, she pulled the wooden doors shut and walked quickly to her own room, situated right next to his. However, she knew she’d be too late and she was. By the time she opened the doors to their shared balcony, Raphael’s spymaster had disappeared into the gray twilight that was the first harbinger of night’s fading kiss.

  * * *

  Gliding on the cool winds of the hour before dawn, Jason came to an easy landing on one of the walls of the heavily fortified Guardian Fort. It overlooked Archangel Fort and was considered an extension of it, a place where a considerable number of Neha’s angelic guard made their homes. Seen from its strong walls, Archangel Fort was a great lady yet asleep, though the scattering of lights burning in the windows told him the place never truly closed its eyes. As it should be. The Tower in New York never slept, either.

  He saw an angel come in to land at the lower fort at that instant. From the way he brought himself to a harsh stop with two simple backbeats, Jason pegged the flyer as one of the warrior guards. Those guards were not exclusively angelic—Neha had her share of vampires in all positions, displaying no bias that could be utilized as a vulnerability.

  If the archangel had had vulnerabilities, they’d been named Anoushka and Eris.

  Reaching into his pocket, he retrieved the small object he’d secreted away even as he passed Mahiya the heavy gold ring. He’d taken the masculine ring exactly for that purpose but hadn’t actually expected her to catch the movement. Something else to add to his growing mental file on the princess who watched him with eyes that saw far too much for a woman who’d been cloistered within sumptuous palace walls her entire adult existence. Now, he used his extraordinary night vision to examine the find he hadn’t returned.

  7

  The ring was a woman’s from the look of it: fine strands of gold woven around an opal at the center. Quite aside from the feminine quality of the design, the ring was too small to have fit even the little finger of Eris’s hand. And, Neha was known to dislike opals, considering them a bad omen, so it couldn’t be hers.

  Mahiya’s ring finger . . . yes, it would fit. However, he had the niggling feeling that opals were not the princess’s chosen gemstone. Clearly, he’d seen something his conscious mind couldn’t articulate, but that made him certain that should Mahiya be free to exercise her will, she would wear bright, cheerful jewels like citrine and peridot, aquamarine and canary diamonds.

  “Amesyst. Is that how you say it?”

  “Almost. Here, listen to me say it again. Amethyst.”

  Lashes lowering, rising again at the fragment of memory, he focused on the piece of jewelry once more. It was the sort of quiet, pretty ring a woman might wear constantly, an everyday item, perhaps something with sentimental value. Modest, but with a fine color to the opal and a touch to the design that spoke of a master jeweler Jason knew in Jaipur, it was unlikely to belong to a servant, even had maids been permitted within Eris’s palace.

  And, giv
en Eris’s proclivities, an innocent explanation for the presence of the ring was so unlikely as to be an impossibility. However, if another woman—a lover—had indeed been permitted within the walls of Eris’s luxurious prison, it could not have been done without the goodwill and silence of at least one pair of guards.

  “A silver tongue, he has ever had it.”

  Add wealth to Eris’s gift of charm, plus perhaps a certain history with the guards, for many in the elite unit had served centuries, and it may have been enough to induce them to forget who it was they served. Neha had always draped her consort in the most expensive furs and silks, the most dazzling jewels—if he had “lost” a piece or two, the archangel wasn’t even likely to notice, much less care.

  Even without the inducement of money, it might be that the men had felt sympathy for the husband who had strayed. In most angelic unions, it would’ve meant the end of the relationship, not a lifetime of confinement, the sky forever out of reach. Yes, Jason could see how the guards could’ve been persuaded to look the other way while Eris entertained.

  As for the initial contact, a still-loyal servant could’ve carried the messages after Eris caught a glimpse of the object of his attentions through the stone lace of the smaller balcony that faced the courtyard.

  Having memorized the pattern of the ring and ascertained that it carried no engraving on the inside, he slipped it away. He didn’t yet have enough information to uncover the name of the woman who’d worn it, but he knew where to look. Not in the inner court . . . or not in the center of the inner court. She’d be on the edges, a beautiful woman who felt she hadn’t received her due. Someone who’d both be flattered at Eris’s attentions and full of enough pride that she sought to cuckold an archangel.