by Nalini Singh
“Surely,” she said when she caught her breath, “you were legend among your peers.”
Jason hadn’t had many friends back then, but he’d had Dmitri and Raphael. “Raphael poured me a glass of a thousand-year-old Scotch then, together with Dmitri, toasted me on my balls.” It had been another link in his relationship with the two men, a link that had been further strengthened over the years, each of the others in the Seven adding their own pieces to create a chain that held him to the world, to life.
“I do not think Neha has ever been so informal with any of her court,” Mahiya said. “Though I didn’t know her when she was as young as Raphael must’ve been at your first meeting.”
“I’ll ask Lijuan the next time we cross paths.”
Mahiya’s eyes flicked up, widened, then sparkled once again. “You do know how to laugh!” She lifted a single finger to lips curved in mischief. “I promise I won’t tell a soul.”
“No one will believe you in any case.”
Mahiya put down her cup, the tea almost spilling. “I can’t believe you made me giggle,” she accused between gulps of air.
He couldn’t move his eyes away from the luminous joy of her, his fingers itching to grip her chin, tug her across the table so he could taste lips shiny wet from her last sip of tea. “Who else will be at this dinner?” he asked, as her smile faded to be replaced by a hectic flush of color on her cheekbones.
Swallowing, she dipped her head in the guise of pouring more tea, but he saw her fingers tremble, his every hunting instinct roaring to the surface. “It’ll be a small group, I think.” She went through a concise list of possible guests, while he struggled to contain the primal urge to shove the table aside and quench the thirst he had for this princess with her stubborn hope and her heart untainted by poison and her way of looking at him that said she might just accede to his every demand.
“Whether she wears mourning white or not,” Mahiya added without meeting his gaze, “Neha grieves for Eris—even as she continues to hate him. So it will be a solemn affair.”
“I’m so sorry. Forgive me.”
The centuries-old echo was a chilling reminder that love and hate were often intimately intertwined—in a way that might be incomprehensible to a child, but that the man understood too well. As that man understood the embers of need in his gut would not go cold until he’d gorged himself on the soft skin and pleasure-riven cries of the Princess Mahiya.
“Mahiya.”
Fingers tucking back a tendril of hair. “Yes?”
“I think,” he said, reaching across to cup her chin, brush his thumb across her lower lip, “you must decide something tonight.”
19
Mahiya tidied away the tea things after Jason left to change, carrying them down to her small private kitchen. Where she poured herself a glass of ice-cold water. “Dear God.”
Jason was . . .
Shuddering, she rolled the cold glass over her neck. But, in spite of the sexual fire that smoldered between them, threatening to turn her bones molten, she had no rose-colored lenses clouding her eyes and her judgment, understood that Jason was a top-of-the-food-chain predator with loyalty to a rival archangel. More, he was a spymaster with centuries of experience at intrigue, could well be playing her for reasons of his own.
But . . . he made her no promises, and thus, he would not break them. He listened to her. Treated her as someone with worth. And if that worth was only in the information she could give him, he was truthful about that, too. She took it as no insult, for Jason was in the business of information.
As for the lack of love words and pretty courtship? Mahiya shook her head. She would far rather be with a man who was honest in his desire than with one who brutalized her with the sweet lies of seduction. Jason had more honor in a single bone of his body than Arav would know in a lifetime.
Heading back upstairs, she refreshed her makeup before pressing a sparkling silver teardrop to her forehead, centering it between her eyebrows. “Yes,” she whispered to her reflection. “The answer is yes.”
The single knock came just then, as if he’d heard her. Slipping her feet into flat silver sandals, she took a deep breath and walked out of the bedroom and across the living area to open the door—to reveal Jason’s harsh masculine beauty showcased in a flawlessly fitted black suit worn with a steel gray shirt.
“You look wonderful.” Beautiful, his hair in that neat queue she felt a sudden urge to undo. “Neha will be pleased.” Jason’s expression didn’t change, and yet she knew—“You care nothing of what Neha thinks.”
“On the contrary,” he said, letting her precede him down the stairs.
Her nape prickled, not in warning, but with the awareness that he was watching her body move. It made her breath catch, her skin stretch taut over her flesh.
“It’s never a smart idea to enrage an archangel,” he continued, “but while she may demand it, Neha will never admire subservience.”
Mahiya shook her head as they exited the palace. “Your opinion is colored by your strength.” A strength she knew he’d had from a very young age. “You can afford to rouse her anger, for she sees you, if not as an equal, then as someone intriguing enough not to summarily kill. You do not know what it is to fear.”
“I wasn’t always the man I am now,” Jason said, a door unlocking inside his mind, spilling a cold shadow across his soul.
She looked at him from the other side of the room, her pretty dark brown eyes filmed over with a whiteness that was wrong. The stump of her neck was crusted with blood where it sat on the table in the corner, as if placed there for just this purpose.
He didn’t scream. He knew never to scream. Instead, he looked at the chunk of meat that had been blocking the trapdoor. It wore a silk sheath of brilliant amethyst.
Amethyst. That’s what his mother always called her favorite color. Amethyst.
It had taken him a long time to say it right, and she’d always laughed in delight when he used the word, her shining black hair dancing in the sunshine.
“Jason.” A softly feminine face lit to glowing warmth by the lamps along the pathway, concern in every line. “You . . . weren’t here. Where did you go?”
Brilliant white sands beneath his small feet, burning hot. The wind waving through the palm trees, sending a coconut plummeting to the sand with a dull thud. The gulls gossiping up and down the wet sand, leaving three-clawed footprints the sea erased with its next crashing arrival.
“Jason! Come in and eat your lunch before it gets cold.”
“A place that no longer exists,” he said gently, and removed the hand she’d placed on his chest . . . to resettle it around his upper left arm, where it wouldn’t get in the way if he had to reach for his sword. “About Arav,” he said, while they were still private, “you have no cause to fear him.”
“He’s very strong.” The concern in her eyes lingered, grew. “Don’t underestimate him.”
“I know exactly how strong he is.” Though they’d never met, the fact the man was one of Neha’s generals meant Jason had made it a point to learn about him—and, in spite of his arrogance and posturing, Arav was no peer of Jason’s. “He is like a peacock, spreading his feathers and squawking loudly to distract you from the fact his body is but weak.”
A stifled laugh, genuine delight that was a kind of music. “I propose a rooster would be the better analogy,” she whispered, “strutting and pecking anyone who gets in his way.” Releasing his arm, she lowered her voice even further as they entered corridors peopled by servants and courtiers both. “He is merely the first. Many will come, hoping to take Eris’s place, or at least the place he would’ve had but for his inability to keep his lusts in control.”
He saw the speculative glances they attracted, made no move to widen the distance between them, the occasional brush of her wing against his a welcome caress. “Did you ever consider Eris your father in truth?”
“Not after I realized he wanted me dead.” A false smile for the b
enefit of those who watched, but the woman with mischief in her voice was gone, washed away on the waves of memory and the cruel reality of life. “I was a child. It broke my heart to realize the handsome man Neha took me to meet every week hated the sight of me. I didn’t understand then that she was using me as a weapon.”
Jason had always dealt in information, until gathering it was part of his very nature, but he wished he’d remained silent this night and allowed Mahiya’s eyes to laugh awhile longer.
“Are you close to your father?” she asked, rifling the pages of his own memory.
“Here, son. You use the string to pull it forward so. Do you see?”
“I was.” Before his father had been eaten away from the inside out, the progression of what Jason thought of as a disease so slow and stealthy that no one who had seen him had realized the true depth of the demons he fought. “He’s dead.”
“I’m sorry.” Her fingers alighted for a fleeting instant on his forearm, and he felt the touch all the way to his bones.
“It was a long time ago.” He’d learned to live with the ghosts. “Tell me about Anoushka,” he said, closing the door on the memories. “Of her relationship with Eris.”
“I think they may have been close when she was young,” Mahiya said slowly, the scent of her a subtle blend of exotic flowers and some bright spice that fascinated. “But when I knew her, she held him in contempt, considering him weak and spineless. I never saw her betray that to Neha, however.”
No, Jason thought, Anoushka had been too smart to alienate her mother that way.
“We’re here.” Mahiya halted before the Palace of Jewels.
What appeared to be a thousand candles flickered along the outer wall, in alcoves and on special stands, each flame refracted by the diamonds that studded the palace, until the entire building was ablaze, an astonishing work of art. “This,” he said with utmost honesty, “is stunning.” No wonder Neha preferred it over larger, more ornate palaces.
“Yes.” Mahiya’s reply was soft. “It fascinated me as a child.”
Something there, a hitch in her voice. But he had no chance to follow up on it, because they’d been seen by the guards. Opening the doors, the two vampires bowed deeply as they passed. Jason was unused to such subservience—Raphael’s Tower functioned in a far different fashion—but he was no longer the uneducated boy-man who’d made his way to the Refuge by shadowing other angels.
His father had chosen an island out of the way of angelic sky roads by design, and so it was the rare angel indeed who had passed over Jason after he was alone. He’d tried to hail them, but he’d been too small and weak to fly up high enough to catch their attention before they were out of range. So he’d survived, grown stronger . . . and after a while, he’d stopped his attempts to alert others to his existence, and simply waited—until he knew he was strong enough to fly for a full day and night without failing, should there be no islands where he could rest.
In the interim, he’d lived in silence.
“It’s a shame the boy’s a mute. The instruments he makes are things of such virtuosity, you’d think he’d learned from Yaviel himself.”
Jason had never been mute. He’d just needed to remember how to speak. And he’d done that by watching and listening. Those skills would hold him in good stead tonight. The room in front of him was warm with candlelight, a table of honey-colored wood polished to such a high sheen that it glowed like amber set upon the carpet, the seat cushions of the matching chairs a rich claret. It was a contrast to the pale colors chosen by the guests, the conversation muted, for no one was yet ready to dance on Eris’s grave.
Save perhaps a man Jason identified as Arav from the way he’d made a place for himself at Neha’s side, a charming, elegant companion as the archangel played gracious hostess. Jason knew she hid a terrible sadness behind that persona, but in itself, it was no lie.
“I have never been to a court as gracious as the one Neha keeps.” Dmitri played a knife through his fingers, one of three he’d brought back from Neha’s territory. “She truly believes in giving honor to a visitor.” He threw the knife at Jason.
He threw it back as Venom added, “Though she might have that guest neatly executed while the court sleeps.”
Venom’s response was as accurate as Dmitri’s—Neha was no two-dimensional caricature. No archangel was, and to believe otherwise was to set yourself up for a nasty surprise. Jason had no intention of falling prey to such blindness. Some mortals might seek to see divinity in the archangels, but Jason saw them for what they were—creatures of violent power who’d had millennia to hone their every lethal edge.
Right then, the Queen of Snakes, of Poisons, turned, met his gaze.
Jason inclined his head but didn’t move toward her, and she returned the greeting before shifting her attention to the guest who stood in front of her.
“The vampire heading this way,” Mahiya said sotto voce after the silent exchange, “is Rhys, one of Neha’s trusted inner council.”
“I’ve met him in the Refuge.” However, he didn’t know anyone in the room as well as Mahiya did, intended to ask her for her opinions after this was done.
“Jason.” A polite nod before Rhys turned his attention to Mahiya. “You are looking lovely, Princess.”
Mahiya’s response was warm enough that he realized she liked Rhys. “Thank you, sir. Is Brigitte well?”
“She is, indeed, though you know her.” A smile shared between the two. “I’m afraid my beloved is not a court creature,” he said to Jason. “However, she is so good at her job as a cryptographer that Neha forgives her the eccentricity.”
“I know of her work.” Everyone in Jason’s profession knew her name. “I’ve even attempted to lure her away a time or two.”
The other man laughed, his eyes twinkling. “Ah, I must admit, I was aware of that. She was very flattered, but we are loyal.”
While the spymaster in him was disappointed in that fact, the Jason who was one of the Seven understood the decision.
“Now Neha tries to lure you away.” Rhys’s tone was warm, but the icy calculation in his eyes made it clear he considered Jason a threat to the security of the fort.
Jason said nothing to that—silence was often a better weapon than words. Instead, he chose to direct Rhys’s attention to another threat. “The fort hosts a visitor who wants to be consort, it seems.”
Rhys didn’t turn to look at Arav. “There are always pretenders.” A hardness in his tone betrayed the blooded general beneath the mask of courtesy, before he excused himself to talk with a female angel Jason knew to be another one of Neha’s inner council.
“Tell me about him,” Jason said to Mahiya.
Mahiya’s response was quiet, with an undertone of steel. “I have come to realize exactly how much you like to give orders.”
Jason considered her words as he watched the intriguing flow and interplay of the people in the room. “You aren’t my equal,” he said, and it was a test.
She fisted, then flexed the hand he could see. “I carry the information you need about the people here.” The smile she sent him was a creation of such feminine complexity he knew he was seeing and understanding only half of it. “At least for this moment”—a shadow flitting over her eyes—“I hold the cards.”
Jason had no reference point for how to behave with a woman who was not his lover and yet already knew him better than any lover ever had. Such intimacy, he thought, was a thing of give and take and constant balance.
“Dance with me.”
“I’m making breakfast. Yavi!”
His father with his arms around his mother’s waist, twirling her around the kitchen, their wings sweeping out to send Jason’s hair back from his face as he sat playing with his blocks on the floor.
“Put me down!” A laughing command. “Yavi! The pancakes are burning.”
Bending her over his arm, his father claimed a smiling kiss. “Say please.”
“Tell me about him . . . pl
ease,” he said to this woman with whom he might never dance, but who had a claim on his loyalty nonetheless.
Shooting him another impenetrable look, she turned her face forward, and he thought he’d missed something, a moment, an emotion slipping through the cracks, water through his fingers . . . as his mother’s severed head had once slipped from his hands to hit the floor.
“I’m sorry, Mama.”
“For the most part, Rhys is what he appears.” Mahiya’s voice cut over the dull thud of sound that had followed him through time. “He has been with Neha for over six centuries and is not ambitious—except if anyone dares threaten his position at her side.
“Eris as consort-in-name posed no such threat,” she added as the same thought passed through his mind. “Rhys knew that when it came time to discuss politics and war, power and strategy, Neha would seek his own counsel. Arav, however, is a very able general himself, has led Neha’s troops in battle. More, he is as efficient at dealing with angelic politics as Rhys.”
The other man looked up at that instant, as did Neha. This time, the archangel flowed toward Jason. “I have never seen you dressed thus,” she said, her approval patent. “All of Raphael’s Seven do clean up well, even that barbarian general of his.”
“I will tell Galen you said as much,” Jason said, knowing the weapons master didn’t give a damn about what any woman but one thought of him.
Gaze shifting to Mahiya, Neha said, “You do not greet Arav,” in a tone rimmed with frost.
20
“We met in the courtyard.” Mahiya kept her voice even, refusing to give Arav the satisfaction of seeing her stumble. Maybe her courage came from having Jason’s dark strength beside her—but she didn’t think so. Arav was the one individual who could make her forget reason and step perilously close to insult.
