24

Raphael watched his consort dress after breakfast; she’d slept a bare three hours before waking. He hadn’t pushed her to attempt more rest—he knew Elena. She wouldn’t truly rest until she’d nullified the threat to her sister and niece. As it was, she’d eaten and drunk five times what she normally would, but her facial bones were starting to become more obvious nevertheless, her clothes a fraction looser on her frame.

Her body was burning fuel at a phenomenal rate.

“Where do you go this morning, Elena?”

She strapped on her crossbow. “To talk to Andreas—I’m going to see if I can track down some sketchy friends of Harrison’s.”

He settled slightly; the senior angel was loyal to the core. “Pass on my greetings to him.”

“You know I don’t like him.” Scowling, she slid her long blade home in its spine sheath. “He’s got a streak of cruelty in him that’s disturbing.”

“So did I.” Raphael had once broken every bone in a vampire’s body to the size of small pebbles, turned the vamp into nothing but a fleshy sack incapable of conscious movement—and he’d made sure the male stayed awake through all of it. “Perhaps Andreas needs to fall madly in love with a hunter.”

Elena shuddered. “I wouldn’t wish that on any hunter—and no, he’s way worse than you.” A pause, then grudgingly, “Though I guess my perspective is skewed since I’m passionately in love with you.” She watched him put on leathers of gunmetal gray with an appreciative gleam in her eye. “I mean, Honor’s a sane woman with advanced degrees, and she married Dmitri, of all people, so maybe being part whackadoodle is a prerequisite to falling in love.”

He clasped on wrist gauntlets of beaten steel not because he needed them today but because Elena had given them to him. “Such romance you give me, hbeebti.”

Laughing, she zipped up her jacket, a lethal black-clad woman who took no prisoners. “What are you doing today dressed up like the sexiest warrior I’ve ever seen?”

“Archangel business.”

Her eyes danced at his deliberately arrogant tone. Closing the distance between them, she rose on tiptoe, her hands gripping his bare biceps to demand a kiss that held naked need. Raphael gave and he took and they broke apart on a rasp of breaths.

“Will you be in the city?” his consort asked, her fingertips tracing the lines of the Legion mark.

“No.” Much as he wished to keep Elena in his sights so he could catch her if she fell, such suffocating protectiveness would be a small death for her, and he did in fact have archangel business to which to attend. “I go to meet Elijah. I want to ensure he’s heard about Favashi’s recent actions and that he’s willing for us to work together to protect our territories—and such discussions between archangels are a thing better done in person.”

The Archangel of South America had once been a general in Caliane’s army, and even after he ascended to become an archangel, he hadn’t forgotten that old loyalty. He treated Raphael’s mother with a deference unusual among archangels, and he treated Caliane’s son with the warmth of an older brother who wished to see his sibling succeed.

Raphael didn’t always know what to make of that, but he trusted Eli. While friendship was a complicated thing between archangels, they had the beginnings of it, a foundation on which their relationship over the centuries to come could be built.

“Tell him to say hi to Hannah for me.” Elena’s phone buzzed with an incoming message on the edge of her words. “It’s been a while since we’ve had dinner together.” Digging out her phone, she quickly checked the message before securing the phone back in a pocket. “Maybe we should organize something before the Cascade causes even more chaos.”

“I leave that in my consort’s hands.”

“Don’t think that I don’t see you laughing.” She pointed a finger at him. “But Andreas’s secretary just confirmed he’s home and willing to meet me, so I’ll deal with you later.”

He walked her to the balcony, running his hand down her spine one more time as they stepped out into the frosty morning air. His healing energy was limited, merely what had regenerated while she slept, but she gave him a grateful look. His jaw hardened. “Your wings are worse?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s just morning stiffness.” She scratched at her chest.

Catching her hand, he stared at the spot. “Elena.”

“Damn, was I scratching again?” A grimace. “You saw me naked in the shower—did you spot anything? I didn’t.”

“No, I saw nothing.”

“Then we keep on living.” A fierce vow. “We do not let the Cascade manipulate us into limbo.”

“Fear will not ruin us,” he vowed in turn.

Elena’s smile was of a warrior, full of teeth.

He took both himself and his consort into the air before dropping her so she could glide into flight. She swept out in a wide curve then back in to head deeper into the Enclave, while he flew toward the Tower to speak to Dmitri before he left for his meeting with Elijah. When he glanced back, he saw that a number of the Legion must’ve been crouching in the trees around their home. They rose into the air to join Elena, providing a silent escort as she flew toward Andreas’s property.

Raphael smiled grimly and flew on.

In his hand was a piece of lint he’d brushed off Elena’s shoulder when he took off her robe after breakfast. Gossamer soft, it was the color of her hair.

Elena looked to the Primary, who flew next to her on silent wings. “Why are you shadowing me?”

“We want to.”

Elena narrowed her eyes; sometimes she thought the Primary was deliberately using inscrutable language to perplex and confound, but then she’d remember the Legion weren’t human in any way, shape, or form. They weren’t angels or vampires, either. They were other, and their minds didn’t walk known paths.

“You’re here because Raphael wants you to be here.” Her archangel’s protective urges were riding a dangerous edge, but he hadn’t tried to chain her. No, he’d taken her to the sky and set her free. But the Legion were so much his that they acted on his emotions.

The Primary cocked his head to one side. “You also want us here.”

Elena went to say no she didn’t—then realized she didn’t actually mind her Legion followers. She liked them whereas she didn’t like Andreas all that much. “Did you spend the night in the trees? Why didn’t you go inside the greenhouse?” She often walked in there to find one of the Legion among her plants, exotic garden statues who woke at the sight of her.

“We like the winter. Many trees sleep, but they exist. And in the spring, new leaves are born fed by the energy of the leaves that sighed to the earth in fall.”

“Very philosophical.” Goose bumps broke out over Elena’s skin, an eerie sense of déjà vu thick in her mind. “Have we had this conversation before?”

“No. Perhaps we will have it in the future.”

Shaking off the chill, Elena flew on with the Legion silent and old yet paradoxically young.

“Elena?”

She looked over. “What is it?”

The Primary’s pale eyes held hers. “We remembered a memory. It is old.”

Skin too hot, her internal thermostat malfunctioning today, Elena had to force herself to break the eye contact so she wouldn’t fly off-course. “Tell me.”

“A memory of white owls who sit with a woman with hair of lilac. She smiled before the Cascade of Terror changed her. Then she bled tears of dark red.”

Shivering at the reference to the last time the Legion had woken, during a war that had “unmade” angelic civilization and sent the battered survivors into an eons-long Sleep, Elena said, “Do you know her name?”

A shake of his head. “We remember only that the owls cried for her after she was gone.”

Elena found her phone and sent a message to Vivek with the description. Please make sure it gets to Jessamy, she wrote.

Sure, Ellie, was the response. Any more creepy things you’d like me to forward?

Tell Aodhan I’m waiting to rewatch Psycho until he gets back.

I’m so glad I’m not in your film club. Messages will be sent.

Putting away her phone, Elena flew on, the Legion keeping pace with her slow flight. When she landed in Andreas’s front yard, it was to find the angel out in the snow. He was dancing through a martial arts routine using dual swords, and he was good. Better than good. Intellectually, Elena had always known that Andreas was powerful, but despite his position as a squadron leader, she didn’t tend to think of him as a warrior.

Seeing him stripped to the waist, however, his muscles moving fluidly and his wings—a rich amber leavened with gray—held with warrior precision as he manipulated the swords at brutal speed, she remembered something Jessamy had once said to her: “An immortal has many facets, Ellie. Millennia of existence create myriad strands of personality.”

Andreas wasn’t only shirtless, he was also barefoot.

Elena looked down at her boots, told herself she didn’t need to show off. She’d rather keep her feet warm and frostbite-free in the nice thermal socks Sara had given her as a gift. They had vampire smiley faces on them.

Finishing up the kata on a suicidal whirl of blades, Andreas came to a halt on one knee, his dark hair falling around the aristocratic lines of his face.

He looked up with a glint in his eye, and for the first time since she’d met Andreas, she saw the man Raphael knew. A warrior who fit seamlessly into an archangel’s forces, a leader who’d have a squadron’s respect, and a fighter who’d throw back a beer while sweaty and dirty.

“Consort,” he said. “Thank you for waiting.”

“You’re a master with the blades.” Elena wanted to scowl as she spoke that grudging compliment.

Rising to his full height, Andreas flipped the blades and held them out hilt-first toward her.

She accepted the offer but took only one blade. As she’d expected, it was heavy. “The workmanship is exquisite.” While the hilt bore the soft patina of hundreds of years of handling, the blade itself gleamed razor sharp in the weak sunlight amplified by the snow into a stinging brightness.

“It was made by a famed angelic weapons-master who now Sleeps.” Andreas handed his other sword to one of his vampires who’d just walked out. Taking a bottle of water in return, he pointed up. “Does your escort require anything?”

“No, they’re happy crouching on your roof.” She handed the weapon back to Andreas using both hands to display it as a work that beautiful should be displayed. “Deacon would love to see this sword.”

He took the sword the same way she’d presented it, warrior to warrior, and passed it back to his vampiric assistant. “Deacon has already held it.” A sharp smile. “I have commissioned him to make me another pair for the dark future when his mortal existence is no more.”

It could’ve been an ugly statement dismissing the value of a human life, but startlingly, she heard a strong thread of regret in his voice. And she knew Andreas foresaw a future centuries ahead where he would one day show someone Deacon’s work and tell them of the gifted human whose life had run far too short.

“I’ll look forward to seeing what he creates,” she said, consciously stepping back from that pathway into a future unseen.

“Would you give me a moment to shower quickly and dress?”

“Of course.” Impatience sank its teeth into her, shook like a dog with a bone, but Andreas was an old-world angel. A gracious response would gain her far more than pushing at him to rush.

She walked to the house with him. Acres of glass and right angles dominated, the building designed by a living contemporary architect. It had always struck her as odd that such an old angel would have so modern a home until Illium pointed out that the Tower wasn’t exactly of a “colonnades and arches vintage.”

Point well made, Bluebell.

The vampire who waited in the doorway wore a simple gown that reached her ankles. “Sire. Consort.” She bowed and moved aside as they neared.

Once inside, Andreas gave a short nod and headed upstairs, while Elena followed the woman—who proved to be his housekeeper—to a contemporary living area decorated in tones of gray and black, with unexpected splashes of aquamarine. She was resigned to having to wait a half hour at the very least, but Andreas was true to his word and took fewer than five minutes to shower and return.

His slightly overlong hair—a deep brown-black—was still damp, and roughly combed, as if he’d run his fingers through it and considered it done. The amber gray of his feathers glimmered with the odd droplet of water. He was also dressed more casually than she’d ever seen him, wearing khaki pants and a simple white shirt with no buttons and an open tunic-style collar.

“I realize you’ve just returned home,” she said. “Thank you for fitting me in.”

His cheeks creased in a smile that reached his eyes, a pale greenish-hazel she’d always before found disturbing in their acute directness. “It is an honor to have the consort in my home.” Waving a hand at the sofas, he said, “Would you sit?”

“Actually, do you mind if we walk?” Despite her continuous low-level hunger and lack of sleep, she felt jumpy with energy, her skin burning from the inside out.

“If you do not mind the snow, there is a path through the back gardens.”

When they went out there, it was to find the path had already been swept clean. The gardens slept under a thick blanket of white, haunting in their simulacrum of death and burial. “This must be lovely when it’s in full bloom.” Ever since she’d discovered Andreas’s punishments included hanging vampires naked from the trees that surrounded his home, she tended to avoid overflying his property.

At least she knew no one was buried alive out there.

A small mercy.

But she still listened for distant screams.

“My father is enamored of growing things.” Andreas’s voice broke into her gloomy thoughts. “He often laments at having a warrior for a son.”

“I didn’t know your father visited New York.” A sudden sinking feeling in her stomach. “Oh God, was I supposed to know that as Raphael’s consort?”

Andreas threw back his head, his laughter deep and resonant and clashing with what she knew of his pitiless methods to break the insubordinate. “You are safe,” he said afterward. “My mother and father both visit but have said they wish to give you time to settle in before expecting an invitation.”

Elena winced. “Were they being sarcastic?”

“No. In their mind, you have but met Raphael.” He used his boot to nudge aside a small branch that had fallen on the path. “My parents are both over a hundred thousand years old. Their sense of time is not ours.”

Andreas, Elena recalled, was older than Raphael, but by a matter of hundreds of years rather than millennia. “Your parents had you late in life.”

“Not in immortal terms.”

“Wow. No wonder everyone’s lost their minds over Aodhan’s sister having a baby.” Imalia was only twelve hundred years old, give or take.

“An infant having an infant,” Andreas agreed, and she didn’t think he was joking.

Shuddering within as she recalled Nisia’s talk of super-parasites and pregnancy, she said, “I promise to invite your folks to dinner the next time they’re in town—but help me out and give me warning of their next visit.”

An incline of his head. “Mother and Father will be most astonished that you are already so well organized.” That glint in his eye returned. “I should warn you, my parents are . . . dedicated, and they remain uncertain Raphael isn’t a bad influence.”

Elena didn’t know which thread to follow first, went for the most fascinating. “I didn’t realize Raphael had a reputation.”

“He went wild in the two centuries after Caliane’s madness. It was to be expected, but my parents worried I would be led astray.”

At nineteen, Elena had once gone after a vampire with only a single throwing blade and no other weapons. Yes, she understood the wildness engendered by grief and anger. “You can reassure your parents I’m being a good influence on him,” she lied.

Andreas’s lips curved. “I admit I am but teasing you. Their worries have long been laid to rest, and they will be honored to be welcomed into your home.”

Elena had the strange feeling she’d successfully navigated the social necessities that came with being an archangel’s consort. “As I said when I contacted your secretary about speaking to you,” she began, returning to the reason for her visit, “I need to ask you about one of your vampires.”

Her left wing threatened to drop. Catching the movement out of the corner of her eye, she pulled it back into the correct position . . . just as her left forearm began to burn.