Swallowing the wave of raw emotion, Mahiya pushed aside the curtains on the balcony doors, saw that the early morning sunlight was crystalline. She’d be spotlighted against the blue sky . . . but no one had forbidden her from taking flight. Decision made, she walked into the bathroom and washed her face, tidied her hair into a tight braid, then opened the balcony doors and stepped out.
There were any number of angels outside, and one flew toward her at once, his wings a dyed black that told her he’d been part of the assault. “Princess,” he said with the curt courtesy of someone who had far more important things on his plate. “How can I serve you?”
“I’d just like to stretch my wings a little before I rest.” Widening her eyes, she gave him a hesitant smile. “I assume it’s safe to fly in the area above and around the palace?”
As she’d wanted, he focused on the second question and didn’t bother to wonder why she’d want to stretch her wings after four hours of flight. “As safe as we can make it.” Frowning, he directed a trio of angels with a complex set of hand signals. “However, I’m certain Lady Nivriti would prefer you remain safely in your quarters.”
He was a general of some kind, she thought. There was too much authority in his tone for an underling. Instead of obeying as he clearly expected, she straightened her spine and said, “Are you ordering me to remain in my rooms?” channeling the dead Anoushka at her spoiled best. “Perhaps you’d like to put me on a leash and lead me around like a pet, too?”
Weariness washed across the general’s face, and she had to fight to keep from wincing in sympathy—she wouldn’t like to be dealing with this version of herself, either, especially after a battle that had cost him so many of his people. But if she didn’t get out now, she could be stuck in this painful purgatory for weeks, even months, smothered by a maternal love blind to the truth of the life Mahiya had survived.
“Please wait,” he said, not giving ground in the face of her outrage—which meant he wasn’t a general, but probably the general. “I will find you an escort.” Turning, he flew off to the left.
Well, that was stupid.
Snorting at his assumption that she’d stay where she was put, she stepped off the railingless balcony, swept over the courtyard, and instead of spiraling out in wide circles, went straight up as she’d seen Jason do so many times. If she could get above the fine layer of white cloud before anyone noticed what she was doing, she could confuse and maybe distract any pursuers long enough to get away.
That pursuit came far sooner than she’d expected, a brusque voice ordering her to descend. Older and stronger as he was, she knew the general would catch her in seconds, but she grit her teeth and continued to beat her wings upward, shoulder and back muscles straining until her tendons felt as if they might snap. Let him think her a spoiled brat—it would plant the wrong idea in his mind, perhaps give her another chance later on—
A sweep of black in front of her. Jason! She was so startled, she shot past him.
“Ready to leave?” he asked when he came up to join her—as if she had gone for an afternoon visit somewhere. Are you all right, princess?
She almost burst into tears at the piercing tenderness of his mental question. “Yes and yes,” she said with a shaky smile, wondering if she would ever understand this man she adored. “But I’m afraid I have acquired a problem.”
“I see that.” Can you hold the hover?
Yes. Her body protested the abuse, but she’d handled worse.
Situating himself beside her rather than in front, Jason reached back and withdrew his sword, holding it casually at his side as the general reached them. The angel’s eyes snapped from Jason to Mahiya, to the quiet threat of Jason’s black sword, and he seemed to decide silence was the best policy. So they all looked politely at one another until her mother winged up to face her.
“Mahiya”—a whip of anger directed at an errant offspring—“I expect my child by my side.”
“Mother,” Mahiya said with utmost gentleness, not wishing to hurt Nivriti, but knowing she had to force her mother to see the truth if they were to ever build a relationship, “I haven’t been a child for centuries. I was never truly allowed to be one. You know that.”
In spite of the gentleness, Nivriti flinched. “I will kill her for what she did.”
Mahiya held up a hand. “No. Do not think to use me as an excuse in your war with Neha. I want no part of it.” Heart twisting, she held that gaze so familiar and so alien. “Three hundred and seven years,” she said in a whisper that held a lifetime of lost dreams and shattering pain. “That’s how long I survived—I do not want to survive any longer, Mother. I want to fly.”
A moment of utter silence before Nivriti’s eyes slammed into Jason’s. “If you do not care for her, spymaster, I will hunt you to the ends of the earth.” With that violent threat, she and her general dropped back down to the palace.
Sliding away the sword, Jason turned to her. She truly does love you in her own way.
Enough to set me free.
43
Four days after he’d put her in it, Dmitri brought Honor partway out of her drugged sleep. “Dmitri.” It was a sluggish question as he cradled her in his lap, but he heard the panic.
“You’re safe,” he said. “It’s time for the first blood kiss. Do you remember?” He’d told her every step of the process, so she wouldn’t be afraid when she woke without full control of her faculties, his Honor who had once been held prisoner by monsters.
Her fingers curled into his chest, fear a slick sheen on her face. “I can’t move.”
“Honor, baby, I can’t bring you fully out.” She was ripping him apart. “Please remember.” He nuzzled and kissed the woman who made eternity worth living, holding her as tight as he dared, for her skin would be sensitive now, easier to bruise. “I would never do anything to hurt you.”
A sigh against his neck, the panic subsiding, though her voice remained thick with the drugs. “I love you.”
Relieved until he could barely breathe, he allowed himself three precious minutes with her before he used one of his fangs to puncture his wrist and hold it up to her mouth. “I know it doesn’t taste good now”—wouldn’t until the transformation had had longer to take hold in her body—“but you only have to take a few drops.”
Honor wrinkled her nose but didn’t fight.
“Very not sexy,” she muttered afterward and made him laugh, the tension leaching out of his body.
“Trust me, it gets sexier.” Kissing her, he forced himself to lay her back down. “Ready?”
“I want it done.” She cuddled into his body. “Want to be with you.”
He reached down to reactivate the drug that would take her under once more. “I’ll be here, waiting for you when you wake again.” He’d waited near to a thousand years—nothing would induce him to move from her side. “Sleep. I’ll keep you safe.”
44
Mahiya sat on the roof of the Angel Enclave house that was home to the Archangel Raphael and his consort, scarcely believing it had been but a week since she left her mother’s palace. The city of shining metal and sparkling glass she could see across the water fascinated her, almost as much as the angel with hair of near-white who swept toward the roof.
Elena landed beside Mahiya with an open joy that made her smile. “Ten points for certain,” she said, having played this game with the other woman earlier in the week
“You’re being nice. I had to take an extra step to balance the landing.”
“Nine point three, then.”
“That, I’ll take, even though you’re still being nice.” Folding those haunting wings of midnight and dawn, Elena took a seat. “Are you waiting for Jason?”
“He’s inside, talking to Raphael.” Having grown up around an archangel, Mahiya wasn’t affected by them as another angel of her age might be, but she never forgot that they were other and thus to be treated with caution. “I came to admire your city so busy and bright, and to listen to the water.” The river rushed past just beyond the cliff, and not far in the distance, she could see two water vessels about to pass.
Drawing up one knee, Elena hooked her arm around it. “Will you stay?”
Mahiya had considered that, ruled it out—New York was dazzling, a beautiful city, but with jagged edges that overwhelmed. “I think I would like to visit.” Taste it in small bites. “But this is not my place.”
Elena nodded. “She’s not for everyone, my city, but I adore her.” Undoing a lightweight crossbow from her outer left thigh, she placed it beside her on the roof.
“Were you on a hunt?” It astonished Mahiya that the consort to an archangel did such a thing, but it also astonished her how Raphael looked at Elena and how Elena looked at the archangel in return. The searing depth of their connection was something she’d never expected, no matter what she had heard of their bonding.
“No, I was running a training session at Guild Academy. My turn on the roster.” She lifted her face to the wind, and they sat in companionable silence for almost ten minutes before Elena shifted to look at her. “Jason,” she said in a quiet voice, “you will look after him, won’t you?”
Startled, Mahiya said, “He isn’t a man who needs anyone’s protection.”
“But,” Elena said, eyes of silver-gray incisive, “I think he needs you.”
Yes. The question was, would Jason allow her to give him what he needed, or would he shy, as a wild creature might? It wasn’t the best of analogies, for Jason knew the ways of sophistication and civilization as well as any court male. Yet, he was not of them, part of him still that boy alone in the middle of an ocean. “I feel such things for him,” she whispered, “that it terrifies me.”
“Good,” Elena said with a shoulder nudge. “You’d never fit in our club otherwise.”
She blinked at the startling statement. “What?”
“It’s for those of us who are insane enough to fall in love with seriously badass men more sensible women would run from screaming. You’ve now superseded Honor as the newest member.” Elena grinned. “I’ll teach you the secret handshake.”
Mahiya laughed, and it was the laughter one shared with a friend. Elena was consort to an archangel, had access to power beyond imagining. She had no need to cultivate a relationship with Mahiya, and yet Mahiya knew why she did so. Not only because of an inherent kindness that had made her feel welcome from the first, but because Jason was one of “theirs.”
Mahiya did not mind being adopted into such a family. There was joy here, loyalty, and best of all, no one wished to use her as a pawn in some political game. Oh, she had no doubts about Raphael’s instincts, but she also knew the archangel would treat her with the courtesy due to the lover of one of his Seven.
Except she wasn’t certain she was that lover, that her spymaster wasn’t simply waiting for her to find her wings. Don’t go, Jason. Words she’d never say, chains she’d never wrap around him, but oh, it hurt to think of never again feeling the rough heat of his touch, never again seeing that wild black fire in eyes of deepest brown.
