Archangel's Blade

38

Freshly showered, they spoke sitting in bed, Honor lying against Dmitri’s chest, her body soft and warm and his. Absolutely, categorically his.

“I couldn’t hide this from you,” she said as he ran his fingers through hair he’d dried as she sat slumped against him, lazy and sated, “but I was prepared for utter disbelief, thought it might take me years to prove it to you.”

Taking her hand, he spread it over his heart. “Some part of me knew from the start.” She was inside him, her soul forcing his own back to life. “I just wasn’t ready to consciously accept it.” Honor was the brave one, the one who had taken that leap of hope.

Her hand fisted. “I know this will hurt you so much, but I need to have this question answered.” Eyes iridescent with tears, jewels in the rain. “Misha . . . what did they do to Misha?”

A searing burn on his chest, the scent of burning flesh and muscle and his body’s silent screams. But his mouth he kept shut, though it cost him a piece of his sanity.

“There now, lover. You will never forget me.” Isis’s red lips pressing over the burned and scarred flesh, her tongue digging into the still painful wound. “Always, you will carry me within.” Her flawless face stayed serene as she took up the branding iron and pressed it to his flesh a second time to make certain of her words.

Blackness engulfed him and when he woke, his chest was ridged with a scar so heavy and thick, he thought nothing would ever erase it. Looking up, he saw Raphael staring at that brand with a cold intensity that spoke of death. The angel said nothing, but when their eyes met he jerked the chain that held his left hand cuffed to the wall. It took Dmitri’s dazed mind a moment to see, to understand.

The stone was cracking. A year it had taken him, but Raphael had weakened his bonds enough to snap them—now, Dmitri simply had to survive, become strong again. So he did, though Isis had almost broken him. But he didn’t do it to kill her, though that need was a fever in his blood. He did it so he could hold his son again, the only one of his family who remained.

“Shh, Misha,” he said, his throat cracked and raw when his son screamed and convulsed, his tiny body attached to the wall by a cuff around his neck. “Papa will be there soon and he’ll make it all right.”

He’d kept his promise. He’d given his son peace.

The guilt of what he’d done clawed him bloody. “Isis tried to Make him.”

A horrified sound. “He was too young.”

“Yes.” Dmitri couldn’t put this pain into words, but when Honor’s hands came up to cup his cheeks, he bent his head toward her, let her press her lips to his closed eyes, to his lips.

“I understand.” Her voice was a husky whisper. “It is all right, Dmitri. It was the only thing you could’ve done.”

Dmitri hadn’t cried, not for near to a thousand years. But the remembered agony of cradling his son’s body in his arms, of looking into those trusting eyes fevered and full of suffering and a madness that had already made Misha gnaw at his own flesh, of holding that gaze until the very end, when he ended the life of his brave, beautiful boy . . . it tore through him now, creating cutting rivers of pain.

He would’ve drowned but for the woman who held him through the storm, whose tears mixed with his own, whose gentle hands gave him forgiveness for a crime for which he’d never forgiven himself. “I was their father,” he said at long last. “Caterina, Misha . . . I couldn’t protect either of them. I couldn’t protect you.”

Honor shook her head. “You fought for us. You surrendered your pride, your body, your freedom. But most of all, you loved us until none of us knew what it was to live without being adored.” Cupping his face again, she touched her forehead to his. “If I got a second chance, don’t you think our babies must have, too?”

Her whisper didn’t wipe out his grief over their loss, but it touched it with the glow of hope. And having this woman in his arms, that was a gift no one could ever take away. “Ingrede or Honor?” It mattered not to him, the essence of her indelibly inked on his soul.

“Ingrede lived another life, was another woman.” A kiss on his jaw, followed by a scowl. “I’m Honor, so don’t suddenly start thinking I’m going to put on skirts and be a stay-at-home wife.”

“You can do whatever you wish to,” he said. “So long as you don’t go far from me.” He wouldn’t allow that, couldn’t stand it. “Almost a thousand years I’ve waited for you. I can’t give you that distance.”

“Dmitri.” It was a long time later that they spoke again, his need for her a deep well that would never run dry. “I’ve got no desire to put distance between us,” she said, brushing his hair back, caressing his jaw, constant touches of love. “The position at Guild Academy for a teacher of ancient languages is still open. I’m going to go for it.”

“Good.” Lifting her hand to his lips, he kissed her knuckles. “We’ll marry at daybreak.” His wife would wear his ring, be his in every way.

“Old-fashioned.” Laughter, familiar and new, wrapping around him, binding him. “I hope you know you’ll be wearing gold, too.”

“I’ve waited an eternity to wear it again.” Body and soul, she owned him. “I’m yours. Always.”

Mists in her eyes. “I love you.”

“Even if I’m no longer as good a man as you once knew?” Never again would be, his soul too battered, too threaded through with violence and darkness.

“We’re both of us a little beat up—that’s what makes us interesting.”

He wanted to laugh, but his chest ached. “Do you wish to be Made, Honor?” If she chose the firefly life span of a mortal, this time he would go with her. It was no choice, but a simple truth.

Honor went motionless. “I can’t be anyone’s slave, Dmitri. Not ever.”

“That won’t be a problem.” Then, because this was Honor, who knew him as no other did on this earth, he said, “You’ll only ever serve me.”

“Arrogant man.” Rising to straddle him, she touched her nose to his, rubbed in that familiar way. “At the start, I thought no, I could never be one of the monsters. But we never had a chance, Dmitri. I want that chance. I want a hundred lifetimes with you.”

He didn’t give her the opportunity to change her mind, greedy for every instant, every second. “We’ll begin the process after the marriage ceremony.”

“Do you think the Guild will still accept me?” It was a worried question. “The Academy’s never been prejudiced against vampiric instructors, but . . . my friends.”

“If they are your friends, they’ll stand with you.”

Yes. Having faith in the strength of the relationships she’d built, she laid her head against him, this man she’d fought death itself to find. “Tell me what you did, what you saw, after I was gone.”

A strong hand fisting in her hair, possessive and dark. “I’ve lived many years.”

“That’s okay,” she said, spreading her fingers over his heart. “We have eternity.”