Archangel's Enigma

28

The scholar in Andromeda wanted to follow that dark thread, but the woman who’d fallen so entirely for this man knew down that alley lay only hurt for him. “I’m sorry,” she said gently. “Did you make good friends at the Refuge?”

“Yes.” A flash of fangs. “Some parents said I was a bad influence, but the children liked me.”

“Of course they did.” Andromeda laughed. “Are you still friends with those children now?”

“Yes. Especially with two of them,” Naasir said. “One works with Galen, the other is a scientist on a tropical island in Astaad’s territory. When I visit, he gives me fish to eat.” Naasir looked dubious. “I eat it to be polite, but I don’t understand fish.”

Her lips twitched. “You’re a good friend.” She could just imagine him eating the fish while trying to figure out why anyone would eat fish. “Tell me the rest of the story.”

Fingers brushing over her hip, he grinned. “Because I didn’t understand I wasn’t supposed to touch wings, I’d do things like wait on top of bookshelves or cling to the ceiling and drop down on unsuspecting angels. Before they’d finished shrieking, I’d have torn off a feather and run away.”

Andromeda’s shoulders shook. “You were a little terror.”

“Yes,” he said proudly. “Then one day, I jumped on Michaela.”

Andromeda’s laughter dried up. “Did she hurt you?” The archangel renowned for her vivid green eyes and flawless skin the shade of milk chocolate, her beauty the muse of poets and artists through the ages, was not known for her patience.

“Michaela wasn’t an archangel then, but she was dangerous all the same. Only her scent was . . . not what it has become.” Naasir frowned, as if trying to figure out the change. “She was fast though. She caught me by the foot before I could run away and, holding me upside down with a grip on one ankle, her arm stretched out so I couldn’t get her with my claws, she said, ‘You are in trouble.’”

Andromeda swallowed. “What did you do?”

“I had one of her covert feathers in my hand and I offered it back to her. When she didn’t take it, I growled and clawed and tried to get away.”

Andromeda’s heart was in her mouth, though Michaela clearly hadn’t done Naasir any lasting harm if he was telling her this tale. “Did she take you to Raphael?”

“No. She carried me to Jessamy and told her I needed lessons in civilized manners.”

“Did Jessamy make her let you go?”

Naasir shook his head. “I’d torn up all my schoolbooks the day before and eaten the schoolroom’s pet bunny.”

Andromeda knew she shouldn’t, but she burst out laughing. “You didn’t.”

“It was there and I was hungry and no one told me I couldn’t eat it,” he said with an aggrieved look on his face. “Why would you put a bunny there if it wasn’t for eating?”

“Poor Jessamy.” Wiping away her tears, Andromeda shook her head. “What did she do?”

“She locked all the windows and doors in her study space in the Archives, then held on to me while Michaela slipped out and pulled the door shut behind her, making sure it locked. When Jessamy released me, I raged all around the room, tearing up things, clawing the furniture and even biting her.”

Andromeda’s smile faded. “You felt trapped.”

“Jessamy didn’t know all of my life before, didn’t understand what it would do to me to be caged. As soon as she realized I wasn’t just angry, but scared, she opened the door.”

“And you ran?” she guessed, her heart hurting for that small, scared boy who didn’t know how to be in an unfamiliar world.

Naasir’s answer was a surprise. “Jessamy was crying. Even though I was scared, I knew that was bad, so I went over and patted her hand and said sorry for biting it.”

Andromeda’s own eyes turned hot.

“She went to her knees and told me that wasn’t why she was crying. She was crying because she’d made me afraid when she’d just wanted a chance to talk to me without me running away when I got bored.”

Andromeda could well imagine Jessamy’s distress. The teacher of angelic young had a heart so huge, she loved each one of her charges as if that child was her own. “You decided to stay, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t like Jessamy crying—she was always nice to me, even when I tore up her books. I put my hand in hers and we went for a walk to a place with gardens, where she took a seat on a stone bench, put me on her lap, and started to teach me what I needed to know so I could live in the world without people being angry with me all the time.”

The ache inside Andromeda, it was so deep now, for the boy he’d been. “How long did Jessamy teach you such things?”

“For years.” Naasir’s tone held a deep vein of affection. “It took me time to learn but Jessamy is patient. Every afternoon, we’d sit in the garden and she’d teach me things the other children already knew. Like how I shouldn’t growl at people even if I didn’t like them, and how bunnies and other animals in the Refuge weren’t for eating.”

He rubbed his fingers over her hip. “Dmitri taught me, too, but Dmitri didn’t care if I ate pet bunnies or if I jumped out at him so he wasn’t the best teacher on the topic.”

Andromeda could well imagine that Raphael’s deadly second had a far more laissez-faire attitude toward etiquette and behavior. When you were that dangerous, you made your own rules. “And now you can be so civilized it’s scary.”

A shrug. “I put on a different skin when it’s necessary. Dmitri taught me that—he said I didn’t have to change, but that my life would be easier if I could fool people into thinking I had at times.”

“I’m so happy you never wear any skin but your own around me,” Andromeda whispered, her heart wide open.

Silver eyes locked with hers. “I’ll always be Naasir with you,” he promised solemnly, then grinned. “Even if you ask me to act civilized for a minute.”

She groaned and pretended to beat at him with her free hand. “You’re never going to let me forget I said that, are you?”

“Maybe if you tell me a story of your childhood.”

Naasir glimpsed many expressions move across Andromeda’s face in a matter of split seconds. He didn’t catch all of them, but he saw pain, anger, shame, and finally joy.

None of it surprised him; immortality meant many experiences. Though the shame wasn’t a usual thing—but then, Andromeda wasn’t a hardened immortal. Her heart was tender. She probably felt shame for a transgression others would’ve long forgotten.

“I never went to the Refuge school,” she began. “I didn’t see the Refuge at all until I flew there myself just after my seventy-fifth birthday.”

“Seventy-five is not full-grown for an angel.” At that age, she would’ve been close to a fifteen-year-old human teenager. “You flew to the Refuge alone?”

“Yes.” Her expression altered, the golden bursts in her eyes suddenly dark. “My body had started to curve early, my breasts lush. I no longer appeared the child I was and a number of my parents’ guests were starting to look at me in a way that was distinctly predatory and sexual.”

Naasir felt his claws prick at his skin, fought to keep them sheathed.

“I couldn’t take it anymore. I knew as a princess of the court, I was probably safe, but the look in the guests’ eyes . . . it made me feel dirty and small. And the way my parents and their friends brutally tortured others for pleasure . . .” She shook her head, stark echoes of fear and shock in her expression. “I told them my plans, then flew out.”

A shuddering breath. “I think Mother and Father expected me to give up and return home. When I didn’t, they washed their hands of me.”

Andromeda was lying. Not about her flight to the Refuge, but about another part of her story. It made him want to bare his teeth and demand she tell the truth, but he’d do that later, when she didn’t appear so fragile. “Who did you play with when you lived with your parents?”

“The animals.” Joy chased out the shadows. “Once, while I was having dinner in my nursery, a baby giraffe poked his head in the window and ate the fruit right off my plate.”

Naasir grinned. “Truth?”

She nodded. “It came back, too. I used to make up a plate especially for him until my nanny caught me—and even after that, I waited until she wasn’t paying attention and opened the window so the giraffe could slide its head and neck inside.”

Delighted at the idea of her dining with a giraffe, Naasir said, “Did the other animals also join you for meals?”

A shake of her head. “With the cheetahs, we’d race. I’d be in the air, the cheetahs on the ground.” She blew out a breath. “They’re fast.”

“I’ll race you,” Naasir said. “When we’re free of Lijuan’s spies.”

“Deal.”

As the plane flew onward and the world turned, she told him more stories of her childhood. It betrayed a total lack of other children. Not even any mortal playmates. Andromeda appeared to have had no one but her animals. Maybe that was why she understood him so well, accepted his wildness without hesitation. He was happy about that, but he didn’t like to think of her so alone.

A chime sounded in the air a minute after heavy turbulence that threatened to throw them both around the cabin.

“That must be our signal,” Andromeda said.

Naasir got up to look out a window. “Yes.” Grabbing the pack lying on another seat, he put it on and snapped on the straps across his chest before pulling on a thin and tight knit cap that would stop his hair from glittering in the sunlight. “Ready?”

She grinned. “Oh, yes.”

The co-pilot exited the cockpit right then. “Two things. First, Illium’s awake and fine—message literally just came in, is probably on your phone, too.” His smile matched their own. “Second, we couldn’t stabilize over the initial drop point. Can you go through the oasis?”

“Yes,” Naasir said, following the bearded male to the back of the plane. “Bad air?”

“This spot is notorious for it—unpredictable air currents, like the sky is telling you to get the fuck out.”

Naasir met Andromeda’s gaze as the co-pilot attached himself to the wall using a strap. “I think we’re in the right place, Andi.”

The co-pilot opened the wide door built for this purpose before she could reply, air screaming into the cabin. Pushing out two packs, he nodded at Naasir. “Good luck!” The wind almost ripped away his words.

Giving him a thumbs-up, Naasir jumped with one final grin in Andromeda’s direction. With a descent this finely calculated, he had to get out at precisely the right altitude for the parachute to function safely. Opening the chute the instant he was clear of the plane, he whooped at the sensation of flight, the air, cold at this altitude, rushing past him.

He heard laughter nearby and when he glanced over, there was Andromeda, snapping out pretty wings patterned like a bird’s. Grinning, he rode the late-afternoon winds all the way to his planned landing spot in the desert landscape, mentally marking the splashes of color that denoted the landing spots of the small chutes that had deployed with their supply packs.

He began to gather up the chute the instant he was on the ground, while Andromeda swept left toward the first supply pack. It only took him a matter of minutes to fold the chute back in. Instead of abandoning it on the sand, he took the time to bury it so it wouldn’t arouse suspicion, or act as a beacon to any searchers in the air.

He finished just as Andromeda returned with the second supply pack, having already dropped the first near him. Naasir packed away the small chutes into special compartments, then pulled on the heavier pack and helped her strap on the smaller one. It was designed to be worn in the front. He hadn’t wanted her to jump with it because the unaccustomed weight might’ve thrown her off.

“Comfortable?” he asked after fixing the final strap.

She nodded. “We should get off the sand. I feel so exposed here.”

Agreeing, he told her to fly ahead to the date palms that sprawled in the far distance, part of an oasis inhabited by a small number of villagers. “Stay at the level of the tree line.”

Rising into the air, she called out, “Race you!”

He took off. He preferred bare feet, but he’d worn boots for this mission, since they’d be climbing through cave systems. Those boots were soon covered in dust as he ran across the sand to the trees.

They both stayed on the same path and he ran in the shadow of Andromeda’s wings for much of the race, their pace neck and neck, but he pulled away at the end, his chest heaving as he sucked in air. Tearing off the cap now that he was in the trees, he shoved it into a pocket of his pants.

Andromeda came down beside him in a rush of wind, her own breathing uneven. “I need to sprint more.”

“We can do it together.” Taking a bottle of water from the side of his pack, he gave it to her to drink, then drank himself. “No more flying for now,” he said after putting away the water. “It’ll just take one sighting by the wrong person to give away our location.” According to Andromeda’s research, this oasis was owned by a tribe not known for its hospitality.

Andromeda glanced around at the pomegranate and fig trees visible below the date palms. “This must be the tribe’s source of income.”

“Which means we can’t guarantee there aren’t people around checking their crops.”

They went forward with care. It wasn’t until an hour later that Andromeda said, “What if I’m wrong, Naasir?” Her voice was small. “What if Lijuan’s people reach Alexander first and she murders him?”

“Then she’s proved her evil once again.” He ran his hand down her wing. “Lijuan is not your fault.” And because he understood the thoughts that haunted her, he added, “As your parents’ choice to hurt people for their own pleasure isn’t your fault.”

Face stark, Andromeda faced him. “Find the Grimoire.” It was a command . . . but her voice, it trembled. “I need you to find it.”

“I will.” Then he would claim her and keep her—and order her to tell him all her secrets, especially the one that made her hurt so much each time she looked at him.