Archangel's Enigma

4

A smile of challenge from the small, soft scholar who was taunting him. “I asked if you were scared,” she said, not backing off, though he could see the pulse thudding hard in her neck.

“Do you want me to bite you?” he asked seriously.

Scowling, she stepped back. “Fine, if you don’t want to spar, I’ll find someone else.”

He barely held back his growl. She wanted him to act civilized? He’d wear the skin so well she’d never see the real Naasir again. “Rules for the session?” he asked. “Other than my not killing you.”

“I get to have a sword as a weapon. You get bare hands.”

He shrugged. “That’s fair.” What it was, was suicidal on her part. She could have ten swords and he’d still be inside her guard in a heartbeat. “Is that your sword in the corner?”

“How did you see that?” she asked. “It’s in the shadows.”

He didn’t say anything, just watched her until she broke eye contact and walked to pick up the sword she’d propped up neatly against a wall. It was in its scabbard and when she drew it out, he saw it gleamed. Either Galen had drummed it into her to clean her weapons, or this weapon had never actually been used in any kind of serious combat. She probably just used it as part of her routine with the flowing, patient stretches.

He snorted under his breath.

“Ready?” she asked, taking a wide-legged stance across from him, enough distance between them that she probably thought herself safe.

“Yes.”

“In that case, three, two, one!”

Naasir lunged, not holding back his speed or agility. All he had to do was put her on the ground and this ridiculous exercise would be done and he could leave and his mouth would stop watering at the intoxicating scent of her. The air whistled past his eyes, the world so slow in comparison to his speed, the stars blurring together—

“Grr!”

He snarled as he came down on his feet, looking in disbelief at his upper arm. There was a thin line of red across his biceps. Shaking his head, he looked again but it was still there. It healed before his eyes, the wound superficial, but the blood remained behind to mark the spot. “You cut me,” he said to Andromeda.

Heart a racehorse and breath coming hard and fast, Andromeda wondered if she knew what the hell she was doing. She hadn’t meant to challenge him, but he’d been so horribly, unnervingly polite that her mouth had opened and the words had tumbled out. He’d clearly decided he didn’t like her, and for some reason that infuriated her.

Now he was looking at her through narrowed eyes of glowing silver, his hair hanging over his face before he shoved it back. “How did you cut me?” A demand.

She was the one who shrugged this time. “I cheated.”

A long, slow blink. “Cheating’s not allowed.”

“Yes, it is. You’re bigger, faster, and far better trained than I am. If I don’t cheat, we’ll have no fun.”

Another slow blink . . . and she realized he was moving, and she was moving instinctively in response, the two of them circling one another. Going into that space inside her head where she was one with the blade, she reacted on instinct again when he moved, and scored him across the hard ridges of his abdomen. Only he didn’t stop in surprise this time but kept going.

She’d never worked harder with the blade in her life.

He still pinned her to the ground in under three minutes, his body heat on her front a stark intimacy. Knees on either side of her hips and hands gripping her wrists above her head, rendering her sword useless, he leaned down until his breath kissed hers and she could look into those astonishing eyes at a proximity she’d never expected.

They were clear, so clear, and utterly beautiful. The silver glowed in the night, the striations within the irises a darker silver. “You cut me seven-and-a-half times,” he said, his voice holding a gritty, growly undertone.

Chest heaving, she tried to shrug again, as if she wasn’t trapped under an unfriendly predator. “Pretty good for a scholar.”

He moved even closer, until his nose was a bare whisper above hers. “You have secrets,” he said slowly. “You wear another skin, too.”

Andromeda went motionless, the game suddenly dangerous. “No,” she said through a hoarse throat. “I don’t have secrets. I’m exactly what I seem.” At least for her final fifteen days of freedom, fifteen days where the people she respected still believed in her, still trusted her.

“A scholar who wields a sword?”

“Have you never heard of a warrior-scholar?”

He continued to watch her with those clear silver eyes that made her imagine she could see galaxies within. “You have spots on your face.”

“What? It must be dirt from when you took me down.”

Shifting her wrists to one strong hand, he touched the rough-skinned pad of a finger to her nose and her cheeks on either side. “Spots.”

She glared past the shiver that wanted to ripple through her. “Those are freckles!” A sprinkling of them across the bridge of her nose and on the tops of her cheeks that had only become more entrenched with time, until she’d given up all hope of ever pulling off cool elegance.

Ignoring her, the predator holding her captive began to count her “spots.”

“Naasir.”

He looked up, expression suddenly dead serious. “Cutting me after fooling me with your outside skin wasn’t nice. It wasn’t civilized.”

“I didn’t promise to be civilized,” she said, then wanted to clamp her mouth shut. She’d spent most of her immortal lifetime being civilized and well-behaved and not an addict of sensation driven by her base needs.

Naasir snapped his teeth at her.

When she jerked, he laughed and stretched out on top of her, one hand still gripping her wrists, and his warm, masculine scent in her every inhale. “Then I’m not going to be civilized either.”

It was odd. She’d only met him hours earlier, and yet his words made something in her unknot, untwist. As if she’d lost something but managed to win it back again. “I only asked you to behave for a minute,” she found herself saying when she should’ve been telling him to get off. “You were aggravating me.”

His fingers flexed on her wrists but he didn’t release her. “I wasn’t hurting you,” he said with a scowl.

“No,” she admitted, the words from the letter stark against the landscape of her mind. “I was angry about something else and I yelled at you. I’m sorry.”

Those astonishing eyes held hers again as he closed the distance between them. “I want to lick your skin.”

That skin prickling with something that was very much not fear, she tried to buck him off. Of course she failed. He was significantly heavier. “I can’t breathe.”

“You’re an immortal.”

“My wings are squashed.”

He raised himself off her. “Spread them out.”

She did, easing the strain, but when she tugged at her wrists, he held on tighter and brought his body right back down on top of hers. “Now your wings aren’t squashed anymore and we can talk.”

Given that she could feel his arousal, hard and thick against her abdomen, Andromeda didn’t think it was talking he had in mind. She had the idea that if she gave him a single ounce of encouragement, she’d be naked with him inside her in a matter of seconds. “No,” she whispered, and for the first time in her existence, she felt regret for the choice she’d made.

He tilted his head to the side. “No?”

“I’ve sworn a vow of celibacy. It wasn’t done on a whim, or without thought.” It had been a hundred years in the making. “The vow is part of my honor, part of what makes me Andromeda.” Not Charisemnon’s grandchild. Not Lailah’s daughter. Not just another jaded princess of the court. Andromeda. Scholar and warrior.

A low, rumbling sound in Naasir’s chest, silver eyes burning above her. “Rutting isn’t dishonorable.”

Her cheeks burned from within. “It is for a woman who has vowed not to indulge in it.”

He shifted to rub himself against the juncture of her thighs. Her breath caught, her inner muscles spasming on aching emptiness as the place between her thighs went damp. Nostrils flaring, Naasir leaned in close enough to nuzzle her throat. “You want me.” It was a satisfied purr of sound.

Her throat was so dry it took her several attempts to get the words out. “That doesn’t change my choice.”

Squeezing her wrists but not hard enough to hurt, he snapped his teeth at her again. “What will change it?”

The words just fell out past her lips, as they had a way of doing around Naasir. “Finding the Star Grimoire.” That was her escape clause—she’d be released from the vow should the Grimoire return to the world.

“What is a Star Grimoire?”

“A book.” A book lost in the mysteries of time, the reason she’d chosen that as the key that would unlock her vow. “An ancient book no one has seen for thousands of years. An angelic treasure.”

Naasir was quiet for a long time. “If I find this stupid Grimoire, will you rut with me?”

Her cheeks blazed hotter even as her nipples grew tight enough to throb. “You can’t find the Grimoire.”

“If I do?”

“If you do, you can do whatever you like to me,” she said recklessly.

His smile was pure sin, the fangs that flashed in the muted light gleaming white. Rising off her, he held out a hand and, when she took it, hauled her to her feet. “Who taught you the blade? Your style is not Galen’s.”

“My other mentor.” She saw him looking admiringly at her sword and passed it over so he could examine it.

Taking it, Naasir stepped away and sliced the sword through the air in a fast, dangerous rhythm. “Someone from Charisemnon’s Refuge stronghold?”

“No. I don’t have anything to do with my grandfather’s people.” Not yet. Not for fifteen more days. “It was Dahariel.”

An icy cut of sound as he halted his swordplay. “Dahariel is Astaad’s second.”

“Teachers and scholars aren’t tied to any one archangel unless they swear that allegiance.” It was assumed Jessamy was more loyal to Raphael than to any other archangel because of her relationship with Galen, but even so, others of the Cadre still came to her for information.

As for Andromeda, she’d proven her loyalty to unbiased scholarship over more than three hundred years of hard work and unrelenting discipline. Most people had forgotten she was of Charisemnon’s bloodline, seeing her as belonging only to the Archives.

Naasir bared his teeth at her. “Do you report to him?”

“No. I report to no one.”

“For this task? To find Alexander?”

“In accepting the task, I have agreed to keep Raphael’s confidence for the duration.” No one could compel her to betray any of the secrets she learned during her remaining days of freedom. And instinct told her that by the day of her four-hundredth birthday, this task would be over, one way or another. Events were moving too fast for it to be otherwise.

Naasir handed back her sword. “Dahariel is not a good man.” The words were harsh. “He hurts people. Sometimes he hurts people who aren’t full-grown.”

Andromeda flinched. “He may,” she admitted, “but he saved me.” She’d been a child who was a possession held jealously close yet rarely given any attention or nurturing. Dahariel alone had seen her as a person; the hawk-faced angel had put a blade in her hand and taught her what he knew best.

The blade will give you a way to earn your place in the world.

As it was, she hadn’t had to sell her sword to find precious freedom. But when she’d broken away from her parents while still technically a child, it had given her the confidence to believe she could protect herself on the skyroads. Her sword and a small pack of belongings was all she’d had when she arrived in the Refuge and petitioned Jessamy for the learning so long denied her.

Charisemnon used scholars but didn’t respect them. He respected only strength—and in his court, that meant cruelly hardened men and women who could mete out pain and torture and humiliation without blinking, who could make a living being beg and crawl and bleed. Lailah had learned that lesson at her father’s knee, and she’d raised Andromeda in a home as filled with brutal violence . . . and as redolent with the smell of sex.

The more deviant the better.

Andromeda’s parents were beyond jaded at this point.

I promise I will learn and I will treat the Library and the Archives with respect, she’d said to Jessamy that long-ago day. I will not harm any of the volumes. The last she’d had to add because it wasn’t every would-be scholar who came from parents who’d been banned from the Archives. I want to learn. To have a chance to be more than a puppet driven by pain and obsessive sexual need. Please, teach me. Please.

Stepping far too close to her, his bare upper body a sensual temptation she had to gird herself to resist, Naasir said, “What does Dahariel ask in return?”

Andromeda’s heart squeezed, the ache deep and old. “Nothing,” she whispered, remembering what Dahariel had said to the girl she’d been.

Maybe you are my one good deed. But there is only so much good in me and I’ve spent it all on this—expect nothing more.

“We should get some rest,” she said, to stop Naasir from following up on her answer. “We start the hunt tomorrow.”

Naasir didn’t get out of her way. Reaching out, he curled an escapee tendril of her hair around his fingers. “Tell me of the Grimoire.”

Andromeda didn’t back away. That would give the wrong signal to this vampire who wasn’t a vampire. He was a predator and she did not want to become prey. “It is legend that the Grimoire was a record of secret things, beings, and treasures, all of which have been long lost in time.”

Naasir tugged on the tendril he’d captured. “You like secrets?”

“I like hunting them.”

A wicked, dangerous smile. “So do I.”

Somehow, Andromeda didn’t think he was talking about the kind of slow, methodical research that was her preferred method of the hunt.

Dawn came in soft washes of color on the horizon. After speaking to the guards on duty at Raphael’s stronghold, where she was currently staying, Andromeda took a walk along the top of the cliffs that overlooked the gorge. Since she had no intention of being kidnapped by Lijuan’s people, she stayed within sight of the stronghold and the guards.

Yes, she could defend herself with the knives she wore strapped to her thighs under her airy mint green gown, but she wouldn’t win against a squadron of trained warriors. Better not to take the risk—and it was no hardship to keep her morning walk to this part of the Refuge. It was peaceful, few angels having yet left their homes or aeries, while none of the vampires in the Refuge seemed to be up and about.

In the calm, she found her center again.

Discipline. Serenity. Learning.

The three foundations on which she’d built her chosen life.

Wild silver eyes and a sword dance that still made her breath catch.

Andromeda shook her head, fisted her hands, and closing her eyes, drew deep of the crisp air of a mountain dawn. There was no room in her life for Naasir’s brand of wildness; she only had two precious weeks to build emotional shields tough enough to survive five hundred years in hell. Those shields had to be created of absolute discipline and steel will.

Feeling the slap of wind against her cheek that signaled a nearby angelic landing, she opened her eyes. She was determined to be polite in spite of the rudeness of such a close landing, but her polite smile disappeared the instant she saw the razor-sharp cheekbones and red-streaked dark gray wings of the black-haired angel bare inches in front of her.

Xi. One of Lijuan’s generals.

Andromeda didn’t hesitate; she stepped backward off the cliff and snapped out her wings . . . but Xi hadn’t come alone. Panic buffeted her as her wings were caught in the fine threads of the net that had been waiting for her. There was no chance to recover or to go for her blades. They had her tightly wrapped within heartbeats.

Then the entire team dropped to the bottom of the gorge at dangerous speed. She screamed the whole time not out of fear but in an effort to give the guards sounds to follow, though her pragmatic side told her it had all happened too fast. The guards probably hadn’t even made it to the top of the cliff yet. And there was little chance of anyone else hearing her—almost no one flew this low in the gorge, so low that she could feel the spray of water from the thundering river beneath.

Xi’s men and women had to have been watching her, had to have learned her habits.

Her hard-fought discipline and allegiance to order and routine had been used against her.

Face pressed uncomfortably against the netting, she managed to insinuate her hand down her side to her thigh and pulled out one of her two blades. It was viciously sharp but when she tried to hack at the netting, she made no progress. Metal filaments, she realized. That was why the strands felt like they were cutting into her skin. She wasn’t getting out of this until Lijuan’s people unwrapped her.

She worked to hide her knife again. Since she never practiced in the public training areas, Xi might not be aware that she wasn’t a soft target. If they didn’t search her on landing at Lijuan’s Refuge stronghold, she could use the blades to help in her escape. While not as confident with them as with a sword, she’d been sparring with Venom since his arrival and he’d taught her a few sneaky tricks.

However, as the minutes passed and the terrain changed below her, she realized they were leaving the Refuge. Her heart chilled at the only possible explanation. She was being taken directly to Lijuan’s citadel, a place where she had no friends, no allies, and that was reputedly far from all civilization.

A place where the living were sacrificed, and the dead walked.