Archangel's Heart

25

“Consort,” said the black-haired angel with wings of dark sienna, the color one she’d seen on no other angel.

“General Hiran.”

“I have instructions from General Rhys to ask after Mahiya,” the male said, his expression impassive. “Is she content?”

Thinking back, Elena remembered that Mahiya had spoken warmly of Rhys and his wife. They’d never treated her badly. “Yes,” she answered. “She’s finding her wings.” For the first time in her life, Mahiya was free to be exactly who she wanted to be and she was extraordinary.

“The spymaster treats her well?” Hiran gave a thin smile. “The question is General Rhys’s—he says he knows it is not his right to ask such questions, but Mahiya has no father to watch over her.”

No, her father had been Neha’s consort and a useless waste of space from what Elena knew. “She has a very scary mother.”

“Nivriti loves her, this I do not doubt,” Hiran murmured thoughtfully, “but I think for Neha and Nivriti, they have ever been one another’s most important relationship. Even in hate, they are forever bound.”

It was an unexpected and insightful comment. Mahiya’s mother and Neha were twins, but it wasn’t that bond alone that bound them. It was centuries of emotion, of memory, of betrayal. Elena understood. The same mess of emotions bound her to her father. “Jason and Mahiya are very happy,” she said, knowing she gave away no secrets.

What she didn’t say was that the man known for his impenetrable darkness would do anything for his princess. Anything. It would’ve made the spymaster painfully vulnerable had Mahiya not possessed the exact same vulnerability. If Jason asked, Mahiya would carve out her own heart.

“I’m certain General Rhys will be pleased to hear that,” Hiran said with enough warmth that she knew he respected the other man a great deal. “His heartmate, Brigitte, has sent a gift for Mahiya.” A pause. “With the cool relationship between your consort and my lady, they have felt disloyal in reaching out to Mahiya, but they could not let this opportunity pass. It would be a great favor if you could take their gift to her.”

“I can do that,” Elena said, knowing she’d also go through the gift with a fine-tooth comb. No way in hell would she take anything back to Mahiya that had the potential to hurt her.

“I will get it to you before it is time to leave Lumia.” Hiran inclined his head in a polite good-bye and then he was sweeping away, his wings beating powerfully as he caught up to Valerius.

Xander, meanwhile, was flying far below, skimming close over the golden landscape of this sunlit land, the gold filaments in his wings and the silver on the underside afire as he dipped this way and that with youthful exuberance.

Reminded of Izzy and Illium both, Elena dropped to his altitude. “What’s so interesting?” she called out when she was close enough.

“There are animals below!” he yelled back. “Goats perched on such narrow ledges that I can’t believe they aren’t falling off!”

Elena joined him in goat-spotting. Not an activity she’d ever before considered. This was definitely not New York. But it kept them both amused—and Xander was right: some of those goats had to have glue on the bottoms of their hooves or something. The landscape below wasn’t particularly hilly, but the hills that did exist were steep and devoid of heavy foliage.

“Magnus!”

The lion-maned rider below them looked up at Xander’s cry and waved a hand before going down low over the neck of his black stallion again, a man clearly at home with that means of transport though he lived in an area where it wasn’t exactly common. But angels and vampires, as she’d learned, had long histories.

Magnus could well have been born in a landscape filled with horses.

When she, Xander, and the others eventually passed over Lumia’s walled border, the aerial guard dipped its wings but didn’t get in their way.

The first thing she noticed was the lack of any guards without wings—vampires need not apply to Lumia in any capacity apparently, not even as guards. The second thing was the sheer size of the defensive squadron—and what she was seeing was only the part of the force assigned to this section of the border.

Raphael, do you know Lumia has an army of its own? She didn’t have the strength to “send” that far, but Raphael could hear her from great distances.

The crisp bite of the wind sliced through her mind an instant later. How big?

This is only an estimate, Elena said, then gave him the numbers.

Interesting. Raphael’s tone was cool—not Archangel cool but thoughtful cool. Lumia has always had a guard complement fed by volunteers from all of the archangelic territories. Unless one of the others in the Cadre has seconded large numbers of people here, the Luminata must have recruited beyond the volunteers.

Elena twisted her lips. I can’t see any of the archangels weakening their defenses to supply a heavy guard to men who are meant to be a bunch of monks.

It could be that these monks are no longer neutral and are providing a service to an archangel, Raphael pointed out. I’ve asked Aodhan to keep a sharp lookout on your return, see if he can identify any of the angels in the squadron.

See what you can discover in the town, he added. If the angels and vampires who live there are aggressive, it may be an overreaction or posturing on Lumia’s part. I, meanwhile, will attempt to keep from killing Charisemnon.

That last didn’t sound like a joke. What’s happened?

Nothing. But I look at him and I see Stavre.

The youngest angel to have died in the Falling, his funeral bier covered with flowers placed there by his warrior brethren. We’ll kill the evil bastard one day, she said. Better yet, I like to imagine his disease-causing power turning back on him again, but this time in a slow, tortuous, but eventually fatal fashion. Don’t give him your energy.

Wise advice from my consort. I shall attempt to follow it.

Blowing him a mental kiss, Elena winged to a slightly higher altitude as the first buildings came into view on the horizon, a hive of life in the midst of an otherwise arid landscape. Interestingly, nothing appeared much over two stories high—angels tended to go up when they built, though low dwellings weren’t unheard of depending on the weather and topology of an area. Lumia itself was gracefully low to the earth—though it did sit on a rise—so maybe that had influenced the architecture of the town.

Elena wanted to get an overview of the place before she landed, see how big an area it covered, guesstimate how many people she’d be dealing with in her hunt to unearth the identity of the woman in the miniature. For all she knew, that miniature had been painted centuries ago and no one would have the faintest clue, but she had to try.

The homes on the edge of town were very small and colored in earth tones, blending into the landscape. Then came the fruit trees—fig and orange maybe—followed by the shocking green of fields planted with vegetables and irrigated against the harsh sun and dry environment. Cows looked up placidly at the shadow of wings passing overhead and children pelted to their homes.

Elena frowned.

Kids ran under angelic shadows in New York, too, especially in Central Park, but they always tried to follow the wings, not divert away from them. Could be Raphael was right and the angels who lived in the town were aggressive and violent. Not that she could see any of them; the only wings in the sky were of her group.

Trees and houses broke up the patches of lush green. The farms were small, each field easily traversable on foot. The deeper they flew into the town, the more the houses began to cluster together, the greenery coming in smaller patches that were probably private gardens. Earth tones permeated throughout.

No mansions. No railingless balconies that she could spot. Nothing beyond the two stories she’d already noted. A few flat roofs that could be used as landing spots, but the people she spotted on them had no wings.

More and more of the town’s denizens began to come into view, some seated under the shadows of trees, others going about their business with their faces covered by colorful scarves. Those scarves were necessary under the merciless heat of the sun. Elena had thrust one into a side pocket when she and Aodhan swung by the suite earlier; it was a bright purple thing with silvery threads in it that she’d picked up on her last trip to Morocco.

In flight, the wind cooled the sun’s kiss and any damage was quickly repaired by the immortal ability to heal such small surface wounds, but on the ground, the heat could be punishing. Those of the Lumia group who hadn’t thought to bring scarves would probably make a few of the local traders very happy very soon.

The town’s central marketplace appeared below them not long afterward.

Elena had traveled the world as a hunter. Bustling marketplaces were one of her favorite parts of any city or village, whether that marketplace was an open air one on a small tropical island, only a tin roof keeping off the afternoon rains while people haggled, or one situated in the narrow maze of streets that was often the center of an old city.

Strip malls didn’t have the same impact, though Times Square did.

It was the unpredictability she enjoyed, the not knowing what stall or store she’d find around the corner or what random sights she’d see. Like the time she’d seen silk threads being colored and stretched along a wall, or when she’d walked into a small café in an old city and found herself in a Michelin-starred establishment. Then there was that G-string-wearing woman in Times Square.

Nothing too unusual about that except the human woman had been dressed like Illium, complete with a wig of black hair dipped in blue, gold contact lenses, and faux wings she wore with a harness that showcased breasts she’d painted a glittering silver. Elena wouldn’t have known whether or not to be horrified for her friend’s sake if he hadn’t been the one to point out the performer to her—Illium thought it was hilarious.

He’d posed with the ecstatic performer, made Elena take a photo.

From what she could see, this marketplace, like Times Square, was a permanent installation, little shops set snugly against one another with sloping roofs that extended several feet out to provide shade for the goods displayed in front of the shops. Sunshine rained down on the entire area, but some clever town planner had left room for a number of large trees that provided shoppers with shade, meaning they’d linger.

Circling the largest tree was a wooden bench on which she glimpsed men and women sitting and chatting as they drank something. Fresh mint tea, she hoped, her mouth watering at the memory of the taste that was an integral aspect of her impression of Morocco.

The marketplace wasn’t only a single street but set out in a ragged wheel, the spokes uneven in length. At the end of the longest spoke, the one that went to the very western edge of the town and had no homes around it, she glimpsed—and caught a whiff of—a tannery. Other stores or industries that created noxious fumes or smells were probably also located near that edge, similarly to how larger cities separated out their industrial districts from retail or residential areas.

The people below all looked up as Elena and the others passed, but no one waved. In fact, they seemed to go oddly immobile. Angelstruck? No, Elena thought. Those humans who were so in awe of angels as to become enthralled into a frozen state by their presence were rare.

The reaction could just be surprise: the Luminata wouldn’t often—if ever—fly out here, since their whole deal was to find their way to luminescence by contemplation while encased in their pristinely controlled environment. Haggling with mortals and being faced with the harsh realities of life didn’t exactly fit into that, no matter how you cut it.

It had to be the guard squadron that got supplies and anything else Lumia might need. But the guards were angels, too. So why this disturbing reaction? And where were the town’s own resident angels?

Continuing on past the marketplace, their entire group flew to the very edge of the town, where once again, the homes became farther apart and green fields became a mainstay. Tasha was at the leading edge, and when she turned, the rest of them followed suit. Elena wasn’t sure if everyone wanted to land, but she had no intention of leaving here without speaking to the townspeople.

With that in mind, she angled her way toward the marketplace once they got closer to the center of the town. The flyers in front of her kept going before someone glanced back and started a chain reaction. By the time she came down on her feet in the center of the marketplace—by the tree circled by the wooden bench—it looked as if everyone had decided to join her.

Elena glanced up at the dusty blue of the sky and hoped Aodhan wouldn’t feel compelled to land. He might be okay with small touches from those he most trusted, but he’d hate the marketplace, be hurt by it. Better for him to stay aloft and alert her if there was a problem.

A rush of sound as the angels landed . . . and then shimmering quiet.

That ghost that was haunting her, it walked over Elena’s grave again. Because it wasn’t surprise she glimpsed on the faces around them. No, it was a far darker emotion, one that pushed bone white against skin that shaded from deepest browns to sunny golds, and that made people’s breath come in ragged beats.

Fear?

Wings folded back tight to take up as little space as possible, she watched the other angels begin to explore. Nearest to the landing area were fruit and spice stalls, with other goods spreading out behind them. Instead of walking on, Elena shifted to under the canopy of the sitting tree as if she just wanted to be out of the sun, and tried to tune into the whispers around her.

She didn’t know why she was wasting her time—she didn’t speak or understand Moroccan Arabic beyond a few words that her mother had passed on to her, those words ones Marguerite’s own mother had spoken often to her. That Marguerite remembered anything at all was a miracle, given how young she’d been orphaned.

But the words Elena’s mother had remembered were almost all ones of love, ones a doting mother would say to a cherished child. Marguerite had been loved, deeply so, that truth a distant but potent memory that had allowed Elena’s mother to survive foster care with her soul undamaged.

“. . . Raphael . . .”

The single word sliced right through her preoccupation.

Looking to her left, she caught the eyes of the slender teenage boy who’d been speaking. Maybe fifteen or sixteen at the most, he paled under the light brown of his skin, his hazel-brown eyes going huge. “What about Raphael?” she said with a smile.

If anything, the boy paled even further, while his friends looked at her as if just waiting for her to pull out a crossbow and punch a bolt through the boy’s heart, leaving him broken and bleeding on the dry earth.

The chill inside her grew harder, colder.