Archangel's Storm

2

Though Mahiya was the fruit of Eris and Nivriti’s forbidden relationship, she was, to all outward appearances, treated as a beloved princess by her aunt, the title a courtesy to elucidate her status as kin to Neha. “Is there anything else?”

Samira’s breathing went very quiet for a minute, and Jason waited without interruptions or demands, knowing she had to be concerned about being overheard. “Neha is half insane,” she said at last. “I’m worried she’ll release her power.”

Knowing as he did the depth of the archangel’s emotions where her husband was concerned—she’d neither been able to forgive him his infidelity, nor set him free after centuries of confinement—Jason shared Samira’s concern. And Neha was a being of immense power. If she gave voice to her agony, she could lay waste to cities, and it was near certain she would aim her rage toward those she held responsible for another terrible pain—the execution of her daughter, Anoushka.

Raphael had delivered the final blow that reduced Neha’s daughter to dust.

“Tell me the instant she makes a move.”

Hanging up, he looked out over the grounds to see the bridal party and guests walking inside for the no doubt exquisite breakfast prepared by the proud household staff, under the butler Montgomery’s dignified guidance. Raphael’s wings glittered in the sunlight, the gold filaments striking against the white. Sire.

Raphael didn’t pause, his expression giving nothing away. What is it, Jason?

Eris is dead. Murdered. He knew Raphael had seen Eris court Neha, win her, and Raphael understood the twisted emotions that had tied the two together.

The archangel’s reply was swift. Meet me in the study.

Two minutes later, when Jason slipped into the study through the French doors that opened out onto the lawn, he did so with a stealth that meant no one would’ve seen him, though the sun rose higher on the horizon with every breath. That was as it should be—it was his job to be unseen, unheard, a shadow among shadows. After six centuries, his status as Raphael’s spymaster was no secret when it came to the oldest immortals, though that knowledge gained them nothing and had even less impact on Jason’s activities. While people focused on him, his operatives quietly found places in courts and towers across the world.

Raphael entered the room at that moment, closing the door behind him. “Neha was already on the edge of madness after Anoushka’s execution.” The archangel’s tone was unforgiving in its honesty. “This may well push her over.”

Jason had seen other archangels lose fatal control, had walked through devastated cities full of rotting corpses, watched an entire country fall into a dark age in which all hope was extinguished, children’s eyes dull with despair. Even if Neha chose a target outside Raphael’s territory, the world could not suffer such devastation so soon after the destruction of Beijing without breaking—and regardless, the ensuing archangelic war would engulf them all.

His phone purred discreetly at that instant. Answering it, he heard Samira say, “She’s left the body—her eyes are of madness.”

“Get her to the room where she has her communications suite.”

“Jason, she won’t see reason.”

“You must find a way.” Every one of his operatives was of cutting intelligence, able to think on his or her feet. “Then get out of the fort and Neha’s territory.”

Samira took a deep breath. “I might be able to do it if I stretch the truth and say the Cadre wishes to speak to her.”

“Do not linger, Samira.” In this mood, Neha would kill her.

“I’ll leave as soon as the words are spoken.”

Hanging up, he looked at Raphael. “If we make the call now, we have a chance of catching her before she can no longer see or hear through the rage.”

“I can divert her,” Raphael responded, “but it could involve your presence in her territory.”

“I’ll go.” While the risk to Samira was now too high, Jason was far stronger, knew he garnered a certain respect from Neha.

Raphael nodded and waited for Jason to retreat out of view before he input the call on the large screen in one corner of the study, for Raphael, too, understood the value of technology. The answer took so long in coming, Jason thought Samira must’ve failed in her task. But the screen cleared at long last to show Neha as he’d never before seen her.

The Archangel of India was always elegant, always graceful.

Now, her black hair hung matted and snarled around her face, as if she’d been pulling at it; streaks of blood slashed across her skin and soaked into the marigold yellow of her silk sari. “Raphael,” she said, her voice so calm it was lethal. “You circle like a vulture even as Eris’s lifeblood stains my hands.”

Raphael’s response was gentle. “I have never been that, Neha.”

A faint smile that was of the reptile that gave Neha her name as the Queen of Snakes. “No, perhaps not. So, do you offer your commiseration?” An almost bored statement, her lashes lowered to shield the wild rage that boiled within.

“I offer my help.”

Neha raised a single regal eyebrow. “Unless you have been keeping secrets, I think bringing Eris back to life is beyond your capability. Lijuan herself could not achieve that.”

Jason wondered if Neha had considered consigning her once-husband to the horror of being one of Lijuan’s “reborn,” a shambling, mindless monster fed of human flesh, and couldn’t immediately discount the idea. That only added to the urgency of the situation, because if Neha and Lijuan joined forces, the world would drown in blood and death and screaming terror.

“No,” Raphael said in response to Neha’s taunt. “Eris was murdered inside your fort, thus, you cannot trust anyone within. I have someone with the skill to unearth the murderer for you.”

The pause was longer this time, the insanity in Neha’s eyes replaced in slow degrees by cold, hard reason. “That black shadow of yours? The rescued pup?”

Jason felt no insult, though the latter description was inaccurate. No one had rescued him.

Raphael’s response, too, was unruffled, the flawless blue of his eyes calm as a glacial lake. “Jason’s skill is beyond dispute.”

“He is also your spymaster.” Raising a bloody hand, she stared at it, her voice altering without warning to a shaken whisper. “Eris bled so much—I did not know he had that much in him.”

“I sorrow for you, Neha. He was your husband and your consort.” It was a solemn statement, one archangel to another.

“Yes.” The madness returned, swirling and clawing. “He was also father to the child you helped murder,” she hissed, her eyes changing in a way that was too quick for Jason to truly see before they returned to normal, but that put him in mind of her serpents once more.

Raphael didn’t back down under the venomous attack, didn’t remind Neha that Anoushka had signed her death warrant when she harmed a child in the quest for power. “You wish to do violence, that much is clear,” he said, “but rather than lashing out indiscriminately, would it not be more satisfying to torture the one responsible?”

Neha turned away from the camera to pick up what appeared to be a juvenile python, settle it around her neck. Stroking the creature like it was a cat, she seated herself in a chair of a pale wood carved with infinite patience, polished and varnished until it gleamed like a jewel. “You think me mad,” she said as the snake raised its head, tasted the air with its tongue.

“I think you are grieving. And I think this was a cowardly act.”

A lazy blink, fingers pausing on the python’s sleek body. “Do you?”

“Eris was not powerful. Beautiful in a way men are rarely beautiful but with little personal strength. This was done to hurt and spite you.”

“My poor Eris.” Another lingering caress. “You are right. I cannot trust anyone within the fort until I know the identity of the assassin . . . but if your spymaster is to enter it, he must bind himself to me.”

“That,” Raphael said with a gentleness that took the sting out of the refusal, “I cannot allow, not even for you. He is one of my Seven.”

“Would you protect him at the cost of thousands of lives?” Ice-cold and rational and manipulative, she was the Archangel of India in that moment.

“Loyalty is not so easily discarded a coat.”

For some reason, that made Neha’s lips curve in what seemed a near-genuine smile. “So attached to your men. Never have I been able to fault your fidelity.” Her smile changed, became inscrutable. “Very well then, it must be Mahiya.”

This time, it was Raphael who paused.

Eris’s child with Nivriti, Jason reminded the archangel, for it wasn’t a topic they’d had much cause to discuss. She is now just over three hundred years old.

“You think to compare so young an angel to Jason?” Raphael said.

“No, indeed. Mahiya is a court trinket, nothing more.” The archangel allowed the python to flick out its tongue at her bloody fingers. “But as I’m sure the pup has informed you, her lineage is of my family. A blood vow to her will suffice.”

Raphael held Neha’s gaze. “I will speak to him.”

Neha inclined her head in regal acquiescence before ending the call.

Turning to Jason, his wings folded neatly to his back, Raphael said, “She’s stable for the time being, but it’s a temporary reprieve. The more she stews on the murder, the more dangerous she’ll become.”

“I’m willing to take the blood vow.” It was an ancient custom, one rarely practiced by even the oldest of angelkind—in swearing a blood vow to Mahiya, Jason would become family in a sense and thus bound to protect that family’s interests. The reason the custom had fallen out of favor was that it skated too close to crossing the line into forced intimacy—for in the distant past, the blood vow had been used to seal the most private of relationships.

However, like all angelic laws and customs, the blood vow was a creation far more subtle than it appeared at first glance. While the ceremonial tie would stop no one with treacherous intentions, in making the invitation, Neha acknowledged the honor of Raphael and his Seven. If Jason then used his entrée into her court to seek and exploit any flaws in her defenses, it would be considered a declaration of war. And once the knowledge of his faithlessness spread, Jason would lose every bit of respect he had earned from the most powerful immortals.

That was no small thing, especially for a spymaster. Much of his information came to him via those immortals. Worse, his people would be in far more danger—though they were the best, it was inevitable that some were unearthed during the course of their duties. Where once they might’ve been forgiven on the strength of the older angels’ respect for Jason, they would now be executed as a sign of those very angels’ displeasure at the breach of the blood vow.

Raphael’s wings rustled as he resettled them, the only sign of his surprise at Jason’s agreement with the archaic custom. “You do not need to,” the archangel said. “The Cadre may be able to control her now that I have time enough to warn the others. And a blood vow places you at risk—should Neha judge that you have broken it, she can ask for an execution.” He shook his head. “You know she agreed too readily to your presence in her territory. She wants you in her power, plans to use you in vengeance against me.”

“Yes.” Jason had seen the calculation in Neha’s gaze, knew the Archangel of India understood what Raphael’s Seven meant to him—if Neha could not reach Elena, could not harm Raphael’s heart, she was fully capable of going after the next best thing. “But,” he added, “while Neha may be driven by the need for retribution, she’s also a creature of pride. For her to break the promise of safe passage implied by the blood vow stains her own honor—and notwithstanding what she says, that honor matters to her.” It was all she had left.

“Are you willing to stake your life on that?”

“Yes.” Jason had watched Neha for centuries, as he watched every member of the Cadre, so he knew that she wasn’t an archangel who used a heavy hand when more subtle methods would suffice. “Neha is more apt to attempt to turn me against you or to entice me to change camps.”

Raphael met his gaze. “It will be a dangerous game of patience and power.”

“A short one.” Jason already had his ideas about Eris’s death. “We state the vow is to be considered fulfilled the instant I unearth the murderer.” Neha would expect the stipulation. “There’s nothing in the custom that bars me from continuing with my other duties, so long as I don’t betray Neha for the duration.”

Eyes inscrutable, Raphael said, “It remains a bad bargain . . . unless you want to get inside Neha’s court for reasons of your own.”

“There is something happening within,” he acknowledged. “Samira was unable to get close to it—I’m near certain Neha knew she was one of mine.” Permitting a certain level of spying, mostly so they could seed false information, was an amusing diversion to some of the archangels.

“The vow,” he continued, “will get me deep inside the fort, and as I wish only to observe, not interfere in this other matter, I do not risk a breach of the vow.” He wouldn’t be able to use any of what he discovered, not unless he could verify the same information through another source, but it would at least confirm that he was on the right trail.

“A fine line.”

“I can walk it.”

Raphael’s next words were pragmatic. “She will not give you free reign. This Mahiya is apt to be your shadow.”

“It matters little.” Jason was skilled at disappearing in the midst of a crowd, at remaining unseen even when he stood right in front of a person. “She’s comparatively young, and to my knowledge, has never been beyond the borders of Neha’s palaces.” Surely schooled in the art of court intrigues, there was a high chance she was no “trinket”—but she couldn’t hope to match a man who’d spent a lifetime learning how to become kin to the dark, until the night was his natural home.

“I’ve never tied your hands,” Raphael said, “and I won’t do so now. It’s your choice.” He frowned. “As for Mahiya—I recall you had doubts about the rumors of her paternity since the whispers of Eris’s infidelity were never proven. Nivriti was also apparently executed for another crime months before the newborn child appeared at Neha’s court. Why are you now so certain she is Eris’s get?”

“She wears her lineage on her face.” It was Mahiya’s highly distinctive eyes that gave away her parentage to anyone not blinded by fear of an archangel’s wrath. “I’ve also heard enough fragments from my spies over the centuries to confirm the evidence of my sight.”

Raphael’s nod was thoughtful. “Neha has a reputation for not harming children, mortal or immortal, so I can see her adopting the child even in this circumstance.” Glancing up, he said, “I leave the choice to you, Jason. And who knows? Perhaps this Mahiya will prove to be your downfall—they say the intimacy of a blood vow is powerful indeed.”

Jason said nothing, but they both knew it to be an impossible thing. Jason had never loved anyone after he dug a grave under a tropical sun, no longer understood the emotion; the boy he’d once been was a faraway mirage in his mind. The closest he came was in his loyalty to Raphael, but he knew from watching Dmitri with his wife, Raphael with Elena, Galen with Jessamy, and long ago, Illium with his mortal, that it was not the same thing at all. “I’ll leave within the hour.”

“Remember,” Raphael said in a quiet tone that cut through the air like a blade, “she is not only the Queen of Snakes, but the Queen of Poisons.”

And Jason was about to walk into her lair.