Archangel's Storm

36

Neha’s voice broke into their silent exchange. “I did not expect such a weak creature to intrigue you so, but it is undoubtedly a fleeting interest.” That quickly, Neha dismissed Mahiya. “What I offer you is far more than you can imagine.”

She’s mad.

Mahiya blinked at Jason’s flat assessment. No, Neha is sane. Coldly so. She knows you’ll be a strong, dangerous, intelligent consort. Jason was a man any woman would be proud to have by her side. And you are beautiful. Neha has always been drawn to beauty in a man. Though Jason was a naked blade to Eris’s pretty ornament.

Only madness would make her blind to the fact that it would be a very stupid man who’d accept the offer of a woman who imprisoned her last consort for three hundred years.

Mahiya’s mouth threatened to fall open. Well, when you put it that way . . .

“I need a consort,” Neha said, walking to the edge of the garden once more, her gaze on the lake, its surface a mirror of the blue sky touched with curling edges of red and orange. “I do not want you for a lover, so you may keep Mahiya as a diversion if you wish, but I am offering you power you will never gain in Raphael’s court.”

Jason was quiet for a long moment. “I did not expect such an offer,” he said at last, as if Neha had caught him unawares and he sought time to get his thoughts in order.

Yes, Mahiya thought, watching Neha’s face as she turned back to Jason. That was the right tack. To refuse her outright would be an insult the archangel would not forget, never forgive.

“A consort must walk beside an archangel,” he added. “I prefer the shadows.”

“My last consort was a creature of the light, shining and handsome, and he betrayed me.” Brittle words.

Some assistance, Mahiya Geet.

Startled at the tenderness in his mental tone, something she’d never heard in his spoken voice, it took her a second to reply. She’s still in love with Eris, and you’re too proud a man to be with a woman who mourns another.

I am?

Her lips twitched. Jason’s laughter was hidden deep within, where the light did not often reach, but it was there. You are, she said firmly, taking advantage of Neha’s preoccupation with Jason to get to her feet.

“This time,” the archangel continued, “a consort who stands in the shadows would suit me well.”

Jason bowed deeper than Mahiya had ever seen him bow, his wings spread to their full breathtaking width, the colors of sunset playing over the jet in a display that turned it into a canvas of black flame. When he rose back up, his expression was as inscrutable as always, but his voice gentle. “I am truly flattered.”

“But.” The edge in Neha’s voice was a scythe.

“But though he may have betrayed you, Eris holds your heart.”

Neha’s sucked-in breath was loud in the silence. “I am not offering you love.”

“I know.” Jason folded in his wings with neat care. “But I am one of the Seven—I have seen a true archangel-consort match, one bound by the heart, and so I will always know the lack.”

Neha’s anger whipped her hair back from her face, a faint glow coming off her wings. “Raphael’s consort should be dead.”

Elena, Mahiya remembered too late, had been critical in Anoushka’s execution.

“Yet,” Jason said, not missing a beat, “Raphael would take on the Cadre rather than allow her to come to harm. You would not do the same for me.”

Neha stared at him, a faint confusion in her expression. “I didn’t expect such a romantic heart from you, Jason.” Her gaze snapped to Mahiya. “Do you expect to find such a love with that?”

Mahiya felt a storm lick against her senses, realized it wasn’t her own emotions she was sensing. Jason.

“I expect nothing but amusement,” Jason said in a tone so calm that had she not been swamped by his rage, she would’ve never guessed at its existence, “but I want it on my terms, on my turf.”

Neha’s wings swept over the velvet grass nurtured by the gardeners to luxuriant life, as she turned away. “I will give her into your keeping if the knowledge you hold proves as valuable as you believe.”

Mahiya knew that was the best they would get. Neha would take any further attempt to negotiate as an attack on her honor. We must accept.

And roll the dice. “The murderer of Eris and the others is not in your court.” Jason walked to stand beside Neha, his wings a stark contrast to the indigo-dusted white of hers. “Neither is she any longer in the area, but my sources tell me she returns here in the hours after sunset.”

Mahiya’s heart ached at the idea of her mother so very close. She knew Jason had been surprised at the discovery of how soon the assault would begin, but it did make a brutal kind of sense—Neha was hurting from Eris’s loss, vulnerable.

Now, the archangel’s hair flared back in a wind no one else could feel. “One of his whores?”

Mahiya fisted her hands until her nails dug into her palms.

“I do not make judgments.” Jason’s response was even. “But I am near certain that until his murder, she had not touched him for more than three hundred years.”

Neha went so motionless as to be inhuman. It was as if she ceased to exist in the moment, in the now, and went elsewhere. “You bring the dead back to life.”

Disturbed by the eerie echo effect in the archangel’s voice, Mahiya rubbed at the tiny hairs on her arms, all standing in alarm.

“I do not think so,” Jason responded. “I also think this dead woman gathers an army.”

Neha’s wings snapped out. “Come.” With that, she swept off the garden and across the lake before spiraling up and back toward the fort.

Jason followed. You’re hurt. Wait here.

Mahiya was already in the air. I can rest later. Beating her wings put strain on her rib cage, the agony threatening to take her under, but she could not turn back.

Mahiya.

She sensed he was on the edge, that he would bring her down physically if necessary. I need to know, she said, laying her heart open, the heart of a girl who’d never known her mother’s fate.

A pause. Then use me.

Not certain if it was what he meant, she nonetheless clung to the midnight strength she could sense in her mind, and landed at the fortified Guardian Fort only seconds behind Neha and Jason. The archangel didn’t even notice her presence, walking with determined steps into a section of the fort that had been closed up as long as Mahiya had been aware of it. She’d tried to explore it once as a child, found her way blocked by fallen debris too heavy to shift.

Now, Neha touched her fingers to the debris in a complicated pattern . . . and that part of the floor just fell in, revealing a staircase on the other side. Mahiya’s heart thudded so hard, she was certain the archangel would hear it. Each staccato beat pushed against broken ribs, but that pain was eclipsed by brutal comprehension.

Here, she was here all this time. It was a keen.

She no longer is. Remember.

Wrenching her anguish under vicious control, Mahiya wrapped the essence of Jason around herself as she followed him and Neha down the staircase and into a corridor lit with modern electric bulbs set in wall sconces that threw warm light on the stone walls. Many had burned out, while still others were swathed in cobwebs, a silent indication of how long it had been since anyone walked this passage. A hundred feet down the corridor, Neha revealed another staircase that went even deeper into the earth.

The lights here were naked bulbs, the corridor itself pounded earth . . . and the single room at the end a pit in the earth with crisscrossing bars that hid the shadowed realm beyond. Throwing out a hand, Neha lit up the cell with a blaze of violent power.

It was empty.

Mahiya swayed, would’ve fallen if Jason hadn’t grabbed her hand.

Mahiya.

I’m fine. Air rushed into her lungs as she took in a breath and thought about what she’d seen: the melted metal where manacles might have hung from the walls, the scorch marks around the hole in the bars of the cell. Whoever had rescued her mother had used a blowtorch to cut her free. Promise.

He released her before Neha could turn. How badly are you hurt?

Already healing. I just . . . this place.

She’d been half afraid they were wrong, that her mother remained trapped in this nightmare place. A creature meant for the skies kept so long in the dark . . . Her wings would’ve been wasted. She couldn’t have flown out of here.

It also means she was rescued far longer than six months ago. If I was asked to bet, I would say it was done when Raphael executed Uram. The world was in chaos, and Neha often had to be away from the fort on Cadre business.

A scream of rage splintered the silence, Neha spinning around in a fury that burned ice along one wall, fire along the other. Mahiya barely escaped being singed by the flames . . . and her step out of its path put her in Neha’s direct line of sight. The archangel’s eyes pinned her, cold as hell, and Mahiya knew she was dead.

Black shimmered in her vision until Jason’s wings were all she could see.

No, Jason, no! In this mood, Neha would execute him regardless of any other consideration.

“The information,” he said as she attempted to budge his shoulders, shove him out of danger. “Was it worth the price?”

A chill silence, the ice cracking and breaking to fall at their feet, the fire flickering out to leave the walls scorched, the corridor dimly illuminated by the single bulb that had survived. Neha’s laugh this time was inhuman enough to sour Mahiya’s stomach, and yet it held a certain amusement.

“Now I understand, Jason. You have a weakness for broken birds, and she would make a pretty hostage.” It seemed to please Neha, that justification. “Very well, you have admirably fulfilled the blood vow. Take this broken bird. Keep her, leave her in some protected aerie, it matters nothing. I have no need of a hostage when I can rend my beloved sister limb from limb with my bare hands.”

Mahiya’s knees almost crumpled, only her grip on Jason keeping her upright. I’m free . . . and my mother is about to die.