Archangel's War

10

Venom stood waiting beside Dmitri now, his body held in that languid way that was natural to him—but there was nothing languid about the youngest member of Raphael’s Seven. He was coiled as tight as Dmitri. That no one else waited on the balconies told Raphael that—excepting the healers—his men hadn’t informed anyone else of their return.

He swept by deliberately close to the balcony, much as he had with Illium. They held their feet under the buffeting, their heads angling up as if following his flight path onto the balcony that led to his and Elena’s Tower suite.

The doors stood open, Keir and Nisia on the other side.

“Can I reach out and poke Nisia?” Elena whispered, even though her voice would not escape the power of the glamour. “Will she feel it?’

Lips curving, Raphael said, “You remain sore about what Nisia said to you?” She had never actually finished telling him about that conversation, but it wasn’t difficult to imagine Nisia making Elena an unwary victim of her somewhat sharp sense of humor.

“Maybe. Just a little.” Teeth biting down on her lower lip as they passed the healers, she stretched out a hand to tap the exposed part of Nisia’s collarbone.

The healer jumped, her hand rising to her chest and her simple gown of midnight blue swirling. “Ringworms,” she said very precisely in the aftermath, sending Elena into a paroxysm of laughter.

Raphael had to make himself let her go. Laying her down on their bed, he forced himself not to help as Elena pushed herself up into a seated position and began to tug the sheet up over her body. Wounded or not, his consort remained a warrior and that was how he’d treat her.

“Psst.” Elena pointed at the wardrobe. “Pants, Archangel. Only I get to admire that delicious view.”

Raphael raised an eyebrow, his lips tugging up slightly at the corners; in truth, he’d forgotten his own state of undress in his concern over her. “I live to obey, hbeebti,” he said, and found a pair of dark brown pants he often wore while sparring with Elena or his Seven.

“Ask me some day about a time more than a thousand years past when I was in a company of warriors who wore only paint on their skin when they went into battle,” he said afterward.

“Pictures or it didn’t happen,” she said, a little breathless as she finished tucking the sheet under her armpits.

He laughed, and he’d have thought that an impossibility only moments earlier.

Behind them, Keir and Nisia had shut the balcony doors, now pulled blackout curtains across them. Elena and Raphael rarely made use of those. Most often, the doors were shielded only by curtains of gauzy white. No one in the city was suicidal enough to land on this balcony and attempt to stare inside, but Raphael appreciated the healers’ care. Elena would choose when she wished to show herself—no one would steal that choice from her.

Nisia turned on the lights.

The bright light threw Elena’s emaciated form into sharp relief, too many shadows and hollows in her. Gut clenching and shoulders knotted, Raphael had to fight to keep his voice steady. “Ready?”

“They’ve both already seen all there is to see, so yeah, let’s do it.” The pragmatic words of a warrior, but her gaze was soft when it met his—vulnerable in a way she showed no one else in the world. “Come here first.”

Her hand was warm on his cheek, her kiss fierce. “I know I look like a bag of bones, but I’m me and we’re together.” Words that dared him to do anything but believe. In her. In them. “We’ll write our next chapter the way we want it—and we’ll keep on kicking destiny’s ass.”

He took another kiss, his hand fisted in her hair and his tongue aggressive. But when they parted, he was the one who felt owned. Branded.

Rising, his hair falling over his forehead, he said, “Not one chapter. Many.”

A quick grin. “A freaking tome,” she vowed. “Oh, and can you find me a phone? If I don’t call Sara, she’ll scalp me. Beth, Eve, my grandparents . . . Raphael, I have so many people in my family now.”

“Not one of whom will begrudge you the time it takes to have this consultation.” With that, he stepped back and dropped the glamour.

Keir and Nisia were seasoned healers who had seen much over the millennia of their existence, but both sucked in an audible breath at first sight of Elena and Raphael. Keir, his dusky face ageless, pressed his lush lips together and bent to kiss Elena gently on the forehead. The golden brown of his wings shimmered under the overhead lights.

Nisia, meanwhile, raised an eyebrow. “You haven’t been drinking my potion, I see.”

“I dunno.” Elena shrugged. “Maybe it’s internal parasites.”

Snorting, the healer shook her head. “It is good to see that being encased in a chrysalis hasn’t done anything to dent your winning personality.”

“Well, Elena.” Keir sat down on the bed on one side, the black silk of his hair cut in layers that brushed his jaw. “You are always my most interesting patient.”

“Hey, Raphael’s glowing like a lightbulb and his eyes are gold lightning.”

“In archangels, such strange things are expected.”

A gentle knock came on the door then, and Raphael realized Dmitri had told another person of their return. Opening that door without exposing Elena, he took in the tray in Montgomery’s hands. The vampire wore a black suit over a crisp white shirt, was as cool and collected as always . . . and the tray, it trembled.

“Thank you, Montgomery.” Raphael accepted the tray piled with food and drink. “My apologies for blowing up the house you kept so beautifully.” Neither Elena nor Raphael were of the kind to infuse a house with small domestic touches that turned it into a home—that was Montgomery’s domain.

A shaky smile. “I have three warehouses full of treasures. Now I will have room to display them.”

Setting the tray aside on a table inside the door, Raphael stepped out and then—for the first time in an eon—wrapped his arms around Montgomery. The vampire who was his butler had been a contained man from the first, not one to give in to displays of emotion. But today, he wrapped his arms around Raphael in return and held on with strength that would’ve surprised those who saw only his elegant surface.

Neither one of them said anything, and when they drew apart, Montgomery’s features were set in their usual composed lines and his hands no longer trembled. “I didn’t know if food was needed, but you always eat after anshara and that is the closest thing to this I could imagine.”

“It is needed. Tell Sivya to prepare Elena’s favorites.”

“She has already begun.”

Stepping back into the bedroom, Raphael nodded at his butler before shutting the door. When he turned, it was to see that Elena had a healer on either side of her, the two frowning as they checked her over using both their healing abilities and medical instruments pulled out of large open cases on the floor.

“Oh man that smells good!”

Placing the tray on his consort’s lap, Raphael went to step outside to speak to Dmitri and Venom before he flew to Illium, but Elena glared at him. “You need to eat, too.”

To his shock, he realized he did. As long as an archangel ate now and then, he didn’t really feel hunger except in exigent circumstances; today, it gnawed at him. He sat down on the bed, and suddenly the huge span was full of wings. Keir and Nisia were being scrupulous about holding theirs close to their bodies, but there was only so much they could do.

“There is no need to waste your energy on proper etiquette,” he told them. “Neither Elena or I will consider it a trespass should you brush our bodies.”

Nisia gave a small nod of acknowledgment, while Keir allowed his wings to ease a fraction.

Leaving them to their work, Elena and Raphael ate with a determined focus that had the tray cleared within ten minutes. Raphael looked to Elena. “More?”

She patted the sheet over her dangerously concave stomach. “Don’t know where it’s going, but yeah.”

He wasn’t the least surprised to open the bedroom door and find a fresh tray waiting. After the two of them had demolished the food on that, Raphael ran his eyes over his consort. “You’re not glowing as much.”

She examined the skin on the back of her hand. “I think you’re right.” Then it was his turn to be scrutinized. “Your eyes are beginning to show hints of blue.” She held out her arm when Nisia requested it. “Go, find out if Lijuan got dead while we were dozing.”

“You are an eternal optimist.” He rose off the bed, but didn’t leave. Hbeebti.

It’s all right, Raphael. Eyes that had settled into a luminous silver at the edges bleeding into gray, with the faintest hint of blue nearest the pupil, held his. Now that the first shock is past, I can handle the examination of my back, the tattoo.

No. Raphael would not budge on this. It happens now, while I am here.

His hunter gave him a lopsided smile. Yeah, fine, I’m freaked. “I need you to examine my back now,” she said to the healers. “I have a very strange tattoo.”

Neither Keir nor Nisia argued.

“Shift forward,” Keir said. “Just enough so we can see the entire mark.”

Having walked around to the back of the bed, Raphael stood watch as Elena did as instructed. Her tattoo was even more detailed than he’d realized. Each filament was defined with care, down to the small feather on her left wingtip that always liked to grow its filaments in the opposite direction to all other feathers.

“It is as if your wings have been made small and burned to your back.” Nisia ran an experimental finger over one feather.

A lightning flicker of power had the healer jerking her hand back with a jolt. “My apologies.” She shook out her hand. “That was unexpected.”

“Did it hurt?” Elena’s forehead scrunched up. “I felt the energy zap you.”

“Not so much pain as . . . I believe your body is telling me the area is private and to stop poking around.”

Keir was more careful when he chanced a touch, but got a jolt, too.

Despite the hazard, the two healers did a thorough examination. When they were satisfied they’d seen the entirety of it, Elena shifted back to lean against the headboard. “Bad news?”

“No news is the better descriptor.” Lines marked the corners of Keir’s eyes, unfamiliar etchings on a face that had always been flawless in its delicate beauty. “It is tempting to compare your wings to an angelic infant’s, but that feels wrong. Nisia?”

“I agree. She has far more sensory capacity than a babe.” Nisia frowned at a reading on the device in her hand. “Infants do not sense their wings until they gain an understanding of what they are.”

“Guess it’d be confusing for them if they can’t see what’s there.” Elena tapped a finger on the sheet. “Makes sense it’d be different for an adult.”

“It’s as if certain elements of your body have been scrambled.” Nisia touched a strand of Elena’s hair. “You have tiny feathers in your hair, while we have found no indication of wing understructure on your back.”

“We have discovered evidence that this marking you call a tattoo extends deep, through all the layers of your flesh.”

“Give it to me straight—is this it?” Firm voice, unflinching gaze, Elena’s question demanded utter honesty. “Am I stuck with a tattoo or is there a chance my wings might grow back?”

Keir’s timeless eyes held Elena’s. “I can give you no definite answers. This is a thing that has never happened.” A smile as gentle as his voice. “You keep being new, Elena.”

Nisia, still staring down at her device, murmured, “Are you hungry?”

“Yes, it’s weird.” Elena made a face. “Those immortal ringworms are hard at it.”

Nisia’s lips twitched. “Tapeworms, my dear, tapeworms.” She showed the screen of the device to Keir. “If I’m reading this correctly, her skin depth has increased by point two millimeters in the minutes since I took the first reading.”

Elena stilled. Archangel, did Nisia just say what I think she said?

Yes, I believe so. Your body is rapidly burning fuel to make you stronger. His hands clenched to bone whiteness on the headboard. It is why an archangel eats with vigor after the deep, healing rest of anshara. The food replaces the energy used during the healing process. It also helps complete final repairs.

She lifted a hand to touch his. And I’ve got a chunk of your heart booming away in my chest.

“IV nutrition,” Nisia said after she and Keir finished consulting with each other. “It’s a much faster way to get calories into you.”

The healers sprang into action on those words, and Elena was soon hooked up to a drip in either arm. As Keir was explaining that the IVs were set up to release their contents over the course of an hour, golden lightning zapped up the lines and sucked the bags dry.

“Whoa.”