Archangel's Enigma

20

Elena walked into Raphael’s Tower office to find the Primary there instead of her archangel. The leader of the Legion was staring at a screen that showed Jessamy’s face. “Oh, sorry.” She began to back out.

“Wait, Ellie,” Jessamy called out as the Primary turned to pin her with those eerie, beautiful eyes, translucent but for the ring of mountain blue around the irises.

“Consort.” His greeting was toneless, but all at once, she could hear seven hundred and seventy-seven voices whispering to her.

Braced for it, she nodded. “Hello.”

The voices receded. Thank God. After a few hiccups, the Legion had come to understand that, unlike Raphael, she couldn’t hold all their voices in her head. They’d also started to learn that she saw them as individuals, not a single entity. Whether they’d take that on board themselves was an unanswered question.

“Have you had contact with Amanat?” she asked, coming to stand beside the Primary.

Jessamy’s soft brown eyes filled with sympathy. “Keir is there now. He says Suyin has fallen into anshara and it’s for the best—the repeated wing excisions without enough time to truly heal in between had a cumulative effect.”

Elena couldn’t imagine the horror the other woman had survived. “None of Jason’s people have made contact with Naasir,” she told Jessamy, conscious the Historian had a deep bond with the silver-haired member of the Seven.

Jason himself had flown to Titus’s territory, after hearing rumors of a border confrontation between Titus and Charisemnon that could break out into war. The spymaster had been confident Naasir would make it out safely now that he and the scholar had escaped the citadel, but Elena wouldn’t be happy until she heard from the damn teasing tiger creature himself.

“He is a being of stealth and shadow; this is what he was born to do.” The Primary had a way of being so motionless that it’d be easy to forget him, but when he spoke, he always spoke sense.

Jessamy’s smile was shaky but real. “He’d agree with you. He loves nothing better than sneaking in and out of places.” She nodded at the Primary. “We’ve been talking history. Or at least I have.”

“Our memories of what we heard in our time of slumber are fading,” the Primary told Elena. “It is a . . . side effect of being in the world.”

“Yet he still won’t tell me everything he does remember so I can record it.”

“Some things are not meant to be remembered.” The Primary’s voice held echoes of countless others. “Life becomes meaningless if all is known. This we have learned.”

“But we could learn from past mistakes, not make them again,” Jessamy argued.

“Each generation, each Cascade has its own rhythm.” The Primary’s counterargument was without passion, but it was no less potent, the eerie sense of endless age that clung to him coloring every word. “You cannot predict the future by looking at the past.”

Slipping out as the two continued to speak, Elena made her way to what had been the infirmary floor. Most of the injured were now gone. The few that remained were in a small section to the northeast.

She walked in to find the mini-infirmary empty but for one angel. Blond curls having grown back, a shirtless Izak was standing on trembling legs, determinedly lifting a heavy set of hand weights. The bones in his arms had been shattered into splinters in the Falling, but they’d fared better than the legs he’d lost below the thighs. Those legs had only just finished regenerating in a searing agony of sensation.

“Izzy,” she said, striding quickly to the young angel. “You know you’re not supposed to do that without a spotter.”

He gave her a guilty but stubborn look. “I can’t be in here much longer, Ellie.” Not fighting when she tugged away and set the weights aside after seeing his biceps muscles quiver, he added, “I’ll go mad.”

Elena’s heart clenched. Izak was the youngest angel to have survived the cowardly attack that had sent so many of New York’s angels crashing to the earth, and the terrible nature of his injuries meant his road to this point had been a long and painful one. Charisemnon had a lot to answer for, and answer he would: Raphael would never forget this crime of war. Neither would any of his people.

“Izzy,” she said, keeping her voice light, “you have an eight-pack that would be the envy of any man.” She patted his abdomen, happy to feel warm, healthy skin where there had only been raw, bloody flesh.

Blushing, he didn’t meet her eyes.

“I spoke to the healer in charge of you,” she continued. “He says you’re a remarkable patient who is recovering far quicker than anyone expected.” Izzy was only a hundred and seventeen years old, a baby soldier in angelic terms. “Galen was so impressed with the healer’s last report that he sent you homework.”

“More?” Izak looked so horrified it was comical.

Giving in to his shuddering legs, he collapsed into a seated position on an infirmary bed, his wings spread out behind him. “I can barely do all the exercises he’s already sent me.”

Stifling her laugh lest his young heart take it the wrong way, Elena showed him the tablet she’d picked up on her way out of Raphael’s office. “Not that kind of homework and it’s not all from Galen. Some of it’s from Jessamy.”

“Jessamy?”

“Uh-huh.” Sitting down beside him, their wings overlapping in an affectionate intimacy she knew would comfort him, she said, “Being in a consort’s Guard isn’t always about strength.” Since she’d somehow ended up with a Guard, she was doing her best to understand how it worked. “Apparently, you have to understand all the courtesy stuff so you don’t accidentally insult an archangel and, you know, start a war.”

Izak gulped.

Patting him on the upper arm, she said, “Don’t worry. If I can learn this stuff”—or at least enough not to stick her foot in it—“then you’ll be an ‘A’ student.”

“Can I rethink being in your Guard?”

“Funny.” And because his small, mischievous smile was adorable, she kissed his cheek.

He went bright red.

“What’s this? An orgy?” came a slow male voice that held a Cajun cadence. “Seems like we’ve been invited here under false pretenses, sugar.”

Looking up, Elena saw Janvier and Ash in the doorway, both wearing leather jackets and holding a helmet in one hand. Ash’s long black hair was unbound, the knives strapped to her thighs only the most visible of her weapons. “These two miscreants are your study buddies,” she told Izak.

“Hey.” Ashwini scowled, not shifting her lithely muscled dancer’s body from the doorway when Elena moved toward it. “What about you?”

“I’ve been in remedial etiquette school since I became Raphael’s consort. I’m way ahead of you.”

Loud grumbling from Ash at her smug statement, but the other hunter’s dark eyes weren’t laughing. Everyone liked Naasir, but he, Janvier, and Ash were especially close. “No news,” Elena said softly.

Janvier ran his free hand through the dark mahogany of his hair, a lopsided smile on his lips. “Don’t worry, cher,” he said, throwing his other arm, helmet and all, around Ash’s shoulders. “Naasir once got the two of us out of an alligator-infested swamp in the middle of a raging hurricane at night, and had fun doing it. He’ll be fine.”

Elena and Ashwini both stared at the Cajun vampire. Fangs flashing and moss green eyes laughing, he gave a sinful grin that illustrated exactly why he was such good friends with Naasir. “I’ll tell that tale when Naasir is here to tell it with me. He always says I forget the good parts.”

“Yes,” Ashwini said firmly. “It’s Naasir.”

Sneaky and strong and with the scent of a tiger on the hunt.