Archangel's Kiss

34

“Sire.” Jason folded his wings behind him and waited for permission to speak.

Raising his head, Raphael nodded in greeting. “Come, we’ll talk inside.” Lijuan’s strange sense of honor would ensure their living space was free of spies—real and technological. She’d consider it beyond the pale to intrude upon her guests’ privacy.

Inside, Elena leaned up against the dresser as Raphael and Jason stood in front of it. The angel’s tattoo was almost totally re-inked, a piece of living art that covered the left-hand side of a face and spoke of ancestry from lands far distant from one another. The story of Jason’s parents was considered one of the great angelic romances. And for a while, it had been.

“Were your men able to discover anything else?” he asked his spymaster.

“Whatever it is that she kept in that room in her stronghold,” the black-winged angel told him, his voice crystal clear, perfectly pitched, “it has been shifted here.”

“One of the reborn?”

“Yes, but a special one—extreme care has been taken to protect it on the way here.” That perfect pitch altered just enough to telegraph Jason’s revulsion. “There are reports of young women missing along the caravan route.”

“She’s feeding her reborn with the living?” Killing humans was no taboo, but for this, in this way . . . it might disgust even Charisemnon.

“We haven’t been able to find any remains to confirm,” Jason said. “But the disappearances match the caravan route—and had they wanted the dead, bodies had recently been interred in all the villages.”

“Lijuan is considered a goddess,” Raphael said, remembering another time, another angel turned god. “The villagers would’ve raised no complaint.”

“No.” Jason’s jet-black hair, unbound, caught the light as he bent his head, took a deep breath. “That isn’t the worst of it.”

“There’s more?” Elena’s voice was openly shocked.

Jason raised his head. “There are rumors, strong rumors, that those mortals in her inner court who weren’t chosen to be Made . . .”

“Dear God,” Elena whispered. “They’re asking to be reborn?”

“It seems they are being seduced by the newer reborn,” Jason confirmed. “The ones who’re being kept long-term in a physical state akin to life by being fed flesh.”

“The young or the old?” Raphael asked.

“Older—but I don’t think that’ll last.” Jason shook his head.

“Why?” Elena looked at Raphael, her eyes uncomprehending. “They must know or guess that they’ll likely have much shorter lifespans than if they’d allowed nature to take its course.”

Jason answered before Raphael could. “It’s the promise of immortality, the hope that Lijuan will find a way to keep them alive for eternity. Some would give up everything for that.”

Elena heard something in that statement, an undercurrent that held a wealth of meaning. She looked at the angel who was always a shadow, his exotically handsome face inscrutable, his wings a sooty charcoal that let him blend seamlessly into the night. “For the promise?” She shook her head. “I just can’t understand when the reality is that they’d become less than slaves.”

“You’ve never chased immortality,” Raphael answered. “You don’t comprehend the hunger of those that do.”

That made her pause. “Maybe I do,” she said, and wished she didn’t. “My brother-in-law loves my sister . . . but he didn’t wait for her to be accepted as a Candidate. He wanted to live forever more than he wanted my sister beside him.” And now Beth would grow old while Harry remained forever young.

Harry had vowed to stay beside Beth, and for some reason, Elena believed him. But she wondered if Beth would accept his devotion. Would her sister’s love survive the knowledge that she’d been second best to immortality, that one day she’d die, leaving Harry to meet someone else, love someone else?

Her gaze locked with Raphael’s, her heart a painful fist in her chest. Because she, too, would have to watch her sister die.

I won’t apologize, Elena. It would be a lie—I couldn’t let you leave me.

The raw honesty of the answer, of the emotion behind it, rocked her. I forget, and then I remember and it hurts all the more.

Beth will turn to dust when her time comes, but she’ll die knowing her children will be watched over by an angel.

She gave a jerky nod, met Jason’s gaze, realizing for the first time that his eyes were black, so black it was almost impossible to distinguish pupil from iris. “Will the courtiers turn against Lijuan if we prove to them that there’s no immortality in being reborn?”

Jason’s wings rustled as he resettled them, but even here, in this room full of light, he’d managed to find a shadow, until she had to concentrate to see their outline. “We may turn a few, but most are too used to seeing her as their goddess. They’ll follow blindly where she leads.”

Giving Lijuan an endless supply of bodies for her army of the dead.