Archangel's Storm

35

Before the other angel could continue, a butterfly, its wings an unabashed red dotted with saffron yellow, alighted on Aodhan’s shoulder. Another followed a second later, its markings more modest, its wingspan larger. Aodhan looked at them, and for a fleeting instant, he was a young angel again, woefully embarrassed by his most curious of abilities.

“It’s as if they can smell me,” he muttered, but didn’t brush the delicate creatures away. Instead, he lifted a finger, and a third butterfly appeared out of the sky to alight on it, this one with wings of creamy sunset. “Illium says that perhaps I can use them to flutter someone to death.”

Jason watched as Aodhan put the butterfly carefully beside the others, creating a living ornament on his otherwise prosaic T-shirt of deep brown. They weren’t the only fragile beings of flight who were drawn to Aodhan—once, long ago, Jason had seen the other angel laughing as he was covered by an array of tiny jewel-hued birds, his attraction greater than the nectar on which they customarily sipped. “As Galen would say,” he replied, “Bluebell has the wings of a butterfly himself.” He knew Illium had done a great deal to pull Aodhan out of the abyss, that the bond of friendship between the two was fast.

Shaking his head, Aodhan returned to the subject at hand. “A number of older vampires and angels have resigned their posts without fanfare in several courts across different regions over the past six months, then disappeared off the grid. All of them had some tie to Neha’s territory in their past.”

Six months.

Time enough to set up a well-guarded base. “How strong were these angels and vampires?”

“No one as strong as Dmitri or you, but by no means weak. Together, they’d compromise a battalion powerful enough to withstand a significant and prolonged assault.”

If, Jason thought, that assault force didn’t include an archangel. “Did they take people with them?” Trusted retainers who could keep their mouths shut.

“Roughly five hundred once you put all the pieces altogether.”

Those were the people Aodhan had managed to track. There could well be any number of vampires or angels who pledged service to no court, and thus flew under the radar. Because while Nivriti might not have been an archangel, as an angel of acknowledged power, she’d ruled a vast swath of territory under Neha.

Jason had heard nothing that said her people had not been loyal. Such loyalties died hard, and three hundred years was no eternity in an immortal’s life. “Were you able to glean any information about their eventual destination?”

“Just this subcontinent.” Aodhan’s eyes fractured the reflection of Jason’s face into innumerable shards. “It’s a secret that’s been kept well.”

Unsurprising. Nivriti’s followers had to know that if Neha discovered the conspiracy, she’d hunt down her sister before Nivriti was ready for battle, and complete the execution she’d begun many mortal lifetimes ago. “One day,” he said to the other angel, “I’ll be able to tell you what you just gave me.”

Aodhan flared out his wings, the air around him busy with pieces of color as the butterflies perched on him took flight. “I will see you in New York.”

“Yes. Good journey, Aodhan.” As he watched the other angel take flight, a splintered piece of light in the sky, he was already calculating every angle of this problem.

It wasn’t until the next morning, the sky still a dark cloud-gray that he found the answer. “It’s time to tell Neha of Nivriti’s resurrection.”

“Yes. Shabnam’s blood . . . it screams for justice.” Deep grooves around Mahiya’s lush mouth. “What is it you’ve discovered that you choose this moment?”

When he laid it out for her, she sucked in a breath. “You play Russian roulette with an archangel.”

He had never feared death, not for himself. But he would not permit Mahiya to be sacrificed on the altar of the bitter war about to take place. It was one born of old vengeance and old pain, twisted and rancid. Nivriti might love Mahiya, but she hated Neha more. Anyone caught in the middle of their conflict would be obliterated.

He thought of Mahiya with her wings broken, her face shattered, her eyes weeping blood, and knew he’d force her hand if need be, earn her hatred, but he would not watch her die. Not Mahiya.

“What are you thinking?” she asked softly. “You went away for a second.”

He considered obfuscation, decided on truth.

Her response was instant. “I could never hate you. I’d sooner love Neha.” Kissing his jaw with sweet, hot lips, she said, “All right, Jason. You are more experienced in matters of war—I will take your lead in this.”

Jason had planned to approach Neha on his own, but Mahiya folded her arms, shook her head. “I know her in ways you don’t, that you can’t, especially when it comes to this one thing on which Neha is not rational.”

“I want you safe.” No one had ever been to him what Mahiya had become. “A single burst of anger from Neha and you will be erased from existence.” And he could not imagine walking the world knowing he’d never again see the strange, dangerous hope that lived in those eyes bright as a jungle cat’s.

“I take your help because you are the stronger,” she said, raw emotion in every word, “but I won’t hide behind your wings. This is my battle and I will not act the coward! I won’t, Jason.”

Before he’d reached this inexplicable equilibrium with Mahiya, before she’d staked a claim on him, he’d have incapacitated her and completed the task before she ever knew it was done. Her anger afterward would’ve mattered little. Now he understood who Mahiya was, understood what his action would steal from her, knew that to deny her this would be to take something from her that could never be returned.

So it was that she landed beside him in the gardens that overlooked the lake, as sunset lingered on the horizon—Jason having spent the intervening time narrowing down the probable whereabouts of Nivriti’s army, with Mahiya assisting by gathering any information she could through subtle questioning of the older servants.

Neha stood alone on the edge where the fort dropped steeply into the water, her gaze on the city beyond.

“I hear Raphael’s people now make free in my territory,” was her opening statement, her tone limned in frost.

“Aodhan had information that was of help to me in my task.”

The folds of the sage green sari Neha wore today flowed around her ankles as she turned, her wings perfect arches at her back. “Must I beg this information from you?”

“I would never expect such,” he said, aware of Mahiya’s resolute presence and conscious that no matter what he’d instructed, she would not run if this turned deadly. “However, the stakes have changed.”

Neha rubbed the skin of the thin golden snake coiled around her upper arm like a living armband. “I see.” A dangerous glint in her eye. “You break the blood vow.”

He would have done so without compunction if it would’ve saved Mahiya, but as it was, he no longer had to. “With my action, I protect the best interests of the family.” Neha, Nivriti, and Mahiya were the last direct descendants of an ancient bloodline. With Neha and Nivriti about to go to certain war, Mahiya had become the family’s only hope for a future.

“You must seek something valuable indeed that you dare play games with me.”

“Not valuable . . . but intriguing.” He knew Mahiya listened to what he said, and yet he did not sheathe his words, having every faith in her intelligence. “My curiosity is not yet sated.”

Neha’s gaze went from him to Mahiya, her smile as cold as the blood of the creature around her arm. “You do not need to bargain with me for her, Jason. You’re welcome to remain at this court as long as you wish.”

“I’m one of Raphael’s Seven,” he reminded her. “I must soon return, and I ask that you release Mahiya to me.”

Neha’s eyes were suddenly chips of ice. “Why would I give you my favorite toy?” A flick of her wrist and Mahiya was wrenched up into the air, her neck arched in a way that meant she had to be having trouble breathing.

Rage, black and violent, surged in his veins, but he held it in check. To show even a hint of care toward Mahiya would be to end this negotiation before it began, and unless the Cascade had altered matters, this aspect of Neha’s power was very weak. She could not hold Mahiya for long. “Because what I have to tell you will provide you with far more satisfaction.”

“I can tear your mind apart like the rice paper of Lijuan’s lands.”

“No,” Jason said. “You can’t.” He felt it then, her mental touch shoving against his shields, clawing and hard.

Her eyes widened, anger replaced by fascination. “Incredible. It is as if your mind wears an onyx carapace.”

Raphael had said something similar to Jason when he’d attempted to reach Jason’s mind in order to—ironically enough—teach him how to protect his thoughts from invasion. No one they’d consulted, not even Jessamy or the healer, Keir, had ever seen or heard of its like in an angel so young.

“Perhaps”—Keir’s wise eyes in that too-young face—“you created it before you ever knew it to be an impossibility. An instinctive defense.”

Jason had always thought Keir had the right of it. Alone and scared when he’d been little more than a babe, he’d had to learn to protect himself from a world too big, too dangerous, too empty. “You can kill me,” he said, because that was true, “but in doing so, you lose the information I hold.”

“You would make an enemy of me out of a frippery?”

Jason heard Mahiya drop behind him, knew she had to be hurt, but still he didn’t turn. “I do not think you’ll consider me thus after you hear what I have to say.”

Mahiya sucked in pained breaths of air, at least three of her ribs cracked. Pushing up from her crumpled state on the ground into a sitting position, she took as deep a breath as she dared. It felt like knives stabbing into her liver, but the haze cleared from her eyes to bring Jason and Neha into sharp focus. The archangel’s face was cold, Jason’s a mask, his tattoo dramatic under the sunshine.

All at once, Neha laughed, and it was a true laugh, full of delight. “I knew I had chosen well.”

Mahiya’s blood went cold, realization a chill rain in her veins.

“I can offer Jason something Raphael will never be able to match.”

Jason wouldn’t realize, wouldn’t understand, but she knew that look on Neha’s face, had seen the calculation in it before, after quarrels with Eris. None of that had ever come to anything, but now Eris was dead.

Swallowing the pain that threatened to splinter her thoughts, she tried to reach Jason’s mind. She’d never before dared this, for it presumed an intimacy he did not wish to share, but he had to know what he faced.

When her thoughts hit the unyielding glossy black of his shields and ricocheted back, panic beat at her with fluttering wings, but she told herself to be patient, to be calm. If she didn’t succeed, Jason could inadvertently insult Neha and in so doing, forfeit his life.

I won’t let her kill you, Jason. I won’t.

Taking another deep breath, she tried to reach him again, realized with a dash of desperation that she was far too weak to have any impact on a shield so solid it was beyond adamantine. It was unlikely he even noticed her attempts, especially when from what Neha was saying, the archangel, too, was attempting to batter his defenses.

Retreating, she threw every part of her mind into coming up with some other way to either gain his attention or create a diversion.

Are you hurt? A voice, pristine as a bell . . . and inside her head.

The wonder of the fact he’d initiated a link might have paralyzed her had she not been so afraid for him. No, I’m fine, she lied, able to taste the gleaming obsidian of his rage. Jason, listen, there is something you must know.

Silence, but the connection remained open.

She cares nothing for me except as the toy she called me, but she wants you.

Neha isn’t the first archangel to want to poach my skills.

No. She held her breath, released it in a quiet rush as pain stabbed at her chest.

You are hurt.

A few broken ribs won’t matter if we both end up dead, so listen. She doesn’t want your skills, she wants you—for her new consort.