She remembered what he’d said once. About breaking her. Knew that she had the power to savage him—but that wasn’t who she was. Who they were. “No. You just scared me a little.”
Apologies, Elena. He ran his hand over the arch of her wing. I was not . . . myself.
It was an admission she’d never expected, because though they’d been together this long, they were still learning each other. And the Archangel of New York had long ago learned to keep secrets—his own, his race’s, his Seven’s.
And now, his consort’s.
“I know.” Shifting up onto her elbow, she closed her hand over the muscle of his shoulder, needing the raw physicality of the connection. “Something is wrong, Raphael. That vampire might’ve appeared sane, but he didn’t act in any way rational when he attacked the school, and you should’ve seen that. But you didn’t.”
“I remember little of my actions during that time.” A question without being a question as he nudged her down onto her back, one big hand warm on her abdomen.
Knowing the loss of control had to be a vicious beast tearing him apart, she recapped the events. “Do you remember executing Ignatius?”
“Yes.” He dipped his head a fraction, and she took the invitation to stroke her fingers through his hair. “When you speak of the events, I do recall them—but there is a red haze over it all.”
Thick and silky, the vivid black strands of his hair kissed a cool caress over her skin. “If I had to put a name to what I saw in your expression, I’d call it rage.”
“Yes.” Moving his hand over her stomach, he settled it low on her hip. “But I have lived long enough that I can handle rage. This was ... other.”
She went motionless, worried by his choice of words. “Outside of yourself?”
His eyes gleamed adamantine blue beneath lowered lashes. “Impossible to confirm.”
Elena wasn’t about to let it go at that. “Talk to me.” She knew what he was, understood that he held more power in his body than she would probably ever know, even if she lived ten thousand years. Equals, they weren’t. Not on that playing field—but when it came to the emotions that could tear a heart apart... “Raphael.”
Nadiel, he said into her mind, exhibited such extreme rage.
His father had also gone inexorably insane.
“No,” she said, not even needing an instant to evaluate the thought. “You’re not going insane.”
“So certain, Guild Hunter.” Formal words, a tone that told her he considered her statement nothing but a platitude.
Lifting up her head, she nipped at his lower lip. “The taste of you is ingrained into my very cells. You’re the rain and the wind and at times the clean, wild bite of the sea. I’d know the instant something changed.”
He rose off her, allowing her to sit up as he shifted to sit with his legs over the side of the bed, his back to her, his magnificent wings spread out. Each filament of each feather was tipped in gold, glittering even in the dull light whispering through the windows. A lethal temptation to mortals—and former mortals.
Elena was reaching out to indulge her desire to touch when he said, “You lie to both of us.”
Frowning, she wrapped the sheet around herself—letting it gape low at the back to accommodate her wings—and scrambled off the bed to stand in front of him. “What are you talking about?”
He raised his head, his face so very clear of emotion that the pristine beauty of it felt as if it should draw blood, it was so sharp, so pure. “Did Uram’s scent change?”
Acid and blood and . . . sunlight.
She shivered at the memory of the bloodlust-driven archangel, her ankle aching in sympathetic memory where Uram had crushed it—simply to hear her scream. “I only met him after he’d already crossed the line into insanity,” she said, knowing this conversation was beyond important. “I have no way of knowing what he would’ve been to my senses beforehand—it’s possible that the blood, the acid in his scent was because of what he became, not what he once was.”
Raphael didn’t look convinced. However, neither did he dismiss her argument as he rose to his feet and pulled on his pants. “It can no longer be avoided. I must speak to Lijuan—”
An eerie cold in the room, a prickle of fear along the back of Elena’s neck. “It’s almost as if she can hear it when you speak her name.”
Raphael didn’t tell her she was being a superstitious twit. Yes, he said instead, we have no way of knowing what Lijuan hears on the winds now. “I cannot disregard the fact that my ... rage comes at a time when an Ancient appears to be stirring to wakefulness. As the oldest among us, Lijuan is the only one who may have some kind of an answer.”
“I’ll come with you.” Not long ago, as Beijing trembled around her, Elena had stood face-to-face with the shambling empty-eyed shells who provided irrefutable proof of the dark heart of Lijuan’s strength. The Archangel of China had bought the dead back to life—whether they wished to return or not.
They’d been monsters, feasting on the flesh of those Lijuan did not favor to clothe their own emaciated forms. But they’d also been victims, mute and unable to scream. Elena had heard them all the same, and everything in her rebelled at the idea of Raphael alone in the presence of the being who’d created those “reborn.” “It’s—”
A brush of strong fingers against her jaw. “She does not see you yet, not truly. I would keep it that way.”
Elena set that jaw. “My safety isn’t enough to compromise yours.” Lijuan was a nightmare, and her power came from the same dark place. There was nothing remotely human in her, nothing that even hinted of a conscience.
Raphael shook his head. “She will not kill me, Hunter.”
“No but she wants to ...” Had Lijuan been another woman, it would’ve been a simple equation. But the oldest of the archangels had no desires of the flesh—she didn’t even eat, much less take lovers. “Possess you,” she completed.
A look that made her feel as if she’d been stripped to the skin, laid out before him like a feast. “But I wish to possess you, hbeebti. The two desires are not compatible.”
Hbeebti.
A beautiful word from the Moroccan half of her mother’s lost heritage. “I’m not letting you sweet-talk me.”
A curve to his lips, her archangel finding dangerous humor in her stubbornness. “Then let logic persuade you. She is as apt to take offense at your presence as ignore it. If I am to do this, I want to get something out of it.”