“No.” It was a laughing refusal, her husky voice entangling him in chains he had no intention of ever breaking. “Or I’ll tell you what I’m wearing under this dress.”
He felt like stretching in pleasure, as if he were a great cat that had been stroked, her laughter as precious to him as the rarest of gemstones. About to respond, he caught something out of the corner of his eye, shifted to see Jason walk into the room. “I think Jason has come to say his good-byes.”
He rose to his feet. “You’re leaving?” he said aloud as the black-winged angel stopped by the table. What has happened?
“Yes, I’m afraid I can stay no longer.” Eris is dead. I must head to Neha’s territory.
When Jason lifted his forearm, Dmitri clasped it in the way of the warriors they had been in battle together. “I’ll see you when you return.” I will remain in contact.
Jason’s hand tightened on his arm before falling away. “Enjoy your time away.” I have it under control, and you have a wife who will not be pleased by a husband tied forever to his work.
Dmitri glanced at Honor, his lips shaping into a faint smile. My wife is a hunter and far more likely to join me in riding to your rescue should you need it. Pausing, he added a personal message for Neha, for before Anoushka, she had been a great lady, an archangel he was not ashamed to have once served.
I’ll ensure she receives it. Jason inclined his head toward Honor. “I take my leave.”
“I’m so glad you were able to attend.” Honor’s smile dazzled. “I’ll see you again when we return to the city.”
Jason left in a sweep of black wings seconds later, and Dmitri retook his seat by his wife . . . who leaned into him not long afterward, her voice a hushed whisper as she asked, “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
Arm around her, he rubbed his thumb over the sensitive arch of her collarbone. “When we are alone,” he murmured, body hardening at the idea of her warm and na**d in his arms in their bed. “Come for a walk.”
Honor gave him a narrow-eyed look. “So you can talk me into your Ferrari?”
“I like what you do to me in my Ferrari.” Sultry and hotly feminine, she’d made him her slave the day she’d taken him with such lush confidence.
A slow, slow smile from the woman who owned him body and soul. “Maybe we should make a detour on our way back to the Tower after the reception.”
He knew his eyes were gleaming, but he didn’t care. Leaning forward, he captured her lips in a kiss that made the guests around them cheer. “A long detour.” It was a promise.
4
Over fourteen hours of intense flight later, Jason used the night clouds to his advantage as he circled the stone and marble of the magnificent fortress perched on a high ridgeline. It was known simply as Archangel Fort, for it was where Neha made her home. Bathed in the light of a full moon that hadn’t yet begun to wane, though morning lay only a few hours away, its defensive walls glowed not the amber gold they were under the sun’s rays, but a pale, haunting silver.
Having stashed his small bag for later retrieval, he’d earlier flown down toward the dark mirror of a lake at the base of the fort, done a sweep over the slumbering city beyond. From the lower vantage point, the fort had appeared a mirage, a fantasy imagined.
A fitting throne for the archangel who was queen of this land.
Flaring out wings of ebony that absorbed the moonlight as they absorbed sunlight, he came to a silent, invisible landing in the shadows cast by one of the great gates that protected the fort, a gate big enough to dwarf an entire cavalry unit. Each gate was hidden from the previous and the next by the angles at which the fort had been built, cutting the sightline and providing no straight runs on which to build up speed that could be used to ram the next gate. As a defensive measure against a mounted attack, it was magnificent.
Flying enemies required further countermeasures, including the squadron of angels in the sky and the vampires armed with land-to-air weaponry on the ramparts. None of them had seen Jason. That was not to say they were useless—it was the rare guard who ever spotted a man who’d been designed to blend into the night. Jason was fairly certain he’d avoided detection by the satellite surveillance system, too, his ability turning him into an indistinct shadow dismissed by man and machine alike.
Rather than walking through the gate, he watched in motionless silence until he could predict the watch route and timing of the vampiric guards, then—taking advantage of a fleeting blind spot—flew up and over the gate to land on the edge of the geometrically patterned gardens on the third-level courtyard.
The fountain in the center sparkled in the moonlight that lit up the courtyard to luminous brightness. Neha’s private palace, he knew, was to the left of his landing position, its marble walls inlaid with ancient motifs created from semiprecious stones. But that was not its most stunning feature—thousands of diamonds had been embedded into the walls, intertwined into the design, until the palace could glitter as hard as the stone itself . . . or shimmer with a fiery heart that awoke wonder in young and old.
“Of all the buildings I have seen in my lifetime, it is the Hira Mahal that steals my breath.”
It had been Titus who’d said those words, and the warrior archangel was not a man given to poetry. Jason could understand the urge, for the Hira Mahal or Diamond Palace—also often referred to as the Palace of Jewels—was a work of art unlike any other. Now, rising from his low, crouched position, he once again timed his movements to avoid the guards and reached the glittering door of the palace without being seen.
The guard who opened it in response to his knock hissed in surprise and went for a weapon.
“I assume that is the spymaster,” said a feminine voice from within, the language the principal dialect in this region. “Do come in, Jason.”
Keeping the guard in his line of sight, Jason walked into the glimmering illusion of the palace to see the Queen of Poisons, of Snakes. Unlike when she’d spoken with Raphael, Neha was now the picture of grace where she sat on a thronelike chair, her body clothed in a sari of palest green rather than the stark white of mourning. She, like the rest of the room, shimmered with the candlelight bouncing off the endless cascade of faceted gemstones.
“Lady Neha.” He swept down into a respectful bow that nonetheless made it clear he was no sycophant and never would be. He’d learned the elegant movement from Illium, and it was useful on the rare occasion when he had to make a public appearance in front of one of the Cadre.