A shrug. "I put on a different skin when it's necessary. Dmitri taught me that--he said I didn't have to change, but that my life would be easier if I could fool people into thinking I had at times."
"I'm so happy you never wear any skin but your own around me," Andromeda whispered, her heart wide open.
Silver eyes locked with hers. "I'll always be Naasir with you," he promised solemnly, then grinned. "Even if you ask me to act civilized for a minute."
She groaned and pretended to beat at him with her free hand. "You're never going to let me forget I said that, are you?"
"Maybe if you tell me a story of your childhood."
*
Naasir glimpsed many expressions move across Andromeda's face in a matter of split seconds. He didn't catch all of them, but he saw pain, anger, shame, and finally joy.
None of it surprised him; immortality meant many experiences. Though the shame wasn't a usual thing--but then, Andromeda wasn't a hardened immortal. Her heart was tender. She probably felt shame for a transgression others would've long forgotten.
"I never went to the Refuge school," she began. "I didn't see the Refuge at all until I flew there myself just after my seventy-fifth birthday."
"Seventy-five is not full-grown for an angel." At that age, she would've been close to a fifteen-year-old human teenager. "You flew to the Refuge alone?"
"Yes." Her expression altered, the golden bursts in her eyes suddenly dark. "My body had started to curve early, my breasts lush. I no longer appeared the child I was and a number of my parents' guests were starting to look at me in a way that was distinctly predatory and sexual."
Naasir felt his claws prick at his skin, fought to keep them sheathed.
"I couldn't take it anymore. I knew as a princess of the court, I was probably safe, but the look in the guests' eyes . . . it made me feel dirty and small. And the way my parents and their friends brutally tortured others for pleasure . . ." She shook her head, stark echoes of fear and shock in her expression. "I told them my plans, then flew out."
A shuddering breath. "I think Mother and Father expected me to give up and return home. When I didn't, they washed their hands of me."
Andromeda was lying. Not about her flight to the Refuge, but about another part of her story. It made him want to bare his teeth and demand she tell the truth, but he'd do that later, when she didn't appear so fragile. "Who did you play with when you lived with your parents?"
"The animals." Joy chased out the shadows. "Once, while I was having dinner in my nursery, a baby giraffe poked his head in the window and ate the fruit right off my plate."
Naasir grinned. "Truth?"
She nodded. "It came back, too. I used to make up a plate especially for him until my nanny caught me--and even after that, I waited until she wasn't paying attention and opened the window so the giraffe could slide its head and neck inside."
Delighted at the idea of her dining with a giraffe, Naasir said, "Did the other animals also join you for meals?"
A shake of her head. "With the cheetahs, we'd race. I'd be in the air, the cheetahs on the ground." She blew out a breath. "They're fast."
"I'll race you," Naasir said. "When we're free of Lijuan's spies."
"Deal."
As the plane flew onward and the world turned, she told him more stories of her childhood. It betrayed a total lack of other children. Not even any mortal playmates. Andromeda appeared to have had no one but her animals. Maybe that was why she understood him so well, accepted his wildness without hesitation. He was happy about that, but he didn't like to think of her so alone.
A chime sounded in the air a minute after heavy turbulence that threatened to throw them both around the cabin.
"That must be our signal," Andromeda said.
Naasir got up to look out a window. "Yes." Grabbing the pack lying on another seat, he put it on and snapped on the straps across his chest before pulling on a thin and tight knit cap that would stop his hair from glittering in the sunlight. "Ready?"
She grinned. "Oh, yes."
The co-pilot exited the cockpit right then. "Two things. First, Illium's awake and fine--message literally just came in, is probably on your phone, too." His smile matched their own. "Second, we couldn't stabilize over the initial drop point. Can you go through the oasis?"
"Yes," Naasir said, following the bearded male to the back of the plane. "Bad air?"
"This spot is notorious for it--unpredictable air currents, like the sky is telling you to get the fuck out."
Naasir met Andromeda's gaze as the co-pilot attached himself to the wall using a strap. "I think we're in the right place, Andi."
The co-pilot opened the wide door built for this purpose before she could reply, air screaming into the cabin. Pushing out two packs, he nodded at Naasir. "Good luck!" The wind almost ripped away his words.
Giving him a thumbs-up, Naasir jumped with one final grin in Andromeda's direction. With a descent this finely calculated, he had to get out at precisely the right altitude for the parachute to function safely. Opening the chute the instant he was clear of the plane, he whooped at the sensation of flight, the air, cold at this altitude, rushing past him.
He heard laughter nearby and when he glanced over, there was Andromeda, snapping out pretty wings patterned like a bird's. Grinning, he rode the late-afternoon winds all the way to his planned landing spot in the desert landscape, mentally marking the splashes of color that denoted the landing spots of the small chutes that had deployed with their supply packs.
He began to gather up the chute the instant he was on the ground, while Andromeda swept left toward the first supply pack. It only took him a matter of minutes to fold the chute back in. Instead of abandoning it on the sand, he took the time to bury it so it wouldn't arouse suspicion, or act as a beacon to any searchers in the air.
He finished just as Andromeda returned with the second supply pack, having already dropped the first near him. Naasir packed away the small chutes into special compartments, then pulled on the heavier pack and helped her strap on the smaller one. It was designed to be worn in the front. He hadn't wanted her to jump with it because the unaccustomed weight might've thrown her off.
"Comfortable?" he asked after fixing the final strap.
She nodded. "We should get off the sand. I feel so exposed here."
Agreeing, he told her to fly ahead to the date palms that sprawled in the far distance, part of an oasis inhabited by a small number of villagers. "Stay at the level of the tree line."
Rising into the air, she called out, "Race you!"
He took off. He preferred bare feet, but he'd worn boots for this mission, since they'd be climbing through cave systems. Those boots were soon covered in dust as he ran across the sand to the trees.
They both stayed on the same path and he ran in the shadow of Andromeda's wings for much of the race, their pace neck and neck, but he pulled away at the end, his chest heaving as he sucked in air. Tearing off the cap now that he was in the trees, he shoved it into a pocket of his pants.
Andromeda came down beside him in a rush of wind, her own breathing uneven. "I need to sprint more."
"We can do it together." Taking a bottle of water from the side of his pack, he gave it to her to drink, then drank himself. "No more flying for now," he said after putting away the water. "It'll just take one sighting by the wrong person to give away our location." According to Andromeda's research, this oasis was owned by a tribe not known for its hospitality.
Andromeda glanced around at the pomegranate and fig trees visible below the date palms. "This must be the tribe's source of income."
"Which means we can't guarantee there aren't people around checking their crops."
They went forward with care. It wasn't until an hour later that Andromeda said, "What if I'm wrong, Naasir?" Her voice was small. "What if Lijuan's people reach Alexander first and she murders him?"
"Then she's proved her evil once again." He ran his hand down her wing. "Lijuan
is not your fault." And because he understood the thoughts that haunted her, he added, "As your parents' choice to hurt people for their own pleasure isn't your fault."
Face stark, Andromeda faced him. "Find the Grimoire." It was a command . . . but her voice, it trembled. "I need you to find it."
"I will." Then he would claim her and keep her--and order her to tell him all her secrets, especially the one that made her hurt so much each time she looked at him.
29
"Dmitri just heard from the pilot," Raphael told Elena as the two of them stood atop the roof of the Legion building, Manhattan draped in early morning darkness around them. "Naasir and Andromeda are safely away."
"I didn't doubt it." Elena tightened her ponytail, her hair gleaming white in the lights of the city. "Will we join them once they locate Alexander?"
"We?"
His consort raised an eyebrow, her gaze flinty. "Don't try that Archangel tone on me."
"I am an archangel."
Lips tilting up at the corners, his hunter spread her wings so that the white gold of her primaries brushed his. "You're also mine and I will hurt you if you dare go up against Lijuan on your own." She slid out her crossbow. "Don't mess with me."
Pulling her close, the crossbow flat against his chest, he took her mouth. He'd fallen for her because she was a warrior, and over the time since they'd come together, he'd learned to accept that she would never stand on the sidelines. But this time--I need you to remain in the city, help hold it while I'm gone.
Elena broke off the kiss, scowled. "Dmitri is plenty tough enough to do that."
"But you, hbeebti, are no longer just a hunter," he said, speaking the word "beloved" in the language his consort's grandmother had brought with her from a distant land. "You are a symbol--even if I am missed, so long as people can see you in the air, they'll feel safe." Because everyone knows I would not leave my consort in a city I didn't feel was protected against all harm.
"Shit," Elena muttered. "I hate it when you make sense." Strapping her crossbow to her thigh once again, she walked to the edge of the roof and waited for him to come up beside her. "Symbols are necessary right now, aren't they?"
Raphael answered by sliding his wing over hers, both of them aware the world was perched on a precipice that could give way without warning. Wind riffling through his hair, he looked toward the Tower, saw Dmitri step out onto a balcony with Aodhan. "I should only be away from the city for a short time, just long enough to protect Alexander during the most vulnerable part of his waking."
Elena nodded, her eyes turned in the same direction as Raphael's. "We going to talk about how you made it to Illium so fast? That was an impossible distance to cross even for you, Archangel."
Raphael watched the light glitter off Aodhan, shards sparking in the air, and thought of that moment when he'd seen Illium drop from the sky. He'd thought it a game until Aodhan's cry for help. "The Hummingbird can't lose him. He's her only link to a tenuous sanity." Raphael loved Illium's mother, had great respect for her, but he also understood that she was broken inside.
A slightly rough-skinned hand closing over his, his warrior-consort's fingers strong. "You can't lose him either." Her eyes held knowledge of him that belied the briefness of their relationship in immortal terms. "He's the heart of the Seven."
Yes. Illium might be younger than several of the others and appear irreverent more often than not, but he was their glue, the piece that tied all the others to one another. "Before Mahiya, when Jason was yet lost in darkness, the only time I saw him close to a smile was after Illium challenged him to an old-fashioned duel."
Raphael could see his spymaster's impassive face in his mind, remember how Jason's eyes had warmed from within. "Your Bluebell was a stripling whom Jason easily defeated, but Illium just laughed and asked if he could have a longer rapier next time so he could poke at Jason from a distance."
Elena's lips twitched. "That sounds like Illium." Though he'd woken an hour past and appeared fine but for a little residual dizziness, terror still bled through her at what she'd witnessed that afternoon. It was pure chance she'd been close enough to help--she and the Primary had been flying toward the Legion building when she'd glimpsed the wild blue and shattered light of Illium and Aodhan high in the sky.
She'd smiled, remembering something Aodhan had said to her.
It was worth the risk to play a game with my friend again. Until I threw that ball at Illium over the river, I didn't understand I hadn't felt alive for over two hundred years.
When Illium had fallen, she'd shaken her head at what she'd believed to be a trick. Everything had changed the instant she saw Aodhan dive, heard Raphael's alert to every angel in the vicinity. Only no one was close enough--least of all Raphael. "Your wings were afire," she whispered, still unable to fully understand what she'd seen in those seconds stretched by horror into hours.
"Tell me what you saw," Raphael said. "I felt my speed increase, but I put it down to the urgency of the incident."
Blinking, Elena turned to face the archangel who'd branded her to the soul. The fact he didn't know hadn't occurred to her . . . but it had all happened so fast, his attention on saving Illium and Aodhan both. "The white fire that licks over your wings at times," she said, touching her fingers to the shimmering white gold of his feathers, "it took over. It was like you had no physical wings--as if your wings were pure white flame."
It had been a magnificent sight she'd only processed in the aftermath. "The effect disappeared as soon as you had Illium in your arms."
Spreading out his wings and curling first one inward, then the other, Raphael examined the feathers before folding them back in. "No evidence of it now, but what you're describing sounds almost like Lijuan's ability to go noncorporeal. On the same continuum at least."
Elena's skin chilled. "Yeah, I guess." Releasing his hand, she gripped the front of his white shirt and tugged him to her. "Don't you dare 'evolve' on me." She couldn't follow him into that other state, though she'd kill herself trying.
Raphael's lips curved. "Have no fear, hbeebti," he said. "I am too fond of the flesh." A caress of her hip, a luscious kiss.
Yet even as the crashing windswept sea of him infiltrated her senses, Elena knew even an archangel couldn't hold back the possibly catastrophic changes wrought by the Cascade. "I'll follow you," she whispered against his lips. "No matter where you go, I'll be right beside you."
Eyes of endless blue burned with an incandescent flame. "Together, Elena-mine. Always." Wrapping her in his wings, he held her until her heart calmed, the fear receding under a tide of furious determination: no one and nothing would steal her archangel from her.
"I heard a bit of gossip from Amanat," she said once she could speak again.
"How can you hear gossip from Amanat? Unless you and my mother have become the best of friends?"
She elbowed him. "Very funny." Elena and Caliane might have called a truce, but Caliane remained an Ancient and her freaking mother-in-law. "I made some other friends on our last visit." Including a smart, funny maiden who danced as gracefully as Elena's sister Belle had danced before a murderous vampire stole her life.
"Belle! Belle! Can I dance with you?"
"Come on, squirt. Stand like this."
Chest achingly tight at the memory of a loss she would carry with her forever, she said, "Apparently, there's a high chance Naasir and his scholar are no longer just colleagues."
He looks at her as I've never seen Naasir look at anyone. As if she is a treasure he wants to keep, wants to protect.
"You catch your consort by surprise," Raphael murmured. "Particularly as the scholar has taken a vow of celibacy."
"We're talking about Naasir here." Elena grinned. "He has a certain charm. Just like his archangel--I never planned to be naked with you, either." Deadly and inhuman, the Archangel of New York was not a man with whom Elena Deveraux, Guild Hunter, had ever intended to mess.
A glint in the eyes that held oceans, even in the dark
ness. "Plan it now," he said, lifting off with her still in his arms. "We have not danced in the sky for too long, and today, I feel a need to celebrate life." His jaw grew hard.
Stroking it as her skin turned electric, Elena pulled his head down to her own. "Life," she whispered before their lips met in a storm of sensation.
30
Two hours of hiking later, Andromeda and Naasir found themselves on the outskirts of the village that was the last bastion of civilization before the cave system, the homes built around what, from the air, was a startlingly clear blue-green lake. A small jewel in the ocean of sand that surrounded the oasis on every side, the lake wasn't a perfect sphere.
No, it was an elongated teardrop.
The village was based around the fat upper curve of the tear.
It would've been far easier had they been able to jump on the other side of the oasis, but not at the cost of crashing the plane.
Settling in to wait for the early evening to turn to full dark, they were careful not to alert the villagers of their presence.
The two of them ate the dried trail foods they'd bought, but Andromeda knew while that would sustain her, it wasn't enough for Naasir. "Sip on me," she said, lifting her wrist to his mouth.
He drew in a deep breath, eyes molten and fangs flashing. "I'll drink you up." It was a rough warning.
"No, you won't." She knew exactly how protective he was. "Drink or I'll start to think you don't like me."
Growl rumbling in his chest, he gripped her wrist when she would've pulled it away, nuzzled her pulse point. It felt as if all her blood rushed to that spot, pouring toward him.
"Andromeda." It was a warm, luxurious purr before he scraped his fangs over her skin.
Secret inner muscles clenched, her breath catching as her breasts ached; jealousy captured her in vicious claws, dug into her desire. "Is this how you feed from others?"
He licked her skin. "I'm not feeding." Another lick, a hot breath. "I'm seducing you."
Yes, he was. Slowly and with primal patience. When he scraped his fangs over the delicate skin of her inner wrist again, she shivered and leaned closer, her wings curling around them to create a shadowed, private enclave.
The bite was a bright pain that shuddered into searing pleasure. Barely stifling her cry, she wove her fingers into his hair and held him to her, but he raised his head too soon, licking over the bite location with small, playful flicks of his tongue until the tiny wounds were closed and all that remained was a faint bruise.