"No." Muscles easing, he rubbed his nose over hers. "If I bite you, it'll be in play. And if I eat you up, it'll be because I have my tongue in your--"
She slammed her hand over his mouth.
*
Pulse racing, Andromeda looked into the eyes of the feral, beautiful creature who was shattering every barrier she'd created in an effort to live a life of honor and discipline where she didn't only use, but created and gave. He was so pure, with a core of primal honesty that drew her like a moth to a flame. She knew that she'd never again meet anyone like Naasir, not even should she live to be ten thousand years old.
Part of her wanted to accept his invitation, to be with him, to hoard the memories against what was to come. She was bound to serve in Charisemnon's court for five hundred years, and knowing her grandfather, those five hundred years would be one horror after another. Surely, whispered the desperation in her, surely she could have Naasir for just a little while?
And what happens when you join Charisemnon's court?
The cold reminder was a slap. The idea of Naasir hating her or himself after they'd been so painfully intimate, it made her feel as if she was spun glass that would break with a single wrong touch. "Remember my vow," she said after removing her hand from over his mouth, her voice husky with all the emotions she couldn't set free.
His expression turned icily serious without warning. "If you were mine, I wouldn't let you rut with others."
She didn't know if that was a threat or a promise.
Pushing off her, he rose to his feet before she could decide how to respond. A single tug when he offered her his hand and he pulled her to her feet. "Tell me about your stupid Grimoire book."
Stomach tight, she blew out a breath. "You can't find it." Her eyes burned because she wanted him to find it, even if it wouldn't change anything.
"I can find anything." His confidence was arrogant but in a way that made her want to kiss him. "How big is it? Where was it last seen?"
"That's just it," she confessed. "It hasn't been seen in the past hundred thousand years or more--before that, there are mentions of it in old stories that might as well be myths." That was the reason she'd chosen it as her escape key. To ensure the door would remain permanently locked.
Naasir scowled. "It's not a real thing?"
"No, it is." Just of incalculable age. "Caliane is actually responsible for the most reputable report of its existence. Long before she was an Ancient, she made a casual note of it in a letter to a friend." Somehow, that eons-old letter had survived and was kept in a special part of the Archives.
"Where did she see it?"
"In the house of an alchemist." At a time when even angels had believed in such things. "The alchemist is long dead, the city he lived in no longer exists, and scholars have spent thousands of years trying to track down the fabled Star Grimoire without success."
"Tell me all about it," he demanded again.
Stupidly happy at his stubborn determination, she gave in. "It's a book on fantastical creatures and hidden mysteries meant to have been written by an angel so long ago that her name has been lost from the Archives. Within its pages are said to be illustrations of utmost beauty hand-painted by the angel's most beloved concubine."
"What does it look like?"
"Leather bound, with a golden clasp." A frustratingly incomplete description. "No one ever seems to want to describe its physical appearance, just what apparently lies within."
Naasir looked at her so intently that she knew he wanted more. So she gave him more, and as she did, she learned that he liked listening to her tell stories of times long gone. He wasn't bored by the history she held in her head and quite often said something that made her look at things in a whole new light.
Yes, she would never forget Naasir. Not so long as she drew breath.
20
Elena walked into Raphael's Tower office to find the Primary there instead of her archangel. The leader of the Legion was staring at a screen that showed Jessamy's face. "Oh, sorry." She began to back out.
"Wait, Ellie," Jessamy called out as the Primary turned to pin her with those eerie, beautiful eyes, translucent but for the ring of mountain blue around the irises.
"Consort." His greeting was toneless, but all at once, she could hear seven hundred and seventy-seven voices whispering to her.
Braced for it, she nodded. "Hello."
The voices receded. Thank God. After a few hiccups, the Legion had come to understand that, unlike Raphael, she couldn't hold all their voices in her head. They'd also started to learn that she saw them as individuals, not a single entity. Whether they'd take that on board themselves was an unanswered question.
"Have you had contact with Amanat?" she asked, coming to stand beside the Primary.
Jessamy's soft brown eyes filled with sympathy. "Keir is there now. He says Suyin has fallen into anshara and it's for the best--the repeated wing excisions without enough time to truly heal in between had a cumulative effect."
Elena couldn't imagine the horror the other woman had survived. "None of Jason's people have made contact with Naasir," she told Jessamy, conscious the Historian had a deep bond with the silver-haired member of the Seven.
Jason himself had flown to Titus's territory, after hearing rumors of a border confrontation between Titus and Charisemnon that could break out into war. The spymaster had been confident Naasir would make it out safely now that he and the scholar had escaped the citadel, but Elena wouldn't be happy until she heard from the damn teasing tiger creature himself.
"He is a being of stealth and shadow; this is what he was born to do." The Primary had a way of being so motionless that it'd be easy to forget him, but when he spoke, he always spoke sense.
Jessamy's smile was shaky but real. "He'd agree with you. He loves nothing better than sneaking in and out of places." She nodded at the Primary. "We've been talking history. Or at least I have."
"Our memories of what we heard in our time of slumber are fading," the Primary told Elena. "It is a . . . side effect of being in the world."
"Yet he still won't tell me everything he does remember so I can record it."
"Some things are not meant to be remembered." The Primary's voice held echoes of countless others. "Life becomes meaningless if all is known. This we have learned."
"But we could learn from past mistakes, not make them again," Jessamy argued.
"Each generation, each Cascade has its own rhythm." The Primary's counterargument was without passion, but it was no less potent, the eerie sense of endless age that clung to him coloring every word. "You cannot predict the future by looking at the past."
Slipping out as the two continued to speak, Elena made her way to what had been the infirmary floor. Most of the injured were now gone. The few that remained were in a small section to the northeast.
She walked in to find the mini-infirmary empty but for one angel. Blond curls having grown back, a shirtless Izak was standing on trembling legs, determinedly lifting a heavy set of hand weights. The bones in his arms had been shattered into splinters in the Falling, but they'd fared better than the legs he'd lost below the thighs. Those legs had only just finished regenerating in a searing agony of sensation.
"Izzy," she said, striding quickly to the young angel. "You know you're not supposed to do that without a spotter."
He gave her a guilty but stubborn look. "I can't be in here much longer, Ellie." Not fighting when she tugged away and set the weights aside after seeing his biceps muscles quiver, he added, "I'll go mad."
Elena's heart clenched. Izak was the youngest angel to have survived the cowardly attack that had sent so many of New York's angels crashing to the earth, and the terrible nature of his injuries meant his road to this point had been a long and painful one. Charisemnon had a lot to answer for, and answer he would: Raphael would never forget this crime of war. Neither would any of his people.
"Izzy," she said, keeping her voice light, "you have an eight-pack that would be the envy of a
ny man." She patted his abdomen, happy to feel warm, healthy skin where there had only been raw, bloody flesh.
Blushing, he didn't meet her eyes.
"I spoke to the healer in charge of you," she continued. "He says you're a remarkable patient who is recovering far quicker than anyone expected." Izzy was only a hundred and seventeen years old, a baby soldier in angelic terms. "Galen was so impressed with the healer's last report that he sent you homework."
"More?" Izak looked so horrified it was comical.
Giving in to his shuddering legs, he collapsed into a seated position on an infirmary bed, his wings spread out behind him. "I can barely do all the exercises he's already sent me."
Stifling her laugh lest his young heart take it the wrong way, Elena showed him the tablet she'd picked up on her way out of Raphael's office. "Not that kind of homework and it's not all from Galen. Some of it's from Jessamy."
"Jessamy?"
"Uh-huh." Sitting down beside him, their wings overlapping in an affectionate intimacy she knew would comfort him, she said, "Being in a consort's Guard isn't always about strength." Since she'd somehow ended up with a Guard, she was doing her best to understand how it worked. "Apparently, you have to understand all the courtesy stuff so you don't accidentally insult an archangel and, you know, start a war."
Izak gulped.
Patting him on the upper arm, she said, "Don't worry. If I can learn this stuff"--or at least enough not to stick her foot in it--"then you'll be an 'A' student."
"Can I rethink being in your Guard?"
"Funny." And because his small, mischievous smile was adorable, she kissed his cheek.
He went bright red.
"What's this? An orgy?" came a slow male voice that held a Cajun cadence. "Seems like we've been invited here under false pretenses, sugar."
Looking up, Elena saw Janvier and Ash in the doorway, both wearing leather jackets and holding a helmet in one hand. Ash's long black hair was unbound, the knives strapped to her thighs only the most visible of her weapons. "These two miscreants are your study buddies," she told Izak.
"Hey." Ashwini scowled, not shifting her lithely muscled dancer's body from the doorway when Elena moved toward it. "What about you?"
"I've been in remedial etiquette school since I became Raphael's consort. I'm way ahead of you."
Loud grumbling from Ash at her smug statement, but the other hunter's dark eyes weren't laughing. Everyone liked Naasir, but he, Janvier, and Ash were especially close. "No news," Elena said softly.
Janvier ran his free hand through the dark mahogany of his hair, a lopsided smile on his lips. "Don't worry, cher," he said, throwing his other arm, helmet and all, around Ash's shoulders. "Naasir once got the two of us out of an alligator-infested swamp in the middle of a raging hurricane at night, and had fun doing it. He'll be fine."
Elena and Ashwini both stared at the Cajun vampire. Fangs flashing and moss green eyes laughing, he gave a sinful grin that illustrated exactly why he was such good friends with Naasir. "I'll tell that tale when Naasir is here to tell it with me. He always says I forget the good parts."
"Yes," Ashwini said firmly. "It's Naasir."
Sneaky and strong and with the scent of a tiger on the hunt.
21
Even with the handicap of Andromeda's wings and the unexpected resumption of search squadrons that forced them to hide out for an entire five hours on the forest floor, Naasir got Andromeda to the nearest water border in the dark of night two days later.
Part of that was because at one point, he'd cleared her to fly at night while he ran below. She'd never seen anyone move that gracefully, that dangerously on the ground. Like a silver tiger shadowed with darker stripes.
Their arrival at the border was almost anticlimactic after the stealth required for the rest of the trip. She'd expected guards bristling with weapons and air squadrons crisscrossing the skies, but Lijuan's people were distracted, drawn to another part of the border. "Jason?"
"Or one of his people."
"How did they know when to act?"
"They didn't. I'm guessing there have been annoying incursions or manufactured dramas along this border for at least twenty-four hours." He lifted a finger to his lips as a harried guard ran past them to join in the melee in the distance. "Now," he said once the guard was clear, and held out his hand.
Taking it, she followed him to a battered barge which Naasir told her was run by vampires allied with Astaad. It appeared the Archangel of the Pacific Isles had chosen to fly his flag with Raphael's.
"Naasir," she said quietly after they were safely on board.
Her wings would've made her stand out, except that no one had seen her and Naasir board, and as soon as she was on deck, she moved so she was hidden from view of the bank. He didn't have to tell her that she could only take to the air once they were past the last of the aerial scouts.
"What is it?" Naasir asked, his eyes scanning the shore as the barge pulled away mere seconds later.
"I think we should go to Amanat, get supplies, and head to the most probable location."
"Did you tell Lijuan that location?"
She rolled her eyes. "Of course not. I lied." Being forced to witness Heng's torture at the teeth of the hounds had only strengthened her resolve. "Very convincingly, I might add. Xi is probably somewhere near Mount Kilimanjaro right now."
"I knew you were sneaky." Eyes glinting on that approving statement, Naasir wrapped an arm around her neck and hauled her close. This time, the snap of his teeth was playful. "You fly to Amanat once we're out of range of the sentries. I'll make it there on my own."
Her instincts and her heart both rebelled. "I'm not going to leave you alone."
"I'll be able to travel faster on my own once I hit land." He took something from his pocket. It was a heavy gold ring with the letter N engraved on it, the engraving embedded with diamonds. "This will get you into Amanat. Stay outside the shield until a sentry appears, then show this to him."
Taking the ring, she ran her thumb over the jewels. She wouldn't have thought this was his kind of jewelry--the identity bracelet he wore suited him much better. "Why are you carrying it instead of wearing it?"
He kept his arm around her and rubbed his jaw against her temple. "I like shiny things but not to wear. Caliane gave that to me as thanks for my help in protecting her city when it first woke."
"I'll keep it safe," she said, just as he reached out and unhooked the simple gold chain she always wore around her neck and that had survived all their adventures. Sliding the ring onto it, he hooked it back around her neck, his fingertips brushing her nape.
Her nipples tightened, a shiver rippling over her skin.
She should've protested the familiar handling, but it didn't feel wrong--as it hadn't felt wrong to stroke her fingers through his hair. Andromeda couldn't think too much about that or it started to hurt deep inside. "Is there someone I should ask for when I arrive in Amanat?" she asked instead, glancing away lest he see all she sought to hide.
"Isabel." Naasir pulled her back against the heated muscle of his body. "She was my partner during my time there and she has chosen to remain in the city."
Andromeda had no will to fight his hold. "I've seen her at the Refuge." A tall, competent warrior who chose to walk the path of an ascetic.
Four hours later, she flared out her wings in readiness for flight. "I'll wait for you." Nothing would be right until he was with her again. "Stay safe."
Naasir watched her soar into the sky, his silver hair bright in the light of the moon.
22
Having taken advantage of the renewed border aggression between Titus and Charisemnon to stealthily invade Titus's territory, Xi and his squadron had spent multiple days in and around Kilimanjaro, searching the demanding and often harsh landscape for any sign of Alexander. He'd flown up and down all three of the volcanic cones that made up Kilimanjaro, studied the cold, deep crater that scored one, walked on the glaciers, and far below, in the c
aves.
He'd found nothing, though if Alexander had gone beneath the earth like Caliane, that would be expected. Still, even the closest villagers had heard no whispers, guarded no legends. He knew they spoke the truth because they were too afraid to lie. While he would've ordinarily ignored such weak mortals, he couldn't permit these ones to live. If Titus discovered the intrusion, he might decide to launch a retaliatory attack and Lady Lijuan needed more time to return to her strength.
"Is it possible the scholar lied?" one of his lieutenants asked after another futile day's searching.
"No." He thought of how Andromeda had sat with Heng, how she'd stayed even after Xi told her it was a foolish thing she did. "Her courage is of the heart and the mind, not that of a warrior. And she accepts this is the right path." The world was in chaos and needed Lijuan's millennia-deep wisdom to steady it.
Cassandra's prophecy made it clear Alexander was a threat to that future peace.
Xi would permit no threat to his lady. "However, the scholar may simply have been wrong in her estimation of Alexander's attachment to his land and to his son." Unlike Xi, Andromeda had never had any direct contact with Alexander, so the error was understandable.
"Love may have made a fool of even an Ancient." The extraordinary thing was that Xi understood Alexander's instincts because he was driven by the same. Despite the strategic weakness of such, should he ever go into Sleep, he would do so near his lady.
His lieutenant stirred. "We go to Favashi's territory?"
"Yes." To the home of Alexander's only and beloved son. "Leave two men here to carry on the search, on the chance the scholar was right. Ready the rest for flight."
23
Andromeda flew straight and true toward Amanat, her sense of aerial direction good enough that three hundred and twenty-five years earlier, she'd got herself to the Refuge while not yet an adult. With each wingbeat, she had to fight not to turn back, return to Naasir, make sure he was safe.
She knew her thoughts were irrational. Naasir was one of the Seven for a reason--he was strong and lethal. She'd seen that when they fought the reborn. He'd taken down three for every one of hers.
He was so beautiful to watch in motion, pure grace and wildness.