Astaad inclined his head. "And these times of war make travel difficult. Mele did enjoy her time in New York earlier this year. Thank you for hosting her."
"It was my pleasure." The other woman was a scholar rather than a hunter, but she and Elena had clicked from the first. "Mahiya also loved spending time with her. I hope she'll visit again."
"She would be delighted to do so," Astaad said, "but I find it difficult to have her far from me." His features altered, tension humming beneath his skin as shadows darkened his eyes. "I have faith in your honor, Raphael, but I do not have such faith in all our brethren--I can see them harming Mele to get to me. Many know that of all my concubines, she is the most favored."
"I wish I could disagree," Raphael said in a tone as grim. "But honor is no longer what it once was."
Astaad stroked his neat black goatee, nodding slowly in silence.
Elena's blood chilled without warning, her spine stiffening. She caught a sensual, smoky perfume the next second. Not too thick, not cloying. Just right.
Curling her fingers into her palm to still the itch to go for a weapon, she kept her expression neutral with sheer strength of will as Michaela came to stand beside Astaad. "How is Dahariel?" she asked the other archangel. "I have not seen him these many months."
This is interesting.
Archangel, you have a talent for understatement.
15
Astaad raised a thin black eyebrow. "My second is as strong and hale as he ever was. He hasn't succumbed to a mystery illness, gone mad from the toxin, or had an accident befall him."
Michaela threw back her head and laughed and it was an exquisite sound. Her eyes were sparkling when she looked at Astaad again, her amusement apparently genuine. "Ah, you know how to wound me, old friend." She sent Raphael a fond glance. "Not all of my lovers have come to such terrible ends."
The implication was clear but Elena was no new consort easily manipulated by venomous barbs. "If you'll excuse me," she said to Astaad before shooting Raphael a smile, "I see Hannah calling me over."
Raphael held her in place with the gentle pressure of his fingertips on her lower back. "In fact, if you could excuse us both," he said to Astaad and Michaela. "I must speak to Elijah before dinner begins, on a matter to do with our shared border."
"Of course. We will talk again." Astaad lifted Elena's hand to his lips for a good-bye that fit him. She'd come to realize that the Archangel of the Pacific Isles had a decidedly romantic side. She could see why Mele and his other women adored him.
"Careful, Raphael," Michaela murmured with a touch of malice in her tone, "or I'll start to think you do not like me."
"Has there been a man born who does not like you?"
Raphael's question seemed to delight the female archangel. She was beaming when they left--and didn't seem to realize that Raphael had simply posed the question, not answered it. "So," Elena said once they were out of earshot, "the Bitch Queen is still intent on hitting on you."
"Sadly, she will remain forever unfulfilled. I do not sleep with spiders who eat their mates after sex."
Elena bit back a laugh, couldn't quite manage it when Raphael leaned in to say, "I prefer women with knives."
Laughter rippling out of her, she kissed him quick and fast, and as she drew back, she saw Favashi take in the interaction from where the Archangel of Sumeria stood with Neha. There was something sad about Favashi's lovely face at that instant, a terrible, deep-down sadness. It was gone a heartbeat later, wiped away to be replaced by archangelic impassiveness.
"You said Favashi and Rohan were close once."
"Very," Raphael responded. "He would've stood by her side had she accepted it, but Favashi has never been satisfied. She wants the strongest, the most powerful. Alexander's son was a powerful general but he wasn't enough for her."
"I think she's regretting that choice." Her heart hurt for the other woman. "He had a good life before Lijuan murdered him, didn't he?"
"He had a life many a man would covet," Raphael reassured her. "The evidence of that stands beside Alexander."
"Yes." Xander was young and green, but it was obvious even on short acquaintance that he'd been deeply loved and had known stability all his life. The murder of his parents hadn't broken him. It had dented him a little, but he'd recover, especially since he had his grandfather by his side.
"Hannah," she said, the two of them having reached the other woman and her consort. "I'm so sorry but I used you as an excuse to escape a certain conversation. Please talk to me."
Tucking her arm through Elena's, Hannah smiled. "You may use me as an escape from Michaela any time you wish." Her lips twisted into a very un-Hannahlike expression. "Do you know she tried to seduce Elijah once? After we'd been together for a century!"
Elena's jaw dropped. "No."
"She apparently thought he'd have tired of his 'little artist' by then." An arch look. "Unfortunately for her, Elijah has an astonishing appreciation for art."
Elijah smiled a slow smile at his consort's teasing, his golden hair shining under the lights that poured down from the chandeliers above and his wings a sweep of pure white. "It has always been about the art," he said in a solemn tone that made his lover's eyes dance. "I am Hannah's most devoted patron."
"Talking of art," Hannah said after wrinkling her nose at Elijah in a way that was far too adorable, "come see this." The other woman led her to a section of the Atrium hidden behind a hanging wall.
"Wow." Breath rushing out of her, Elena just stared.
The artwork was another mosaic but it was far more intricate than the one she'd been staring at earlier. Each tiny square had been perfectly fitted to create the stunning image of an angel midfall, a spear through his heart that came out on the other side of his body. His wings were pure white splattered with the red of his blood, his hair a deep brown, his closed eyes making his eye color impossible to see.
Still . . . "Looks like Gian except for the wings."
"I had not seen that, but yes, you are right. Perhaps he was the model for the artist?"
"Maybe," she said, thinking of the conversation she'd overhead, of the "betrayal" the two other Luminata had referenced. Arrow through the heart wasn't exactly a subtle image--and what did it say that Gian had allowed this to stay up here for who knows how long? "It's a strange thing to have here. Aren't the Luminata all about inner peace?"
"Immortals are never so simple, Ellie. The potential for violence lives in the most powerful of us always. We have too much power for it to be otherwise."
Elena thought of all the deaths she'd seen since becoming an angel, compared it to the violence she'd experienced in her previous life, found herself nodding. Immortals took violence to the next level. "There's a signature in that corner."
"Where?" Hannah frowned. "Oh, how did you see that? It's minuscule."
"I don't know. My eye just went to it." She tried to bring the signature into focus but it was too high up in the mosaic to make out. "A shy artist."
"Like Aodhan. He often hides his signature."
They stayed in front of the mosaic for some time, taking in the intricate details as Elena tried to find a clue in the art. She saw nothing she hadn't already seen, but then Gian came to stand beside her and she realized he must've been watching her again. It wasn't as if she and Hannah were easily visible from the main section of the Atrium.
"This piece speaks to you?"
Elena said the expected thing. "Yes." She turned to look at Gian, steeling herself to be the focus of his disturbingly intent gaze . . . and still had to clench her stomach to keep from betraying her surprise at how close he stood.
His wings were almost touching hers, a breach of etiquette that could be deadly for him. Because while Gian was powerful, Raphael was an archangel. And Gian wasn't one of his Seven, whom he trusted to be so familiar with his consort. Elena wasn't as sensitive about her wings as normal angels, but this was inappropriate enough that she wanted to reach for her knife, put it at his throat, and tell him to
back off.
Taking a small step away from him instead, using the excuse of including Hannah in their conversation, she said, "Do you know the artist?"
"A mortal collective. Dead many centuries now."
"Oh, I didn't want to hear that," Hannah murmured. "Such talent is rare."
Gian shrugged and Elena expected him to say something along the usual lines about how mortals were born and they died, only for more to be born. Instead, he said, "Great beauty and great talent lie within mortals. I believe they burn hotter with it for their shorter lifetimes."
The silvery sound of a bell broke the strange tension in the air.
"It is time for dinner," Gian said, waving his hand forward. "Please. I will follow."
Elena went ahead with Hannah, and the entire time she had Gian at her back, she was dead certain he was staring at her. She hoped he saw not her bare back but the knife she wore along her spine.
*
Raphael's hunter said nothing until their escort left them at the door to their suite after the dinner. Then, she said, "I want to fly."
"I was about to say the same." Raphael needed clean, fresh air untainted by politics or secrets. "Aodhan, do you wish to join us?"
"Yes."
The simple answer said all too much about Aodhan's need for freedom.
"Give me two minutes to change." Elena pushed into the suite. "I've got zero desire to flash my underwear at the Luminata."
Raphael's lips curved. No other consort or archangelic lover would ever say those words. Only his Elena. Would you like a shield of glamour?
No, I think the bathroom is safe--it doesn't set off any of my instincts. What do you think?
I think even if the Luminata are watching us in some fashion, to spy on the bathing chamber would go against rules of behavior so ingrained that it simply could not be justified by angels this old.
Good.
Deciding to wait for her where he was, in the hallway outside the open door to their suite, he locked eyes with Aodhan, the angel just over a foot away, and spoke in a voice that would carry only between the two of them. "Are the walls impacting you?" He'd learned to be blunt with Aodhan--the angel was too good at deflecting otherwise.
Aodhan spread, then resettled, his wings. The filaments glittered even in the relatively dim light of the hallway. "Yes," he answered after a long pause, his voice almost inaudible. "But I remain able to carry out my task."
"If I thought you incapable, you wouldn't be here." Even before the issue with Remus had come up, Raphael had taken a calculated risk in assigning Aodhan as Elena's backup--the angel had problems being shut inside for too long, but of all the Seven aside from Jason, he was the best at detecting the undercurrents in any given situation. Because even prior to arriving at Lumia, Raphael had worked out that any danger here would be a thing of stealth.
When Aodhan glanced away to the left, his shoulders stiff, Raphael realized he needed to be even blunter. "I wouldn't have made you Elena's backup if I didn't trust you to hold the line to the death if need be. You know what she is to me." Everything.
The other angel faced him once more, his spine no longer so stiff. "Sire," he said, a world of unspoken things in that single word.
After glancing down the hallway, as if to ensure they remained alone, Aodhan stayed with vocal speech. Raphael knew he'd already checked the hallway and the suites for any false walls or hidden passageways where someone might hide. The suites on either side of theirs were empty.
Elena had looked for technological devices before her bath earlier today, made the call that the Luminata had only accepted so much modernization, then halted. Electric lights and hot water, yes. Any kind of satellite or antenna, no. Neither did they appear to have phones of any variety. So any spying they did would be of the low-tech variety using their superior knowledge of Lumia.
"I am disturbed by how interested the Luminata are in Ellie."
"Explain." Though he'd been aware of Elena's position in the room every second, Raphael had been forced to keep the majority of his attention on the other archangels rather than the Luminata, the politics of the Cadre currently a perilous sea.
"The brothers watch her when they think there is little or no chance that their interest will be detected. Not all of them, but all those who were at the event tonight--and they are all senior members of the sect, at least five hundred years in the fold."
Raphael's blood iced over, not in fear but in a determination as ruthless as it was dangerous. "Is there a threat in their gaze?"
"No, but it's not simple curiosity in an angel-Made. There is something more."
Raphael considered all the options. "It's possible the Luminata are no longer as neutral as they have always previously been. She may be a target."
"I will continue to watch and to listen," Aodhan said. "If there is a threat, given the way the Luminata move and the secrecy that clings to them, it will be an assassin's blade in the dark rather than open battle."
Such an attack couldn't hurt Raphael, but Elena was vulnerable. In many ways, she was weaker than even a comparatively young vampire. "I'll warn her." He couldn't stop his hunter from being who she was, wouldn't clip her wings, but he could give her the weapons she needed to survive.
She appeared in the doorway on that thought, striding out dressed in black jeans and a simple T-shirt in dark gray, the wing slits closed with small buttons at the bottom. She'd pulled her hair back in a ponytail, and though her makeup remained, she was once more the hunter for whom he'd first fallen, her "dress" blade replaced by forearm gauntlets that held her throwing knives, and her crossbow and gun worn openly on either thigh. On her back was the closed sheath that held a full quiver of bolts.
Yes, he loved her in all her faces, but this face, it was her truest one.
They moved in silence down the hallways. And as they did, Raphael told her of Aodhan's observations, warned her of the possible risk to her.
"I think it's something else," she replied. "That's what I wanted to talk to you ab--" She cut herself off as they spotted a Luminata flowing down the hallway. We'll talk in the air, she added mind to mind.
Keeping his silence until they reached the courtyard in which they'd originally landed, Raphael then wrapped his arms around Elena's waist. "Let them assume you do not have the ability for a vertical takeoff," he murmured against her ear. "It gives you one more weapon in your arsenal."
A small nod from his consort as she wrapped her arm around his neck and they rose into the air, her weight nothing to Raphael's archangel strength. Aodhan rose after them, having stayed below to watch their backs. Unlike his usual preference, today he remained low while they went high.
Releasing Elena once they were at a high enough altitude that she could sweep out into a stable position without difficulty, he flew beside her as she headed toward the mountains in the distance. They were farther away than they appeared and the three of them only reached the nearest peak after about twenty-five minutes of flight.
Landing, Elena blew out a breath. "Man, that felt good!"
She waved up at Aodhan, who continued to glide across the sky.
The angel dipped his wings to show he'd seen her.
Smiling, Elena walked to the very edge of a cliff and took a seat, her legs hanging over the edge and her wings spread on the stony surface behind her. Raphael sat beside her. Except for the change from day to night, the view was similar to when they'd arrived at Lumia. The stronghold stood in their direct line of sight, all graceful curves atop a gentle hill, its windows glowing with light.
"Beauty and peace in luminescence," he murmured. "That is their motto according to the few Luminata I spoke to in the time prior to dinner."
"Total BS," Elena scowled. "That place seethes. That's the right word. Seethes. There's all this stuff below the surface and it's something ugly."
It was a deeply felt reaction to a stronghold and a sect she'd earlier described as merely "spooky." "Tell me."
So she did, laying
out the conversation she'd overheard about a woman with hair of near-white and skin of dark gold. She was right--the two Luminata could've been talking only about her. No one else in the entire immortal world had the same looks as Elena. No one. "It appears you may have accidentally stumbled upon an ancestor."
Elena blew out a breath. "Sounds like it, doesn't it?" Eyes narrowed, she said, "Funny coincidence, don't you think?"
"Or not a coincidence at all," Raphael murmured. "The entire world saw images of you after the battle in New York." The most iconic images had been taken by people on the ground as he fell with her broken body in his arms, her hair a pale banner and his wings eaten away by angelfire.
His chest squeezed still when he thought of how close he'd come to losing her, losing the chance to build this life that made immortality a gift. "The Luminata had to know I'd bring you with me if they called a meeting."
Snorting, Elena said, "I don't have delusions of grandeur--I don't think they called a meeting of the Cadre just to see me close up, but I do think it might be a nice side benefit." Her throat moved. "But it's clear Gian was involved with someone who looked like me. What are the chances it could've been my grandmother?"
16
Raphael thought of what he'd glimpsed in the eyes of the Luminata leader when he first greeted Elena. Gian hadn't stepped over any lines, which was why he was still alive. But there had been distinct male admiration in his gaze. "We can't know until we track down your family line and discover if the unusual coloring is strong in the line, or if your grandmother was the first."
Lips twisting, Elena stared out at Lumia. "Whoever Gian's lover was, these guys could put me on the path to finding the truth about that side of my history, but I have the feeling no one's going to just answer my questions if I ask."
"The angels you overheard, you should find out how long they've been Luminata."
"Why?"
"Because unless they knew Gian in the outside world, it's possible Gian was already Luminata when he was involved with the unknown woman. And not just a brother--he's been the Luminata for centuries."
Elena sucked in a breath. "He'd have broken his vows. Shit, if that's true, no wonder it's verboten to discuss it."
Gripping his protective instincts in a fierce hold, Raphael spread his wings so that his left wing was lying across her back. "If the Cadre meeting drags on as I expect it to, you'll have several days to explore Lumia and try to unearth the truth. But never forget--angelic secrets can be deadly."