There was no doubting it was an order.
"Sire," Janvier said, and the two of them left to head out. He'd already grabbed a black and red motorcycle jacket to replace the jacket he'd given to the woman he'd rescued, so there was only one other thing to remember.
"Grab a few bottles of blood," she said to him once they were in the main corridor. "You need more than I can give you."
His smile was wicked. "You give me plenty, sugar. And it's all good."
Rolling her eyes, she leaned in and kissed him on that pretty mouth. "Thank you." For figuring out she'd needed a smile and giving it to her.
"No thanks necessary," he said and took her hand again. "Just always be mine."
I want to grow old with you, she thought on a heartbreaking surge of love, to see the world with you, to fight with you, to kiss your sinful, laughing mouth a million times.
Giorgio had become bored with eternity, when Ashwini would give her soul to experience a single mortal lifetime with the vampire by her side without the specter of a psychological breakdown that would eventually fragment her into myriad tiny pieces.
Bitterness threatened, but she'd made her decision a long time ago, and she wasn't about to permit a monster to shake the foundations of her world. No, she'd think of her sister, of Felicity, of Lilli. None had had a chance to experience love in this way, to walk hand in hand with a man who would lay down his life for her. A day, a week, a month, a year--no matter how long she lived as a whole person, she would do it with an open heart and an unfettered spirit.
"I love you," she said as they walked to his Tower apartment, pressing her lips to his jaw.
"Cher." He turned to cup her cheek, his eyes startlingly vulnerable.
Heart raw, she stroked her fingers through his hair. "You know I do. You have to."
"Yes." A gorgeous, wild smile. "But it is nice to hear you admit it."
Kissing her laughing mouth, he murmured his own words of love, told her she owned his heart and always would. "Let's stay here," he said, sliding his hand under her jacket and sweater. "We can go to your place in the morning."
"Deal," she said just as her phone buzzed.
Holding the moss and sunlight of his gaze, one hand on his nape, she reached into her pocket with the other. "I have to check the caller ID." It could be Banli House.
"I know," said the man who understood her, accepted her.
Eyes burning, she leaned into him as she looked at the name on the screen. It wasn't Banli House, but it was a call she had to answer.
"Tanu is Tanu tonight," Arvi said, his voice holding a smile. "She'd like to see you."
42
Elena walked out to a Tower balcony with Raphael. Dmitri had just left to handle an emergency situation with Sorrow, the young woman who'd been taken by a mad archangel and changed in inexplicable ways. Honor had been training Sorrow in how to handle herself in the dark, Naasir hanging out with them, when Sorrow had had one of her unpredictable violent episodes.
Everyone was physically fine, but Sorrow was near a mental breakdown. Since Dmitri seemed to be the one person who could get through to her, Honor had called him in. Elena would never forget finding Sorrow, covered in blood and naked, in the old shed meters from the chamber of horrors that had held the remains of her friends. It infuriated her that the young woman continued to pay the price for another's evil; she hoped Sorrow would find a way to fight the poison inside her, to make it.
The survivors of Giorgio's and Cornelius's crimes would have a road as difficult to travel. Of those found in the crates, it appeared Brooke alone might be able to live a normal life and she was badly traumatized. The others had the bodies of infirm elderly people, their minds nearly broken. "Will you really let the victims choose the punishment?" she asked her archangel.
"It's the only satisfaction I can give them."
"What if they choose mercy?" Elena wouldn't, but then, she liked her justice bloody.
Raphael faced the night winds. "I would honor their wish--and I would also lock both Giorgio and Cornelius in barren cells underground, so that they can live in mercy till their deaths."
"That's why I love you, Archangel." She spread her wings, folded them back in. "Your mother seems happy." Caliane had remained at the Enclave property since her arrival, content to spend time with Raphael and to speak to Keir, though she'd also taken a liking to Montgomery.
"Yes." Turning to face Elena, Raphael held her close, their eyes locked together. "You make me proud to be yours, hbeebti." Power in every word, his emotions a fury. "I know she is difficult, but you are treating her with grace and compassion."
"She's your mom, Raphael, and she loves you." It was as simple as that. "Speaking of Caliane, we should fly back. She said she can only stay another day without putting Amanat at risk and you've already had to be at the Tower for hours to deal with Cornelius and Giorgio."
His kiss was a storm inside her, making her body ignite. "We will continue this when we are alone." With that, he fell backward off the balcony before twisting in midair and rising.
Show-off. Taking flight herself, she waved to her Legion escort, recognizing him now. The Legion were like identical twins, times seven hundred and seventy-seven. Each was the same, and yet once you got to know them, each was unique.
This one was a sweetheart and not the least bit creepy on his own.
He waved back, and when she went to her greenhouse after landing, he came with her. Go spend time with your mother, Raphael, she said when her archangel frowned at her. Caliane and I, we've made our peace. Or at least begun the process. That doesn't mean we want to see each other any more than necessary.
His lips curved, the sea a crashing wildness in her mind. I will see you in our bed, Guild Hunter.
Count on it, Archangel.
*
Ashwini walked into Banli House to be told that Tanu and Arvi were in the winter-and-night-cloaked gardens. Stepping outside, Janvier by her side, she followed the sound of animated voices to find her sister sitting on a wrought-iron garden seat under the moonlight, Arvi by her side. Tanu had a thick blanket wrapped around her, while Arvi was wearing his coat.
They were both smiling, their conversation fluid.
"Ashi!" Tanu's face lit up. "Come, sit." She held her blanket open.
Heart breaking into a thousand shards of pain and hope, Ashwini accepted the welcome and leaned into her sister's side. Arvi rose at the same instant, held out his hand. "We never met properly. I'm Arvan, Ashwini's older brother."
"Janvier."
The men shook hands, then Arvi retook his seat beside Tanu, while Janvier located a metal outdoor chair, brushed off the snow, and set it up to Ashwini's left in front of the seat. Then the four of them sat talking under the moonlight. Carl brought out coffee at some stage, and, warmed by the liquid, they remained outside for hours more.
Tanu was vivacious and intelligent and occasionally sharply sarcastic in her replies as she'd been before the degeneration. And Arvi, he laughed helplessly at several of Tanu's retorts. But for that single incident five years past, Ashwini hadn't seen him that way since she was a young girl. It made her realize just how much of her brother had broken when Tanu fragmented.
Throat tight, she looked helplessly toward Janvier. He reached quietly under the blanket to take her hand. The two of them were silent for the most part, Ashwini content to sit with her sister's arm around her while Tanu and Arvi spoke, two pieces of a whole that had been torn apart and who'd found one another again for this single magical night.
"It's time," Tanu said with a smile as fire kissed the sky on the horizon, dawn whispering its arrival. "I'm so happy to have spent this time with you and your Janvier, Ashi." Her sister hugged her tight before releasing her from the blanket. "You grew up as smart and as wild and as beautiful as I always knew you would."
Reluctant to go, but knowing she had to, Ashwini rose to her feet to find herself pulled into her brother's warm, strong arms. "I'm sorry for not being the big br
other you needed," Arvi said against her ear. "But I have always, always loved you. I am so proud of you for what you've become."
Tears choking her throat, she hugged him with all her might. "It's okay, Arvi. I understand."
She hugged Tanu again as well, her arms wanting to hold on forever. "I love you, Tanu. You and Arvi both."
Face devoid of darkness, Tanu kissed her on both cheeks. "Live an extraordinary life, won't you, Ashi? Fate has promised me you'll make it."
Ashwini couldn't speak. Nodding jerkily, she grabbed Janvier's hand and left the garden. It wasn't until they were in the car halfway down the long drive that she let the sobs come.
"Cher." Janvier pulled over to the side, beside a winter-barren oak and hauled her across the stick shift into his lap. "Ashwini, what's wrong?" One hand on her hair, he held her against him, his other arm locked around her waist. "Please talk to me."
She couldn't, not for a long time. The first wave of the sun's rays had warmed up the sky when she whispered, "They're gone."
Janvier grew motionless around her. When he moved, it was to press a kiss to her hair. Voice thick, he said, "You knew they were saying good-bye."
"Arvi started dying the day Tanu began to disappear." Her brother had done what was necessary to bring Ashwini up, had even become a celebrated surgeon, but he'd been a ghost of the Arvi she'd once known. "Tonight . . . today, Tanu was herself, truly herself, for the first time in years, and I saw Arvi again."
"They made the decision together."
"Yes. Everyone used to say Arvi was the alpha of the twins, but they were always equal." And so, after years of saving Tanu from herself, Arvi had waited for her to come back long enough to make certain of her wishes, waited for a decision uncontaminated by the mysterious disease that haunted the women of their family.
Swallowing past the lump of grief inside her, she reached into her jacket pocket. "Arvi gave me this." He'd slid it in during the final hug she would ever receive from her big brother.
Janvier took the small envelope, shook it open in the passenger seat. A golden key fell out, along with a folded piece of paper. "I think it's to a safe-deposit box."
She smiled through the sadness. "That's Arvi, organized to the end."
When Janvier passed her the notepaper, she unfolded it to find instructions on how to access the box. Arvi had written in his strong, sloping hand:
Everything you need to settle our estates is in there. I know we're leaving you alone, but I've made sure you'll be able to afford every resource you could ever need.
Tanu says she's dreamed a dazzling future for you, and I want to believe her, but if fate isn't so kind, then you'll have the money to fight it. I couldn't find the answer, but another surgeon might.
Make sure Tanu's brain is autopsied; compare it to the results of Mom's autopsy--I had it done privately after the accident. The report is in the safe-deposit box, along with full scans of her brain. The associated slides are in a special medical storage facility you'll find the details of in the box. Make sure the pathologist follows the format exactly so you get all the required information. If he balks once he has cause of death, hire a private pathologist to redo that part.
You've lived without fear for so long. Keep on doing it, keep on being the strongest of us all.
With all my love--Arvi
The grief slammed into her anew and with it a beam of blinding knowledge. "Don't go with me, Janvier." She sat up, held the beautiful moss green eyes that had laughed with her across the world. "Don't make that choice when it happens for me."
Arms locked around her, Janvier shook his head, his jaw set in a way she'd seen only rarely. She'd lost the argument every single time. "No," he said, "that you cannot ask of me."
"Yes, I can." She gripped his jacket on either side, tried to shake him. "Think of Arvi--he saved so many lives." Angry tears formed. Blinking them away, she said, "Those gifted hands will never again pick up a scalpel, never again give someone hope."
"He lived a shadow life," Janvier growled. "You said it yourself. It was his choice to go today, when he was happier than he'd been for decades!"
"Arvi has been heading toward this since the day Tanu was first diagnosed! You're whole, healthy."
"I won't be after you!" His fury filled the car, his voice raw. "I won't be me after you."
"Honor came back for Dmitri," Ashwini whispered, sharing a secret she'd spoken to no other. "I promise you I'll come back for you." She might not wear the same face, the same name, but she'd know him. Always, she'd know him. "No matter what it takes. I'll come back."
His eyes glittering wet, Janvier's fingers dug into her hips. "You're sentencing me to an eon alone. How can you ask that?"
"Because you're strong enough to bear the pain."
"No, I'm not."
She kissed him, her hand curved around his neck. "You need to be. I need to know you'll be here when I return."
He wouldn't look at her, his muscles rigid, and she knew she'd lost the battle today. But it wasn't over. The disease inside her might snuff out her light, but she would not let it snuff out Janvier's.
*
Fourteen days later and a week after Felicity and Lilli were laid to rest, Janvier drove his Ashblade high into the mountains, where she scattered the ashes of her sister and her brother on the wind. According to the autopsies, Tanushree and Arvan Taj had died of heart failure. Inexplicable, said the pathologist, but not unheard-of in twins. Whatever it was that connected them, it sometimes snipped both lives short when only one was wounded.
Two syringes had been found in Arvan Taj's pocket, filled with a drug that would've stopped their hearts if the needle was stabbed into the organ, the plunger pushed down. Neither syringe had been uncapped, much less used. The siblings bore no marks on their bodies.
It was as if once they'd made the decision to go, their hearts had simply stopped beating. They'd been found at peace on the wrought-iron seat where Ashwini and Janvier had last seen them, Arvan's arm around Tanu's shoulders and her head against his chest, their eyes closed and the sunrise warm on their faces.
The pathologist had done the specialist autopsy requested on Tanu's brain, but the results had appeared ordinary at first glance. However, when Ash took that report and its associated findings, as well as her mother's, to a neurosurgeon who had been a friend of Arvan's, the doctor had discovered an abnormality deep in the temporal lobe. A tiny, tiny malformation that was identical in mother and daughter, except that Tanu's was slightly larger.
"It's like nothing I've ever seen," the doctor had said. "No one could've ever picked it up without having the two slides side by side." His brow had furrowed. "I don't think it had anything to do with her death," he'd told Ash, unaware of the Taj history on the female side. "But even if it was malignant, there would've been nothing we could do. It's in an inoperable location and I don't know of any drug created to deal with something like this."
Ash had taken the news better than Janvier. It was Ash who'd held him, who had comforted him. His strong, beautiful lover.
"There," she whispered now, putting down the second urn. "I felt them go. I think they were waiting to make sure I was all right." The long white cotton scarf she wore around her neck, the same color as her tunic and leggings, threw the sorrow on her face into sharp relief, the wind blowing back the rich silk of her hair.
Sliding his arm around her, he stood with her on the mountaintop and he thought of the promise she'd asked him to make. "If you're right and people sometimes come back, then I'll come back with you." He couldn't imagine it any other way. His soul would find hers, no matter the unknown beyond death.
"You are an awful, mule-stubborn man."
"I love you, too."
A quiet, husky laugh as she tilted up her head. "I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't let this thing in my head take you, too."
"I'm over two hundred years old," he reminded her. "By rights, I should already be dust in the earth. Eternal life for its own sake h
as no meaning for me--I'm angry only because I won't get to live it with you."
Reaching up to stroke her fingers through his hair, she sighed. "Let's have hope in Tanu's dream and discuss your stubbornness another time." A hard pull of his hair that made him wince. "When I have a kukri at your throat."
He nipped her lower lip, smiled. "Full throttle all the way, cher."
Her eyes warmed. "All the way, cuddlebunny."
43
Titus arrived with only three warriors the night before the block party was scheduled to begin. Elena didn't have to be told that the small unit was both a gesture of trust and a display of his confidence in his own strength. Folding in his wings as he landed on the Tower roof, his warriors coming down behind him--two males and one female--Titus headed toward Elena and Raphael.
"Titus." Raphael walked forward to meet the other man halfway and held out his arm. "You are welcome."
Titus grabbed Raphael's forearm, Raphael's own hand closing over his in the clasp of warriors. "I am glad you are here to welcome me, Raphael," he said, his words a boom that made Elena realize the archangel usually modulated his voice so as not to drown out everyone else in his vicinity. "You are a pup, but a strong one I'd have at my back in any battle."
"And I would have you, though you are heading toward frail old age."
Titus's laugh at Raphael's riposte was huge. "Well met, young pup. Well met."
Breaking the handclasp with a deep smile, Raphael turned to Elena. "My consort."
She stepped forward. "Archangel Titus," she said, keeping it formal until he gave an indication that informality was welcome.
Her restraint was thanks to Jessamy. Elena had been in Remedial Protocol School that afternoon, since this was the first time she was welcoming an archangel to her city who had no consort and who was unrelated to Raphael, but who'd known Raphael as a boy and had, in fact, helped train him.
All of which, apparently, changed everything.
At this rate, she thought with an inward snort, she'd have the protocol thing sorted in, oh, another nine hundred years, give or take. "You made good time."
Titus made his reply in the softer tone she was used to hearing from him. "A good wind."
"If you and your people would follow us," she said, hoping Raphael was right and Titus was laid-back enough that she could soon drop the protocol crap. It was making her head ache. At least she hadn't had to put on a gown for this. "We have prepared suites for you."