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Ten minutes later, when she located the archangel, it wasn’t within the cool confines of her private palace, but walking the ramparts, looking down at the city that was her own. Keeping her wings neatly to her back, her emotions under rigid control, Mahiya watched the archangel nod to the visitors walking or riding up the steep, curving path to the fort. Neha didn’t allow modern vehicles on the pathway or within the fort itself, but elephants, camels, and horses were considered acceptable means of transport.
“Have you forgotten who it is you come to speak to?” It was a silken question.
“I apologize if I have misstepped, my lady. ” Once, the words would’ve been knife shards in her throat. Now, they were nothing but tools she used to distract the archangel while she worked to break out of this prison.
Silence. Neha’s wings a sweep of cool white scattered with a rare few jewel blue filaments that echoed Mahiya’s own feathers. The familial connection showed itself in other ways, too, but only to someone who knew what it was they searched for, and those old enough to deduce the truth also knew never to speak of it.
To everyone else, Mahiya was a distant descendant of Neha’s the archangel had taken in out of kindness after the death of her unnamed parents. That the newborn child had appeared eight months after Eris’s incarceration and Nivriti’s assumed execution had further distanced any connection that might’ve been made by most. Few could imagine that Neha had been cruel enough to have kept her sister chained through the months of her pregnancy, but Mahiya had heard the story from Neha’s own lips.
“A gift on your hundredth birthday. ” The archangel’s smile caused a chill along Mahiya’s spine. “The history of your becoming. ”
Angels didn’t easily die, but a female angel was most vulnerable after childbirth, especially a childbirth where her womb had been cut open with a rusty blade, her baby literally torn out of her by uncaring hands, her internal organs left to spill to the floor. Add in a lack of food and water, and the thin, thin air at the top of the distant mountain fort where her mother had apparently been held, and Nivriti had stood no chance.
Even then, powerful as she’d been, it must’ve taken her years of agony to starve to total death.
“You give offense by existing,” Neha said at last, and it was an almost absent comment. “Tell me about Jason. ”
Mahiya did, and it was the truth . . . what she spoke of it in any case. As Jason had pointed out, she could hardly accuse Neha of murder and hope to live. “He appears to be upholding the vow,” she concluded, “and working to unearth the identity of the murderer or murderers. ”
Neha’s eyes focused on some distant aspect Mahiya couldn’t see, the silk sari Neha wore now a cool champagne bordered in bronze, the folds pinned with neat precision on her shoulder by an antique brooch. Her blouse was a bronze that echoed the border, the cut perfect, the intricate back work necessary to accommodate wings done with such precision that the fit remained flawless.
No one, Mahiya thought, could say the Archangel of India was not the most elegant of creatures, but Mahiya alone understood the vindictive depth of hatred that had driven Neha for so long. It hadn’t surprised her in the least when Anoushka was found guilty of crimes against a child—the angel had watched her own mother raise a child for the sole purpose of vengeance after all. Kindness to a thousand other children could not eradicate the evil taint of that single heinous act.
“Do you mourn your father?” Neha asked into the silence.
“I mourn who he could’ve been. ” There had been promise in Eris, and perhaps if he’d had better guidance as a youth, as a husband, he might have fulfilled it. That was as much forgiveness as she could give him, because he’d been an adult, too, had made his own choices.
“In that we are in agreement, child of my blood’s blood. ”
Mahiya went motionless—it never augured anything but ill for her when Neha referred to the ties that connected them. However, today, the archangel simply tilted her face to the burning heat of the sun, allowing it to wash over the golden brown of her skin, imbuing it with warmth. At that moment, Mahiya could imagine why her people saw her as a benevolent goddess.
“I first met him when I was an angel of a thousand. ” The words were soft, her gaze on a past long gone. “At four hundred, he was barely an adult to my mind, and I treated him as such. Irresponsible, I thought, but beautiful and with such masculine charm. Our paths did not cross again until I had become an archangel, and Eris a man elegant and confident. ”
A hot desert wind waved over them a second later, breaking Neha’s reverie. “Have you ever loved, Mahiya?”
Knowing what was coming, she steeled her spine. “No. ”
“Not even Arav?”
There it was, the blow that reminded her of a humiliation that had crushed her young heart, threatened to fracture her fledgling spirit. “I was a child then. What did I know of love?” However, she’d learned that pretty words were not to be trusted—and that she had a strength she’d never before understood.
“My daughter is dead,” Neha said, in an apparent non sequitur, “and so is my husband and consort. Some would say I am being punished for what I did to you and your mother. ” Dark eyes on Mahiya’s face. “Do you think I am being punished, Mahiya?”
If you believe so. For your karma is of your own making.
“It is not my place to think such things, my lady. ” Mahiya used every ounce of skill she’d picked up from her years in the court to hide her thoughts, keep her voice expressionless. “I am only grateful for your kindness in giving me a home. ”
Neha’s lips curved, but the ice in her gaze remained frigid. “A pretty speech. Perhaps you will prove interesting, after all. ” A slight motion of a slender hand, and Mahiya knew she’d been dismissed.
Walking the wide pathway along the ramparts until she came to steps that led down into the sprawling main courtyard—built at a time when ground armies were mounted on elephants—she made her way down with slow grace, though she wanted nothing more than to spread her wings and fly off into the mountains. That deadly chance was one she’d save for last, when she had no other hope.
“Yes. You matter. ”
Hugging Jason’s quiet words to her heart, her faith in his integrity an instinct she had no will to fight, Mahiya crossed the stone of the courtyard with measured steps. Open as it was, with only a few miniature trees in large planters on the edges, she could feel a hundred eyes on her—guards, courtiers, servants.
She acknowledged those who acknowledged her, but stopped for no one . . . until a tall, handsome angel with skin of darkest brown and eyes of smoky gray walked into her path, his wings a mottled brown two shades paler than his skin. And she understood why Neha had spoken of the man who had taught Mahiya her first and most lasting lesson about love.
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“Mahiya, my sweet. ” Arav went as if to take her hand in preparation for lifting it to his mouth, but she halted that by the polite expedient of a small bow, hands clasped together in greeting in front of her.
“Sir,” she said, and in her mind, it was an insult. “I did not know you visited my lady. ”
“Of course I visit Neha. ” A charming smile he’d once convinced Mahiya was for her alone.
Now she trusted no man’s smile . . . and was starting to trust a man who smiled not at all. It was an impossible thing, but there it was. She had more trust in an enemy spymaster than she had in any other person in this fort—Jason’s truths might be dark and often brutal, but they were never lies wrapped in acidic sweetness that could corrode.
“She and I are friends of an age. ” Arav’s gaze lifted to where Neha stood on the ramparts, her gaze cityward. “And of course, I have not seen you, my favorite lover, for many a year. ”
“I am no longer your lover and have not been for centuries. ” She felt defiled by the memory of how she’d allowed him to take her innocence with a satisfaction she’d then mistaken for
care. “I wish you a good visit, but I must be on my way. ”
Arav blocked her when she would’ve walked around him. To insist would be to cause a scene, and while Mahiya had no compunction against slapping Arav if need be, giving in to the urge while Neha stood so close could be dangerous. Because in one thing Arav did not lie—he and Neha did have a friendship.
To this day, she didn’t know if Arav had been acting under orders when he seduced then threw Mahiya away like trash, or if it had been simple chance, the male in front of her taking advantage of an untutored girl who did not enjoy her archangel’s favor and thus had no one from whom Arav might fear reprisal.
“I hear you share rooms with one who has sworn a blood vow. ” Arav’s eyes glittered. “Raphael’s pet mute. ”
Mute? It was an insult so incomprehensible as to have no impact. Jason didn’t chatter, but he wasn’t a wholly silent creature—he simply chose not to speak until he had something to say. “Neha,” she said, with glacial politeness, “appears to hold him in high esteem. ”
His lips twisted in a reflection of the putrid inner self she hadn’t seen until it was too late. “She is grieving. ”
Ah. “Is that why you’re here? To offer solace?”
“It is a friend’s prerogative. ”
“A friend who wishes to take Eris’s place. ”
“I am stronger than he ever was. ” Arrogance backed by fact; Arav was one of Neha’s generals. “When I am consort,” he said, gripping her jaw between thumb and forefinger before she could flinch away, “I will ask Neha to give you to me as my special pet. ”
Fool. Mahiya twisted out of his grip, heedless of whether it might attract Neha’s attention. Because if there was one thing the archangel had never done, it was to overlook the mistreatment of women in her court. Any man found to have forced, beaten, or coerced a woman was summarily punished by having parts of his body amputated—the worse the assault, the more he lost, until some didn’t survive to regenerate.
It did not matter if the woman was in favor or not, rich or poor, peasant or courtier. The rule was absolute and part of what made Neha such a beloved queen. But that Neha, Mahiya thought suddenly, a prickling of cold along her spine, might not be the one who ruled now . . . at least not where Mahiya was concerned.
“Some would say I am being punished for what I did to you and your mother. ”
Stifling the chilling realization, she favored Arav with a scalpel-sharp smile. “Neha values loyalty in a man above all else. If she ever thinks you have plans to touch another while bound to her, Eris’s torture and disemboweling will seem a gentle punishment in comparison. ”
Paling until the loss of blood was obvious even under the darkness of his skin, Arav took two quick steps away from her. Mahiya was already gone, having used his momentary shock to skirt past and down the pathway toward the stables—petting the horses she so loved would go some way toward calming her. She felt Arav’s eyes boring between her shoulder blades until she disappeared around the corner, and knew that where he had previously seen her as a toy, he now saw her as something he wanted to break. She’d made an enemy this day.