Waving to Montgomery when she saw the butler standing perfectly suited on the lush green of the lawn, she luxuriated in the cool air that ran over her wings and tugged at the small strands of hair that had escaped her tight braid. Aodhan had gone high, as he preferred, but Raphael was flying nearby. And his wings, they were dangerous white fire.
He could’ve outpaced her in a heartbeat, but he stayed on the same drafts, and when she looked over to him, he glanced back with a smile that was for her alone. They didn’t speak; there was no need for it, the two of them in perfect harmony as they dipped and angled and rode along the winds. It felt as if they arrived at the airport far too fast.
Landing first, Raphael waited for her to join him, then the two of them watched Aodhan descend. He was a fracture of light, so bright even in the pale dawn sunshine that Elena had to slide on sunglasses to continue to watch. Every part of him seemed to shimmer as he landed in front of her and folded back his wings.
The captain descended the steps of the plane at that instant. “Sire.” The vampire inclined his head.
Elena had been around the Tower long enough to have caught on to the subtleties in the greetings Raphael received. Dmitri never bowed his head, his and Raphael’s friendship far too deep, their trust too cemented to need it. As slight a bow as the captain had offered meant the other man was a powerful vampire who held Raphael’s trust and respect.
Elena smiled at the medium height male built like a tank, all muscle and power. “Hey, Mack.”
Dougal Mackenzie gave her a quelling look. “Consort.”
He was such a stick in the mud. It put paid to all her ideas about Scottish lairds. Okay, fine, she hadn’t actually had any ideas about Scottish lairds before meeting Dougal, but it just seemed wrong that he was so by-the-book. Maybe he was still sore that his clan had said he couldn’t be laird for any longer than the span of a natural human life. Not fair to the coming generations to have a vampire laird who could live for thousands of years.
Of course, she was just speculating since Dougal had never deigned to satisfy her curiosity. Today, he met Raphael’s eyes, said, “We’re ready to take off on your word.”
Dougal headed back inside after Raphael acknowledged the statement, while Elena raised her eyes to the sky once more. Come on, Bluebell. You know he needs you. Aodhan might be getting ever stronger, but he still permitted only Illium to touch him freely.
He wouldn’t shrug off Elena’s touch or Raphael’s, but he wouldn’t welcome it, either. It was more that he’d learned to bear it—no, that wasn’t right. He’d held on to her hand when she needed it, given her comfort. It was better to say he could break through his trauma to make contact. Only with Illium was that barrier nonexistent.
That told Elena a lot about how far Aodhan still had to go.
“Raphael, you know what happened with those two last night?” she asked when the other angel removed his dual swords and harness and took them to store inside the plane, where they would be within arm’s reach.
Raphael shook his head. “Dmitri told me both were missing all night, that is all.”
“From the way Aodhan looked at the sky before he went into the plane,” Elena said, her own eyes lifting up once again, “I have a feeling he didn’t find Illium. You think . . .”
“I do not know if your Bluebell will come here,” Raphael said. “Illium rarely takes offense—and when he does, it is often over in a flash. He forgives more generously than any other angel I know.”
That fit with everything Elena understood about Illium herself. “Then why?”
“Because this, hbeebti, isn’t only about anger.”
She thought of how Illium had fought not to cry, his body rigid. “He was really hurt.” Looking over her shoulder as Aodhan came back out to stand beside the plane, she switched to mental speech. Can we wait a little longer?
Eyes of heartbreaking blue landed on the angel who shone like a star under the sunlight. I’m afraid not. Her archangel’s voice was the cool mountain wind against her senses. “There is no more time.”
They headed up the steps of the plane on the heels of his words.
Aodhan was the last one to board, and he kept his eyes turned toward the window as the plane began to roll down the runway. He didn’t look away even after they were in the clouds . . . not until they’d gone too far for even Illium to catch up to them.
9
This part of Morocco was an arid brown and gold landscape broken up only by hardy mountain wildflowers, waving grasses, and occasional groves of deep-rooted trees that provided an unexpected kiss of green to the landscape, but it was spectacular in its starkness.
Elena had been looking forward to the feast to the senses that was Marrakech, noisy and crowded and her kind of place, but they landed even deeper inland, at a private airstrip a considerable distance from the city with which she was most familiar. From there, they flew on the wing over and into the Atlas Mountains and to a sloping peak on which sat a stronghold that was all graceful curves and arches.
Lumia was formed of thousands of small sand-colored bricks that blended into the landscape, and rather than being one big block, it was a sprawling stronghold with myriad pathways and sections that flowed into one another, giving the place a delicate and almost ethereal air. She also glimpsed two domes far apart, one of which looked like glass, the other opaque.
“It’s like the Taj Mahal,” she said to Raphael when he flew close enough. “This huge thing that somehow has an air of beautiful fragility.” The Taj, too, appeared to float against the sky.
“Lumia was designed on the principles of perfect serenity, as understood by the Luminata. Each brick, each pathway in the garden, all of it.”
While the courtyard gardens she could see from the air appeared to be manicured and green with precise placement of foliage, mountain flowers covered the hillsides that swept down to gorgeous golden meadows on which it appeared no development had ever taken place.
But for the Luminata complex, there were no other buildings or roads within sight. No vehicles. Not even people on less modern means of transport. She couldn’t even glimpse the walled border that Raphael had told her protected Lumia on three sides. There had been no wall on the side over which they’d flown, the mountains providing a natural bulwark. “When you said the Luminata like their privacy, you meant it. Are the borders patrolled?”
Raphael maintained his position at her side with a minute change in his wing balance. “The sect has a small complement of guards who ensure no one breaches Lumia’s peace, but for the most part, the people here—mortal and immortal—know that these lands are forbidden to all except by invitation.”
“They have a lot of land if we can’t see the walls.”