Touched by the gentleness in Isabel’s tone, Elena nonetheless shook her head. “Keir will need to examine the body.” Frowning, she considered the logistics of it. “He’ll need to wait till after the ball to avoid arousing suspicion, but I’m guessing the shield’s going to go up soon as the overnighting guests are all in”—Isabel nodded at her questioning look—“which means the temperature will rise.” And Kahla would begin to rot.
“Amanat has no suitable refrigeration facility,” Isabel told her, “but there is a fishing village two hours to the east. I’ll have a local drive one of their refrigerated trucks into the forest where it’ll be concealed from sight and out of earshot.”
There in the cold, Elena thought, Kahla would sit alone while the city danced.
• • •
“I am sorry, Mother,” Raphael said, as Caliane walked with him through her city, her people offering him shy smiles, their eyes drenched with love when they landed on Caliane. “Naasir told me of the loss of one of your own.”
“Kahla was a sweet girl—lively as a small bird, inquisitive as one, too.” Sorrow deep and true, followed by a whiplash of fury. “It is cowardice to take an innocent life in such a way, with no claim to the honor of open combat.”
His mother, Raphael thought, would never believe she’d just echoed the words of the hunter who was Raphael’s consort. “We will unearth the perpetrator and make his cowardice known.” It was one thing to infect a volunteer from his or her own lands, another to attempt to use a maid who knew nothing of battle.
Caliane’s expression softened as she tilted her head back to meet his gaze. “Yes, you will, my beautiful boy.”
Again, they walked in silence for many minutes.
“In the last Cascade,” he said, knowing she was the one living being old enough to know the answer, and someone who’d never betray him to another, “do you know of any archangel who heard whispers in his dreams?”
It was a strange thing to ask, but his mother simply looked thoughtful and he could feel her turning the pages of her eons-long existence. “No,” she said at last, stopping beside a wall entirely covered with hot pink blooms, her expression searching when she turned it on him. “Do you?”
He heard the concern she couldn’t hide . . . and he knew. “Father heard whispers, did he not?”
Sorrow darker and older than that caused by the loss of Kahla, a sadness that made his bones ache. “My beloved Nadiel would’ve been so proud to see who you’ve become. He always said you were the best of both of us.”
In evading his question, she’d given him his answer. His father had heard voices in his madness and now Raphael heard them, too.
22
Twenty-four hours after she’d left the temple, Elena found herself in the surreal position of getting ready to dress for a formal ball while a refrigerated truck sat not far from the city, hidden from the sight of the angels who’d soon be flying into Amanat. A number were already here, the city in a flurry of excitement, the majority of the residents unaware of Kahla’s death.
Caliane had made the decision to delay the announcement till after the ball—“for my people have worked so hard for this night”—the death to be explained as a tragic fall that broke Kahla’s neck. The young woman would still be sent into the heart of a volcano, but as part of a full funeral service that gave her friends and family an opportunity to say good-bye.
“Won’t people question the volcano?” Elena asked now, Raphael having just received the update about the funeral from Naasir.
He shook his head. “No, Amanat’s people have never buried their dead, so it’ll be seen as a fitting farewell.”
“Caliane,” she said, tightening the belt on her robe, “is she okay?” Raphael had spent time with his mother that morning, while Elena explored Amanat in Isabel’s company.
“She mourns.” His upper half shirtless, he stood at the open balcony doors of their third-level suite, looking out over the bustle of the city below. “My mother has ever treasured the people of Amanat.”
Elena couldn’t argue with that, not when she knew Caliane had taken her people into Sleep with her, she valued them so deeply. Those people, in turn, adored her with an openness and an affection so heartfelt, it gave them a rare sense of innocence and the city an unexpected warmth of heart.
“Kahla is the first she has lost since the Awakening.” His hands closed over hers when she wrapped her arms around him from the back, her cheek on the living silk of one of his wings and her palms on the rippled muscle of his abdomen. “If she could call off this ball, she would, but it’s too late.”
Elena thought of the haunting sorrow she’d glimpsed on Caliane’s face. “How does she not see anyone lesser as disposable, given how long she’s lived?” Of all the archangels Elena knew, including Raphael, it was Caliane who appeared the most attached to her people, mortal and immortal.
“I asked her the same question once as a boy,” Raphael answered. “It was after we’d been to the territories of two other archangels within a short period of time, neither of whom treated their people as I’d always seen my mother do.
“She told me there was a time when she, too, was utterly remote from the world. It was her love for my father that began the change . . . and my birth that completed it.” Echoes of time, of memories from the dawn of his life. “In becoming a mother, she found an ability to love that transcended the change engendered by time and power.”
Elena thought of the life Caliane had lived, tried to imagine the weight of so many years: To see an eon pass, then to fall in love and bear a child, only to watch your mate be consumed by a madness that forced you to execute him. And later, to be consumed by insanity yourself, cause harm to the child who was the last cherished reminder of your mate, to Sleep for over a thousand years and wake to find your son a man of incredible power . . . one who’d given wings to a mortal.
“If that happens to us,” she whispered, unable to wrap her mind around the idea of a life so long and so full of tragedy, “if we feel ourselves, who we are together, becoming lost in time, I don’t want to Sleep. I want to say good-bye when I’m still me and you’re still you.” A clean, sharp ending rather than a gradual unraveling.
Turning, Raphael cupped her face, his eyes incandescent. “Caliane and Nadiel never lost one another, Elena. My parents loved even in the madness.” And so, Raphael thought, would he.
Elena’s hands fell to his waistband, finger hooking slightly inside. “Together,” she said, and he knew she was recalling what he’d told her about Caliane’s inadvertent admission when it came to the whispers that plagued his dreams, his hunter’s words a reminder of the promise they’d made to one another.
“We fall, we fall together.”
Eyes going to his right temple now, she shook her head, jaw set. “If you dare go before me, I will haunt you in the afterlife.”
“To be haunted by my heart is no threat.” Tugging back her head, he claimed her lips. He’d meant only to initiate a kiss, needing to taste the fiery life of her, but they were by the bed seconds later, her robe falling to the carpet to leave her golden-skinned body open to his caresses. Passion a crash of sensation in his blood, he took her to the sheets, their limbs entangled and skin hot as they forged another memory that would hold through eternity.