And he knew. Shoving Elena behind him so she wouldn’t unbalance and fall, he rose into the sky, high above the clouds, past where even Illium or Aodhan could fly. Land! It was an order blasted out to every single angel in the vicinity.
Then, and with only the slightest hesitation at the loss of the profound violence of power, he released the dark matter of it in a lightning storm that cracked the sky.
• • •
Elena fought the screaming urge to go to Raphael, the need a raw compulsion in her chest as she tried to use the sense of reason she hadn’t used earlier. Not only were her wings in bad shape, she’d be struck down by a lightning strike within seconds of takeoff. There was too much of it in the air to avoid.
She could see angels landing wherever they could all over the city, many who’d been up high simply folding their wings so they’d plummet closer to the ground in an attempt to outrace the lightning, before snapping out their wings at the last minute. She witnessed a few close calls but no injuries, Raphael’s warning having come in just enough time, but her archangel, he burned in the center of a cold white storm.
“Ellie.” Illium’s hand on her nape, Aodhan on her other side. “The Sire has gained another ability.”
No, she thought, he’d just rejected one, but kept her silence.
An hour, an eon later, there was no more lightning in the sky and Raphael winged down to hold out a hand toward her. Taking it, she stepped off the edge, their hands parting as she swept around to fly side by side with him, heading homeward—though she was dead certain he had her in his sights the entire time, ready to catch her if her injured wing threatened to collapse. But she made it home, where Raphael used his healing ability to ameliorate the damage.
She wouldn’t have been surprised if the reminder of her injury, and how it had come about, reignited his temper, but he sent his power into her in silence, the warmth of it an embrace. “You’ll be fine now, Guild Hunter.” A kiss on the back of her neck.
Skin heating in response, she turned in his arms, the glow from the library fireplace gilding them both in gold. “Talk to me, Archangel.” If she had a tendency to shut down, pretend things didn’t matter, then Raphael had the habit of handling everything himself. Not surprising, given his status as an archangel, but he had her now.
Walking to the square crystal decanter on a side table, he poured a splash of amber liquid into a tumbler and threw the liquor back in a single hit. Alcohol didn’t affect angels as it did humans, and it had no effect on Raphael, but he’d told her he liked the kick of heat, the taste. “If this is the emergence of a new power,” he said, the fire reflecting off the faceted tumbler, “then it’s one I cannot control.”
Taking the tumbler from him when his fingers tightened, threatening to turn the crystal to dust, she put it down. “You’ve only had two chances to—”
“It changes me,” he said, cutting through her words. “You sensed it attempting to take control. You were right.” His fingers clenched on the mantelpiece, his wings arcing to the floor in a display of white fire. “I could murder millions in the grip of it and not blink.”
Her stomach lurched, her eyes rising from the stunning beauty of his wings to his face. “Drop the glamour.” The instant he did, she swore.
Striding over, she traced the dark red with a fingertip. “It’s grown.” Not only that but it had curved with a jagged edge, the line thicker, darker. “This can’t be coincidence—it’s linked to the power fluctuations in some way.”
Raphael shoved away from the mantel. “It matters nothing, not when to utilize the power, I must allow it to erase my personality. I may as well give the city to Lijuan if the Raphael who rules it is one forever in the Quiet.”
Elena tried to think past her instinctive repudiation of the idea of him permanently in that place of malevolent calm where he was no longer the man she loved, the man who loved her. “The birds,” she said suddenly, something niggling at her. “The first time they fell, is it possible it wasn’t one event but two?”
Raphael’s eyes, no trace of that cold liquid black in their depths, locked with hers. “You believe it was mischance they got caught up in the wave of disease that took down the angels?”
“The sky boiled just like tonight,” she said, trying to put her instinctive realization into words. “Could be they were coming to you and were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time—remember, they were moving from Manhattan to the Enclave.”
Wings continuing to flicker with that illusion of luminous white fire until he moved out of range of the firelight, he pushed open the doors to the lawn. “You may be right.”
“But it doesn’t give us any answers, does it?”
Standing in the doorway, his eyes on the pristine snow beyond, he said, “The power, it seduced, whispering to me to weave it into my own cells.” A glance over his shoulder. “Before you, I would’ve no doubt accepted it and it would’ve destroyed me from the inside out.”
She followed him when he stepped out onto the stretch of unbroken white, a snowflake falling to dust her cheek, her wings kissed by the soft, whimsical rain. It wasn’t heavy, just enough to be pretty, covering up their tracks from the house in a glittering veil, the unexpected stars above making the ice crystals sparkle.
It seemed wrong to talk about the horrors of war and power in such a magical moment, but they had no choice. “Before you,” she whispered, “I was shut up inside my heart, protecting it from harm, and never knowing the glory I missed.” She linked her hand to his. “You and I, we’re a unit. I dare any evil on this earth to tear us apart.”
Spreading his wings, Raphael drew his warrior into his arms, and as he closed those wings around them both, he knew that while war was inevitable, the loss of his soul was not. The chill price of immortality was one Elena would never allow him to pay.
“I would rather die as Elena than live as a shadow.”
His consort’s words from their courtship—though perhaps she would not call it that—whispered into his mind. Raphael had no intention of dying or of surrendering his territory to anyone, but should he ever be forced to make that choice, he would rather go into the last goodnight as Raphael, the archangel who fell in love with a mortal, than Raphael the archangel so bloated with power that he no longer understood such an emotion.
“One thing good came out of tonight, though,” Elena said, leaning back so their eyes met, her hair wildfire against the backdrop of white. “The lightning storm will give anyone getting ready to attack second thoughts about exactly what you’ve gained in the Cascade.”
“Possibly, but what troubles me is why they haven’t already launched a direct assault.” Even with everything he and his people had done to hide the extent of the harm done to the city’s defensive force, their enemy had to suspect he or she had struck a vicious blow. “It makes me believe they wait for something, something with enough chance of so fundamentally changing the balance of power in any war that they willingly risk giving New York extra time to prepare, rather than capitalizing on the damage already done.”
“I really need that cake now.”
Startled laughter in his blood, unexpected light in the shadows, the taste of snow in her kiss. And he knew that come what may, they’d stand together. In the light and in the terrible darkness.