But she seemed to like him naked.
Her eyes kept going to him, and she’d sigh and lean over and kiss him. Or she’d pet his chest. Or his thigh. It was having a predictable effect, but he could contain himself now that he’d satisfied the first bite of need. Eating the square of meat she’d fed him—that she’d made for him, he watched her pick up the Grimoire.
“It’s so beautiful,” she said, stroking the cover before opening the book to look at the pages again.
Moving until she was sitting with her back half-propped up against his side, one arm on his chest and her hair electric and wild from his loving, she read to him from the book, translating the words unknown to him as she went. “And it was said that the griffin was the mightiest of creatures, but that it had a madness inside it nothing could cure. It could not be tamed. Blood drenched the ground where it walked and though it was a peerless fighter, it could not be controlled and was a wild creature that did not know the hand of man.”
She turned the page. “Those who saw a griffin were forever marked by its regal appearance, for its violent and maddened heart was not visible on the surface. Its golden fur glinted in the sunlight and its wings took it aloft as high as angelkind. Even in its danger, it was too magnificent to kill.”
Turning, she showed him an illustration of a griffin flying in the sky beside an angel. “Can you imagine?”
The anger of memory stirred in him. “Legends like this drove Osiris. He wanted to make them true.” His claws sliced out. “Alexander’s brother was a melder and he decided to meld living beings.”
Putting down the Grimoire, Andromeda turned to fully face him. “I’m sorry,” she said, voice trembling. “I’m so sorry. All this time, I talked about the Grimoire and I never considered how it might hurt you.”
Naasir hadn’t meant for his words to wound her. “Your thoughts and wonder about mysterious creatures don’t hurt me,” he said, tugging her down into his arms and tucking her head against his neck. “It’s fun with you.” A game.
“Really?”
“Yes.” Andromeda’s heart wasn’t twisted, and she had no desire to cage or own any of these creatures. “I like hearing the things you have to say.”
Then, because it was time, he told her of the evil that had taken place on the ice. “I didn’t know about the Cascade before, but now that I do, I think Osiris must’ve gained his abilities in the last one. He was an Ancient like his brother, would’ve been alive then.”
Andromeda’s head moved against his chest as she nodded. “According to Jessamy’s research, while the Cascade most significantly affects archangels, it can also have an impact on a small percentage of other angels.” She stroked his chest, running her nails over his skin and the fine fur that striped it.
The petting made it bearable to go into the death and the dark. “Osiris had the ability to put two things together and make them one.” An ability no one had paid much heed to, for it seemed so frivolous. “At first, he melded inanimate objects for his and others’ amusement—a chair to a broom, or a sword to a stone. Then he decided to see if he could meld two living things together.” It had all been in the diaries Raphael had saved for Naasir.
“He started with plants and it worked. He is responsible for many of the most extraordinary flowers in the world—flowers that aren’t one color but many, or that are so unusual a hybrid, no one can work out how they ever cross-pollinated.”
Andromeda’s breath brushed his neck, her nuzzled kiss making his eyes close. “After Raphael first found me and took me to the Refuge, I used to rip the heads off all the flowers Osiris had created in front of me, but then after a while, I decided that they had beaten him and should be allowed to exist. Like me, the flowers lived where he didn’t.”
“At some point,” Andromeda said, her hand fisting on his chest as her voice vibrated with rage, “he decided to move from plants to people, to children. How can anyone justify such evil?”
“According to his diaries, it began by chance—he found an urchin boy and brought him to his old laboratory in Alexander’s territory. He intended for the boy to become a cleaner. Then his hunting dog ran into the room and he was struck by the idea of melding them. He called it a ‘glorious moment of genius.’”
Naasir pulled up Andromeda’s leg so it lay across his body. She turned a little farther and swept her wing over him. The heavy warmth, the scent of her, it anchored him to the joyous present where he had his mate in his arms and Osiris was long dead, never to commit his atrocities again.
“He tried to meld the boy and the dog then and there. The two died in a twisted mess of limbs and organs.” Naasir’s heart raged at the knowledge that that had been merely the start of Osiris’s murderous reign. “The failure only fueled his ugly desires. He bought children from poor families, or simply abducted them, paid poachers and hunters to bring him the young of animals.”
Lifting Andromeda’s hand to his mouth, he kissed her palm and forced himself to remember the peace he’d felt under the ice. No sadness, no pain, no horror. “The boy who is part of me grew up alone until the tiger cub. Osiris either stole or bought the boy when he was a baby—I never found out which.”
He ran his hand through Andromeda’s hair, bunching it up in his hand, then letting it escape in a burst of color and life. Pretty. “In his diaries, he called us his hope.” Such an ugly use of the word. “And though I wish he’d never had the satisfaction, he succeeded with the tiger cub and the boy. Osiris never worked out why and all I can tell you is that the tiger cub and the boy were best friends who helped one another survive.” The instant of change was blurry in his memory, but he knew there had been pain, such agonizing pain.
Andromeda rose up and, expression stripped of all traces of civilization, said, “I’m glad he’s dead.”
He squeezed her waist with the arm he had around her. “I tried to kill him immediately after my transformation, but I was too weak.” It had felt as if he was a broken doll, his limbs useless and his mind dull.
“It took me months and months to start thinking clearly again, though my thought patterns weren’t ‘human.’ Neither were they animal.” Rather, an amalgamation of the two. “I had to learn to walk again, talk again. Osiris wanted to know why I had two legs instead of four, why the boy’s form had taken precedence over that of the tiger cub, so he did more experiments.”
Andromeda’s eyes glinted. “I’m glad he’s dead,” she repeated, “but I want to bring him back to life so I can hack out his black heart and feed it to him.”
Naasir bared his teeth at her. “I knew you were my mate.” He drew her close with a grip around her nape, parted her lips with his own and licked his tongue against hers until her wing fluttered over him and her thigh rubbed against his.