He cuddled her onto his chest, her wings spreading out over the bed and across his chest. Yawning, he stroked her wing and said, “I negotiated for you to return to the Refuge.”
“Hmm.” She put her hand over his heart, her touch possessive—as a mate’s should be. “Is Alexander setting up a stronghold there?”
“Yes. Technically, you’ll be attached to that, but you’re free to do your work in the Archives with Jessamy.”
Rising up on her elbow, her hair all tumbled, she blinked several times as if to clear her head. “I can’t believe you just asked Alexander for this and he gave it to you.” A sudden, deep worry creased her brow. “Did you lose something in the bargain?”
Naasir used his thumb to rub away her frown. “We saved his life.” Now that the Ancient had been in the world, he understood just how bad things had become with Lijuan and the Cascade. “He’s grateful he’s not locked in Sleep while his people need him. What I asked was little enough.”
He played with Andromeda’s hair. “Alexander offered to free you from his court altogether, but that could cause problems with the other archangels. So you’ll remain an official part of his court, but you don’t have to take up any duties within unless you want to.”
“My grandfather won’t be pleased that I’m not feeding him information.”
“Do you care?”
“No. He repudiated the blood vow in front of Alexander—it doesn’t matter what he wants.” Her smile was gleeful. “It just matters what we want. Are you going to take me to your secret aerie?”
“We leave tomorrow for home.”
“Home.” Tears rolled down Andromeda’s face. “Home.” For the first time in her life, home would be a safe place where she was loved and cherished, and where she could be herself without any secrets or fears. “Home,” she whispered again.
Turning them over so that he was braced over her, Naasir kissed away her tears, then began to playfully kiss her “spots” one by one. “Home,” he rumbled when she started to smile and count along with him. “For me and my mate and our cubs.”
“Yes,” she whispered, her mind filling with tiny, wild children who’d drive her crazy and who she would love as fiercely as she loved their wonderful, beautiful chimera father. “Yes.”
Epilogue
Raphael ended his conversation with Alexander and turned off the communications screen. The Ancient had done one of Raphael’s Seven a great favor, and though Alexander had said there was no debt, Raphael had reached out to thank him regardless.
“Why make the call?” Elena asked. “Wouldn’t it have been better to just let things lie?” she added as they walked out onto the cliffs behind their home. In front and below them, the Hudson was sluggish and dull under the cloud-laden sky, Manhattan shadowed enough by the ponderous weather that a number of the high-rises had switched on their lights, though it was only early afternoon.
“You must remember that though Alexander appears little older than me, he is hundreds of thousands of years older.”
“He’s like your mother—he expects certain courteous behavior?”
“You are becoming an ever-more-elegant and knowledgeable consort.” His tone might have been a tease, but the words were truth; Elena had been forced to absorb an incredible depth of knowledge in a highly condensed span of time. “Soon you’ll be hosting angelic balls with regularity.”
“Hey, watch the insults.” She pointed a knife at him before sliding it away. “It’s a delicate thing though, isn’t it? When you talk to Alexander, it’s not like when you talk to Elijah or even Titus.”
Raphael watched the distinctive figures of Legion fighters fly in and out of their home in the distance. “Come. We’ll talk as we fly. You have to be at the Guild soon.”
Spreading her wings, Elena took off in a low sweep over the Hudson before using the air currents to rise up. Raphael didn’t need to do the same, but he did so they could fly wing to wing toward the city. Titus helped train me when I was a stripling, he said after they were both in position, but once I ascended, he accepted that I was an archangel and his equal on the Cadre.
Alexander, on the other hand, has always had trouble with the fact that I became an archangel at only a thousand years of age. It made Raphael the youngest angel to have ever become an archangel. As a result, I can never allow him to treat me as a youth. He could laugh with Titus and call him “old man” while the other archangel called him “pup,” but such games would never happen with Alexander.
Right. Elena’s braid slipped over her shoulder as she swept left with the wind, her joy in flight apparent. He’s like a father who can’t accept that his child has grown up.
A good analogy. Almost to Manhattan, he said, Look.
Elena’s response was free of the worry that had twisted through it in the days immediately after Illium’s fall. Bluebell and Sparkle are having a competition again.
Not far from the Tower, the two angels were racing in a straight vertical line into the clouds. As Raphael watched, Aodhan eked out a lead, Illium overtook him, only to be overtaken himself . . . and then everything went to hell.
Illium slammed into the stratosphere as the world suddenly shattered into a blue-gold rain. Hitting Elena beside him, it glimmered and stuck, streaking her skin and hair.
Raphael, what’s happening?
He’s ascending. Raphael’s heart thundered. Land. Now. With that curt instruction he knew his intelligent consort wouldn’t fight, not with the air currents already turbulent around them; he rose into the sky after Illium.
It wasn’t done to interfere with an angel’s ascension, but the boy was too young, hundreds of years too young. Right then, Raphael couldn’t help but think of Illium as the boy he’d first met, the one who had followed him all over the Refuge telling him stories of his adventures. The small blue-winged boy who, with his quieter friend, Aodhan, had pulled more tricks than most other children combined.
At not much past five hundred, Illium’s body simply wasn’t physically strong enough to handle the power that lived in an archangel’s veins every moment of every day. A thousand had been a stretch—Raphael had barely survived the transition, been able to feel his skin about to break when he landed following his ascension. It had taken every ounce of his will to hold himself together instead of flying apart.
Today, using that same violent power to cut through the unstable air currents that had sent other angels dropping onto the closest landing surfaces, he arrowed directly toward Illium. The younger male was glowing golden, so much power pouring out of him that it threatened to ignite and annihilate him. His body was bent backward, his wings hanging down limply though his hands were fisted, his jaw gritted.