Raphael was an archangel, feared no man, far less his own butler. But there was an innocence in sneaking out of the study like misbehaving youths, the laughing glance Elena threw him over her shoulder stirring a part of him that awakened only for her.
The house was warmly lit at this pitch-dark time before dawn, but of Montgomery, there was no sign.
“He has a wife now,” Raphael murmured with a stroke of his hand up Elena’s bare flank. “I’m sure he’s engaged in far more pleasurable matters than in rising pre-dawn to wait for us.”
“Hush.” Elena threw him a quelling look. “I can’t think about Montgomery that way. As far as I’m concerned he sleeps in his suit.”
“Sivya may have some disagreement with a husband who is never naked.”
Elena put her fingers in her ears. “La-la-la, I can’t hear you.”
Holding onto the simple joy of this instant when they’d set aside the problem of the dangerous changes in Elena, Raphael teased her with heavy strokes of his palm across her wings as they went up the stairs. His warrior threatened to kick him. He pressed a kiss to the dimple at the base of her spine.
She pounced on him the instant they were behind the closed doors to their suite.
Weapons and clothes dropping to the floor, they tumbled onto the bed in a warm tangle of limbs, their wings wrapped around each other.
“I love you too much,” she said without warning, her smile wiped away. “What if one day something happens to you like what almost happened to Harrison yesterday?”
He brushed back the strands of her hair that stuck to her cheeks, living pieces of gossamer crackling with life. The strands clung to him. “I am difficult to hurt.” He didn’t have to say the rest, didn’t have to point out that she was the one who threatened to break him.
Swallowing hard, she caressed her fingers down his cheek then gave him a concise summary of what had happened to her while they’d been apart. The watching owls, the horrific pain in her left temple, the continued problems with her wings . . . and the voice in her head. “Describe it to me again,” he ordered.
She twisted up her face. “Old, old, old. Older than Caliane. Than Alexander.” Biting down on her lower lip, she considered it. “A female energy. No sense of overt threat, but the words she says, Raphael. ‘You must end for the other to live.’ That’s not exactly a warm and fluffy bedtime story.”
Shifting so that he was braced over her, his wings blocking out the night and offering her a canvas for fingers that painted affection over him, Raphael forced his brain to think. Raw archangelic power was no use against a foe unknown and unseen. He must be intelligent, fight with will and knowledge. “We will speak to Jessamy. The words are in the pattern of a prophecy. It could be that such a prophecy was recorded in our histories.”
“But if the speaker is an Ancient among Ancients . . . Age and time eats away at even great civilizations. Libraries are lost, entire histories erased.”
“Yes, but angelkind has living histories, whose memories simply need to be mined.” Even then, the task might be impossible—he knew of no angel older than five hundred thousand years who was awake. Their forebears Slept an endless night, immortals who wished no more to walk the earth. “We must ask.”
Elena nodded. “Never know what someone’s great-uncle Bert might remember.”
The joke fell flat, both their hearts beating too fast. Raphael almost wished Lijuan would rise again. She, even in her deadly and dreadful “evolution,” was a foe he understood and could battle.
Having his hands tied while Elena hurt . . .
“Enough of this.” His consort placed her palms against his glowing wings. “You don’t have to save me, Archangel. We are us. That’s how we fight this. Together.” One hand against his heart. “You’re a little bit mortal and I’m a tiny bit immortal. We did that to each other. We created the wildfire. We beat Lijuan. We’ll beat this together. The one thing we won’t do is surrender who we are to this menace.”
Yes, she was magnificent, his warrior consort. She was also right. All their greatest successes had come when they acted as one. He would do well to remember that. “As you say.”
“I do so say.” She poked a finger to his chest. “Also, we’re both covered in angel dust.”
Bending his head, he licked the tip of one breast. She shivered.
The result was inevitable.
Afterward, her skin gleaming with a layer of perspiration mingled with angel dust and sleep not yet on her mind even now so close to dawn, she rose from the bed to raid the table on which Montgomery and Sivya had laid out a feast of covered dishes before they retired the previous day.
One of the two had also placed a heating device on the table. A microwave, he recalled, that was what it was termed. On the microwave was a note in Sivya’s hand that she’d be happy to rise to prepare fresh foods whenever Raphael and Elena returned home, but Raphael knew his hunter would never think of intruding on the couple’s sleep for such a small matter.
“Those two would keel over stone-dead if they knew what I used to eat as a mortal at the end of a long day in the field,” she said as she put a full plate in the microwave. “This kind of a spread would’ve been beyond my wildest dreams.”
After the food was ready, she filled a second plate with cold items then came back to sit on the bed facing him, her right wing lying heavily on his thigh as he remained on his back in bed.
“Tell me about your day and I’ll tell you about Nisia’s warped sense of humor,” she traded.
“You are too late, hbeebti. I learned of Nisia’s leanings when she solemnly told my three-hundred-year-old self that I had a growth on my back that was for life but should cause me no harm. I spent days twisting around to try to find it.”
Elena paused with a slice of pie halfway to her mouth. “What was it?” Wide eyes.
23
“You have the same growth.”
Elena twisted instinctively before groaning. “Wings? She was messing with your head the whole time? God, she’s diabolical. What did you do to piss her off?”
“Broke my bones once too often trying to gorge-dive.” He’d been much younger, with weaker bones, the gorge that bisected the Refuge a massive crack in the mantle of the earth. “But I will tell you about my day and then you can tell me how you discovered Nisia’s sadistic streak.”
He plucked a grape off her cold plate, bit into the tart sweetness of it. “Jason found me before he left to return to his princess. We had a long discussion.”
“About Favashi, I’m guessing.” Finishing off her pie, Elena fed him another grape.
Raphael accepted the gift. “She appears to be gathering a much bigger standing army than she’s ever before had.”
“China’s bigger than her previous territory.” Getting up off the bed with hunter fluidity, Elena refilled her hot plate. “Maybe she thinks she needs more people?”
Her left wing was dragging on one side.
A primary feather, shimmering dawn and white-gold, floated to lie on the carpet as he watched.
His gut tensed. Losing a feather so significant for flight was not a common thing.