He lifted his swords to block the strike of an assailant that had no face.
“What took you so long, Archangel?” Elena called back.
“I’m growing my heart around yours,” he answered even as he spun to help her block the advance of three bloodlust-driven vampires with hooked claws. “I’ll keep your heart safe, but it’s too mortal for an archangel. I must grow an immortal one around it.”
Breath hard, Elena said, “That’s super-weird, because I have the most ginormous heart inside my chest. I’m getting used to it, though.” Her back slammed against his again, the ridged scars where he’d amputated her wings apparent to him even through her clothing and his. “The Cascade fucking took my fucking wings!” Each word accompanied by a throwing blade finding its mark.
Raphael’s body stirred, his blood wildfire. “Am I in your dream, Elena, or are you in mine?” She felt real, not an illusion. When his skin brushed hers, when his wing moved across her body, when her voice reached him, it all felt right.
“No idea.” A possessive kiss when she faced him again, the rawly physical act erasing any notion of dreams and illusions.
Her eyes melted to silver, inhuman in their beauty. “I remember now, Archangel.” Twisting out, she blocked another attack, as he did the same.
When they came together again, she was breathless. “You shouldn’t have given me your heart. You shouldn’t have taken mine—it was fully mortal with a side of Cascade weirdness.”
“A thank-you would be nice.” He beheaded a horde of reborn with rotting limbs. “It’s not every day a man gives you his heart.”
“What did I say about the jokes?” She poked him gently with the hilt of her sword before they were deluged by opponents.
In a small moment of peace: “Raphael, how long can we keep this up?”
“Not long,” he said, able to see the green of the grass beyond the gray. He could step out and be back on that field so brilliant and bright and bloody. “Can you see the field?”
“What field? The one you dream?”
“Yes.”
“Nope.”
“Then I am in your dream.” If his mortal consort had once invaded his dream, could he not invade hers? She’d anchored him in the dreams, in the bloodstorm that had sought to turn him into a cold, heartless being of pure power.
Hauling Elena against him, he sheathed one sword and gripped the side of her neck. “Elena-mine, as you were my anchor, now I am yours.”
Her hand rose to his cheek, her sword falling to her side even as the wildfire light began to fade and the darkness crept closer, ready to consume her. Behind him, the green of the field grew brighter.
“I’m so tired, Archangel,” said his wild and beautiful Elena who didn’t know the meaning of giving up. “We really need to wake up.”
He resisted. “The chrysalis is too small.”
“No wings? Or are we talking even more missing limbs?” She pressed her fingers to his lips. “We’ll find out soon enough.” A sigh before she came into his arms.
Around them, the gray raged, reaching out grasping tendrils toward her. And he knew . . . he had to wake them up before the Cascade got what it wanted and consumed her. Even Elena could not battle forever. “How do I wake us?”
“Remember the bloodstorm,” she said, her eyes closed and her sword dropping to the floor as her strength deserted her.
His mind bled with thoughts of the sky that had boiled crimson, the rain like shards of ice. He’d given up the dark and old power that wanted to fill him to the brim because that same power would kill Elena with its coldness.
He’d ejected it from his body, waking himself back to reality.
Today, it was golden lightning become wildfire that filled his veins. A power he could control. A power he could use and that didn’t use him. But—“No power is worth you, Elena-mine. I would give up immortality for a single mortal lifetime with you.”
“See you on the other side, Archangel.”
Her words were yet sounds being formed when he released every drop of the wildfire that was so bright and so beautiful and of them. And because his heart was more than a touch mortal, he told that energy to go to ground. Not to turn the sky into an inferno that erased hundreds of angels from existence, but to sear itself into the earth.
It was eerie, how he saw white owls in silhouette in the burn of light, watching with eyes of gold.
Cassandra! What do you see!
The future aligns. Paths are chosen. Death comes. A voice so very languid, falling into a deep Sleep. Such death, child of flames. Goddess of Nightmare. Wraith without a shadow. Rising into her Reign of Death.
Do you see her end? he asked as the wildfire light spread and spread and spread.
I see . . . Sleep heavy in every word.
Cassandra! The light was almost to the edge, Elena motionless in his arms. What do you see!
Wings of silver. Wings of blue. Mortal heart. Broken dreams. Shatter. Shatter. Shatter. A sundering. A grave. One last sigh of a being slipping into the Sleep of immortals. I see the end. I see . . .
Raphael came awake with the side of his face on dirt so hot it glowed, his rest prematurely ended, and his new heart not yet ready. It had, he realized, broken under the weight of the violent energy release and exposed the small mortal heart within. That small heart had exploded from the pressure.
Fragments swam in his blood, weaving their way through his entire system. A system devoid of wildfire. Devoid too of the golden lightning. Uncaring of the loss and of the agony in his chest, he opened his eyes . . . and looked into those of liquid silver.
Turn the page for an excerpt from the
Silver Silence
First book of Nalini Singh’s incredible Psy-Changeling Trinity series!
Chapter 1
To be a Mercant is to be a shadow that moves with will, with intelligence, with pitiless precision.
—Ena Mercant (circa 2057)
SILVER MERCANT BELIEVED in control. It was what made her so good at what she did—she was never caught by surprise. She prepared for everything. Unfortunately, it was impossible to prepare for the heavily muscled man standing at her apartment door.
“How did you get in?” she asked in Russian, making sure to stand front and center in the doorway so he wouldn’t forget this was her territory.
Bears had a habit of just pushing everything out of their way.
This bear shrugged his broad shoulders where he leaned up against the side of her doorjamb. “I asked nicely,” he replied in the same language.
“I live in the most secure building in central Moscow.” Silver stared at that square-jawed face with its honey-dark skin. It wasn’t a tan. Valentin Nikolaev retained the shade in winter, got darker in summer. “And,” she added, “building security is made up of former soldiers who don’t understand the word ‘nice.’” One of those soldiers was a Mercant. No one talked their way past a Mercant.
Except for this man. This wasn’t the first time he’d appeared on her doorstep on the thirty-fourth floor of this building.