Are the birds doing anything of note?
Raphael’s voice was stronger and more resonant now; he had to be heading back toward Manhattan.
I think they’re leaving. The three birds she’d seen had just joined a much larger group. A massive vee of them, heading south. The sight of so many birds of prey together was beyond majestic.
I have spoken to Dmitri, Raphael said after a short pause. He tells me the pumas and other large cats are also departing the city.
Elena shivered as the wind blew her hair off her face, but she stayed in place, her gaze on the departing wave of birds. Elijah must’ve gotten word of Raphael’s return, was retreating from his fellow archangel’s territory before Raphael had to ask. A friendship between two archangels would always be a finely balanced thing—there was too much power involved for it to be otherwise.
The condors a distant blur now, she turned and got the doors closed with creative use of her crutches. Right as Nisia walked through the door. “Of course you are not resting like a sensible being who just emerged from a chrysalis,” the diminutive healer muttered, her ankle-length gown a dark blue that Elena hadn’t properly noticed before. As always with Nisia’s work clothes, it was simple but beautifully stitched.
“In my defense,” Elena said, “I appear to be the first non-insect to emerge out of a chrysalis, so I figure I get to make my own rules.” She got her butt on the sofa cushions again—not exactly gracefully, but hey, she hadn’t done a face-plant. That counted as a win in her book.
A thought struck her. “Unless . . . do creatures other than insects make chrysalis-like things? Chance I’m going to grow a chitinous shell or the wings of a butterfly?”
Nisia listened to her heart using a prosaic stethoscope. “Butterfly wings are a ridiculous idea. Do you know what size they’d have to be to have any hope of holding up the weight of an adult angel?”
Scowling at whatever Elena’s mega-heart was doing, she picked up Elena’s wrist to check her pulse. “A hard shell, on the other hand, might be an excellent safety measure for a consort who keeps breaking herself. Also, why do you believe I know anything about what makes a chrysalis and what doesn’t?”
“Because you are a font of endless knowledge, my dear Nisia.” Keir walked in with a smile, his body clad in flowing pants of chocolate brown and a tunic in a similar shade. It sounded so dull, but nothing was ever dull on Keir. He was a beautiful man, and one with an inner peace that made it seem as if he’d been born hundreds of millennia ago rather than only three.
“See,” she said to Nisia, “even Keir expects you to know everything.”
Harrumphing in a way only Nisia could, the healer continued her examination while Keir set up the IVs. As they worked, Elena admired Nisia’s wings—dark gray with white spots, she’d never seen them up so close. “Your feathers are so pretty.” Far more delicately beautiful than she’d ever realized.
Glaring at her as if she’d offered a mortal insult, Nisia stuck silvery things to Elena’s temples that led to a machine Keir had pulled out of another room. Then she pressed the stethoscope to Elena’s chest again. “Your heart is behaving oddly.” The healer sounded irritated. “It’s beating in a rhythm that’s not yours.”
“Huh?” Elena scratched her head, the damp strands of her hair cool against her skin. “How can you tell?”
“You’re a hunter. Surely you know mortal and immortal hearts beat in unique rhythms.”
“I mean, yeah, vampiric hearts can slow down to the point of almost not beating, but Raphael’s heart feels pretty normal to me.” She’d fallen asleep more times than she could count with her head on his chest, the steady beat of his heart lulling her into a deep rest.
“It may seem similar,” Keir murmured, “but there are minor but telling variations. The older the angel, the less power the heart needs to exert to keep the body functional. Prior to being encased, your heartbeat was close to a mortal’s.”
“Is my heart beating like an archangel’s now?” She couldn’t see a downside to that.
“No, not quite.” Nisia scowled at another device in her hand. “It’s beating as if you’re a three-hundred-year-old immortal rather than one barely born.”
“Her own cells must be merging with Raphael’s donated heart,” Keir murmured to Nisia. “The innate structure of her, her DNA, is yet morphing.”
The two switched into another language, the back and forth rapid.
“That’s another thing,” Elena interrupted when the discussion showed no signs of ending. “Why did my body accept the heart? What about donor rejection, all that stuff?”
Both healers stared at her. It was Nisia who said, “You were encased in a chrysalis like a giant insect and you’re worried about tissue rejection?”
“I’m just saying.”
“It was ambrosia that made you an angel,” Keir reminded her. “Ambrosia that came from Raphael.”
The pieces clicked. She and her archangel, they’d always been two parts of a whole. Settling back with a deep sense of rightness inside her, she stopped interrupting the healers and concentrated on zapping the IVs dry.
“I spot no signs of a chitinous shell,” Nisia said at one point. “It appears only your head is hard.”
Elena grinned. “Takes one to know one.”
Keir snorted a laugh—the first time Elena had ever heard him make such an inelegant sound.
Nisia was still glaring at him when the two left a half hour later. Elena wanted to go visit Tower friends, drop by the Legion’s green skyscraper, but even she wasn’t insane enough to attempt any of that in her current state. So there she sat with a blanket over her legs, mentally cursing the Cascade using blue words in multiple languages.
A knock on the door.
15
Come in before I die of boredom!”
The face that peeked around the door was thinner than when she’d last seen it, but as ridiculously pretty. She held out her arms. Illium came inside in a rush, his eyes brilliant with emotion, but halted a foot in front of her. “Will I break you?”
“I’m going to hit you in a second.”
A wicked grin before he put his arms around her . . . with conscious care. Elena told herself to be patient; she’d be careful, too, if a friend came back looking sixty-eight percent dead.
Good thing he hadn’t seen her at ninety-three percent dead.
“I brought you a present,” he said when he drew back. Stepping out, he returned with her special lightweight crossbow.