“I can’t believe I asked you if I was levitating!” she called out to Raphael once they were high enough up that no one else was going to hear them.
I will be magnanimous and blame it on shock. It will be a hushed secret between an archangel and his consort.
Laughing, she swept to the left, then back around to the right to test her maneuverability. They function just like flesh and blood wings. Eyes hot, she had to blink to clear her vision. You gave me your heart, a heart that can process violent Cascade energies—you gave me back my wings, Raphael.
The salt-laced sea in her mind, huge and cold and of Raphael. I may have provided the raw material, Guild Hunter, but you made the choice. Wings of fire and lightning can fit in a chrysalis that is too small.
Despite her desperate desire to fly and fly, she went straight to their Tower balcony. After landing beside her, Raphael cupped her face and pressed his forehead to hers. There they stood, no words needing to be spoken.
When they did walk inside and down to the infirmary level, it was to run into Dmitri. He took one look at her and shook his head. “Don’t scorch the walls.”
Striding over, Elena hauled down his head and kissed him hard on the lips. “Today, even you can’t annoy me,” she said into his stunned face before releasing him.
A laugh sounded from not far down the corridor, where Dmitri’s wife had just emerged from Lucius’s office. Honor’s eyes were dancing. Dmitri, meanwhile, was looking at Elena in utter horror. “We will never speak of this again,” he said. “Ever.”
“I think he could use a hug,” Elena said to Honor.
“You two are awful together and I love you both. And your wings are a showstopper.” With that, Honor walked over to console her scowling husband.
Raphael meanwhile, was wearing a suspiciously bland expression.
Elena jerked up her head as they continued on down the corridor. “What?”
“I have never seen that look on Dmitri’s face in all my life. I also cannot wait to see the look on your face when it sinks in that you kissed Dmitri.”
“All worth it.” Full of sunshine and sparkles and freaking puppy dogs, Elena all but skipped into Nisia’s office.
The Tower healer and Keir were seated on a small dark blue settee, their heads bent over a pile of charts and notes. A single glimpse of Elena and they were over her like a rash, muttering and examining and talking in a fluid language Raphael told her was a variant of Aramaic. It was as Keir was about to take a reading that her wings disappeared in a silent whoosh.
Elena tried not to panic. “Raphael, what’s my back look like?”
“Your leather jacket boasts two wing slits with the edges sealed shut as if by heat.” He helped her get the jacket off. After which, she pulled off the long-sleeved T-shirt she’d been wearing underneath. Turning her body toward the mirror Nisia held up, she sucked in a breath.
A familiar tattoo covered her back: a fiery outline of wings that blazed before settling into a glittering light under her skin.
“Your wings have always been present,” Raphael murmured, running his finger along the edges and making her toes curl. “At least since the day we first saw the fire tattoo.”
“I don’t know how to bring them back.” It was hard to breathe.
Eyes as blue as a mountain sky met hers. “Remember how you learned to fly?”
“You pushed me off a cliff.”
Nisia held out a palm. “Wait, just wait.”
“I am not sure that’s the greatest idea,” Keir began, but Elena was already putting her clothes back on.
Dire alarm marking their faces, the healers hurried after Elena and Raphael as she and her archangel strode out onto the balcony. When she saw the Legion’s gray wings filling the air, she knew Raphael had called them. Her personal catching team. She walked to the very edge. “I’m ready.”
No hesitation, no questions; the love of her life pushed her into a deadly fall before sweeping down and below her with his arms open, ready to break her fall. Elena didn’t panic, just thought of her wings. Her body kept accelerating. And accelerating. Shit. She was about to slam straight into her archangel. I need wings now!
A wrench at her back. A jerking halt.
“Yee-fucking-hah!” She dived straight at Raphael, laughing, and they played like wild winged children. The Legion swept and flew around them, their voices in Elena’s head.
We have not seen this.
We did not know.
The chrysalis was not too small for this.
You are new, Elena.
We are new.
We are . . . happy.
25
Caliane’s tone was frosty when she called Raphael that night. “You did not have to keep your consort’s lightning wings secret from me.” Her eyes were the same shade as his and at that instant, they were Arctic ice. “I am not the enemy.”
“No, Mother, you are not.” She had fought for him since her return. At the same time, she had once been an insane archangel who’d left him to die on a forgotten field, his blood rubies on the green, green grass.
Raphael couldn’t forget, saw both sides of her. And so, he chose his words with care. “We did not wish to speak of it until we knew all there was to know about Elena’s new physical state. Unfortunately, an accident with a child altered the timeline.”
“I see.” The slightest thaw. “I will accept that as a warrior’s decision not to expose her strength to all the world while it is nascent.” A raised eyebrow. “Where is your consort?”
“Right here, Lady Caliane.” Stepping into frame, Elena inclined her head just enough that it was polite without calling her own status as Raphael’s consort into question. “Would you care to see my wings more closely?”
Appearing mollified by the offer, his mother nodded.
Elena’s wings erupted out of her back in a flash of electric lightning, a storm surge barely contained. She shifted so that Caliane could get the full effect.
Raphael had rarely seen his mother lost for words, but today, Caliane was silent until she said, “You, my child, are a being of change.” It wasn’t an indictment. “My son will certainly never suffer ennui with you as his love.”
His mother signed off soon afterward.
Of course they flew that night.
Elena’s wings dazzled against the ebony of the sky. I look like a giant lightbulb, don’t I? One of those ones they have at the science center with all the arcs of electricity inside.
Raphael felt his cheeks crease. You are extraordinary. So preternaturally beautiful that he knew anyone looking up at the sky would be spellbound. A career as a spy, however, might be beyond your reach.