responsible for the damage, but Jason would bet she’d suffered the abuse prior to death. Because this killing, like Eris’s, had been about fury, about rage.
The viciousness of it was such that even the decay and the foraging of small animals and birds couldn’t hide the fact that she’d been stabbed over and over. Where the skeletal structure of her body lay exposed to the elements, he could see the notches the blade had cut into her bones, marks of an ugly violence that would last long after the maggots had cleaned up what remained of her flesh.
Audrey had clearly not been the strongest of vampires, because while her heart was gone—ripped out by a brutal hand if her splintered rib cage was any indication—her head was still attached to her body. That head had been cracked and damaged, the skin of her neck shriveled to mummylike dryness where it wasn’t missing, but from what Jason could see, the damage had been caused by birds and rodents eating at her flesh, not by an attempt at decapitation.
Her hands were bone now, no way to tell if she’d worn a ring on a particular finger, but he could as easily glean that from a photograph now that he knew her name. Walking the area around the body, he saw nothing else of note. It went against his every belief to leave her here, but he could not risk bringing her to the fort as yet. Neha’s response was unpredictable—things could get deadly very quickly unless he did this exactly right.
And Audrey was long past being hurt. He had to consider other lives now.
“Whatever happens, I’ll make sure you get home,” he promised, before shifting back to a more open part of the valley and rising into the night sky.
Mahiya’s balcony doors were open as if in invitation, and when he entered, it was to find her seated on a cushion on the living room floor. She’d changed from the sari into a tunic of vivid aquamarine teamed with slim cotton pants in plain black, her hair gathered in its familiar knot at the nape of her graceful neck.
In front of her sat a low table carved of dark wood and inlaid with the merest glimmer of fine gold around the edges, on top of which stood a pot of tea alongside a tray of mixed savories and sweets, and two cups. He halted, disappointment curling through his body. “You’re expecting someone.”
Mahiya’s laugh was warm. “I am expecting you.”
He hadn’t been caught off guard for a long, long time. “How did you know when I would return?” Swirls of steam rose from the fine black tea she’d begun to pour.
“A good host learns her guest’s rhythms.” She waved a slender hand bare of rings but circled by two glass bangles the same shade as the tunic, toward the flat cushion on the other side of the table “Please, sit.”
He wondered if she sought to seduce him, decided it unlikely—her tunic was too modest, the mandarin collar high, her sleeves elbow length, and her face scrubbed clean. Thrown a little off-balance by the fact she’d gone to all this trouble, he nudged aside the cushion and took a seat directly on the floor, his wings draping over the smaller jewel-toned cushions thrown around, the fabric soft against the bottom of his wings. “You must have a sensory gift of some kind to have anticipated my arrival with such accuracy.”
“What? No.” Her startled look transformed with the second word into an honesty so rueful that he knew she would’ve preferred to claim a gift. “I was watching the skies for you. So you see, there is no mystery after all.”
Except that she had seen him. No one saw Jason when he didn’t want to be seen, and he hadn’t wanted to be spotted coming in to the fort. Which meant Mahiya did have a gift. “When did you spot me?” he asked in a casual tone, wanting to gauge the extent of her abilities. “When I dropped out of the clouds?”
“I assume so—I saw you on the horizon just past Guardian.”
He’d been
“Your tea.”
“Thank you,” he said in the same language she’d spoken, received a smile in return.
When she nudged over the plate of savories, he ate over half of them before halting—he’d missed dinner, was hungrier than he’d realized. All the while, Mahiya watched him with those cat-bright eyes of hers, and he searched for the poisonous hatred that should’ve infected her . . . only to find an incisive intelligence and a sweetness of spirit she couldn’t hide, no matter how good she was at court masks.
Fascination entangled with a pride he had never expected to feel for the Princess Mahiya, for she had to have the will of a lioness to have managed to hold that poison at bay, though it dripped on her each and every day.
“Did you find Audrey?”
Jason considered the question, decided to trust her with the truth, measure her response. “Yes.”
“She’s dead, isn’t she? And she was most likely the woman warming my father’s bed.”
The speed and accuracy of her conclusion made Jason still. “You know who killed Eris,” he said slowly, realizing he’d erred in more than one way. “You’ve always known.” She was far too smart, far too good at listening to what was unspoken, not to have put the pieces together.
In the process of placing her teacup on the table, she jerked, had to act quickly to stop the fine porcelain from tipping over. “What?”
Setting his own cup on the table, he reached for the pot and poured her more tea. “Drink.”
Fingers trembling, she didn’t dispute the order. By the time she put the cup back down, her expression was acute with determination. “You first.”
15
Jason saw no reason not to acquiesce when they both carried the same knowledge. “Perhaps others could’ve bribed their way in, but we both know only one person could have walked
Mahiya picked up a sweet that was a combination of sugar and milk spiced with cloves and topped with slivers of almond, ate it with great deliberation. “Yes,” she said at last, her tone rough silk, “that was my first thought.”
“You’ve changed your mind?”
“Why would . . . Your presence, it makes no sense.”
Yes, Jason thought, why would Neha invite him to solve a murder she herself had committed and for which no one would ever hold her to account? That was a far more powerful mystery than why Eris had died. It was either madness or fatal arrogance that had led the male angel to believe his wife wouldn’t discover his affair with Audrey. Or perhaps Eris had sought death after three hundred years of imprisonment.
Jason discarded that thought as soon as it arose. Eris had been too self-centered, too much a man of ego to have ever chosen suicide, especially by such a convoluted method and in a way that left him violated and stripped of pride and beauty.
Porcelain clinked on porcelain as Mahiya put her cup on the saucer. “Neha would subvert you from Raphael. Perhaps that is the reason why.”
“No.” Not when Neha had met him soon after he arrived at the Refuge. “She must surely know I will never serve a woman who did such to the one she claimed to love.”
Mahiya’s gaze grew piercing, as if she’d heard the history that drove his declaration.
“And she is too proud to lie and claim you broke the vow in order to have you executed. Which does not leave us with any answers.” Reaching forward, she topped off his tea. “What will you do?”
He considered each of the facts he currently had, both together and as separate pieces. It wasn’t the murder that was the most important. That Neha and Lijuan were involved was problematic, but the two were neighbors—a friendship between them was not incomprehensible. Without further details, he remained in the dark as to the nature of their secret meetings.
And . . . he hadn’t yet worked out how to gain Mahiya her freedom. “I’m not ready to leave.”
Mahiya nudged forward the savories again. “Do you expect me to lie to her when she asks what you have
