Archangel's Storm

Sprawling into the chair on the other side of the table, he reached for a slice of sweet white peach with a desultory hand. “Don’t ask me to talk you out of vampirism. I’m only being this good because I don’t want you to hate me.”

She nibbled on a piece of apricot. “Noted.” Twisting around, she put her feet on his lap, her toes—currently painted a vivid blue green—shimmering in the sunlight.

His hand stroked over her in an absent caress. “You won’t ever be like the monsters,” he said quietly, speaking to her deepest fear. “Never, Honor. That’s not in you.”

It choked her with blind terror that she might become like the soulless creatures who’d caused her such heartbreaking harm not in one lifetime, but in two. But then she looked across at the man who had loved her both those lifetimes, and she saw not simply the darkness he wore so close to his skin, but also the truth that he’d maintained a claw hold on honor even as he sank into sin and depravity. Dmitri had never brutalized a woman, and he’d never hurt a child . . . not after he’d had to break their son’s neck to save Misha from unimaginable horror.

Unlike Dmitri, she wouldn’t be going into this new life through an ugly act of coercion, broken and twisted and tortured. She’d be ushered into it by a man who adored her, would spend eternity discovering every changing facet of him. Never would they become jaded with one another—never. It was a quiet truth deep within her, born of a love that had survived death and time itself.

“Dmitri,” she said into the sunlit silence. “Where is your heart?”

Her question could’ve been taken many ways, but her husband knew what she meant. “In your hands, where it’s always been.”

Luminous joy in her every breath, a sense of peace in her soul. “And you hold mine. So you see, I only have to worry about your heart, not my own.” As his heart was her most precious treasure, hers was his. He would love and care for that heart with every bit of his dangerous strength, would never permit her to lose the compassion and humanity he cherished in her. “Let’s go home,” she said, “begin the process.”

Dmitri’s hands tightened on her legs. “This is it, Honor. No more chances.”

“No, Dmitri. Now we’ll have an eternity of chances.”

24

Mahiya felt bruised in places she hadn’t known it was possible to have bruises, muscles sore in a way they’d never before been sore. Jason was . . . a storm.

Slow.

Relentless.

Inexorable.

She’d thought he’d be satisfied after that shockingly carnal union against the door, but he’d brought her back to her bed, allowed her only a small respite before he took her again.

Mahiya wasn’t complaining. Never would, not so long as he came to her bed.

“. . . this won’t make me stay with you, won’t make me commit.”

A twinge in her heart as she opened the bedroom window to the bright morning sunshine, that of a woman who wasn’t only in sensual thrall to Jason, but who was fascinated by the glimpses she’d had of the man behind the spymaster . . . and that man, he was a dangerous, complex, fractured creature she hungered to know. But it wasn’t an opportunity she’d ever have, wasn’t an opportunity Jason would give her. She wasn’t even certain if he’d return to her bed.

“Goodnight, Mahiya.” Watchful eyes.

She wanted only to sleep wrapped around the strength and heat of him, but she satisfied herself with a final caress of her fingers over his cheek, having the haunting sense of setting a wild creature free. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“In the morning.”

A rustle at the door shattered the whisper of memory. Then Vanhi was bustling in through to the bedroom, her rich ebony hair tamed in a severe knot at the back of her head, her body clothed in a sari of black dotted crimson. Only she could get away with such bold shades while the rest of the fort wore the faded colors of semi- mourning. Because only Vanhi had been alive since before Neha.

The vampire with her green eyes and skin of deep bronze had the appearance of a stunning woman in her thirties, but the manner and ways of a grandmother. She’d rocked Neha and Nivriti in the nursery as she’d later rocked Anoushka, then Mahiya. She was the only being Mahiya had dared love after the brutalization of the single friend she’d made as an adult.

Crimson on the stones, slick and thick, blood-drenched wings lying lifeless beside the unconscious form of a man whose only real crime had been kindness.

Even the beloved mare Mahiya had helped raise from a foal had been given away—to Arav’s new lover, the cruelty a conscious one. However, Vanhi held Neha’s affection and thus was safe to love, though even the vampire wasn’t permitted to spend too much time with Mahiya without finding herself sent on holiday to another part of the territory.

“So,” Vanhi now said, “that spawn of a she-goat is dead then.”

Mahiya was unsurprised at the judgment. “I won’t be mourning Arav, but the way he died . . . I would not have wished that on him.”

Vanhi snorted. “He should’ve been castrated for the advantage he took of a young girl barely fledged.”

“I allowed him to take that advantage,” Mahiya replied, the argument an old one. “I was a fool.” Willing to accept dross for gold. “I won’t be one again.”

“Oh yes?” Vanhi raised an eyebrow as she picked up a jet-black feather from the carpet. “Yet Raphael’s spymaster is welcome in your bedroom?”

“He tells me no lies.”

The quiet statement made Vanhi still in her energetic movements around the room as she settled this, straightened that. A heavy sadness in her expression, she laid a soft palm against Mahiya’s face. “I wish you would expect more, Mahiya child.”

“One day,” Mahiya promised, “I’ll have the chance to dream bigger dreams. Until then, I must work with what I have.” False hope could be more devastating than unvarnished pragmatism—she’d learned that during her attempt to find sanctuary with Lijuan years prior to the archangel’s “evolution.”

“Silly girl.” Lijuan’s dove gray wings swept the floor as she waved her hand, dismissing the guard who’d escorted an exhausted Mahiya into a cavernous room that echoed with sound. “You ask me to make a ruin of my friendship with Neha for you?”

“No. I ask only sanctuary.”

Eerie eyes of a strange pearlescent gray, staring at her out of a face with skin so pale, she imagined she could see the skeletal structure beneath. “Either you are feeble-minded,” Lijuan said, “or you are being disingenuous.”

Mahiya fought the ice invading her bloodstream to say, “You are far more powerful than Neha. She would not put your relationship in jeopardy for so insignificant a thing as I.”

“It follows that I have no need of you. You offer me nothing.” A smile that made Mahiya’s stomach clench, her bones rattle. “Your wings . . . hmm, perhaps I will keep you after all.”

That was when Lijuan had “invited” Mahiya to view her Collection Room, watching with that same inhuman smile as Mahiya bent over and threw up what little food there was in her stomach.

“Ju will clean that up.” The man who shuffled out of the darkness was . . . wrong. Jerking up, Mahiya ran the back of her hand over her mouth as Ju produced a mop and wiped away all evidence of her lack of control, his eyes black and dull, his movements that of a marionette.

“He was a strong man once, but I broke him. Still, I cannot let him go.” Lijuan reached out to stroke Mahiya’s wing.

Twisting away, she waited to be reduced to ash for her insolence, but Lijuan smiled. “A pity I cannot take you for my collection. Better I think, to return you to Neha. I will be patient, and ask her to give you to