Archangel's Storm

defenses.

Retreating, she threw every part of her mind into coming up with some other way to either gain his attention or create a diversion.

Are you hurt? A voice, pristine as a bell . . . and inside her head.

The wonder of the fact he’d initiated a link might have paralyzed her had she not been so afraid for him. No, I’m fine, she lied, able to taste the gleaming obsidian of his rage. Jason, listen, there is something you must know.

Silence, but the connection remained open.

She cares nothing for me except as the toy she called me, but she wants you.

Neha isn’t the first archangel to want to poach my skills.

No. She held her breath, released it in a quiet rush as pain stabbed at her chest.

You are hurt.

A few broken ribs won’t matter if we both end up dead, so listen. She doesn’t want your skills, she wants you—for her new consort.

36

Neha’s voice broke into their silent exchange. “I did not expect such a weak creature to intrigue you so, but it is undoubtedly a fleeting interest.” That quickly, Neha dismissed Mahiya. “What I offer you is far more than you can imagine.”

She’s mad.

Mahiya blinked at Jason’s flat assessment. No, Neha is sane. Coldly so. She knows you’ll be a strong, dangerous, intelligent consort. Jason was a man any woman would be proud to have by her side. And you are beautiful. Neha has always been drawn to beauty in a man. Though Jason was a naked blade to Eris’s pretty ornament.

Only madness would make her blind to the fact that it would be a very stupid man who’d accept the offer of a woman who imprisoned her last consort for three hundred years.

Mahiya’s mouth threatened to fall open. Well, when you put it that way . . .

“I need a consort,” Neha said, walking to the edge of the garden once more, her gaze on the lake, its surface a mirror of the blue sky touched with curling edges of red and orange. “I do not want you for a lover, so you may keep Mahiya as a diversion if you wish, but I am offering you power you will never gain in Raphael’s court.”

Jason was quiet for a long moment. “I did not expect such an offer,” he said at last, as if Neha had caught him unawares and he sought time to get his thoughts in order.

Yes, Mahiya thought, watching Neha’s face as she turned back to Jason. That was the right tack. To refuse her outright would be an insult the archangel would not forget, never forgive.

“A consort must walk beside an archangel,” he added. “I prefer the shadows.”

“My last consort was a creature of the light, shining and handsome, and he betrayed me.” Brittle words.

Some assistance, Mahiya Geet.

Startled at the tenderness in his mental tone, something she’d never heard in his spoken voice, it took her a second to reply. She’s still in love with Eris, and you’re too proud a man to be with a woman who mourns another.

I am?

Her lips twitched. Jason’s laughter was hidden deep within, where the light did not often reach, but it was there. You are, she said firmly, taking advantage of Neha’s preoccupation with Jason to get to her feet.

“This time,” the archangel continued, “a consort who stands in the shadows would suit me well.”

Jason bowed deeper than Mahiya had ever seen him bow, his wings spread to their full breathtaking width, the colors of sunset playing over the jet in a display that turned it into a canvas of black flame. When he rose back up, his expression was as inscrutable as always, but his voice gentle. “I am truly flattered.”

“But.” The edge in Neha’s voice was a scythe.

“But though he may have betrayed you, Eris holds your heart.”

Neha’s sucked-in breath was loud in the silence. “I am not offering you love.”

“I know.” Jason folded in his wings with neat care. “But I am one of the Seven—I have seen a true archangel-consort match, one bound by the heart, and so I will always know the lack.”

Neha’s anger whipped her hair back from her face, a faint glow coming off her wings. “Raphael’s consort should be dead.”

Elena, Mahiya remembered too late, had been critical in Anoushka’s execution.

“Yet,” Jason said, not missing a beat, “Raphael would take on the Cadre rather than allow her to come to harm. You would not do the same for me.”

Neha stared at him, a faint confusion in her expression. “I didn’t expect such a romantic heart from you, Jason.” Her gaze snapped to Mahiya. “Do you expect to find such a love with that?”

Mahiya felt a storm lick against her senses, realized it wasn’t her own emotions she was sensing. Jason.

“I expect nothing but amusement,” Jason said in a tone so calm that had she not been swamped by his rage, she would’ve never guessed at its existence, “but I want it on my terms, on my turf.”

Neha’s wings swept over the velvet grass nurtured by the gardeners to luxuriant life, as she turned away. “I will give her into your keeping if the knowledge you hold proves as valuable as you believe.”

Mahiya knew that was the best they would get. Neha would take any further attempt to negotiate as an attack on her honor. We must accept.

And roll the dice. “The murderer of Eris and the others is not in your court.” Jason walked to stand beside Neha, his wings a stark contrast to the indigo-dusted white of hers. “Neither is she any longer in the area, but my sources tell me she returns here in the hours after sunset.”

Mahiya’s heart ached at the idea of her mother so very close. She knew Jason had been surprised at the discovery of how soon the assault would begin, but it did make a brutal kind of sense—Neha was hurting from Eris’s loss, vulnerable.

Now, the archangel’s hair flared back in a wind no one else could feel. “One of his whores?”

Mahiya fisted her hands until her nails dug into her palms.

“I do not make judgments.” Jason’s response was even. “But I am near certain that until his murder, she had not touched him for more than three hundred years.”

Neha went so motionless as to be inhuman. It was as if she ceased to exist in the moment, in the now, and went elsewhere. “You bring the dead back to life.”

Disturbed by the eerie echo effect in the archangel’s voice, Mahiya rubbed at the tiny hairs on her arms, all standing in alarm.

“I do not think so,” Jason responded. “I also think this dead woman gathers an army.”

Neha’s wings snapped out. “Come.” With that, she swept off the garden and across the lake before spiraling up and back toward the fort.

Jason followed. You’re hurt. Wait here.

Mahiya was already in the air. I can rest later. Beating her wings put strain on her rib cage, the agony threatening to take her under, but she could not turn back.

Mahiya.

She sensed he was on the edge, that he would bring her down physically if necessary. I need to know, she said, laying her heart open, the heart of a girl who’d never known her mother’s fate.

A pause. Then use me.

Not certain if it was what he meant, she nonetheless clung to the midnight strength she could sense in her mind, and landed at the fortified Guardian Fort only seconds behind Neha and Jason. The archangel didn’t even notice her presence, walking with determined steps into a section of the fort that had been closed up as long as