most powerful reasons why. But regardless of what Asirani believed, Nimra didn’t play games. For now, she was Noel’s. As for the future—his first priority was to ensure her safety.
That thought had him circling back to Asirani.
There had been unhidden care in her tone when she’d spoken of Nimra, a distinct vein of empathy. Disappointment, too, along with a touch of anger—both directed at Christian, but not even an undertone of the kind of resentment she’d need to feel to want Nimra dead. All of which left him with no viable suspects.
Christian could be a prick but he’d swallowed his antagonism and cooperated with Noel when it came to Nimra’s interests. Exeter had spent centuries by her side, Fen decades. He couldn’t see either man developing such a deep hatred for her without her being aware of the change. As for the two older servants, quite aside from all else, they had proven quietly devoted.
Frowning, he headed out into the breaking day in search of Nimra—because there was one thing they hadn’t considered, and it was the very thing that might hold the answer. He half expected to find her beside Mimosa’s grave, but midway to the wild gardens where her pet was buried, something made him look up . . . and what he saw stole his breath.
She was stunning against the slate gray sky streaked with the golds, oranges, and pinks of dawn, her wings backlit with soft fire, her body shown to lithe perfection in the layered gown of fine bronze silk that the wind kissed to her skin. Leaning against the smooth trunk of a young magnolia, he indulged in the beauty of her. Seeing her wings spread to their greatest width, her hair whipping off her face as she glided on the air currents reminded him of the Refuge, the remote city that had been his home for so long.
He’d been placed in the angelic stronghold after completing his hundred-year Contract, when he’d chosen to remain in service to Raphael. There, he’d been part of the guard that helped maintain the archangel’s holdings in the Refuge, as well as watching over the vulnerable who were the reason for the existence of the hidden mountain city. However, he’d soon been drafted into a roaming squad that took care of tasks all over the world.
New York, where Raphael had his Tower, had been a wonder to a lad who’d come out of the untamed emptiness of the moors. With its soaring buildings and streets buzzing with humanity, he’d been at once overwhelmed and exhilarated. Kinshasa had stirred the explorer’s soul that lived within him, the part that had led him to dare the challenge of vampirism in the first place. Paris, Beirut, Liechtenstein, Belize, each place had spoken to him in a different way . . . but none had sung the soft, sultry song that Nimra’s territory whispered to his soul.
A caress of jewel-dusted wings against the painted sky, cutting across the air with breathless ease. His heart squeezed, and he wondered if she knew he watched her, if she flew for him. A fraction of an instant later, he caught a glimpse of another set of wings and his mood turned black.
Christian flew to cut under and around Nimra, as if in invitation to dance. His wingspan was larger than hers, his style of flight less graceful, more aggressive. Nimra didn’t respond to the invitation, but neither did she land. Instead, as Noel watched, the two angels flew in the same wide sky, cutting across each other’s paths on occasion, and sometimes seeming to time their turns and dives to a hairbreadth so as to just miss one another.
Anger simmered through his veins.
It wasn’t cold and tight and hard as it had been for so long, but hot, spiked with a raw masculine jealousy. He had no wings, would never be able to follow Nimra onto that playing field. Gritting his teeth, he folded his arms and continued to keep watch. Maybe he couldn’t follow, but if Christian thought that gave him the advantage, he didn’t know Noel.
Troubled to a depth she hadn’t been for decades, since the day she learned of Eitriel’s betrayal, Nimra had come to seek solace in the skies. She’d found no answers in the endless sweep of dawn, and now discovered she was being watched by the very same eyes that had caused her disquiet. It was a compulsion to fly for him, to show him her power, her strength.
Noel had taken only her blood, not her body, in the dark heat of the night’s intimacy, and yet he’d touched her too deep all the same. She’d been ready to offer surcease, find some peace for herself. But somehow, he’d wrapped a wolf-strong tendril around her very heart. Nimra wasn’t certain she appreciated the vulnerability. It had nothing to do with the scars left by Eitriel, and everything to do with the strength of the draw she felt toward the vampire coming ever closer as she flew in to land.
“Good morning, Noel,” she said, folding back her wings as her feet touched the earth.
In answer, he strode across the ground, his strides eating up the distance. And then he kissed her. Hot and hard and all consuming, his lips a burn against her own, his jaw rough against her skin. “You are mine,” he said when he finally allowed her to breathe, his thumbs rubbing over her cheekbones. “I don’t share.” A possessive statement from the core of the man he was, the veneer of civilization stripped away.
The primal intensity of him was a blaze against her senses, but she coated her voice in ice. “Do you think I would betray you?”
“No, Nimra. But if that popinjay doesn’t stop flirting with you, blood will be spilled.”
Pushing off his hands, she took a step back. “As the ruler of this territory I must deal with many men.” If Noel believed he had the right to put limits on her, then he was not the man she’d thought him to be.
“Most of those men don’t want to sleep with you,” he said in blunt rebuttal. “I reserve the right to introduce my fist to the faces of the ones who do.”
Her lips threatened to tug upward. Raw and open and real, this indication of possession was something she could accept. It spoke not of a grab for power, but a territorial display. And Nimra was old enough not to expect a vampire of Noel’s age to act in a more modern fashion. “No bloodshed,” she said, leaning forward to cup his cheek, claim his mouth with a soft kiss. “Christian is a useful member of my court.”
Twenty minutes later, Noel leaned back against the wall beside
Nimra’s writing desk and watched her walk to the armoire where she kept the Midnight. Her wings were an exotic temptation, reaching out to touch them an impulse he only resisted because neither of them was in the mood for play.
Less than half a minute later, she turned, the vial of Midnight delicate even in her fine-boned hands. Walking to the window, she held it up to the light. Darkness crawled a stealthy shadow across her face. “Yes,” she murmured at last, “you are right. There is not as much Midnight as there should be.”
He hadn’t wanted to be right. “You’re certain?”
A nod that sent liquid sunlight gleaming over the blue-black tumble of her hair. “The vial is ringed with circles of gold.” She ran her fingers over and along those thin lines. “It is no more than an aesthetic design, but I remember looking at the bottle when it was first given to me and thinking of what some would do for this infinitesimal quantity of Midnight—it just reached over the third line of gold.”
Noel crouched down by the window as she held the vial level on the sill. It took a bare few moments for the viscous fluid to settle. When it did, it became apparent that it now hovered
“I would that you were wrong, Noel.” Leaving the Midnight in his hands, Nimra walked across the room, her wings trailing on the amber-swirled blue of the carpet. “The fact that the assassin came into my chambers and took this means two things.”
“The first,” Noel said, placing the vial inside the safe and locking it shut, “is that he or she knew it was here.”
“Yes—I can count those who have that knowledge on the fingers of one hand, and not use up my fingers.” A desolate sadness in every word. “The second is that it means no other powerful angel was involved in this. The hatred is theirs alone.”
Noel didn’t attempt to comfort her, knowing there could be no comfort—not until the truth was unearthed, the would-be murderer’s motives exposed to the light of day. “We need to get an evidence tech in here to see if there are any prints on the vial or the safe that shouldn’t be there.”
Nimra looked at him as if he were speaking a foreign language. “An evidence tech?”
“It
Her eyes narrowed. “Laugh at me at your peril.” But she didn’t resist when he tugged her into his arms.
