"Don't get snarly on me, Archangel." Slipping past him, she opened one of the side zippers of the bag that had held her weapons and retrieved a small box. "I have a gift for you, too."
Surprised pleasure spread its wings inside him. He'd been given many, many things over the centuries. But most had meant nothing, mortals and immortals alike courting him for power, for prestige, for gain large and small. "Did you purchase it in the Refuge?"
"No."
"Then how did you get it?"
"I have my ways." Coming to stand before him, she opened the small box to retrieve a ring.
A ring set with amber.
"You," she said, sliding the ring onto the appropriate finger of his left hand, "are well and truly entangled."
His heart tight in a way that he had no experience with, he brought the ring up to his eyes. The band was platinum, thick and solid, the amber a square polished chunk. But it was dark, the darkest amber he'd ever seen . . . with a heart of pure white fire. Intrigued, he slid off the ring to bring it up to the light. The colors changed constantly, now dark, now light.
It was then that he saw it, the inscription on the inside.Knhebek.
He had lived in the Maghreb for a while, traveled through Morocco before he became an archangel, had heard that word whispered by eager youths to dark-eyed, blushing beauties.
I love you.
The tightness in his chest grew ever more powerful. Sliding the ring back onto his finger, he said,"Shokran ."
Her face broke out into a delighted smile. "You're welcome."
"Do you speak the language of your grandmother?" He closed his fingers into his palm, possessive about an object for the first time in centuries.
"I only know a few words my mom used to say." A smile filled with memories - happy ones. "She'd mix up the Moroccan Arabic with Parisian French and English all the time.
But we grew up with her, so we all understood." Even Jeffrey.
He'd laughed then, she thought, remembering. Her father had laughed at her mother's mishmash of languages - laughed at himself, not her.
"Have pity." Holding his head in his hands. "I'm a poor country boy. I don't know no fancy languages."
"Girls." Sparkling eyes, pale silver and bright with mischief. "Don't believe a word your papa says. He speaks French like a native."
"Ma cherie, you wound me." Dramatic hands slapping over his heart.
"Where do you go, Elena?" Fingers tipped up her chin, until she met eyes so blue she could drown in them forever.
"Home," she whispered. "Home before it was all taken away."
"We'll build our own home."
The promise curled around her heart, a vivid ray of sunlight. "In Manhattan."
"Of course." A slow, slow smile. "What kind of mansion would you like?"
Damn, but the archangel was playing with her again. The sunshine grew, filled her veins.
"Actually, I kind of like yours." She slid her arms around his neck. "Can I have it? Oh, and can I have Jeeves, too? I've always wanted a butler."
"Yes."
She blinked. "Just like that?"
"It's only a place."
"We'll make it more," she promised, her mouth to his. "We'll make it ours."
But first, she thought as a knock came on the door, they had to survive Lijuan's madness.
Chapter 33
Raphael in formal clothes made Elena drool, his profile etched with perfect clarity against the night sky as they walked along the curving pathways of the Forbidden City -
following their escort to dinner. Her archangel was wearing a white shirt with black pants, but that shirt was a work of art, the fabric on either side of the wing slots embroidered in a black design that curved and flowed - without ever losing the edge that said this was the Archangel of New York.
"Sexy" was too tame a word to describe him.
And it was obvious the silken-maned vampire beauties around them thought the same.
She pinned her eyes on one who had the temerity to flutter her fan in his direction. The fan drooped.
Satisfied, she turned back to Raphael. "Jason and Aodhan?"
"They have their tasks."
Doesn't she know about Jason?
Yes.
And then they were being ushered through intricately painted doors - into a room that seemed to absorb all light, all air, crushing her ribs into her organs. Shifting the barest fraction, Raphael caught her gaze, giving her a focus, a way to fight the feeling of suffocation. It felt like hours passed, but it couldn't have been more than two seconds at most. When she turned her attention back to the room, her heart scrabbling to regain its rhythm, she found her gaze drawn to a grouping of chairs below a wall filled with butterflies, their wings forever unfurled, a single sharp pin spearing each.
"Raphael." Lijuan whispered across the room to greet them, her pupils a strange pearlescent shade, her gown a disconcertingly girlish concoction created from layers of floating gauze that swirled around her body in a haunting gray and white mist, her hair blowing off her face in a wind that Elena couldn't feel, a wind that touched neither the heavy brocade curtains, nor the exquisite tapestries on the walls.
Elena's skin pricked in primitive warning, millions of years of evolution telling her she should never, ever let herself come to the attention of the creature in front of her. Because it wasn't the room that absorbed all light. It was Lijuan. Elena's primitive hindbrain sent a bolt of panic through her when she stayed in place, telling her to run, to hide.
But, of course, it was already too late.
She watched as Raphael took Lijuan's hands in his, as he bent his head to brush his lips across that pale, perfect skin. Lijuan's eyes met hers over Raphael's shoulder, and there was nothing remotely human in them, nothing Elena could even attempt to read.
As the delicate angel drew back, those unearthly eyes returned to Raphael. "You are different."
"And you never change."
A tinkling laugh, one that shouldn't have felt so cutting against Elena's skin, as if it was made of razors crushed into glass. "Why did I not meet you when I was younger?"
"I wouldn't have held your interest then," Raphael said, turning to put one hand on Elena's lower back. "This is Elena."
"Your hunter." Lijuan's pale eyes settled on Elena, and it took every ounce of will she had not to step back, not to hide.
Because Lijuan was the horror in the closet. The one mothers scared their children with.
The one you were never actually supposed to see.
"Lady Lijuan." The formal title, learned from Jessamy, came out, sounded normal. How, Elena wasn't sure.