“Uram tore out her heart,” she said, recalling her horror at the gaping wound, “left that glowing red fireball in her chest. Direct contact.” The only other person to have such intimate contact with Uram, and survive, was Sorrow, and she’d undeniably come out of it altered on a fundamental level.
The young woman wasn’t human any longer, but neither was she a vampire; she’d starve without blood as she’d starve without food. Then there was the would-be assailant twice her size whose neck she’d snapped in a self-defensive fugue. Now in training to learn how to consciously manage her strength and speed, Elena knew Sorrow was also under constant watch for signs of the same murderous insanity as her “blood sire,” the term one she’d heard Dmitri use.
It infuriated Elena that the gutsy young woman couldn’t escape Uram, but Sorrow wasn’t the issue right this instant. “What if Michaela refuses to leave?”
“Then I’ll force her out.”
Guilt gripped her in its bony hands. If Michaela had gained an offensive power in the Cascade, any battle would be a treacherously uneven one for Raphael.
“I would wash off the night, Elena.” Raphael turned toward the house.
Stomach in knots, her earlier anger at him buried under the chilling reminder that she might just have killed him, she went in silence.
Shutting the bedroom door behind them, Raphael walked across to open the balcony doors, letting in the cold morning air. “Come here, Guild Hunter.”
“What is it?”
“I would like to know”—his tone a serrated blade—“why my consort is keeping secrets that make her fly into herself.”
She flinched, stepping past him to stand on the very edge of the balcony. “I’m angry at you, for what happened with Ransom.”
“You might be angry, but you understand the decision.” As ruthless an answer as the way he’d dealt with Cici. “That isn’t what you’re keeping from me.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Now, you lie to me?” Cold, deadly, each word honed as bright as sword steel.
Spinning to face him, she fisted her hands. “Stop trying to intimidate me—I’m your consort.”
“I don’t think you have the capacity to be intimidated,” came the icy response, but his eyes, they were violent blue flames. “What are you hiding, Elena?”
Relentless and used to getting answers to his questions, he wouldn’t drop this, she knew, but the thought of telling him the truth was a rock in her gut. “Leave it,” she said, jaw clenched. “I’m asking you to just let it go.”
“When it puts shadows under your eyes and makes you swallow your words?” He strode across to grip her jaw. “No. You’re hurting and I will know why.”
“But I didn’t and he could not help me once others learned of my transgression.”
Illium’s words dashed cold water on the heat of her self-protective response. She couldn’t do the same to Raphael, couldn’t make him helpless in the face of her pain. Taking a shaky breath, she placed a fisted hand on his chest and knew it was time to stop hiding from the damage she’d done.
• • •
About to tell Elena that they wouldn’t leave this balcony until she told him the truth, Raphael was silenced by the light weight of her fist against his chest.
“In the Refuge,” she began, “I heard what they said: that you were the most powerful youth anyone had ever seen.” Her voice was raw emotion, her features bleak. “You became Cadre at the end of your first millennium—it makes you extraordinary. And now . . .”
He saw it then, the torture she’d been inflicting on herself, and had to willfully temper his anger that she’d do this, cause herself harm in such an insidious way. Releasing his grip on her chin so he wouldn’t inadvertently hurt her, he ended the statement she’d begun, not bothering to conceal his fury. “Now others are gaining vicious powers, while I appear to have gained only a negative ability.”
Stubborn as always, his consort held his gaze. “It’s true and it’s because of me.” Visceral pain. “I’m your assassin—no one else!”
16
Elena could push him to the edge faster than any other, but Raphael fought his rising anger to say what she’d forgotten. “My ability is the only one that has had any impact on Lijuan.” The Archangel of China had been stunned that he’d managed to cause her physical harm.
“Yes, but we both know it won’t be enough.” Skin pale from the way she held herself, all taut muscle and tendon, Elena dropped her hands to her sides. “Not against Lijuan’s reborn and not against Neha’s ability to create fire and ice, just to name two of the others. You said it yourself.”
He’d never meant for her to take his words as an indictment. Even more, he’d never expected Elena, brash and honest, to hold such damaging thoughts within . . . but he should have. His hunter, after all, had held the horrific loss of her family inside herself for nearly two decades, keeping it even from her trusted best friend.
“I,” he said, infuriated with her even as he wanted to bring Slater Patalis back to life so he could send him to a torturous death, “do not make a habit of hiding accusations behind the words I speak to my consort.” That she may have believed such of him had rage lacing a film of red across his vision. “And I will not tolerate you concealing your thoughts from me in this way.”
A glint in his consort’s eye. “I told you—don’t speak to me like I’m some soldier you’re disciplining.”
“I would break every bone in the body of any soldier who dared lie to me.” Elena had never held her tongue around him, even when it might’ve been the smarter option, and he had no intention of allowing that to change.
Violence in those eyes of silver-gray. “You’re making me want to go for a blade.”
He raised an eyebrow, well aware she’d read it as a taunt.
Releasing a hissing breath, she thrust her hands into his hair and, tugging down his head, pressed her lips to his instead of slicing cold steel across his flesh.
He took the kiss, demanded more, demanded everything. Even angry and on edge, she was his, would always be his. Wrapping his arms around her as their tongues lashed against each other, their bodies primed for a furious intimate battle, he said, Tighten your wings, and took her into the air, spreading his glamour to cover her, until they were invisible to the world.