Taking a graceful seat on the flat cushion in front of the low table, her wings spread out behind her in a glory of emerald and peacock blue with splashes of jet, she picked up the water jug. “You’ll need to dress, too. Neha has summoned us to a formal dinner. But we have time enough to eat and drink.”
He took his place opposite her, noticing the color on her lips, the skillful use of other cosmetics to highlight her cheekbones while playing down her eyes. This, too, he thought, was a subtle mask. “The food at dinner will not be agreeable?”
“The food will be exquisite, but the conversation will curdle my stomach. And you will be too busy watching and listening to everyone to eat more than a bite or two.”
He thought perhaps the strange sensation in his chest might be amusement. Illium occasionally incited the same response in him, but this was somehow gentler, more tender. “In that case, I thank you for your thoughtfulness.”
She gave him a sharp look, eyes narrowed. “Be careful or I’ll stop feeding you.”
“A great punishment indeed.” And it would be; this fragile ritual of homecoming was important to him in a way she could not comprehend. “May I have some water?” he said, absently noticing a little bag of carrots set on a small table that held an unlit lamp, as if Mahiya had put the bag down, then forgotten about it.
“Since you asked so nicely.” Lips twitching, she poured it for him, then removed the lids off the trays that sat between them. “I was in the mood to cook, so you have several choices. Do you want to try a little of each?”
“Yes.” He knew he should protest the way she served him, but she seemed to take pleasure from it . . . and so did he. So he stayed silent, took the plate she made up for him. As they ate, his mind cascaded with memories of how he’d tried to cook after he was alone, how he’d burned everything, lived on fruits and raw cassava root for a time until his stomach rebelled.
Later, when he’d arrived at the Refuge, he’d demanded to be treated as an adult regardless of his chronological age, and no one had argued. Until Mahiya, he wouldn’t have said he’d missed such a quiet indication of care as someone bothering to notice whether he ate or not.
“Now,” he said, after they’d cleared away the plates and she’d poured them both mint tea, refreshing and strong, “tell me if the reason your stomach will curdle is the same one that made you afraid to open the door.”
Mahiya looked at him over the top of her teacup, tendrils of steam caressing her lips. “Are you always this persistent?”
He raised an eyebrow, and her lips parted in a quiet laugh. “Of course you are. How else would you have become the best spymaster in the Cadre?” Cupping her hands around the tea, she said, “Arav . . . a man with whom I had a relationship when I was little more than a girl”—the laughter leaching out of her eyes—“is in the fort, and he’s being persistent, too, in an unwelcome way.”
Black fire, cold and deadly, formed in his bloodstream. “Did he touch you?”
“Only my hand.” Putting down her cup, she rubbed at that hand. “He caught me in the courtyard an hour ago when he had no reason to be on this level of the fort. I know he did it to remind me of his presence, to intimidate—I walked away from him earlier, and no one does that.”
Jason listened as she told him of her morning encounter with the angel, the black fire within tempered a fraction when she added, “It may not have been the smartest move to deliberately antagonize him, but it was satisfying, and I’m not sorry.” She set her jaw, as if expecting censure.
“When I was a hundred and twenty-three,” Jason said, making a note to pay Arav a visit in the darkest hour of night, remind the other man of the acrid taste of fear, “I asked Michaela to dance.” It wasn’t because he’d been drunk on her beauty—he’d always seen the truth of her selfish heart—but because he’d wanted to experience that drunkenness, wanted to feel more than the remote distance that was his normal mode of existence. “She wasn’t an archangel then, but still a queen, her power immense.”
Eyes huge, Mahiya leaned forward. “Well?” she demanded with unhidden impatience. “What happened?”
“She was so astonished at my gall she said yes.” And he’d had his question answered; whatever it was that was broken in him, even the proximity of the most beautiful woman in the world couldn’t fix it. “Afterward, Raphael told me she could just as well have taken offense and killed me on the spot . . . but I wasn’t sorry, either.”
Mahiya laughed again, the vivid clarity of her eyes sparking with flecks of gold that captivated him, because he’d never before glimpsed those flickers of shimmering metal. And he thought that perhaps the young man he’d been might have been wrong, that perhaps even a frozen heart might one day be awakened.
“Surely,” she said when she caught her breath, “you were legend among your peers.”
Jason hadn’t had many friends back then, but he’d had Dmitri and Raphael. “Raphael poured me a glass of a thousand-year-old Scotch then, together with Dmitri, toasted me on my balls.” It had been another link in his relationship with the two men, a link that had been further strengthened over the years, each of the others in the Seven adding their own pieces to create a chain that held him to the world, to life.
“I do not think Neha has ever been so informal with any of her court,” Mahiya said. “Though I didn’t know her when she was as young as Raphael must’ve been at your first meeting.”
“I’ll ask Lijuan the next time we cross paths.”
Mahiya’s eyes flicked up, widened, then sparkled once again. “You do know how to laugh!” She lifted a single finger to lips curved in mischief. “I promise I won’t tell a soul.”
“No one will believe you in any case.”
Mahiya put down her cup, the tea almost spilling. “I can’t believe you made me giggle,” she accused between gulps of air.
He couldn’t move his eyes away from the luminous joy of her, his fingers itching to grip her chin, tug her across the table so he could taste lips shiny wet from her last sip of tea. “Who else will be at this dinner?” he asked, as her smile faded to be replaced by a hectic flush of color on her cheekbones.
Swallowing, she dipped her head in the guise of pouring more tea, but he saw her fingers tremble, his every hunting instinct roaring to the surface. “It’ll be a small group, I think.” She went through a concise list of possible guests, while he struggled to contain the primal urge to shove the table aside and quench the thirst he had for this princess with her stubborn hope and her heart untainted by poison and her way of looking at him that said she might just accede to his every demand.