Mahiya felt an ineffable tension radiating off the man next to her, though his expression remained opaque, and she knew it was because of her. She also knew she couldn’t allow him to make an enemy of an archangel in an effort to spare her from Arav’s attentions. “Actually,” she said with a quick smile, “I see scholar Quinn across the room. I’ve just read his newest treatise, and I promised him I would talk with him about it.”
Neha didn’t bristle—the vampire was one of her favorites. That mattered less than the fact that Jason was no longer a blade about to be unsheathed.
* * *
“All in all,” Mahiya said to Jason after the tea had been served and they were readying themselves to return to their palace, “it was not so terrible a dinner party.” Quinn had been a lovely companion, and Neha had been so engrossed in conversation with Rhys and Jason that she’d ignored Arav most of the night. “Arav has no idea who he’s dealing with—Neha’s playing with him as a cat does with a mouse.”
Jason’s response to her murmured supposition was silence. She didn’t read anything into it. He was, she thought as they walked out and began to cross the courtyard, thinking about the subject before he replied. “Temperature’s dipped.” Still, the night air was relatively balmy—though when she glanced up, it was to see the stars hidden by fat clouds that threatened rain.
When something fell from that sky, she thought it must be a bird, it was such a tiny thing. But then it grew bigger and bigger and—“Jason!”
However, Jason had already seen. Instead of running toward the body that had just crashed to the earth in a splatter of blood and bone that sprayed guests closer to the impact site, he shot straight up into the air, chasing the one responsible for the carnage.
Mouth dry, Mahiya watched him go, a black arrow soon invisible against the night, then made her way to the body, taking care not to step in the gore. She shut out the sound of a woman screaming about the blood on her face, the deeper voices of the men who called out to one another in a panic, the snap of the wind as others took off in pursuit, and swallowing her gorge, she focused only on the identity of the body.
That square ring of rare blue tourmaline, those mottled brown wings . . .
For a second, her brain couldn’t quite process what it was she was seeing, and then all her synapses fired, connections made, and she realized the angel without a head and likely without internal organs, was . . . “Arav.”
* * *
Jason was fast, an ace at vertical takeoffs, but his prey had disappeared by the time he breached the heavy layer of dense waterlogged clouds. Given the limited time frame and Jason’s speed, he guessed the killer had flown just out of visual range, then dropped in a steep dive to slip into a hiding place.
Cocking his ear to the wind, he listened to where it had been interrupted, used it to track as one of the hunter born might use a scent. The ephemeral trace ended abruptly in the mountains just beyond the fort. Conscious his quarry had had enough time to take a low flight path, backtracking while Jason was above the cloud layer, he nonetheless landed and began to scan the rocky ground around him. There was no overt sign that anyone had landed, nothing but darkness—
Shimmering blue green caught by a ray of silver before the moon was hidden behind a cloud again.
Sliding the feather into his pocket for later examination, he flew up and back to Mahiya, confident that no matter her shock, she would not have broken.
She hadn’t.
Rather, she’d nudged one of the senior guard into organizing a perimeter around the splatter, though Jason expected the guard thought it all his own idea. “Good girl,” he murmured, and was almost expecting the raised eyebrow.
Then she shook her head, and he thought perhaps they’d just had a conversation.
Storing the moment to reflect on later, he sent two of the guards to find either high-powered portable lamps or torches. While they did that, he took in the bloody ruin of Arav’s body, weighed it against the wider situation. Shabnam’s murder could perhaps be put down to a smart copycat using Eris’s death as cover, but Arav’s?
It stretched the bounds of coincidence that a second hunter had been waiting to take advantage of the circumstances. There had to be a hidden connection between the victims he wasn’t yet seeing. Also, given how determined Arav had been to act Neha’s port in a storm, it must’ve been a strong temptation indeed that had drawn him up into the skies, away from those who might oppose his bid to be Neha’s next consort.
Jason considered the way Arav had looked at Mahiya when he’d thought himself safe from other eyes toward the end of the dinner, his mask slipping to reveal an ugly possessiveness that said he saw Mahiya as nothing but a trophy, a thing to be taken and used.
As Jason had already decided to teach the other angel a lesson in fear he’d never forget, he wasn’t particularly motivated to discover Arav’s killer. However, Shabnam had done nothing to deserve the death meted out to her, and so it was for her that he began to consider the hows and whys of this crime.
A man such as Arav might well find himself unable to control the impulse to take what he wanted should the chance arise. Yet in spite of the feather Jason had found—been meant to find?—Mahiya had never left Jason’s sight, couldn’t have lured Arav into the skies.
Another woman?
Arav wouldn’t be so stupid, not now.
That left politics. It was a surety that Arav had had a spy of his own in the court. Again, however, the timing didn’t make sense—why would the angel choose to meet his spy now? Yes, he’d disappeared outside for a cigar, but it had been clear to Jason that the other man was merely passing time until Neha finished speaking to her guests.
With Rhys having left earlier, Arav had had a clear run at lingering to be the last remaining guest. He would never have chanced missing that opportunity and the associated privacy to advance his embryonic courtship, regardless of any temptations of the flesh.
Rhys?
It had surprised Jason when Neha’s senior general had taken his leave while Arav was still buzzing around the archangel, but the move would make perfect sense had Rhys planned an ambush. Rhys wouldn’t even have to worry about skirting the attention of the guards. He was a general known to hold the loyalty of his men—because he did not mind getting blood on his own hands.
“Were you here when Arav stepped outside?” he asked the closest guard, an angel who stood stiff backed and at attention, facing outward from the body.