In the interim, he’d lived in silence.
“It’s a shame the boy’s a mute. The instruments he makes are things of such virtuosity, you’d think he’d learned from Yaviel himself.”
Jason had never been mute. He’d just needed to remember how to speak. And he’d done that by watching and listening. Those skills would hold him in good stead tonight. The room in front of him was warm with candlelight, a table of honey-colored wood polished to such a high sheen that it glowed like amber set upon the carpet, the seat cushions of the matching chairs a rich claret. It was a contrast to the pale colors chosen by the guests, the conversation muted, for no one was yet ready to dance on Eris’s grave.
Save perhaps a man Jason identified as Arav from the way he’d made a place for himself at Neha’s side, a charming, elegant companion as the archangel played gracious hostess. Jason knew she hid a terrible sadness behind that persona, but in itself, it was no lie.
“I have never been to a court as gracious as the one Neha keeps.” Dmitri played a knife through his fingers, one of three he’d brought back from Neha’s territory. “She truly believes in giving honor to a visitor.” He threw the knife at Jason.
He threw it back as Venom added, “Though she might have that guest neatly executed while the court sleeps.”
Venom’s response was as accurate as Dmitri’s—Neha was no two-dimensional caricature. No archangel was, and to believe otherwise was to set yourself up for a nasty surprise. Jason had no intention of falling prey to such blindness. Some mortals might seek to see divinity in the archangels, but Jason saw them for what they were—creatures of violent power who’d had millennia to hone their every lethal edge.
Right then, the Queen of Snakes, of Poisons, turned, met his gaze.
Jason inclined his head but didn’t move toward her, and she returned the greeting before shifting her attention to the guest who stood in front of her.
“The vampire heading this way,” Mahiya said sotto voce after the silent exchange, “is Rhys, one of Neha’s trusted inner council.”
“I’ve met him in the Refuge.” However, he didn’t know anyone in the room as well as Mahiya did, intended to ask her for her opinions after this was done.
“Jason.” A polite nod before Rhys turned his attention to Mahiya. “You are looking lovely, Princess.”
Mahiya’s response was warm enough that he realized she liked Rhys. “Thank you, sir. Is Brigitte well?”
“She is, indeed, though you know her.” A smile shared between the two. “I’m afraid my beloved is not a court creature,” he said to Jason. “However, she is so good at her job as a cryptographer that Neha forgives her the eccentricity.”
“I know of her work.” Everyone in Jason’s profession knew her name. “I’ve even attempted to lure her away a time or two.”
The other man laughed, his eyes twinkling. “Ah, I must admit, I was aware of that. She was very flattered, but we are loyal.”
While the spymaster in him was disappointed in that fact, the Jason who was one of the Seven understood the decision.
“Now Neha tries to lure you away.” Rhys’s tone was warm, but the icy calculation in his eyes made it clear he considered Jason a threat to the security of the fort.
Jason said nothing to that—silence was often a better weapon than words. Instead, he chose to direct Rhys’s attention to another threat. “The fort hosts a visitor who wants to be consort, it seems.”
Rhys didn’t turn to look at Arav. “There are always pretenders.” A hardness in his tone betrayed the blooded general beneath the mask of courtesy, before he excused himself to talk with a female angel Jason knew to be another one of Neha’s inner council.
“Tell me about him,” Jason said to Mahiya.
Mahiya’s response was quiet, with an undertone of steel. “I have come to realize exactly how much you like to give orders.”
Jason considered her words as he watched the intriguing flow and interplay of the people in the room. “You aren’t my equal,” he said, and it was a test.
She fisted, then flexed the hand he could see. “I carry the information you need about the people here.” The smile she sent him was a creation of such feminine complexity he knew he was seeing and understanding only half of it. “At least for this moment”—a shadow flitting over her eyes—“I hold the cards.”
Jason had no reference point for how to behave with a woman who was not his lover and yet already knew him better than any lover ever had. Such intimacy, he thought, was a thing of give and take and constant balance.
“Dance with me.”
“I’m making breakfast. Yavi!”
His father with his arms around his mother’s waist, twirling her around the kitchen, their wings sweeping out to send Jason’s hair back from his face as he sat playing with his blocks on the floor.
“Put me down!” A laughing command. “Yavi! The pancakes are burning.”
Bending her over his arm, his father claimed a smiling kiss. “Say please.”
“Tell me about him . . . please,” he said to this woman with whom he might never dance, but who had a claim on his loyalty nonetheless.
Shooting him another impenetrable look, she turned her face forward, and he thought he’d missed something, a moment, an emotion slipping through the cracks, water through his fingers . . . as his mother’s severed head had once slipped from his hands to hit the floor.
“I’m sorry, Mama.”
“For the most part, Rhys is what he appears.” Mahiya’s voice cut over the dull thud of sound that had followed him through time. “He has been with Neha for over six centuries and is not ambitious—except if anyone dares threaten his position at her side.
“Eris as consort-in-name posed no such threat,” she added as the same thought passed through his mind. “Rhys knew that when it came time to discuss politics and war, power and strategy, Neha would seek his own counsel. Arav, however, is a very able general himself, has led Neha’s troops in battle. More, he is as efficient at dealing with angelic politics as Rhys.”
The other man looked up at that instant, as did Neha. This time, the archangel flowed toward Jason. “I have never seen you dressed thus,” she said, her approval patent. “All of Raphael’s Seven do clean up well, even that barbarian general of his.”
“I will tell Galen you said as much,” Jason said, knowing the weapons master didn’t give a damn about what any woman but one thought of him.
Gaze shifting to Mahiya, Neha said, “You do not greet Arav,” in a tone rimmed with frost.
20
“We met in the courtyard.” Mahiya kept her voice even, refusing to give Arav the satisfaction of seeing her stumble. Maybe her courage came from having Jason’s dark strength beside her—but she didn’t think so. Arav was the one individual who could make her forget reason and step perilously close to insult.
“Insult to a guest is an insult to me.”
Something Neha had said long ago to the child Mahiya had been when she’d returned to the fort for a visit during a break in her schooling. She’d never liked those visits, her time at the school with Jessamy the happiest of her life. The censure that particular day hadn’t been personal, and yet the way the archangel had looked at her had made the tiny hairs on the back of her neck prickle in warning.
The instant Neha had left, she’d run back to the nanny who looked after her when she was at the fort, the same one who’d later told her nothing she’d ever do would please Neha.
“Why doesn’t the lady like me?”
Her nanny’s stern face set into a frown before she gave a curt nod. “You’re old enough to know. Though you must never repeat this in public, your father is Eris, Neha’s consort. Your mother was Neha’s sister, Nivriti.”
She was small, didn’t immediately understand. “They shared a consort?”
Horror filled her nanny’s expression. “Never speak such filth, child.” Putting away the tunic she’d been folding, she shut the dresser. “Your mother seduced a man who was not her own, and she bore the fruit of their ugliness.”
Me, Mahiya thought, the fruit is me. “I’m ugly?”
A sigh, a softening in her nanny’s face. “You are not ugly, child, but you remind my lady of that ugliness. It is a testament to her kind nature that you are given all the rights and privileges of a princess.”
The latter, of course, was a lie. But even Mahiya would concede that Neha’s treatment of her while she’d been a minor had been scrupulous. Perhaps there’d been no warmth, but there’d been no abuse, either. She’d attended the Refuge school, studied in its libraries—and there, she’d had access to Jessamy’s kindness and guidance, felt what it was to be loved, for the Teacher loved all her students.
Then she’d come “home,” turned a hundred . . . and learned that Neha’s cruelty had simply been saved for the adult that hopeful, innocent child had become. The man who stood beside Neha was proof enough of that cruelty—even if the archangel hadn’t ordered the seduction, she hadn’t warned Mahiya about Arav’s duplicitous courtship, either, making certain that Mahiya’s first taste of romantic love would be a bitter one.
“You didn’t tell me you had spoken with Mahiya.” Neha’s voice was silk over steel.
Arav’s cheeks creased in a smile that glowed with charm. “We passed as I was on my way to speak to you.” He favored Mahiya with a condescending look of approval. “I did not say how glad I am to see you looking so well.” Raising his glass, he took a sip of wine, the square ring on his index finger flashing vivid blue in the candlelight, the stone a rare form of tourmaline.
“He is like a peacock, spreading his feathers and squawking loudly . . .”
“Thank you,” she said with a smile so dazzling, it took Arav visibly aback.
Small crystalline sounds silvered through the air as the glass bangles on Neha’s wrist moved against one another. “Come. Let us be seated.” Her gaze landed on Jason. “As guest at the fort, you sit on my left. Arav can entertain Mahiya—they are great friends.”
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.”