“She could’ve done it and been gone before we ever knew she was here.” The Archangel of China had the ability to dematerialize her body, though as Raphael had shown in the battle above Amanat, she wasn’t as omnipotent as she went to great lengths to make everyone believe.
“Yes,” Venom said, “but she’s always had a cordial enough relationship with Neha. And to kill Eris in that way? I’ve seen the sick things Lijuan has done, but this was personal.”
“Yes.” Catching a whisper of some unknown flower intermingled with spices bright and opulent, he turned to see Mahiya step out of her suite. Part of him went motionless, waiting to see if she’d come to regret the passion they’d shared in the hours before dawn.
Her smile lit up her eyes. “I heard your voice.”
It took intense concentration not to reach out, part her soft lips with his own, taste a smile that was a kiss against his senses. “What did you discover today?”
Venom rolled up to his feet before Mahiya could reply. “Let’s talk inside.”
It seemed natural to follow Mahiya into the cool comfort of her living quarters, the low table on the floor set with food. “I thought you might be hungry since it’s after lunch,” she said, but Jason’s attention was riveted by the pink teddy bear sitting beside the lamp.
“Ah.” Venom closed the doors and said, “I have a story about that.”
Jason stayed silent as Venom relayed the strange tale. “A scarlet-haired vampire?” he asked Mahiya once she’d added her findings. As for her taking the risk that she had with the box, they’d discuss that in private.
“Yes.” A fiery glint in her eye. “Unfortunately, I couldn’t ask anyone else in the area if they’d seen the man—it would’ve caused too many ripples.”
Jason looked at Venom.
Sipping at his coffee, the vampire gave him a lazy grin. “Yes, I went down to the city, made some enquiries.” Leaning back against the wall, he said, “Our buyer doesn’t sound like he’d blend into the general populace, yet no one has any knowledge of him. Then again, my contacts are—relatively speaking—on the younger side. Might be he’s an old one who’s just come out of seclusion.”
Angels Slept when immortality became too heavy a burden. While vampires lacked that ability to put their bodies in a state akin to suspended animation, they could and did sometimes retreat into isolation accompanied only by their “cattle.” It was what the old ones called the humans who were addicted to a vampire’s kiss and remained with them as a ready source of food.
For the older vampires, the term was one of affection, the donors treated with the same respect one might show a beloved pet. Those cattle quite often recruited replacements as the decades passed—Jason had known one vampire to remain in seclusion for three hundred years and counting.
“He might be from outside the region,” Mahiya said.
“He sent you what could be a courting gift. That argues otherwise.” According to everything she’d told him, her trip to Lijuan’s stronghold had been her only foray beyond the borders of Neha’s territory since her return from the Refuge. “Did you see anyone who might fit the description while you were in China?”
A tiny shiver rippled across her shoulders. “No. Red wings, yes, red hair, no. No one with that skin tone, either.”
“Refuge?” Venom asked. “Could be he saw you when you were younger.”
Mahiya shook her head.
“Any visitors to Neha’s court who’ve paid you undue attention of late?” Hair color could be altered.
“The usual meaningless court flattery. Nothing that would lead to such a convoluted scheme to pass on a gift.”
And the gift itself, Jason thought, was unusual for an immortal, most of whom would woo a woman with jewels or unusual treasures. As for this particular woman, he found the idea of another man courting her incited in him a dark violence he’d spent a lifetime learning to contain.
“Don’t lie to me, Nene!”
“I’m not! Why won’t you listen? He’s a friend—”
“Is that why you disappeared with him for an hour?”
“I was showing him the atoll while you spoke with his father!” A sobbing sound of frustration. “I hate this ugly jealousy of yours, Yavi. It’s killing us.”
His mother’s prophetic words ringing through his mind, Jason turned to Venom. “See if you can dig deeper without it reaching the wrong ears.”
Venom bent to put his empty cup on the table before flowing to his feet with a supple grace that was a thing of beauty to some, an indication of danger to others. “I think I’ll jump off the balcony, scare the guards hiding outside.” With that, he was gone.
Jason stepped closer to Mahiya. “You should not have taken that risk.”
“It was a considered one.” Her tone was resolute. “I would do it again in a heartbeat. I will not barter for my life with yours or Venom’s.”
Gripping her chin, Jason looked into an unflinching gaze bright as a jungle cat’s. “I do not wish to scrape up the remains of your broken, violated body.” It was a confession from a part of his self that hadn’t seen the light in an eon. “So you must allow me to keep you safe.”
Mahiya had been ready to fight arrogance, found herself bewildered by the quiet request so potent with emotions unspoken. “I won’t take any unnecessary risks,” she said, closing her fingers over the bones of his wrist, his skin hot under her touch. “I promise.”
“You are the weakest one of us, Mahiya.”
“But,” she whispered, asking him to understand, “I am not weak. I cannot be that and survive.”
Her black-winged lover said nothing for a long, motionless moment before releasing his hold on her. She forced herself to let go of him, feeling bereft. “Come,” she said. “Eat with me before the food goes cold.”
Jason caught her wrist when she would’ve moved to the table. “You don’t treat food as other immortals do.” His thumb moved over her knuckles. “Tell me why.”
Snakes hissing all around her, fangs sinking into her skin, poison in her bloodstream.
Mahiya’s fingers curled into her fist, but she held her ground. “No, Jason. I will not allow you to steal all my secrets while you hoard your own.” He knew so much about her, while she did not even know where he made his home.
His fingers flexed, and he tugged her closer, until they stood toe to toe. “Do you know the story of Yaviel and Aurelani?”
It was the most startling of questions. “Of course.” Theirs was one of the great angelic romances. “They were born of warring families from different sides of the world. Yaviel was a singer turned artisan, Aurelani a scholar gaining renown.” Both families had been painfully proud of their children, but when the two fell in love, centuries-old hate had overwhelmed the tenderness of their devotion, and they’d been torn apart.
“It is said Yaviel survived torture to break into Aurelani’s home to steal her away and that they disappeared to build a life together, far from the vicious power of their families.” The romance of it had made her girlish heart sigh. Even now, as an adult, her soul ached at the idea of being loved with such devotion. “Yaviel’s musical instruments continued to appear in the Refuge, so there were some who knew where the lovers lived, but it was a secret never betrayed.”
Jason’s voice was rough as he said, “He called her Nene, and she called him Yavi.”
A chill over her skin, a vision of suffocating darkness.
“Nene couldn’t abide the cold, and Yavi loved her so that he found them an uninhabited atoll in the warm waters of the Pacific, far, far from any sky roads to civilization.” His fingers tightened on her wrist, but she didn’t move, didn’t dare breathe. “Trusted friends came and took Yavi’s creations to the Refuge, where they sold for amounts that meant he could buy his Nene whatever she wanted. She loved amethysts, and he showered her with them . . . but what Nene loved most was her Yavi.”
A tear trickled down her cheek though he’d said nothing awful, yet the sadness in him, it was a heavy weight she thought might crush a lesser man. “She must have loved you, too,” she whispered, seeing in his face the history of two different clans who had eventually ended one another in a rage of violence.
“Yes.” Haunted eyes meeting hers. “I was well loved by my parents.”
Mahiya wanted to ask him why he used only the past tense, why he carried such black sorrow within, what had happened to Nene if Yavi was dead, but she couldn’t hurt him when he was already so terribly hurt deep inside. “I never ignore food, because I know what it is to starve.”
The profound sadness in Jason changed, became a black blade licked with flame. It took a great deal for an older angel to starve, but an angel of Mahiya’s age remained vulnerable. “When?”
Mahiya swallowed, her fingers curling on his chest. “After Lijuan had me escorted back from her territory. Neha threw me into a windowless cell up at Guardian, and then she locked the door.”
The fear that emanated from her was too violent a thing for the slow pain of starvation. And Jason knew. “You weren’t alone in the room, were you?”
Tears welling in her eyes, teeth sunk into her lower lip, she shook her head. Releasing her wrist, he locked his arms around her. But she didn’t sob, the princess he held. Breath ragged, she said, “There were so many of them. Pit vipers and spitting cobras, rattlesnakes and taipan.”
Venomous snakes.
Their poison couldn’t kill an adult angel her age, but it could cause excruciating pain, convulsions, even temporary blindness and paralysis. “Tell me one thing.” He cupped the back of her head, pressed his cheek to her temple.
“Yes?”
“If you could kill Neha, would you?” A spymaster knew a great deal, such as when an archangel might be most vulnerable to attack by her enemies.
Mahiya shook her head. “No.” Shifting so they were eye to eye, she whispered, “In making that my goal, I’d become just like her, a woman driven by hate until there’s this knot of bitterness inside her that infects everything she touches.”
Anoushka, Jason thought, hadn’t become who she was in isolation.
“I’ll find my vengeance in living a life overflowing with happiness,” Mahiya vowed. “In drowning myself in love, not hatred.”
In that instant, her eyes incandescent against the golden brown of her skin, she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and he knew that she was too fine a thing for him, that the black emptiness within him would ruin her. And still he said, “The skies will be clear tonight. Will you fly with me?”
Her smile glowed, the horror erased by a fearless joy.
* * *
The hours passed with a leaden slowness. Jason retraced his every step in the search for the murderer, but it was his interview with the guards who’d been on Eris’s door when he was killed that proved the most intriguing. When Jason had believed Neha the murderer, the fact the archangel had said she’d stripped their minds and found nothing hadn’t been a surprise.
