“Of all the buildings I have seen in my lifetime, it is the Hira Mahal that steals my breath.”
It had been Titus who’d said those words, and the warrior archangel was not a man given to poetry. Jason could understand the urge, for the Hira Mahal or Diamond Palace—also often referred to as the Palace of Jewels—was a work of art unlike any other. Now, rising from his low, crouched position, he once again timed his movements to avoid the guards and reached the glittering door of the palace without being seen.
The guard who opened it in response to his knock hissed in surprise and went for a weapon.
“I assume that is the spymaster,” said a feminine voice from within, the language the principal dialect in this region. “Do come in, Jason.”
Keeping the guard in his line of sight, Jason walked into the glimmering illusion of the palace to see the Queen of Poisons, of Snakes. Unlike when she’d spoken with Raphael, Neha was now the picture of grace where she sat on a thronelike chair, her body clothed in a sari of palest green rather than the stark white of mourning. She, like the rest of the room, shimmered with the candlelight bouncing off the endless cascade of faceted gemstones.
“Lady Neha.” He swept down into a respectful bow that nonetheless made it clear he was no sycophant and never would be. He’d learned the elegant movement from Illium, and it was useful on the rare occasion when he had to make a public appearance in front of one of the Cadre.
“You surprise me.”
Greeting complete, he met the penetrating brown of her gaze, conscious of the fine emerald-hued snake she wore as a living bracelet. “Did you expect a savage?” he asked in the same dialect, having long ago learned the dominant languages of the world—including variations used in the home territories of the Cadre. Secrets, after all, had no one language.
Lips painted a sedate blush curved. “You do give that impression.” Rising from her heavily carved chair of black marble, the carvings inlaid with gold, she came down the three steps to a floor covered by a hand-knotted silk carpet the shade of sapphires under sunlight.
When he didn’t offer her his arm, she raised an imperious eyebrow.
“I need both arms free to fight.”
Neha’s laugh was delicate . . . hiding a shrill note beneath. “So honest, but then that is a clever lie, is it not? A spymaster can never give everything away.”
Jason said nothing, having no interest in playing this particular game.
“Come,” she said with a gleaming smile that held the appreciation of an immortal who rarely lost a battle of wits and who had only shot her first volley, “it’s time to meet the one to whom you will swear fealty in blood. All is in readiness for the ceremony.”
Jason laid out his single condition as they walked. To his surprise, Neha not only made no demur to his stipulation as to the duration of the vow, she welcomed it.
“You are too dangerous a creature for Mahiya.” An unreadable darkness in the archangel’s tone. “The poor child will likely die of fright unless she knows she’ll soon be free of the chains that bind her to you.” She paid no heed to a large owl flying silent as a ghost just beyond the open outdoor passageway where they walked. “Mahiya is not capable of handling such a burden for long.”
Again, Jason kept his silence. The princess had never struck him as weak, but he’d only ever caught the most fleeting glimpses of her, for she was no power in the court, not at the center of any intrigues, and thus of little interest to a spymaster. Yet he knew it could all be a clever subterfuge, Mahiya a well-hidden blade. It made little sense to charge a fragile “trinket” with keeping watch on the movements of an enemy spymaster.
On the other hand, Mahiya might have been the only available choice, the sole known direct descendant of the same ancient bloodline as Neha who was both alive and not bonded to a lover.
Even as he went over everything he knew of the princess, he took in the liveried and armed guards hidden behind fluted columns of red stone; the way modern lighting had been integrated to appear a seamless part of the centuries-old structure; the lithe loveliness of the ladies-in-waiting out for a night stroll who bowed as Neha led him not across the gardens, but up a level and into the fourth-level courtyard.
As the exquisite palace on the highest level was used only to house guests the caliber of the Cadre, and otherwise left empty but for the watch rotation, this was effectively the most remote section of the fort, the walls falling off steeply on either side. However, parts of it were newer than the rest of the structure, this level having been altered from its original design roughly three hundred years ago.
A pavilion, delicate columns holding up the roof, sat in the center of the courtyard. That much was unchanged, but gardens had been added around it in the shape of a single stylized flower, each of the “petals” planted with different blooms. A fountain created gentle music somewhere, but he couldn’t immediately see it—then he realized the water was cascading down the raised sides of the pavilion to run into fine channels that kept the gardens healthy in spite of the desert climate in this part of Neha’s territory.
Where once the entire courtyard had been surrounded by interconnected apartments, there were now two separate palaces—one on the side that faced the jagged terrain of the mountains and one that overlooked the city. The remaining two sides appeared to have been part of the older architecture. However, both sets of buildings now stood apart from the palaces, the apartments no longer interlinked.
The entire section was under heavy guard.
Those guards didn’t bow as Neha passed, their absolute attention on their task. Sari whispering in the wind as she walked, Neha kept her wings scrupulously off the clean stone of the pathway that led to the lamp-lit pavilion, the otherwise open sides curtained with gauzy silks currently tied back to columns that reminded Jason of elongated vases, the arches above finely scalloped. A woman stood at the center of the pavilion, and she wore a sari that may have been palest pink, but appeared a creamy white in the soft light—as if she mourned where Neha didn’t.
Jason already knew that her face was small and pointed, her body softly curved and of a height that would barely reach his breastbone, her eyes a light tawny brown so vivid against her honey-colored skin and black hair that they were the first things anyone noticed about her. The eyes of a lynx or a puma. Eris’s eyes had been blue, but Eris’s father possessed the same distinctive irises that marked Princess Mahiya as illegitimate.
However, no one in the world had Mahiya’s wings—deep emerald and vivid cobalt with splashes of rich black, the wild spray akin to a peacock’s fan. Except that somehow, Mahiya had managed to remain out of the limelight, until no one mentioned the princess with wings to rival a bird famed for its beauty when they spoke of the most stunning wings in the world.
She went into a graceful curtsy as Neha approached, bowing her neck to reveal the vulnerable nakedness of her nape, her hair parted down the centre and gathered into a simple knot at the back of her head. “My lady.”
“Do try not to frighten her too much, Jason,” Neha murmured, the fine filaments of cobalt in the primaries of her otherwise snow-white wings whispering of their blood tie. “She is rather . . . useful on occasion.”
Jason nodded in greeting toward the woman who made broken razors slash through Neha’s tone, received a curtsy as elegant, though not as deep as the one she’d given the archangel. However, she maintained her silence as Neha lifted a single finger and a turbaned vampire wearing the uniform of the guard appeared from behind one of the columns, a velvet-lined tray in his arms. The crimson fabric was home to a ceremonial knife, its hilt embedded with yellow sapphires.
Neha picked it up with long fingers clearly at home with the blade. “It’s time.”
The ceremony was an ancient one, the words Neha asked him to speak to Mahiya, and Mahiya to him, unchanged for millennia. Stripped of its ritual robes, the core of it was a promise of loyalty that did not challenge his deeper oath to Raphael, yet that bound him to keep faith with Mahiya and her blood for the duration of his task.
“I hold your vow,” Mahiya said, speaking the closing words for this part of the rite. “Until the name of the traitor is known. It is done.”
Neha smiled into the thick silence after Mahiya accepted their bargain. “Your neck, Jason.”
“I think not,” he said without blinking, and turned his arm to reveal his wrist. “Blood is blood.”
“You do not trust me?” A silken question that dripped menace.
“I trust no one at my neck.” He was powerful enough that he’d most likely survive a beheading, but that didn’t mean he wanted to chance it.
The head falling from his blood-slick hands to thud onto the floor. “I’m sorry . . .”
When Neha’s eyes remained ice-cold, he expected her to bleed him far more than necessary, but she made only the shallowest nick on his wrist, right above his pulse. As a droplet of blood welled onto his skin, she ordered Mahiya to angle her neck and made another cut above the beat of the other angel’s pulse.
This last act was the final, and for many, the repugnant reason why the ceremony was no longer in favor. “Princess Mahiya,” he said, stepping close enough to see the taut line of her jaw, her spine as rigid as the tendons in her neck.
A slight nod, permission for him to seal the vow with the most basic of acts.
Dipping his head, he flicked his tongue over the ruby red droplet that shivered against her dusky skin, the warm iron of it metallic against his tongue. He stepped back, held up his wrist.
Mahiya placed both of her hands under his wrist and lifted it to her lips. The touch of her lips on his skin, light as butterfly’s wings. Lifting her head, she said, “The blood vow is sealed,” her expression unreadable in its very lack of deep emotion. Except for that single betrayal of distaste during the sealing of the vow, it was as if they stood at a cocktail party, exchanging pleasantries, the effect was so curiously shallow.
Perhaps that was all there was to the princess, but Jason’s every instinct whispered otherwise.
He turned to Neha, never losing his awareness of the enigmatic Mahiya. “Eris?”
Clapping her hands, she laughed. “Oh, what a thing to say directly after a primal act of blood.” A reminder that in times lost to the mists of history such vows had been spoken between lovers, the blood exchanged an erotic kiss. “You truly are cold, Jason.”
He’d been called that many times in his life, and it was a fact he didn’t dispute, though deep within him burned a cauldron of black fire. “It’s why I am here.”
“Of course. Come.”
When Mahiya went to drop behind him, Jason shook his head. “I will not have you at my back.” She was an unknown, her threat level as yet a mystery. “Walk ahead of or beside me.”
A flash of startling tawny brown, but she fell into step at his side . . . a fine, fine hum of tension across her shoulders. It was so subtly camouflaged, even Jason might not have caught it if he hadn’t already been on alert for any sign of the woman behind the mask. Mahiya, it seemed, did not like having anyone at her back either. Unusual for a court “trinket,” even more so for a princess who should’ve been used to a retinue.
