With fall now a blaze of red and orange and yellow across Central Park, the engineers had also added clever transparent “curtains” of what Illium had told Naasir was a high-tech material that allowed the Legion to fly in and out at will, but that maintained a warm, growing temperature within. Each time a fighter went through, the curtains fell automatically back in place, trapping the heat inside.
Naasir had snuck into the high-rise soon after he first returned to New York two weeks earlier. The inside was structured so that the remaining parts of the internal floors and ceilings jutted out at unusual angles; the distance between one and the next was often deep. Enjoying the lush greenery within, the vines climbing up the sides already starting to take strong hold and small trees digging in their roots as flowers bloomed, Naasir had made his way to the top regardless—without alerting the Legion he was in their territory.
He didn’t think the Primary had been pleased when Naasir appeared on the glass of the roof, but the leader of the Legion was loyal to Raphael, and Naasir was one of Raphael’s Seven, so they existed in a wary truce. Just thinking about the Legion made Naasir’s skin prickle and muscles tense.
They were so old and so other that he often had to fight the compulsion to bite them.
Despite that, or perhaps because of it, he sometimes felt that the strange fighters who flew on wings devoid of feathers, were more like him than anyone else in the entire world. Naasir might not have wings, but he was as other. Except, where there were seven hundred and seventy-seven in the Legion, he was only one.
You are angry with us because we are many, but you know deep within that you are one of us. A child of the earth. Bitterly young in comparison to our eons-long existence, but with a connection to life that is primal.
The leader of the Legion had said that to Naasir with a straight face. The other man—though man didn’t feel like the right description—truly believed his words. He didn’t understand that Naasir wasn’t anything natural. He hadn’t been born of the earth; he’d been created by a monster.
A monster whose liver and heart Naasir had clawed out and eaten.
Teeth bared, he looked down at the balcony to his left and two floors below, noting that it was one of the rare ones with a railing. Dmitri had said he couldn’t jump to the city streets because he’d end up flattened like a pancake, but this jump wasn’t far and the wind, while brisk, wouldn’t push him right to the edge. Muscles bunching a split second after his eye fell on the other balcony, he jumped.
Cold air rushed past his face, pasting his T-shirt to his body and stinging his eyes, and then his bare feet hit the hard surface of the balcony. Absorbing the impact through his entire body, having purposefully ended up in a feline crouch, he found the wind had pushed him farther than he’d expected—another couple of inches and he’d have hit the top of the railing, would’ve had to scrabble for purchase to keep from tumbling out into open air.
He was grinning at the close call when he became aware of someone rushing out onto the balcony. He didn’t need to look behind him to know who it was; Honor’s scent was as familiar to him as his own. Rising to his full height as he turned, he saw that her cheeks were pale beneath her gold-kissed skin, her green eyes huge.
“Naasir!” She ran across to him, frantically running her hands over his shoulders and down his arms. “Did you hurt yourself?”
Naasir suddenly realized he might be in trouble. “No,” he reassured her. “It was only a short jump.”
“A short jump?” Honor pressed one hand over her heart, her other hand gripping tight at his upper arm, as if she was afraid he’d fall off the balcony. “You scared me half to death!”
Moving slowly so as not to scare her any more, he wrapped her in his arms and nuzzled his cheek against her hair. “Don’t tell Dmitri,” he whispered.
“You are a person.” The deadly vampire who was Honor’s mate had said that to Naasir when he was only a feral child. “You are Naasir. I’ll lose a piece of me if you die and it’s a piece I’ll never get back.”
Until that instant forever seared into his memory, Naasir hadn’t actually understood that anyone considered him a real person, a person who would be missed if he was gone, and who had the right to other people’s love, affection, and care. That day, in Dmitri’s dark eyes, he’d seen pain at the idea of a world without Naasir, as well as raw anger at the fact Naasir had once again endangered himself, and it had forever changed the boy he’d been.
In many ways, that moment marked his true birth. The birth of Naasir, the person.
Even today, though he was full-grown, Naasir didn’t like making Dmitri scared for him, or angry with him—and he felt the same way about Honor. She was Dmitri’s mate and part of Naasir’s family now. She treated him as if he were hers to care for, to spoil, and to touch as family touched. That should’ve been strange, but it wasn’t. He had no trouble following Honor’s orders, no matter that he was the far more dangerous predator.
Maybe because she belonged to Dmitri . . . and maybe because she made him feel safe and protected. It made no sense, but when he was with Honor, her soft scent in his every breath, he felt like he thought a cub must feel next to the comforting warmth of its mother. She looked after him and she didn’t do it in a way that made his hackles rise.
Laughing a little raggedly now, she ran her hands down his back. “I won’t tell on you,” she promised, “but you can’t go around doing things like that.” She leaned back so she could hold his eyes with the jeweled brightness of her own. “What would I do if you hurt yourself?”
He hung his head, looking at her through his lashes. Like the choppily cut hair that slid around his face, they were a metallic, inhuman silver that marked him as different. “I’m sorry. Sometimes I forget to think like a human.”
Shaking her head, Honor cupped his face in her hands. “You’re perfect exactly as you are,” she whispered with so much love that he felt as if he was being hugged. “I just don’t want you hurt.”
He smiled at the last, knowing he was forgiven for having scared her. Lifting her up in his arms and off her feet, he squeezed her tight. She laughed, silhouetted against a cloudless sky of chrome blue, and, when he put her back down, said, “Be on time for dinner. I asked Montgomery for the recipe for the spiced meat you like.”
Making the promise, Naasir walked her back into the Tower and realized he’d jumped onto the balcony right outside her study. He was thinking about curling up in a sunny armchair in the corner and just napping when he felt the crashing wave, the biting, fresh touch of water, that was his archangel’s voice in his head.
Naasir, I need to speak to you.
I’m on my way, sire. Leaving Honor with a rub of his cheek against hers that she permitted with a smile, he made his way to the room in the Tower from which Raphael ran his territory. Spearing through the Manhattan sky, the city’s Archangel Tower held countless rooms, all with a purpose. Above this floor were the private suites.
Naasir had one, but he preferred to stay with Honor and Dmitri.
Why would he want to be by himself when he could be with family?
Entering Raphael’s office, he was disappointed to find that Elena wasn’t there. He liked sparring with his sire’s consort and they’d done it several times since Naasir had finally been released from long-term duty at Amanat, the city held by Raphael’s mother, Caliane.