Her eyes stung, her throat thick. She couldn’t speak for a long time. When she did, her voice came out husky. “The dinner is technically in my honor. It’s mandatory for those of my blood to return home on our four-hundredth birthday.”
She knew she should tell him she wouldn’t leave again for five hundred years, but the words stuck in her chest, hard and taunting. “I thought you’d make the dinner more fun.”
Naasir’s cheeks creased, his eyes glinting. “We’ll have fun,” he promised. “I’ll bring your parents a present.”
Her instincts shouted an alert. “Ah, Naasir—”
Laughing at her dubious tone, he pulled himself up and out of the water without warning. She saw the hard curve of his buttocks, the strong muscle of his thighs, the sleek strength of him as he stood on the bank and shook himself dry like a big cat. His silver hair glittered even in the darkness.
He began to turn toward her.
Skin so hot it seared her from the inside out, she forced herself to shut her eyes and go under the icy water, staying there until she was no longer in danger of combusting. When she came back up, she saw Naasir had pulled on his wet pants. He didn’t look happy about it, though. Nostrils flaring, he picked up a couple of things he must’ve left on the ground and slid them back into his pockets, then examined his T-shirt and finally started to pull it on, no doubt figuring it’d dry faster on his body.
“I won’t look,” he told her, keeping his eyes scrupulously on the trees in front of him.
Trusting him, she got out of the water and found her things. She stared at her panties, belatedly realizing he must’ve handled them earlier. Also remembering that he’d had no underwear. Skin hot again and breasts aching, she pulled on her heavily damp tunic. It hit her several inches below her butt, saving her modesty.
“I don’t want to wear the rest,” she admitted aloud.
Naasir glanced over, taking her words as permission. “Don’t. I’ll carry your things since you have the sword, and we can dry them in the sun after dawn.”
“Do you really want to wear your T-shirt?”
It was as if he’d just been waiting for her words. Stripping off the T-shirt to reveal a chest that threatened to make her a breaker of vows, he watched as she, blush furious, tied her pants and panties, as well as his T-shirt, into a small bundle. Taking it, he said, “You must wear the slippers. They protect your feet at least a little.”
Nodding, she slipped her feet into them; they were falling apart, but as Naasir had said, they did provide a faint measure of protection for her tender and bruised feet. As they began to move again, air kissed her most private places, her nipples rubbing against wet silk. She felt scandalous and wild and adventurous.
Beside her, Naasir prowled along at what was clearly a lazy pace for him. They didn’t speak as the world turned from black to gray. Wet and half-naked . . . and she’d never been as comfortable with someone in her entire life.
Until he glanced over and reached out a hand to bounce the tight spirals of her hair on his palm. “I like this better than your braid.”
Her stomach dropped . . . but then she realized it no longer mattered if someone saw her and was immediately reminded of Lailah, daughter of Charisemnon; her mother had the same distinctive gold-streaked brown curls and facial bones. Though instead of Andromeda’s freckles, Lailah had smooth, silken skin perhaps two shades darker than Andromeda’s.
Lailah’s curls also never frizzed like her daughter’s, were always glossy and perfect.
Those differences made Lailah a beauty many a man had coveted, Andromeda the far more ordinary child. One who’d known from childhood that people looked at her and saw an inferior imitation of the original. “Really?” she whispered, wondering if Naasir would compare them, too. “My hair is totally out of control.”
A grin from the wild creature next to her.
The tight band easing from around her chest, she laughed and they continued on.
“We stop here,” Naasir said as dawn’s fingers stroked the horizon. “There’s too much activity in the sky. Villagers will also have been alerted to be on the lookout.”
“We’ll travel only at night?”
A nod. “I have an advantage at night and they won’t expect a scholar to seek the darkness.”
“I’m tired, too,” she admitted, Galen and Dahariel both having taught her to be honest with any partner in battle—and this was a kind of battle. “Being grounded and having to hold up my wings while walking for such long distances is straining my wing muscles.”
Naasir went as if to reach out and ease her muscles, stopped halfway, obviously recalling the intimacy of such a touch. Brushing part of a wing was one thing—squeezing the arches and other muscles far, far different. “We’ll rest,” he said, then cocked his head. “Wait here. Don’t get caught.”
“I’ll do my best,” she said dryly, holding up the sword.
A sharp flash of teeth against that flawless, pettable skin, and he was gone, so adept at disappearing into the trees that she didn’t see him vanish.
17
Raphael wasn’t expecting to be called into a Cadre meeting anytime in the future, so when the call came—especially when it came from Titus—he knew it must be deadly serious. He cut an over-sea night-training drill short the instant Aodhan relayed the message, and headed to the Tower communications room.
Sirens rose up from the streets as he winged his way past lit-up high-rises, a yellow cab rear-ended another, and tugs on the Hudson sounded warning horns. All familiar sights and sounds, his city back in one piece.
That didn’t mean the war had been won.
Elena, he said after landing on the Tower roof, aware she was in the Tower helping young Izak with his physical therapy. I’m about to speak with the Cadre. He folded in his wings and strode forward. I want you to listen in. Not only did Elena need to understand the political climate, his hunter had a sharp mind and an acute gaze.
On my way.
He didn’t wait for her, but knew when she slipped into the room out of sight of the cameras that linked him to the others. He glimpsed the lightweight crossbow strapped to her thigh and the blades in her forearm sheaths before the screen in front of him split to display Favashi, Titus, Astaad, Elijah, Michaela, Neha, and Caliane.
Missing were Lijuan and Charisemnon.
Lijuan’s absence was no surprise, but since Raphael’s ascension, Charisemnon hadn’t missed a meeting regardless of wars and battles. It gave credence to the theory that the Archangel of Northern Africa had been ravaged by the very disease he’d created—he wouldn’t appear in public again until he was in full health.
“Titus,” Neha said, her hair swept off her face into a soft bun at her nape, and her body clad in a sari of gold-shot green silk. “What is the emergency?”
When the archangel who controlled the southern half of the African continent began to speak, his voice wasn’t the tempered quiet he usually used in meetings. It was a booming bass that vibrated with raw anger. “One of my scouts has long been a friend of Jariel and was invited to his home for a stay. He arrived to find Jariel’s people massacred, and Jariel’s head placed in the center of the entranceway, a pile of ash the only evidence of what may have happened to his body.”
Onyx eyes glittering and muscles bulging under the jet of his skin, Titus slammed down a glass jar. It cracked to spill black ash over the wooden surface on which the Archangel of Southern Africa had slammed it. “We all know ordinary fire does not create a neat pile of ash in a defined area. It also does not destroy the brain while leaving the rest of the head untouched.”
A stunned silence.
Archangel?
Jariel was believed to be on the cusp of becoming an archangel, Raphael told his consort. Perhaps in the next two decades.