Part of her wanted to accept his invitation, to be with him, to hoard the memories against what was to come. She was bound to serve in Charisemnon’s court for five hundred years, and knowing her grandfather, those five hundred years would be one horror after another. Surely, whispered the desperation in her, surely she could have Naasir for just a little while?
And what happens when you join Charisemnon’s court?
The cold reminder was a slap. The idea of Naasir hating her or himself after they’d been so painfully intimate, it made her feel as if she was spun glass that would break with a single wrong touch. “Remember my vow,” she said after removing her hand from over his mouth, her voice husky with all the emotions she couldn’t set free.
His expression turned icily serious without warning. “If you were mine, I wouldn’t let you rut with others.”
She didn’t know if that was a threat or a promise.
Pushing off her, he rose to his feet before she could decide how to respond. A single tug when he offered her his hand and he pulled her to her feet. “Tell me about your stupid Grimoire book.”
Stomach tight, she blew out a breath. “You can’t find it.” Her eyes burned because she wanted him to find it, even if it wouldn’t change anything.
“I can find anything.” His confidence was arrogant but in a way that made her want to kiss him. “How big is it? Where was it last seen?”
“That’s just it,” she confessed. “It hasn’t been seen in the past hundred thousand years or more—before that, there are mentions of it in old stories that might as well be myths.” That was the reason she’d chosen it as her escape key. To ensure the door would remain permanently locked.
Naasir scowled. “It’s not a real thing?”
“No, it is.” Just of incalculable age. “Caliane is actually responsible for the most reputable report of its existence. Long before she was an Ancient, she made a casual note of it in a letter to a friend.” Somehow, that eons-old letter had survived and was kept in a special part of the Archives.
“Where did she see it?”
“In the house of an alchemist.” At a time when even angels had believed in such things. “The alchemist is long dead, the city he lived in no longer exists, and scholars have spent thousands of years trying to track down the fabled Star Grimoire without success.”
“Tell me all about it,” he demanded again.
Stupidly happy at his stubborn determination, she gave in. “It’s a book on fantastical creatures and hidden mysteries meant to have been written by an angel so long ago that her name has been lost from the Archives. Within its pages are said to be illustrations of utmost beauty hand-painted by the angel’s most beloved concubine.”
“What does it look like?”
“Leather bound, with a golden clasp.” A frustratingly incomplete description. “No one ever seems to want to describe its physical appearance, just what apparently lies within.”
Naasir looked at her so intently that she knew he wanted more. So she gave him more, and as she did, she learned that he liked listening to her tell stories of times long gone. He wasn’t bored by the history she held in her head and quite often said something that made her look at things in a whole new light.
Yes, she would never forget Naasir. Not so long as she drew breath.
20
Elena walked into Raphael’s Tower office to find the Primary there instead of her archangel. The leader of the Legion was staring at a screen that showed Jessamy’s face. “Oh, sorry.” She began to back out.
“Wait, Ellie,” Jessamy called out as the Primary turned to pin her with those eerie, beautiful eyes, translucent but for the ring of mountain blue around the irises.
“Consort.” His greeting was toneless, but all at once, she could hear seven hundred and seventy-seven voices whispering to her.
Braced for it, she nodded. “Hello.”
The voices receded. Thank God. After a few hiccups, the Legion had come to understand that, unlike Raphael, she couldn’t hold all their voices in her head. They’d also started to learn that she saw them as individuals, not a single entity. Whether they’d take that on board themselves was an unanswered question.
“Have you had contact with Amanat?” she asked, coming to stand beside the Primary.
Jessamy’s soft brown eyes filled with sympathy. “Keir is there now. He says Suyin has fallen into anshara and it’s for the best—the repeated wing excisions without enough time to truly heal in between had a cumulative effect.”
Elena couldn’t imagine the horror the other woman had survived. “None of Jason’s people have made contact with Naasir,” she told Jessamy, conscious the Historian had a deep bond with the silver-haired member of the Seven.
Jason himself had flown to Titus’s territory, after hearing rumors of a border confrontation between Titus and Charisemnon that could break out into war. The spymaster had been confident Naasir would make it out safely now that he and the scholar had escaped the citadel, but Elena wouldn’t be happy until she heard from the damn teasing tiger creature himself.
“He is a being of stealth and shadow; this is what he was born to do.” The Primary had a way of being so motionless that it’d be easy to forget him, but when he spoke, he always spoke sense.
Jessamy’s smile was shaky but real. “He’d agree with you. He loves nothing better than sneaking in and out of places.” She nodded at the Primary. “We’ve been talking history. Or at least I have.”
“Our memories of what we heard in our time of slumber are fading,” the Primary told Elena. “It is a . . . side effect of being in the world.”
“Yet he still won’t tell me everything he does remember so I can record it.”
“Some things are not meant to be remembered.” The Primary’s voice held echoes of countless others. “Life becomes meaningless if all is known. This we have learned.”
“But we could learn from past mistakes, not make them again,” Jessamy argued.
“Each generation, each Cascade has its own rhythm.” The Primary’s counterargument was without passion, but it was no less potent, the eerie sense of endless age that clung to him coloring every word. “You cannot predict the future by looking at the past.”
Slipping out as the two continued to speak, Elena made her way to what had been the infirmary floor. Most of the injured were now gone. The few that remained were in a small section to the northeast.
She walked in to find the mini-infirmary empty but for one angel. Blond curls having grown back, a shirtless Izak was standing on trembling legs, determinedly lifting a heavy set of hand weights. The bones in his arms had been shattered into splinters in the Falling, but they’d fared better than the legs he’d lost below the thighs. Those legs had only just finished regenerating in a searing agony of sensation.
“Izzy,” she said, striding quickly to the young angel. “You know you’re not supposed to do that without a spotter.”
He gave her a guilty but stubborn look. “I can’t be in here much longer, Ellie.” Not fighting when she tugged away and set the weights aside after seeing his biceps muscles quiver, he added, “I’ll go mad.”
Elena’s heart clenched. Izak was the youngest angel to have survived the cowardly attack that had sent so many of New York’s angels crashing to the earth, and the terrible nature of his injuries meant his road to this point had been a long and painful one. Charisemnon had a lot to answer for, and answer he would: Raphael would never forget this crime of war. Neither would any of his people.
“Izzy,” she said, keeping her voice light, “you have an eight-pack that would be the envy of any man.” She patted his abdomen, happy to feel warm, healthy skin where there had only been raw, bloody flesh.