“I see it.” His breath on her skin, the sensation intense even with the wind. “Try your wings again, Andi.”
She tried, so hard it felt as if she’d ruptured blood vessels in her eyes, but it was useless. When she shook her head, Naasir growled. “My mate is trying to save your fucking life, Archangel!”
The heat began to burn, though the cauldron was boiling far below. That was when Andromeda understood death would come long before they ever got close to the surface of the lava—or tempest of molten metal, whatever it was. The heat would liquefy their internal organs and melt the flesh from their bones before those bones cracked and turned to dust.
The disintegration would end them both, for total and absolute immortality was the province of myth. Given her resurrection, it was possible that Lijuan had reached that level of evolution. Andromeda was too young to survive even half of what was about to happen, while Naasir . . . She didn’t know his limits, but she knew she couldn’t watch him die.
“Alexander!” she cried in desperation. “You’re meant to be a wise man!”
The bottoms of her boots melted, the feathers at the ends of her wings beginning to singe and burn, the air so hot and dry it threatened to sear the lungs.
“No, he’s a stupid one!” Naasir snarled . . . and they jerked to a halt in midair.
38
Eyes wide, Andromeda stretched out her wings. They moved, but she knew without attempting it that should she try to fly out, she’d be sucked back down. Not that she would, not when she didn’t have the strength to lift Naasir with her. Keeping her arms around the taut muscle of him, she looked around as he did the same.
There was nothing else in this tunnel of stone except Andromeda and Naasir and the bubbling, ravenous lava below. Heart a staccato beat and every breath an effort, she said, “I think you got his attention.”
Naasir bared his teeth. “You’re more civilized—you talk.”
Molten geysers shot out of the lava, as if Alexander was getting impatient. “Archangel,” she said, directing her words to the lava, though she knew Alexander could hear her regardless of where she pitched her voice. “The world is in the midst of a Cascade and the archangels of the current Cadre are spiking violently in power.”
The lava bubbled and erupted with countless geysers as they fell another two feet.
The heat scorched her soles through her ruined boots.
Naasir’s growl was more feral than she’d ever heard it, the sound echoing off the stone to reverberate in her bones. “Lijuan wants to kill you in your Sleep, you stubborn old bastard! She believes she’s a goddess!”
Andromeda winced. Alexander had been wise, but he’d also had a stormy temper.
The stone rumbled but they didn’t drop again.
“He’s laughing,” Andromeda whispered incredulously. It pushed her over the edge. “Listen, damn you! Lijuan isn’t who you remember! She’s insane and she can kill you—while you’ve been Asleep, she’s become the Archangel of Death.”
She felt the heat of Naasir’s skin as his temperature rose, smelled burning flesh. Not hers alone. No. No. “Even if you survive, your loyal sentinels won’t!” As Naasir was Andromeda’s, the Wing Brotherhood was Alexander’s—worth dying for, worth fighting for. “Your men and women have held to their vows for four hundred years and they will die one by one in agony and suffering rather than leave you!”
She screamed as they fell again. The smell of burning feathers filled the air. It felt as if her blood was a heartbeat away from boiling, her eyes so hot she couldn’t keep them open.
Naasir’s voice was no longer in any way human, the words he spoke guttural. “I’ll come back from death you ancient relic, hunt down your immortal ass if you harm my mate!”
“Brotherhood,” Andromeda managed to whisper, sure Alexander’s bond to his sentinels was their only hope of reaching him.
Naasir pressed his cheek to hers, trying to curve his body as much as possible around her own. “As for your sentinels, Lijuan might decide to make them reborn. Shambling, living dead who hunger for the flesh. You are no sire if you permit that!”
No warning before they were pushed up at the same suicidal rate they’d been pulled down. Up and up and up until the air was cool and they could breathe.
The voice, when it came, was everywhere.
I am waking. Prepare for battle.
Naasir and Andromeda found themselves shoved out of the wind tunnel and dumped on the sandy floor of the stone chamber again. The chasm that had sucked them in closed up so seamlessly that there was no sign it had ever been there.
Getting up with muscled, feline grace, Naasir crouched in front of her as she sat up. He ran his hand over her hair, then very gently over the arches of her wings—it was a highly sensitive area, the touch intimate, but she burrowed against his chest, needing the tenderness, wanting nothing more than to be close to him.
Death, she’d realized in that tunnel, could come at any instant.
“Kiss me,” she said, lifting her face to the primal masculinity of his. “If death comes, I want to go having known your kiss.”
He nipped sharply at her lower lip instead. “We’ll kiss after I find your stupid Grimoire book.”
Forehead scrunching up, Andromeda shook her head. “Forget the Grimoire.”
Naasir gripped her chin, his eyes—so haunting and beautiful—locking with hers. “Your honor is important to you. It is as important as your heart. Kill one and I will kill the other.”
She cried then, because he knew her heart. His arms came around her, his breath against her cheek as he rubbed the side of his face against her, but she knew they didn’t have time for her sorrow. Stealing one more moment against the heat and strength and fierceness of him, she got to her feet.
Her soles were severely burned, causing excruciating agony, but she could already feel her body attempting to make the repairs. More important, she could still walk as long as she didn’t focus on the throbbing pulse of pain. “My wings should hold me for short periods,” she said, stretching them out. “I can fly up, search for a way out.”
Naasir’s eyes were flames of liquid silver as they took in her blackened and burnt feathers but he nodded. “Go. I’ll look down here. There’s still something about the air currents.”
It was only when he turned that she saw his back. A pained cry leaving her mouth, she reached out instinctively before pulling back her hand lest she harm him with her touch. “Your back.” Her voice shook with fury. “Alexander hurt you.” His T-shirt had been almost totally burned away on that side of his body, leaving only exposed and charred skin.
Turning toward her, he cupped her cheek, his thumb scraping over her cheekbone. “It’s only a minor burn. It’ll be gone within hours.”
Old and strong, she reminded herself. He was older and stronger than her, and he was a legendary chimera. “Is it true that you can heal as well or sometimes even better than an angel?” That was a “fact” she’d just remembered, something she’d come across during her studies into mythical creatures.
“Yes.” Leaning in, he rubbed his nose over hers as he’d done at the end of their tunnel ride. “I’ll tell you all about chimeras after we get out.”
She felt her lips twitch at his tone—as if he was offering her a treat. And the truth was, he was: she was a scholar, loved new information . . . and this wild chimera had figured that out because he looked at her and saw who she was. “I’ll hold you to that.”
Spreading her wounded wings on his smile, she rose into the air. Vertical takeoffs took more strength than a glide, but as a result of the training regimen Dahariel and Galen had taught her, she usually had no problems. Today, however, it felt as if a thousand thin spikes were stabbing into every inch of her wings, trying to hold her down.