A sad, rueful smile that spoke of the besotted youth he’d been. “I’m certain other angels have told their mortal lovers over the centuries, the secrets going to the grave with those men and women, but I told a girl who could not keep her silence, who began to whisper hints to others in her village.”
This time it was Elena who touched his wing, the silken silver-blue a living piece of art beneath her fingertips. “I’m so sorry.”
“No angel can afford to break with such ease,” Illium continued, “and though I loved her with all of my being, I also knew her down to the soul, knew she didn’t have the will to hold secrets within. Raphael was right to punish me.”
When he spread his wing and lifted his arm, she went, hugging him with the embrace of a friend, was hugged in turn, his grip so fierce she knew he fought not to splinter under the deluge of memory.
“The Sire,” Illium said, his chest rising against her in a long, jagged breath, “was wounded at what he had to do. I could see it, feel it, and it is the greatest shame of my life that I drove him to the point where he had no other option.”
Of everything he’d said, that was the least expected, but Illium wasn’t done. “If only,” he said, “I’d come to him as soon as I realized my mistake in telling, he would’ve quietly erased her memory of angelic secrets, warned me not to make the same mistake again, and I would’ve been free to love her. But I didn’t and he could not help me once others learned of my transgression.”
Elena’s heart twisted as she understood at last. Ruthless he might be, but Raphael protected those who were his own. For him to not only be unable to do that, but to actually be forced to cause harm instead, would’ve exacted a terrible price. Especially when it had been Illium, son of an angel who had both Raphael’s respect and his love: the Hummingbird, someone he treated with heartbreaking gentleness.
“Whatever price I paid,” Illium said into the quiet, “he paid it twice over.”
Hurting for the loss that defined the blue-winged angel to this day, and the circumstances that had led to it, Elena leaned back, raised her hand to touch his face, and found herself hesitating.
“Be careful with Illium, Elena. He’s vulnerable to the humanity you carry within.”
The echo of Dmitri’s voice, sin and seduction and violence, the vampire’s expression unexpectedly serious as he cautioned her about Illium not long after her return to New York.
“It’s all right, Ellie.” A lopsided smile, Illium’s body heat pressing against her own. “You are the Sire’s and I would tear off my own wings before I would break that trust.”
Dropping her hand, she took a step away, putting more distance between them. “I don’t want to cause you pain,” she said, affection intertwined with worry. Her worry wasn’t only for how he reacted to her, but also the fact that he continued to mourn a woman who’d turned to dust centuries ago, having forgotten she’d ever been so unbearably loved.
When Elena had been human, she’d sometimes wondered how mortal-immortal couples handled the aging of one, while the other appeared as young as the day they’d first met. Never once had she considered that if the love was true, the pain would be endless for the one left behind. “You have enough hurt inside you already.”
“The only thing that’ll hurt is if you allow my mistakes to damage our friendship.” A slow smile that painted over the sadness, eyes of liquid gold backlit with wickedness. “Shall I tell you about my lovers so you don’t feel sorry for me?”
She cocked her head. “In the plural?”
“I wouldn’t want to give anyone the wrong idea.” Tugging playfully on her braid, he headed for the door. “The blood pickup team has arrived.”
The vampiric team, gloved up and masked, made quick work of clearing the fridges. Locking up after them, Elena got a quick lift from Illium and angled her wings toward the Tower. Regardless of her personal anger with Raphael, they were and would always be a unit when it came to protecting their city, and she wanted to update him on the Blood-for-Less situation, as well as find out why he’d left the site of the five vampiric deaths so precipitously.
The light-filled column of the Tower a cold burn in front of her, she reached out to make certain he was inside. Raphael?
The answer came immediately, but it held the slight remoteness that denoted a certain amount of distance. There is a situation, Elena. Michaela is here.
15
Raphael didn’t shift his eyes off Michaela as he instructed Illium to lead Elena to Gable House, the place the female archangel had taken in the short term. He’d left the house of disease as soon as one of his far advance scouts had spotted her flying into the territory, and made the long flight to escort her—a gesture she’d seen as welcome, but that he’d done to make certain she brought no army.
She hadn’t, her escort consisting of a single angelic squadron and a vampire, the vampire catching a lift with the angels by way of a light carrier designed for that purpose. Had Michaela been in distress, or in fear of an imminent assault, he’d have waited to have this discussion, but dressed in a green catsuit that hugged her curves, she moved with opulent sensuality, her actions designed to remind him she was considered the most desirable woman in the world.
Raphael would rather sleep in a pit of venomous snakes than with Michaela.
He had, however, allowed her time to rest and have a meal after her journey, for he would not harm the babe in her womb. “I’m glad you had the sense not to impinge on my home,” he said now.
An insinuating smile. “It is an inconvenience not to use my own property, but I know you’re protective of your little mortal—and Riker has a taste for her. It would’ve been impossible to stop him from crossing the woods to get to her had we been neighbors.”
Riker, Raphael thought, wouldn’t touch Elena. Last time he’d come close to her, Raphael had simply ripped out his heart and left him twitching on the earth. Should Michaela’s pet vampire have forgotten that lesson, Raphael would be happy to teach it again—this time, with a permanent conclusion. “Do not bring Riker into my territory again unless you want him dead.”
“Oh, Raphael, I didn’t mean to make you angry.” All but purring, she went as if to place her hand on his chest.
He gripped her wrist before she could, her bones slender under his hold, and, driven by instinct that said her every word was a honeyed lie, activated his healing ability. Knowledge poured into him, of Michaela’s physical strength, of the sickening acid-green taint she carried within as a result of the day Uram had cracked her rib cage open to play with her blood-slick heart . . . of the emptiness in her womb.
Releasing her with enough force that she stumbled back a step, he said, “Do not cross more lines than you’ve already done by entering my lands without invitation. I am not yours to touch.” Only a single stubborn, intelligent, and dangerous woman had that right.
A tightening of lush brown skin over the blades of her cheekbones, rejection anathema to a woman used to being worshipped by the male sex. “I thought to plead my case in person.” Tilting her head to the side, the glossy black curls of her hair shining with bronze highlights, she placed her palms flat against the concave slope of her abdomen. “I thought you, of all the Cadre, would show kindness to a woman with child.” Her tone altered, became huskier, her dawning smile painful in its apparent tenderness. “You watched over the angelic nurseries as a young man. I have ever respected that about you, Raphael—your willingness to protect our most precious treasures.”
Raphael wondered if Michaela was so used to manipulating men that she simply didn’t understand he couldn’t be molded to her requirements with sweet words buttressed by an undertone of sex. “I am no longer a young man,” he said, seeing her eyes narrow at the continued ice in his tone, “and you have come perilously close to a fatal breach of the rules of Guesthood.”