She wouldn’t have been surprised if the reminder of her injury, and how it had come about, reignited his temper, but he sent his power into her in silence, the warmth of it an embrace. “You’ll be fine now, Guild Hunter.” A kiss on the back of her neck.
Skin heating in response, she turned in his arms, the glow from the library fireplace gilding them both in gold. “Talk to me, Archangel.” If she had a tendency to shut down, pretend things didn’t matter, then Raphael had the habit of handling everything himself. Not surprising, given his status as an archangel, but he had her now.
Walking to the square crystal decanter on a side table, he poured a splash of amber liquid into a tumbler and threw the liquor back in a single hit. Alcohol didn’t affect angels as it did humans, and it had no effect on Raphael, but he’d told her he liked the kick of heat, the taste. “If this is the emergence of a new power,” he said, the fire reflecting off the faceted tumbler, “then it’s one I cannot control.”
Taking the tumbler from him when his fingers tightened, threatening to turn the crystal to dust, she put it down. “You’ve only had two chances to—”
“It changes me,” he said, cutting through her words. “You sensed it attempting to take control. You were right.” His fingers clenched on the mantelpiece, his wings arcing to the floor in a display of white fire. “I could murder millions in the grip of it and not blink.”
Her stomach lurched, her eyes rising from the stunning beauty of his wings to his face. “Drop the glamour.” The instant he did, she swore.
Striding over, she traced the dark red with a fingertip. “It’s grown.” Not only that but it had curved with a jagged edge, the line thicker, darker. “This can’t be coincidence—it’s linked to the power fluctuations in some way.”
Raphael shoved away from the mantel. “It matters nothing, not when to utilize the power, I must allow it to erase my personality. I may as well give the city to Lijuan if the Raphael who rules it is one forever in the Quiet.”
Elena tried to think past her instinctive repudiation of the idea of him permanently in that place of malevolent calm where he was no longer the man she loved, the man who loved her. “The birds,” she said suddenly, something niggling at her. “The first time they fell, is it possible it wasn’t one event but two?”
Raphael’s eyes, no trace of that cold liquid black in their depths, locked with hers. “You believe it was mischance they got caught up in the wave of disease that took down the angels?”
“The sky boiled just like tonight,” she said, trying to put her instinctive realization into words. “Could be they were coming to you and were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time—remember, they were moving from Manhattan to the Enclave.”
Wings continuing to flicker with that illusion of luminous white fire until he moved out of range of the firelight, he pushed open the doors to the lawn. “You may be right.”
“But it doesn’t give us any answers, does it?”
Standing in the doorway, his eyes on the pristine snow beyond, he said, “The power, it seduced, whispering to me to weave it into my own cells.” A glance over his shoulder. “Before you, I would’ve no doubt accepted it and it would’ve destroyed me from the inside out.”
She followed him when he stepped out onto the stretch of unbroken white, a snowflake falling to dust her cheek, her wings kissed by the soft, whimsical rain. It wasn’t heavy, just enough to be pretty, covering up their tracks from the house in a glittering veil, the unexpected stars above making the ice crystals sparkle.
It seemed wrong to talk about the horrors of war and power in such a magical moment, but they had no choice. “Before you,” she whispered, “I was shut up inside my heart, protecting it from harm, and never knowing the glory I missed.” She linked her hand to his. “You and I, we’re a unit. I dare any evil on this earth to tear us apart.”
Spreading his wings, Raphael drew his warrior into his arms, and as he closed those wings around them both, he knew that while war was inevitable, the loss of his soul was not. The chill price of immortality was one Elena would never allow him to pay.
“I would rather die as Elena than live as a shadow.”
His consort’s words from their courtship—though perhaps she would not call it that—whispered into his mind. Raphael had no intention of dying or of surrendering his territory to anyone, but should he ever be forced to make that choice, he would rather go into the last goodnight as Raphael, the archangel who fell in love with a mortal, than Raphael the archangel so bloated with power that he no longer understood such an emotion.
“One thing good came out of tonight, though,” Elena said, leaning back so their eyes met, her hair wildfire against the backdrop of white. “The lightning storm will give anyone getting ready to attack second thoughts about exactly what you’ve gained in the Cascade.”
“Possibly, but what troubles me is why they haven’t already launched a direct assault.” Even with everything he and his people had done to hide the extent of the harm done to the city’s defensive force, their enemy had to suspect he or she had struck a vicious blow. “It makes me believe they wait for something, something with enough chance of so fundamentally changing the balance of power in any war that they willingly risk giving New York extra time to prepare, rather than capitalizing on the damage already done.”
“I really need that cake now.”
Startled laughter in his blood, unexpected light in the shadows, the taste of snow in her kiss. And he knew that come what may, they’d stand together. In the light and in the terrible darkness.
31
Jason’s report at noon the next day made it deadly clear what they would face when the hostilities did begin. “Lijuan is openly consolidating her troops,” Raphael told Elena after scanning the report.
“How bad?”
“Her numbers have always been greater than mine—a consequence of her age.”
Elena didn’t need Raphael to spell it out to realize that Lijuan had been kept in check previously only because every member of the Cadre was more or less equal in power, thus Lijuan risked death in a fight. That clearly no longer applied. “Is there any chance New York isn’t the target?”
“No.” He showed her a piece of heavy paper, the texture rough silk, as if it had been handmade. “A courier brought this in just before you came up from the infirmary.”
Elena couldn’t read the message, but recognized the language as an ancient angelic one she’d seen in one of Jessamy’s history books. “It’s a declaration of war,” she guessed.
“Lijuan is ‘civilized’ to the end.” Expression harsh, he glanced back down at his spymaster’s report. “Jason also confirms there is no indication whatsoever that she has gained the ability to cause disease, and the fact she wasn’t in the vicinity of Amanat at the time of Kahla’s infection bears out the theory she has a conspirator.”
“So we might be about to face not one but two enemy archangels.” Meanwhile, the Tower infirmary remained full, only three of the injured fighters having recovered enough to rejoin their squadrons. The good news, however, was that with the transfers from outside the main city, they weren’t as badly disadvantaged as Lijuan might believe.
“We’ll also have the benefit of fighting on home soil,” Raphael pointed out when she shared her thoughts, “while her fighters must arrive on the wing. I’ll speak to Elijah, test the strength of our alliance—the odds change dramatically if we and our people stand together.”
Leaving Raphael to speak to the other archangel, she flew out with the intention of sneaking a visit with Eve during her break at school. Her sister’s recent e-mails had held an undertone of anxiousness she didn’t like and she planned to get to the bottom of it—just because the world was going to hell didn’t mean Elena was about to abandon the little girl who needed her.