“What’s it like to be so arrogant?” she asked musingly. “Do you spend at least an hour a day imagining all the ways in which you are wonderful?”
“Do you wish to come or not? Or you can land and I’ll pick you up on the way back.” They both knew he wasn’t going to make good on his threat—he wasn’t about to leave her to the mercies of the reborn that crawled across the landscape. But a man had a limit.
Folding back her wings, she dropped—right into his arms.
Only once she’d looped one arm around his neck, her wings pressed tightly against her body to reduce drag, did he realize that this was going to make things extremely difficult. Because now, not only did he have the soft warmth of her pressed up against him, he could see down her neckline, to the rounded mounds of her breasts. If that wasn’t enough, every part of her that was bare rubbed against his own bare skin.
The Hummingbird. The Hummingbird. The Hummingbird, he chanted silently. This is not a woman. This is the Hummingbird. A great artist. A treasure of angelkind.
“What do your myriad lovers think of being fleeting conveniences?”
24
A treasure of angelkind.
More like a jackhammer drilling into his brain.
“Why do you believe my lovers are fleeting conveniences?” he asked with a scowl, because holding her was like holding light and air; he’d have to ensure she ate properly whilst in his court or she’d waste away.
Only . . . how could a woman be so light and have such soft breasts and curving hips?
Hummingbird. Hummingbird. Not a woman with breasts and hips and nipples. THE HUMMINGBIRD. An artist. A treasure—
“Oh, come now, Titus.” Her breath whispered warm and soft against his neck, her voice husky and her lush lips curved. “I may have been at a distant outpost of late, and I may have been quite insane prior to that, but I never lost my hearing. The revolving door to your sleeping quarters is well-known.”
Titus didn’t know which one of those statements to address first. In the end, he decided to go for the most unexpected one. “What do you care about the door to my sleeping chamber?” It came out rough and edgy, his cock growing hard in his pants.
He grit his teeth and thanked the skies that she couldn’t see his arousal from her position in his arms. Arousal! He couldn’t be aroused by the Hummingbird! It’d be like being aroused by a great work of art. You weren’t supposed to touch such masterpieces.
The great work of art bared her teeth at him. “Oh, I’m not.” She waved her free hand. “I just worry about the women you use and discard.”
“That is enough!” he boomed, certain she was attempting to annoy him on purpose.
A wince. “I’m right here, my lord Archangel.” A hand rubbing over her ear. “There’s no need to try and blow out my eardrum.”
Did nothing terrify her? “Are you certain you’re not still insane?” In truth, he was sure that she’d never actually lost her sanity—she’d just lost herself for a period. “Baiting an archangel isn’t considered good for one’s health.”
“It is possible,” she said thoughtfully, tapping a finger on her lower lip. “But I find that I don’t give a shit. Is that not a wonderful statement? Think about it. To care so little for a thing that you wouldn’t even offer excrement for it!”
He was so agog at the vulgarity coming from her mouth that he stopped flying for a second. They both dropped. He recovered at once, but she dug her nails into his neck regardless. “Concentrate.”
Titus’s cock thickened even more, his skin hot, and his pulse rapid. “I’ve treated with respect each and every woman who has shared her body with me. I’ve never made promises of forever.” That would’ve been a lie and Titus didn’t lie. “Any woman who comes into my arms understands that I offer only pleasure and affection.”
Uncharacteristically for the fascinatingly impertinent woman he’d come to know, Sharine went silent. For so long that he began to fear he’d scared her to silence . . . and that chilled his blood. About to apologize for yelling at her, even though he’d been speaking at his usual tone, he was stopped by her saying, “Do you know what’ll happen to Astaad’s harem? I know they’ve been helping their people, but what’ll happen to them in the longer term?”
He blinked. “Heartbroken though they are, they’re not just helping on the ground—they’ve been acting as a kind of advisory board to Qin, assisting with the transition of power. Qin’s asked Mele and the others to stay on, but if they don’t wish to continue to advise him beyond the transition period, he’s promised to pension them to lives away from the court.”
“Do you think he’ll keep his word?”
Titus hesitated. “Qin rarely speaks,” he said at last, searching for the right words to describe the Ancient. “It’s as if he has half a foot in this world, half in another.” In that second world lived the mad, beautiful prophetess whom Qin loved so profoundly that for him to be in this world without her was pure pain.
“That he doesn’t wish to be awake couldn’t be more clear.” Qin was a creature out of time and place, woken from the depths of the ocean by the pitiless Cascade and left stranded on the unforgiving sand. “But unlike Aegaeon’s posturing, Qin is quietly going about doing his job as an archangel. So yes, I believe he’ll keep his word.”
He tightened his hold a fraction, so he could have more of Sharine’s warmth against him. “Also, even if I’m wrong in my reading of him, Mele is too strong and too intelligent to take any deceit or force lying down. She’ll find a way to protect herself and the other women of the harem.”
“So she’s a warrior? Good.”
Titus frowned. Mele wasn’t a warrior, not in the sense of sword and shield, but he couldn’t argue with the characterization—from everything Titus’s spymaster had managed to discover through her sources on the islands, Astaad’s most beloved concubine was standing shield to the other ladies of the harem. Mele alone dealt directly with Qin, though she was but a vampire and he was an archangel.
“Yes,” he said slowly. “Mele is a warrior who doesn’t carry a sword.”
Sharine searched his face. “I worried,” she said, “because I saw what happened to Aegaeon’s harem after he went to Sleep. A kind of bloody savagery as the women sought to find positions in the courts of other strong angels.”
Titus curled his lip. “Aegaeon harps on about not wishing to be awake, but he’s already begun to form a new harem, full of the type of women that he prefers. Vicious backbiting spiders who eat their own young.” The words were barely out when he realized that he’d put his entire giant foot in his mouth.
Wanting to groan, he said, “I don’t count you in that number.”
The nails that dug into his neck this time were deliberate. “That’s good, because I was never part of his harem.” Ice-cold words. “He invited me to live in his court more than once, but I couldn’t exist in that sphere. I couldn’t survive there.” The latter words were flat. “At the time, I was a soft creature, a crab without a shell. I preferred to live in the Refuge with my art and—later—with my son.”
Titus had to fight the urge to crush her to him. “I think you don’t have to worry about Mele and the others. They’re a family, and they’ll make the decision as a family.”
“Do you believe Astaad will rise?” No more nails digging into his neck . . . and possibly a small caress of fingertips over skin to soothe the earlier bite. “Did not Lijuan suck out part of his life force?”
“As a small child,” he said, soaring underneath a banner of brilliant stars, “I was told the legend of an archangel who was cut into a hundred pieces by his enemy then burned up with angelfire. But the enemy missed a fragment of his brain. It was left in a rock crevice and there it stayed for many years. It was covered by snow and then by the grasses of the distant plateau where it lay among the rocks and it was pecked at by birds, but it didn’t decay and it wasn’t lost.