Archangel’s Enigma (Guild Hunter #8)(67)
Author: Nalini Singh

As the fat droplets crashed onto her skin, she would’ve done anything to be where she’d been the last time she’d taken a proper bath, in that icy pool in the valley. She could almost feel Naasir’s strong fingers in her hair as he washed it, the sneaky touch of his hand on her feathers, the way he’d raced with her. “Hurry,” she whispered, her hand reaching out as if she’d catch him through space and time itself. “I miss you.”

24

Naasir wasn’t surprised when Jason landed beside him soon after he hit the shores of Japan. The barge hadn’t brought him all the way—he’d transferred onto another friendly and much faster vessel soon after Andromeda took flight. When he’d dived from the barge to swim across to the sleek little freighter, both crews’ mouths had fallen open. Someone had screamed.

He didn’t know why. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t swim.

“Andi?” he said to Jason as the two of them spoke on a deserted part of an otherwise busy dock.

“Isabel tells me she’s safe inside Amanat.” Lines of tiredness marked Jason’s ordinarily impassive face. “I just returned from the border between Titus and Charisemnon.”

“War?”

The black-winged angel shook his head. “A small skirmish neither side appeared to want to fan into full flame.”

“That won’t last.” Titus and Charisemnon had disliked each other for centuries if not millennia, and with the world going to hell, that dislike would collide into all-out war sooner rather than later.

“No,” Jason agreed as one of his feathers drifted to the scarred and stained concrete of the dock. “But the region’s stable enough right now that Raphael doesn’t have to worry about any ripple effects.”

Naasir had always liked Jason, but as he grew, he’d started to see that the strong, black-winged angel was lonely. Perhaps even lonelier than Naasir. He’d tried to draw Jason out, instinct telling him it wasn’t good for the angel to exist so tightly within himself, but Jason had stayed contained and remote. No longer.

“Your mate must be missing you,” he said. “You should go home.”

Jason’s dark eyes flickered the tiniest fraction but in that flicker, Naasir saw his friend’s raw need to return to his princess. “You and Andromeda will require backup.”

“If we do, I’ll contact the Tower.” Naasir had thought the plan through during his and Andromeda’s escape, discussed it with her. “Locating Alexander isn’t a sure thing.” Andromeda had made it clear her expertise only went so far—no one could predict an archangel’s actions with pinpoint accuracy.

“And it’s better if it’s a team of two,” he added. “We’ll have to move with stealth so no one spots us and alerts Lijuan’s people that they’re in the wrong place.”

Jason stretched and resettled his wings in silence. “You know I have people scattered across the world. If you need immediate assistance, call me.”

“I’ll buy a new phone before I leave the country.” He had money on a card stored in a thin waterproof case in his back pocket. At first when Illium had given him such a card, he’d spent hours staring at it, trying to figure out how it worked. He’d finally made his brain understand that the card was a kind of machine that moved money from one place to another.

When he used it in a shop, the card moved money from his own treasury to that of the shop’s. Dmitri and Illium kept an eye on his money, so he didn’t really have to think much about the mechanics of it all. What he did know was that he had plenty of funds. Raphael had always been more than fair toward his Seven, and Naasir was very good at hunting down treasures everyone thought lost.

Treasures like the stupid Grimoire book.

“Tell me what you know about a book called the Star Grimoire,” he ordered Jason, because Jason knew everything.

A raised eyebrow. “It’s a mythical book coveted by those who collect such things.”

“Do you know where it is?”

Jason’s eyes narrowed, his expression intent. “No . . . but two hundred years ago, I met an old one of our race who spoke of the Grimoire’s red leather binding and golden edges.” A pause, Jason’s form motionless in a way Naasir had never seen another angel replicate.

He didn’t interrupt. Immortals had long memories, but Jason’s was near flawless. The other man just had to track down the right piece of it.

“And this book of mysteries untold had a golden clasp carved with the fearsome image of a crouching griffin.” Jason’s voice held a rhythm not his own.