Archangel’s Enigma (Guild Hunter #8)(83)
Author: Nalini Singh

Raphael could see his spymaster’s impassive face in his mind, remember how Jason’s eyes had warmed from within. “Your Bluebell was a stripling whom Jason easily defeated, but Illium just laughed and asked if he could have a longer rapier next time so he could poke at Jason from a distance.”

Elena’s lips twitched. “That sounds like Illium.” Though he’d woken an hour past and appeared fine but for a little residual dizziness, terror still bled through her at what she’d witnessed that afternoon. It was pure chance she’d been close enough to help—she and the Primary had been flying toward the Legion building when she’d glimpsed the wild blue and shattered light of Illium and Aodhan high in the sky.

She’d smiled, remembering something Aodhan had said to her.

It was worth the risk to play a game with my friend again. Until I threw that ball at Illium over the river, I didn’t understand I hadn’t felt alive for over two hundred years.

When Illium had fallen, she’d shaken her head at what she’d believed to be a trick. Everything had changed the instant she saw Aodhan dive, heard Raphael’s alert to every angel in the vicinity. Only no one was close enough—least of all Raphael. “Your wings were afire,” she whispered, still unable to fully understand what she’d seen in those seconds stretched by horror into hours.

“Tell me what you saw,” Raphael said. “I felt my speed increase, but I put it down to the urgency of the incident.”

Blinking, Elena turned to face the archangel who’d branded her to the soul. The fact he didn’t know hadn’t occurred to her . . . but it had all happened so fast, his attention on saving Illium and Aodhan both. “The white fire that licks over your wings at times,” she said, touching her fingers to the shimmering white gold of his feathers, “it took over. It was like you had no physical wings—as if your wings were pure white flame.”

It had been a magnificent sight she’d only processed in the aftermath. “The effect disappeared as soon as you had Illium in your arms.”

Spreading out his wings and curling first one inward, then the other, Raphael examined the feathers before folding them back in. “No evidence of it now, but what you’re describing sounds almost like Lijuan’s ability to go noncorporeal. On the same continuum at least.”

Elena’s skin chilled. “Yeah, I guess.” Releasing his hand, she gripped the front of his white shirt and tugged him to her. “Don’t you dare ‘evolve’ on me.” She couldn’t follow him into that other state, though she’d kill herself trying.

Raphael’s lips curved. “Have no fear, hbeebti,” he said. “I am too fond of the flesh.” A caress of her hip, a luscious kiss.

Yet even as the crashing windswept sea of him infiltrated her senses, Elena knew even an archangel couldn’t hold back the possibly catastrophic changes wrought by the Cascade. “I’ll follow you,” she whispered against his lips. “No matter where you go, I’ll be right beside you.”

Eyes of endless blue burned with an incandescent flame. “Together, Elena-mine. Always.” Wrapping her in his wings, he held her until her heart calmed, the fear receding under a tide of furious determination: no one and nothing would steal her archangel from her.

“I heard a bit of gossip from Amanat,” she said once she could speak again.

“How can you hear gossip from Amanat? Unless you and my mother have become the best of friends?”

She elbowed him. “Very funny.” Elena and Caliane might have called a truce, but Caliane remained an Ancient and her freaking mother-in-law. “I made some other friends on our last visit.” Including a smart, funny maiden who danced as gracefully as Elena’s sister Belle had danced before a murderous vampire stole her life.

“Belle! Belle! Can I dance with you?”

“Come on, squirt. Stand like this.”

Chest achingly tight at the memory of a loss she would carry with her forever, she said, “Apparently, there’s a high chance Naasir and his scholar are no longer just colleagues.”

He looks at her as I’ve never seen Naasir look at anyone. As if she is a treasure he wants to keep, wants to protect.

“You catch your consort by surprise,” Raphael murmured. “Particularly as the scholar has taken a vow of celibacy.”

“We’re talking about Naasir here.” Elena grinned. “He has a certain charm. Just like his archangel—I never planned to be naked with you, either.” Deadly and inhuman, the Archangel of New York was not a man with whom Elena Deveraux, Guild Hunter, had ever intended to mess.