Archangel’s Enigma (Guild Hunter #8)(93)
Author: Nalini Singh

Andromeda knew it must’ve been an offer to feed him, found herself both pleased that he’d turned down the offer and angry because she’d soon be out of his life while countless other women wouldn’t.

In front of her, Tarek lifted his glass after giving the lingering server a sharp look that had her hustling away. “To honor.”

“To honor,” Andromeda and Naasir said together and drank.

Placing her cup back on the table, Andromeda took a piece of the bread and tore off a small bite for Naasir. His consuming the ceremonial piece seemed to please the sentinel leader. Finishing off the blood in his glass then eating a small piece of bread himself, Tarek folded up the sleeves of his sand-colored shirt, the fabric shadowed with slightly darker blotches that allowed him and his men to blend into the landscape.

The tattoo on his left forearm, the lines inked in an impossible silver, caught Andromeda’s eye.

A raven.

That wasn’t a surprise. Alexander’s symbol had been a raven. Legend said that on his ascension, a raven had flown high with him, only to die in the blaze of his power. To Alexander’s people, the raven symbolized courage against all odds. But this particular stylized rendering of a raven . . .

Andromeda narrowed her eyes, sure she’d seen it before.

“You say you are friends,” Tarek said into the quiet, “but you bring Lijuan’s people with you.”

Having caught Naasir’s eye, Andromeda was the one who spoke. “Our task is to find and warn Alexander before the enemy locates him.”

The sentinel’s face grew austere. “In seeking Alexander you break a taboo so old, its origins are lost from memory.”

Andromeda knew her next words could lose this man’s trust and possibly endanger her and Naasir’s lives. “Yes,” she said. “We break a law, but if we don’t, then Alexander will be helpless against Lijuan. You can’t protect him against her.” Even weak as she was, Lijuan could easily annihilate this village—if Xi didn’t take care of that first.

“You will die if beheaded, and once you are gone, no one will stand between Lijuan and the Ancient.” She held the man’s gaze. “We cannot lose him from the world. He is the greatest angelic statesman who ever lived. He stopped wars and created cities that stand to this day. His battle strategies are taught to young soldiers and his political strategies studied by archangels themselves.”

Tarek looked at her very carefully, the intensity of his gaze making the hairs rise on the back of her neck. “How do you know so much of Alexander?”

“I am a scholar.”

The male’s eyes went to Naasir. “I’ve been long from the Refuge, but I know you have never claimed to be a scholar.”

Naasir’s fangs flashed in the sunlight as he grinned. “I can read.” Laughter in his voice. “I am a bloodhound and, like you, a guard dog.”

“You’re so much more,” Andromeda said, unable to keep the words within. “You’re extraordinary.”

“Yes,” Tarek agreed, his tone difficult to decipher. “There is no one else like you—the silver-eyed vampire who has hair and eyes the same unique shade as Alexander’s wings.”

Andromeda frowned at the explicit connection, her thoughts once more on that metallic feather in the Archives.

“Alexander didn’t Make me,” Naasir said, answering the unasked question. “It was his brother, Osiris.”

Andromeda sucked in a breath as Tarek’s expression turned deadly. “Osiris was purged from the family line, all traces of him erased.”

“Except me,” Naasir said unworriedly, accepting a second small glass of blood brought out by an older woman whose smile held simple courtesy.

“Except you.” An unblinking gaze. “How did you survive the destruction of all that was Osiris?”

“I helped that destruction along,” Naasir said before he drank from the glass. “I ate his liver and his heart.” A sideways look at Andromeda. “Osiris kept me hungry to test my strength.”

Andromeda closed her hand over his. “Then he was a stupid angel who deserved to get eaten.”

Smile deep and wide, Naasir wove his fingers into hers and turned back to a grim-eyed Tarek. “I never called Osiris sire and I never would have even if Alexander hadn’t executed him.” Naasir’s loyalty was Raphael’s.

The sentinel stared at him. “Two hundred years ago, I ventured briefly to another part of the world and met a learned man. He told me there were rumors of a living legend, of a chimera with silver eyes who is not one but two, asked me if I knew the origins of it, for only Alexander and Osiris had eyes of true silver and both were gone from the world.”