Archangel’s Legion (Guild Hunter #6)(10)
Author: Nalini Singh

“Thank you,” she said, aware of Eve standing politely by her side, hands folded in front of her. “I don’t think you’ve met my youngest sister, Evelyn.” Of her three living sisters, only Beth had been to the Angel Enclave house and she’d been so overawed she hadn’t spoken a peep the entire time. “Eve, this is Montgomery.”

An elegant bow. “Miss Evelyn.”

Eyes wide, Eve stuck out her hand. “Hi.”

Elena had never seen Montgomery shake anyone’s hand. Expecting him to be scandalized by the idea, she found herself charmed instead at the solemnity with which he accepted Eve’s hand.

“If you need anything further,” he said, after the formalities were over, “I will be at the house.”

Wiggling into one of the chairs at the table after the door closed behind Montgomery, Eve leaned in close to whisper, “Was he a butler?”

“The best one you’ll ever meet.” Picking up the gorgeous little teapot, Elena poured hot chocolate into delicate cups she’d never before seen, the edges curlicued and the white china surface painted with tiny pink flowers.

Perfect for a young girl.

“Wow. We have a housekeeper, but I don’t know anybody who has a butler.”

Elena grinned, thinking of her own reaction the first time she’d seen Montgomery, and put a cupcake on Eve’s plate, the frosting swirls of yellow decorated with crystallized violets. “Now,” she said, once her sister had finished the confection, “tell me what made you cry.” She’d never have been so direct with Beth, but Eve was built tougher, for all that she was a child.

Face falling, her sister pushed a crumb around her plate. “I feel dumb now. I shouldn’t have called you—I know you must be sad and busy because of the Falling.” She squashed the crumb, staring at it as if it were the most important thing on the planet. “I was scared you’d fallen, and Amy was, too. Thanks for messaging me back.”

“No thanks needed.” Elena reached over to tuck the deep black strands of Eve’s hair behind her ears. “Remember what I said? I’m always here for you.” The angry bitterness between her and Jeffrey might’ve kept her a stranger from her half siblings for most of their lives, but that was a mistake Elena would never again make. “It was nice to get your message yesterday, and I’m glad you called me today.”

A hiccuping breath, and Eve looked up, eyes huge and wet. “I know I shouldn’t have, but this morning I told Father about how I aced an exercise at the Academy.”

Elena’s stomach twisted. She knew what was coming, but she listened anyway, because Eve needed to release the poison before it could fester—as it’d festered in Elena and in Jeffrey, until it’d worn a jagged hole through the once-strong fabric of their relationship.

“He’s always so proud when I do well at school,” Eve continued. “I thought he’d be proud of this, too . . . even though I know he hates hunters.” Lower lip trembling, she swallowed. “I thought if I could make him happy, then maybe he’d be nice to you, too, except h-he told me to get out of his sight.”

“Oh, Eve.” Chest aching for her sister’s hurt, she went around the table to kneel beside Eve’s chair.

Sobbing in earnest now, Eve threw her arms around Elena, her face wet against Elena’s neck. Elena said nothing, simply stroked her sister’s back, let her cry out the pain. It was better this way. As a child, Elena had swallowed her own pain again and again until it had become a knot inside her she wasn’t sure anything could unravel.

Some wounds were inflicted too young, scarred too deep.

It took time, but Eve finally cried herself out. Wiping her sister’s cheeks with a napkin she dampened using water from the small jug Montgomery had left on the table, Elena kissed each in turn. “Jeffrey hurt you, and he has no right to do that, no matter if he’s your father.” Even as she spoke, she knew she had to tread carefully, make sure her scars didn’t color Eve’s view of Jeffrey.

Because notwithstanding the bastard he’d become as far as Elena was concerned, he’d apparently been a good if remote father to Eve and Amy. Not the same man who’d thrown Elena into the air as a child and danced with his first wife in the rain—that part of him was buried in the same grave as Marguerite—but a father Eve and Amy could rely on nonetheless.

Elena would never do anything to damage that bond, not when she knew what it did to a child to be estranged from the man who was meant to protect her at her most innocent and vulnerable. “The truth is,” she said gently, her wings spread on the greenhouse floor as she continued to kneel beside Eve’s chair, “Jeffrey’s not rational on this one thing.”

I have no desire to house an abomination under my roof.

Words Jeffrey had thrown at her during the final, ugly fight that had destroyed the last, brittle threads of the bond that had once tied them together.

“But why?” Eve fisted her hands, jaw jutting out as she asked the one question Elena had never been able to answer. “If I’m hunter-born and you’re hunter-born, doesn’t that mean that Father must be hunter-born, too?”

5

“No,” Elena said, answering the question she could, “it means someone in his family was, and he carries the genes for it.” A fact he’d consciously hidden from Elena until the emergence of Eve’s ability had thrown a grenade onto that particular secret. “But the ability isn’t active in him, like it is in me and you. Do you understand?”

A thoughtful nod, frown lines marring the creamy skin Eve had inherited from Jeffrey’s second wife, Gwendolyn. “Like he’s asleep and we’re awake.”

“Yes.” Elena got to her feet, spreading her wings in a light stretch that had the white-gold primaries grazing a pot of chrysanthemums in bloom. “I think that’s a good way to put it.” However, their father couldn’t keep on being asleep, continue his willful, damaging blindness. Elena would not allow him to hurt Eve as he’d hurt her.

“He might never understand, right, Ellie?” Eve said with her customary openness of nature a few minutes later, as they got ready to leave. “That’s why he’s always so mad at you.”

Elena squeezed her sister’s hand, her calluses encountering the ones just beginning to form on Eve’s soft palms. “Jeffrey and I,” she said, “have other problems.”