That hard, pragmatic look back on his face. “Not fast enough. The mark may be complete, but in power, I’m no different than I was yesterday. We must focus on the factors we can control.” He stepped back, the glamour going up. “I need to reconfigure squadron placements. You should wake the leaders of the Guild and vampire shooting teams and do the same.”
Elena nodded. “One thing, Archangel.” She drew him to a stop with a touch on his wing. “I don’t think you should hide the mark come morning.”
“Fool the enemy into believing I’ve gained more power than is true?”
“And give our own forces heart,” Elena said, pushed by the same instinct that told her his wings were changing in more ways than in surface appearance. “There’s nothing to lose.”
• • •
Hours later, with the sky shifting from darkness to gray, Raphael left Aodhan on watch and walked up to the suite, having sensed a disturbance in Elena’s sleep patterns. He’d kept an eye on her since she’d finally gone to bed two hours past, knowing her tiredness and the tension-filled day made for optimal conditions when it came to the horrors that stalked her dreams.
When he reached the bedroom, he found her restless but not yet in distress. Lying down beside her, he spread his wing over her body in a protective wave and murmured words of love from an archangel to his consort until she sighed and sank into a deep, peaceful sleep. “Sleep well, hbeebti,” he said softly, brushing a kiss to her temple.
Not needing to rest, he had every intention of leaving the bed in the next few moments . . . but then he was dreaming, with no awareness of having closed his eyes. This time, he wasn’t on that lonely, forgotten field, but in a place so dark, it was beyond the rich black of night. He could hear nothing, see nothing, feel nothing, the blackness pressing down until it felt as if it would suffocate the life out of him.
More games.
His anger ignited, his wings glowing to fill the dark with light. The blackness swallowed the glow, pushing down harder on his body. Furious, he struck out with his power, and it parted the black, only to reveal more blackness, a world of nothingness. About to strike again, he thought suddenly that he needed Elena, needed the passionate life of her, born of the brilliant firefly existence that was a mortal’s.
“Raphael.” A touch, fingers rough from weapons-work sliding into his to curl around his hand.
“How did you find me?”
The rim of silver around her irises luminous in the blackness, she said, “I heard you call my name.” Screwing up her nose, she glanced around. “I’m not sure I like this new dreaming habit of yours.”
Sliding his wing over hers, he said, “I have to agree with you,” as around them, what had been impenetrable black became a soft gray. “Your heart drives away the dark.” She’d seen terrible things, been bathed in blood, yet in her lived an innocence of soul of which she seemed unaware.
“No,” she murmured, her hair flying backward in a gentle breeze. “I don’t think it’s me. It’s us.” Wing shifting under his in a soft susurration of sound, she said, “The white fire, Archangel. Ignite the white fire.”
He reached within him for that wild, near-uncontrollable flame, coaxing it onto his hand. Where it had once manifested a radiant white-gold with iridescent edges of midnight and dawn, today the white-gold bore swirls of violent blue, the flame just as volatile, as passionately alive. “Us,” he whispered and threw the wildfire up into the gray.
“Wildfire,” Elena whispered, as if he’d spoken aloud. “Yes, that describes it so much better.”
The wildfire arced out into the gray in every direction, eliminating the fog to leave them encased in sun-shot water of a pale, haunting green.
Elena ran her fingers through the water, the ripples disturbing the flawless serenity of the place, but there was no sense that the disturbance was unwelcome. “Oh, I like it here.” She danced her hand gracefully in the water, her delight without affectation.
It made his lips curve, his heart remember what it was to be a child. “We’re deep inside the ocean,” he said, understanding the sunlight wasn’t sunlight at all but the lingering burn of the wildfire.
“I’ve never been anywhere so beautiful.” Wonder in her eyes, their handclasp unbroken, Elena pointed out a tiny jellyfish-like creature that floated by, its body a translucent coral . . . but the wildfire, it was fading, the water caressed by gray, then enclosed by darkness.
“I understand,” he said, as his consort came into his arms, her hands on his shoulders and her kiss one that branded, drawing him out of the dream and into the warmth of their bed. She was strong and lithe underneath him, his warrior with her mortal heart, eyes of silver-gray open in the murky light that told him he hadn’t slept long.
“The risk,” he said, when their lips parted, “is being consumed by it.”
“The darkness?”
“Without you, I might one day have become another Lijuan.” Scowling, she would’ve shaken her head, but he stopped her with a grip on her jaw. “No, Elena. This truth I must confront—in me lives more power than any other angel my age has ever had. That much power changes a man, and it changed me.”
“Okay, that’s a fair point, but what’s also true is that you’re not the archangel I first met.” Elena’s expression stubborn, the hands she’d thrust into his hair fisting tight. “You’re still becoming—and, unlike Lijuan, you’re not afraid to take risks. She’s a coward who killed the mortal who made her feel; you claimed me as yours.” Tugging him down, she nipped hard at his lower lip in sensual rebuke. “Don’t ever think to compare yourself to her.”
“As my consort decrees,” he said, speaking with his lips on hers, his body cradled in the silken prison of her legs. “I know you’d never permit me to turn into a megalomaniacal tyrant with delusions of godhood.”
“Glad we got that straightened out.” Rubbing her nose against his in an open affection he knew he’d never tire of, should he live to be a hundred thousand years old, she said, “Where we were, it was a place of power, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.” That power had saturated the water, the darkness, the living creatures that swam in those deep waters. “Not malevolent, and attuned to me, but out of my reach.” The final bitter seal on the revelation he’d had in the bloodstorm.