Archangel's Heart

Aware of Aodhan listening with concentrated focus even as he kept his eyes on their surroundings, Elena had the worrying thought that he might be considering this place . . . then mentally shook herself out of it. Aodhan had made it clear that he wanted to live, wanted to experience life in vibrant color after disengaging from the world for two hundred years.

Still, she’d ask him, make damn sure. She wasn’t convinced he wasn’t still shaken up after the fight with Illium.

“What about love?” Elena asked this initiate who appeared to have no hidden agendas, too new to have been inducted into the Luminata’s secret society.

20

“Love?”

“Ellie means to ask if there was not a person or people you loved?” Aodhan said into the quiet. “To be Luminata is to leave behind such ties, is it not?”

Instead of answering the question, Ibrahim gasped. “You call your archangel’s consort by a diminutive?”

“He’s my friend,” Elena said, proud of the fact she’d earned Aodhan’s trust. “And I’m never going to be like other consorts—I’ll always have a mortal heart.”

It is your greatest strength.

Words Keir had spoken to her the last time he’d visited New York. The healer had placed his hand over that heart as he spoke. Coming from another man, it might’ve been a come-on, an invasion of her personal space, but Keir was . . . Keir. She knew he was a sexual being, had seen clear evidence of it, but he never interacted with her in that way. To her, he was a healer, wise and gifted. And his hands held only a healer’s gentleness.

Never lose your heart, Elena. No matter if the world tells you it makes you weak. Immortals have so much power. It is good to have a weakness.

Elena wasn’t certain she agreed with that last—especially when it came to Raphael. She never forgot that she was Raphael’s greatest weakness, and it both infuriated and scared her. She didn’t want her archangel to have any weaknesses, not when he swam with the vipers of the Cadre on a regular basis.

But in one thing, Keir was right: her mortal heart made her Elena. Give that up and she might as well lie down and die.

“A mortal heart.” Ibrahim paused in a corridor awash in color, the tiles having become ever more vivid step by step, the mosaics intricate bursts, and the paintings on the walls expressionist splashes of pigment. “You say that with pride and yet mortality is a fleeting thing without any hope of luminescence.” Rather than arrogance, his words held confusion and a question.

“Let me tell you a story, Ibrahim,” Elena said as they began to walk again. “About a holy man I met three years after I first became a hunter.”

The story was one of peace, of transcendence, of an awareness that mortality was but a shell and that the soul soared free in an immortality even the angels could not understand.

“You teach me,” Ibrahim said sometime later, the three of them at a stop in front of stone doors carved in complex patterns. His expression held equal amounts of awe, bewilderment, and thoughtfulness. “And I am humbled.”

Those sky blue eyes met hers. “I understand now: A thousand years or ten thousand years of life does not automatically proffer more wisdom. It is only fitting that I learn this from—forgive me for my boldness—a consort who is an infant in angelic terms.”

Elena shook her head. “I’m not wise, Ibrahim.” She was reckless more often than she should be, hadn’t made peace with the memories that haunted her, had so many other faults. “But someone who is wise once told me to treasure my weaknesses. They are what make us.”

Beside her, Aodhan reached forward to haul open one of the stone doors. The air that whispered out was noticeably cooler than the external air, though by no means chilly. “Thank you for showing us here.”

“It has been my pleasure.” Ibrahim bowed low. “If I may be so forward, Consort,” he said upon rising, “I would speak to you again.”

“Only if you call me Elena,” she said.

Ibrahim’s smile was that open and oddly innocent one. “Then I will see you again soon, Elena.” He pulled up his hood as he turned away, but paused to add, “I have not forgotten my promise to look for a map.”

“Thanks, Ibrahim.” Elena didn’t say anything further until she and Aodhan were inside what appeared to be some type of an antechamber, a relatively small room richly carpeted in deepest blue and hung with small artworks. At the other end of it was another door. “An airlock?”

“I do not know this word,” Aodhan responded.

When she explained, he nodded. “Yes, I believe so. To ensure the air within and without do not mix to destabilize the constant temperature needed for the more delicate works of art.” He indicated the pieces on the walls. “These are relatively new, created only two hundred years ago at most. They do not need the extra care.”

Jerking her thumb over her shoulder, she said, “What about the stuff outside?”

“The mosaics were created in situ, likely purpose-done, and the paintings are brilliant but did not strike me as rare.”

Elena thought back to what Ibrahim had said of Laric’s compulsive painting of that one scene. Which reminded her, “You’re not being seduced by the idea of luminescence?”

“The idea, yes,” Aodhan replied. “This place, no.”

“Phew. Because I’d come drag you out if you lost your mind and joined this cult. Though Illium would probably beat me to it.”