Archangel's Heart

Terror stole all the color from beneath his skin, his bones seeming to shake. “Lady, I think my store is too poor for you.”

Glancing around to make sure no one was lurking inside with them, Elena said, “I will do you no harm.”

The whites of his eyes showing, the man—who had to be seventy-five at least—went to a corner that held a little table set with tea things. “I will make you mint tea,” he said, but his hands were shaking so badly that he couldn’t handle the stainless steel pot that held the hot water, clattering it to a stand on the similarly brightly polished tray.

Sounds outside, two women bustling into the store and freezing when they saw Elena. The terror on their faces was a visceral stab, a dagger of ice. But the younger one, she found the courage to run past Elena. Dropping the package in her hands to the floor, she placed those hands on the carpet maker’s upper arms as he stood facing the tea service. “Abba?”

Father.

Elena had learned that word on her own during her travels. Jeffrey had always been Papa to her as a child, Marguerite Maman, her mother far more at home in her adopted language.

Whatever the man said, his voice trembling, the daughter turned to Elena with a fear-pinched face that held a courageous determination. “My father is old and tired. He wants only to live in peace.”

So take the trouble you bring to our door and go.

The girl had no need to speak those last words—Elena heard them loud and clear. Disappointed but not willing to terrorize an old man for her answers, she pulled up her scarf, once more covering the hair that had triggered his response.

“I’m sorry I distressed him,” she said. “If he ever wants to speak to me, he can find me through New York’s Archangel Tower. My name,” she said, not assuming that the doings of a faraway city were of any interest here, “is Elena.” Moving past the older woman, who still stood frozen near the doorway, she found her escort of teens lounging around sharing a packet of candy.

“Elena! Elena!” They swarmed around her the instant her foot hit the street.

She let them show her their market, and she listened, and she watched.

And she learned that though no angels lived in the town, everyone here was terrified of them—but beneath the fear burned a cold hatred. She was insulated from most of it because of the boys’ enthusiastic adoption of her, but she caught dangerous hints in the eyes that turned her way when they didn’t think she was looking, saw it in the twists of countless pairs of lips, felt it in the subtle way they avoided her, their shoulders stiff and their hands clenched.

It wasn’t hard to do the math.

Archangel, can you hear me?

His response was delayed by about two seconds. Of course, hbeebti. I am arguing with Astaad—he is beginning to be swayed by Charisemnon’s arguments.

Elena made a swift decision. This isn’t urgent. Do what you have to do—we’ll discuss things tonight.

A kiss of the tumultuous sea in her mind as Raphael retreated, rippling waves of sensation left in his wake as the minute amount of wildfire that lived in her blood reacted to his voice.

“Wow.” Riad’s whisper and wide eyes had her angling her head in a silent question.

“Your eyes just”—a frustrated pause, a debate with his friends—“grew fire,” he finally said. “White fire around the black center.” He opened his fingers out in a burst then closed them. “White fire then no white fire.”

Great, her eyes were acting even weirder.

She spotted Xander around the same time that the thought passed through her mind; he was walking toward her with Valerius at his side. While Valerius’s face gave nothing away, Xander’s distress was obvious. He tried to hide it, but he was young, and she suspected that what had set him off was totally outside the realm of his experience.

Heading over to him, she told her five teenage guides to come along with her. They did, but stayed safely behind her, their faces wary once more. “Xander,” she said. “I’d like you to meet my escorts.” Then she introduced each boy by name.

Xander’s face glowed with an inner light, the anguish retreating. “I am Xander,” he said with a small incline of his head. “My grandfather is Alexander.”

Gasps went from boy to boy, making it clear they all knew the legend of the silver-winged archangel who had risen from a long Sleep. However, in contrast to their nonstop chatter with her, and though it was obvious they had a thousand questions for Xander, the boys didn’t voice any of them.

“Xander is only a little older than you,” she said in an effort to “humanize” the young angelic male. “In human terms, he’s—”

“About twenty, perhaps twenty-one on a very mature day,” Valerius unexpectedly supplied.

“Yes,” Xander said. “I am in training.” He winked out of sight of Valerius. “And because my father was a great general”—a fast swallow, a hitch in his breath—“and my grandfather is Alexander, I can’t miss a single session without being called on the carpet.”

A tentative set of grins from the human teenagers before one dared to ask what kind of training Xander was doing. He immediately began to tell them about crossbow drills and aerial maneuvers. Ten minutes later, Elena left him happily surrounded by fascinated teenagers and being bombarded by questions on every side, and came to join Valerius where he stood a short distance away.

“He is a young man growing into his strength and will soon be considered a true adult, but he found himself lost today—he is not used to being looked upon with hatred and fear,” Valerius said under his breath, a humming anger to him that she sensed only now that she was standing right next to him. “Not after growing up in his father’s territory, training in Titus’s, only to return to the wave of love and respect commanded by his grandfather.”