Archangel's Shadows

His eyes glittering wet, Janvier’s fingers dug into her hips. “You’re sentencing me to an eon alone. How can you ask that?”

“Because you’re strong enough to bear the pain.”

“No, I’m not.”

She kissed him, her hand curved around his neck. “You need to be. I need to know you’ll be here when I return.”

He wouldn’t look at her, his muscles rigid, and she knew she’d lost the battle today. But it wasn’t over. The disease inside her might snuff out her light, but she would not let it snuff out Janvier’s.

•   •   •

Fourteen days later and a week after Felicity and Lilli were laid to rest, Janvier drove his Ashblade high into the mountains, where she scattered the ashes of her sister and her brother on the wind. According to the autopsies, Tanushree and Arvan Taj had died of heart failure. Inexplicable, said the pathologist, but not unheard-of in twins. Whatever it was that connected them, it sometimes snipped both lives short when only one was wounded.

Two syringes had been found in Arvan Taj’s pocket, filled with a drug that would’ve stopped their hearts if the needle was stabbed into the organ, the plunger pushed down. Neither syringe had been uncapped, much less used. The siblings bore no marks on their bodies.

It was as if once they’d made the decision to go, their hearts had simply stopped beating. They’d been found at peace on the wrought-iron seat where Ashwini and Janvier had last seen them, Arvan’s arm around Tanu’s shoulders and her head against his chest, their eyes closed and the sunrise warm on their faces.

The pathologist had done the specialist autopsy requested on Tanu’s brain, but the results had appeared ordinary at first glance. However, when Ash took that report and its associated findings, as well as her mother’s, to a neurosurgeon who had been a friend of Arvan’s, the doctor had discovered an abnormality deep in the temporal lobe. A tiny, tiny malformation that was identical in mother and daughter, except that Tanu’s was slightly larger.

“It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen,” the doctor had said. “No one could’ve ever picked it up without having the two slides side by side.” His brow had furrowed. “I don’t think it had anything to do with her death,” he’d told Ash, unaware of the Taj history on the female side. “But even if it was malignant, there would’ve been nothing we could do. It’s in an inoperable location and I don’t know of any drug created to deal with something like this.”

Ash had taken the news better than Janvier. It was Ash who’d held him, who had comforted him. His strong, beautiful lover.

“There,” she whispered now, putting down the second urn. “I felt them go. I think they were waiting to make sure I was all right.” The long white cotton scarf she wore around her neck, the same color as her tunic and leggings, threw the sorrow on her face into sharp relief, the wind blowing back the rich silk of her hair.

Sliding his arm around her, he stood with her on the mountaintop and he thought of the promise she’d asked him to make. “If you’re right and people sometimes come back, then I’ll come back with you.” He couldn’t imagine it any other way. His soul would find hers, no matter the unknown beyond death.

“You are an awful, mule-stubborn man.”

“I love you, too.”

A quiet, husky laugh as she tilted up her head. “I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t let this thing in my head take you, too.”

“I’m over two hundred years old,” he reminded her. “By rights, I should already be dust in the earth. Eternal life for its own sake has no meaning for me—I’m angry only because I won’t get to live it with you.”

Reaching up to stroke her fingers through his hair, she sighed. “Let’s have hope in Tanu’s dream and discuss your stubbornness another time.” A hard pull of his hair that made him wince. “When I have a kukri at your throat.”

He nipped her lower lip, smiled. “Full throttle all the way, cher.”

Her eyes warmed. “All the way, cuddlebunny.”

43

Titus arrived with only three warriors the night before the block party was scheduled to begin. Elena didn’t have to be told that the small unit was both a gesture of trust and a display of his confidence in his own strength. Folding in his wings as he landed on the Tower roof, his warriors coming down behind him—two males and one female—Titus headed toward Elena and Raphael.

“Titus.” Raphael walked forward to meet the other man halfway and held out his arm. “You are welcome.”

Titus grabbed Raphael’s forearm, Raphael’s own hand closing over his in the clasp of warriors. “I am glad you are here to welcome me, Raphael,” he said, his words a boom that made Elena realize the archangel usually modulated his voice so as not to drown out everyone else in his vicinity. “You are a pup, but a strong one I’d have at my back in any battle.”

“And I would have you, though you are heading toward frail old age.”

Titus’s laugh at Raphael’s riposte was huge. “Well met, young pup. Well met.”

Breaking the handclasp with a deep smile, Raphael turned to Elena. “My consort.”

She stepped forward. “Archangel Titus,” she said, keeping it formal until he gave an indication that informality was welcome.

Her restraint was thanks to Jessamy. Elena had been in Remedial Protocol School that afternoon, since this was the first time she was welcoming an archangel to her city who had no consort and who was unrelated to Raphael, but who’d known Raphael as a boy and had, in fact, helped train him.