“Yes.” Jason had seen the calculation in Neha’s gaze, knew the Archangel of India understood what Raphael’s Seven meant to him—if Neha could not reach Elena, could not harm Raphael’s heart, she was fully capable of going after the next best thing. “But,” he added, “while Neha may be driven by the need for retribution, she’s also a creature of pride. For her to break the promise of safe passage implied by the blood vow stains her own honor—and notwithstanding what she says, that honor matters to her.” It was all she had left.
“Are you willing to stake your life on that?”
“Yes.” Jason had watched Neha for centuries, as he watched every member of the Cadre, so he knew that she wasn’t an archangel who used a heavy hand when more subtle methods would suffice. “Neha is more apt to attempt to turn me against you or to entice me to change camps.”
Raphael met his gaze. “It will be a dangerous game of patience and power.”
“A short one.” Jason already had his ideas about Eris’s death. “We state the vow is to be considered fulfilled the instant I unearth the murderer.” Neha would expect the stipulation. “There’s nothing in the custom that bars me from continuing with my other duties, so long as I don’t betray Neha for the duration.”
Eyes inscrutable, Raphael said, “It remains a bad bargain . . . unless you want to get inside Neha’s court for reasons of your own.”
“There is something happening within,” he acknowledged. “Samira was unable to get close to it—I’m near certain Neha knew she was one of mine.” Permitting a certain level of spying, mostly so they could seed false information, was an amusing diversion to some of the archangels.
“The vow,” he continued, “will get me deep inside the fort, and as I wish only to observe, not interfere in this other matter, I do not risk a breach of the vow.” He wouldn’t be able to use any of what he discovered, not unless he could verify the same information through another source, but it would at least confirm that he was on the right trail.
“A fine line.”
“I can walk it.”
Raphael’s next words were pragmatic. “She will not give you free reign. This Mahiya is apt to be your shadow.”
“It matters little.” Jason was skilled at disappearing in the midst of a crowd, at remaining unseen even when he stood right in front of a person. “She’s comparatively young, and to my knowledge, has never been beyond the borders of Neha’s palaces.” Surely schooled in the art of court intrigues, there was a high chance she was no “trinket”—but she couldn’t hope to match a man who’d spent a lifetime learning how to become kin to the dark, until the night was his natural home.
“I’ve never tied your hands,” Raphael said, “and I won’t do so now. It’s your choice.” He frowned. “As for Mahiya—I recall you had doubts about the rumors of her paternity since the whispers of Eris’s infidelity were never proven. Nivriti was also apparently executed for another crime months before the newborn child appeared at Neha’s court. Why are you now so certain she is Eris’s get?”
“She wears her lineage on her face.” It was Mahiya’s highly distinctive eyes that gave away her parentage to anyone not blinded by fear of an archangel’s wrath. “I’ve also heard enough fragments from my spies over the centuries to confirm the evidence of my sight.”
Raphael’s nod was thoughtful. “Neha has a reputation for not harming children, mortal or immortal, so I can see her adopting the child even in this circumstance.” Glancing up, he said, “I leave the choice to you, Jason. And who knows? Perhaps this Mahiya will prove to be your downfall—they say the intimacy of a blood vow is powerful indeed.”
Jason said nothing, but they both knew it to be an impossible thing. Jason had never loved anyone after he dug a grave under a tropical sun, no longer understood the emotion; the boy he’d once been was a faraway mirage in his mind. The closest he came was in his loyalty to Raphael, but he knew from watching Dmitri with his wife, Raphael with Elena, Galen with Jessamy, and long ago, Illium with his mortal, that it was not the same thing at all. “I’ll leave within the hour.”
“Remember,” Raphael said in a quiet tone that cut through the air like a blade, “she is not only the Queen of Snakes, but the Queen of Poisons.”
And Jason was about to walk into her lair.
3
She wears my ring.
Dmitri watched Honor’s face light up as she laughed at something her clever friend Ashwini had whispered to her. With her sly wit and eyes that saw too much, the other hunter had been a good friend to Honor, and so Dmitri would’ve been inclined to like her, even if she hadn’t provided him with a source of amusement—the game of cat and mouse she and Janvier had played for over two years was as inexplicable as it was fascinating.
Honor’s eyes turned in his direction, her face holding an unasked question.
“I’m looking at my wife,” he murmured for her ears only, running his fingers over her nape as he told himself he really should behave since they were in public. “My beautiful wife, whom I’d like to peel out of her dress and set naked on my lap so I can do debauched things to her sexy body.” He never had been much good at behaving.
A faint shiver. “You shouldn’t be let out to torment women.”
Smiling with a slow deliberation that brought slumberous heat into those eyes of haunting green, he leaned in close, his next words a purr against the shell of her ear. “I only plan to torment one woman for the rest of eternity.”
Her pulse thudded in her throat, the call of her blood an erotic siren song. He drew in a deep breath, took her scent within, but he wasn’t about to rush. Not today. “Shall I tell you what I intend to do to you for your wedding night gift?” He wrapped her up in tendrils of chocolate and a sensual promise rich and decadent.
“No.” It was a laughing refusal, her husky voice entangling him in chains he had no intention of ever breaking. “Or I’ll tell you what I’m wearing under this dress.”
He felt like stretching in pleasure, as if he were a great cat that had been stroked, her laughter as precious to him as the rarest of gemstones. About to respond, he caught something out of the corner of his eye, shifted to see Jason walk into the room. “I think Jason has come to say his good-byes.”
He rose to his feet. “You’re leaving?” he said aloud as the black-winged angel stopped by the table. What has happened?
“Yes, I’m afraid I can stay no longer.” Eris is dead. I must head to Neha’s territory.
When Jason lifted his forearm, Dmitri clasped it in the way of the warriors they had been in battle together. “I’ll see you when you return.” I will remain in contact.
Jason’s hand tightened on his arm before falling away. “Enjoy your time away.” I have it under control, and you have a wife who will not be pleased by a husband tied forever to his work.
Dmitri glanced at Honor, his lips shaping into a faint smile. My wife is a hunter and far more likely to join me in riding to your rescue should you need it. Pausing, he added a personal message for Neha, for before Anoushka, she had been a great lady, an archangel he was not ashamed to have once served.
I’ll ensure she receives it. Jason inclined his head toward Honor. “I take my leave.”
“I’m so glad you were able to attend.” Honor’s smile dazzled. “I’ll see you again when we return to the city.”
Jason left in a sweep of black wings seconds later, and Dmitri retook his seat by his wife . . . who leaned into him not long afterward, her voice a hushed whisper as she asked, “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
Arm around her, he rubbed his thumb over the sensitive arch of her collarbone. “When we are alone,” he murmured, body hardening at the idea of her warm and naked in his arms in their bed. “Come for a walk.”
Honor gave him a narrow-eyed look. “So you can talk me into your Ferrari?”
“I like what you do to me in my Ferrari.” Sultry and hotly feminine, she’d made him her slave the day she’d taken him with such lush confidence.
A slow, slow smile from the woman who owned him body and soul. “Maybe we should make a detour on our way back to the Tower after the reception.”
He knew his eyes were gleaming, but he didn’t care. Leaning forward, he captured her lips in a kiss that made the guests around them cheer. “A long detour.” It was a promise.
4
Over fourteen hours of intense flight later, Jason used the night clouds to his advantage as he circled the stone and marble of the magnificent fortress perched on a high ridgeline. It was known simply as Archangel Fort, for it was where Neha made her home. Bathed in the light of a full moon that hadn’t yet begun to wane, though morning lay only a few hours away, its defensive walls glowed not the amber gold they were under the sun’s rays, but a pale, haunting silver.
Having stashed his small bag for later retrieval, he’d earlier flown down toward the dark mirror of a lake at the base of the fort, done a sweep over the slumbering city beyond. From the lower vantage point, the fort had appeared a mirage, a fantasy imagined.
A fitting throne for the archangel who was queen of this land.
Flaring out wings of ebony that absorbed the moonlight as they absorbed sunlight, he came to a silent, invisible landing in the shadows cast by one of the great gates that protected the fort, a gate big enough to dwarf an entire cavalry unit. Each gate was hidden from the previous and the next by the angles at which the fort had been built, cutting the sightline and providing no straight runs on which to build up speed that could be used to ram the next gate. As a defensive measure against a mounted attack, it was magnificent.
Flying enemies required further countermeasures, including the squadron of angels in the sky and the vampires armed with land-to-air weaponry on the ramparts. None of them had seen Jason. That was not to say they were useless—it was the rare guard who ever spotted a man who’d been designed to blend into the night. Jason was fairly certain he’d avoided detection by the satellite surveillance system, too, his ability turning him into an indistinct shadow dismissed by man and machine alike.
Rather than walking through the gate, he watched in motionless silence until he could predict the watch route and timing of the vampiric guards, then—taking advantage of a fleeting blind spot—flew up and over the gate to land on the edge of the geometrically patterned gardens on the third-level courtyard.
The fountain in the center sparkled in the moonlight that lit up the courtyard to luminous brightness. Neha’s private palace, he knew, was to the left of his landing position, its marble walls inlaid with ancient motifs created from semiprecious stones. But that was not its most stunning feature—thousands of diamonds had been embedded into the walls, intertwined into the design, until the palace could glitter as hard as the stone itself . . . or shimmer with a fiery heart that awoke wonder in young and old.