Nivriti.
He released Mahiya at the whisper of wind, folding his wings to his back. “Come.” Walking out and around the shadow-shrouded side of the temple, Mahiya silent as she followed, he looked toward the fort, searching for any sign of trouble.
He saw nothing . . . not until he swept his gaze to the right.
The night sky was a sheet of black, the glitter of the stars blotted out by an army of wings. Those wings appeared “wrong” to his vision until he realized they were pure jet. Since no living angel he knew of had wings akin to his own, that meant they had been dyed as camouflage. The vampiric ground guard had to be within minutes of the fort.
This is madness. Mahiya’s horrified voice. Even with this army, my mother cannot hope to take Neha on in combat.
Jason couldn’t disagree. Impressive as Nivriti’s forces appeared, they weren’t, not in comparison to the garrison that lived in the fort—which represented only a small percentage of the offensive resources at Neha’s command. You should not watch this.
No . . . I should be a part of it. I may not know Nivriti, but she is my mother, and Neha has done nothing to win my loyalty.
Jason turned to pin her with his gaze. You put yourself on that field, and you do nothing but distract your mother. Neha will use you, make Nivriti watch you bleed. You’re too weak to be anything but a liability.
Mahiya flinched. That was cruel.
Cruelty is sometimes necessary.
You’re strong, she retorted. You could help my mother—but you’re a coward, hiding here.
He didn’t allow her to see what the mental slap did to him. The instant I step onto that battlefield, I draw Raphael and all his people into a war. Thousands, millions would die in the aftermath.
Mahiya seemed to wilt, her eyes on the black wings on the horizon. I’m sorry. I knew that . . . I shouldn’t take my anger out on you. Forgive me, Jason.
He could taste her heartbreak. It is forgotten.
Shifting to put her back to the wall, she slid down to sit against it, a desolation in her expression he’d never before seen, that stubborn, beautiful hope close to extinguished. I’ve waited so long for her, and now she’ll die.
Jason turned his face toward the skies. Stay here. He rose up into the star-studded black before she could question him, blending into the night shadows with an ease that was instinctive. Then he shot straight at the approaching army, their slow, careful pace no match for his speed.
A cry went up only when he wanted to be seen. Raising a hand to halt crossbows being fired, a woman who was unquestionably kin to Neha cut away from the group to head to him. He felt her mental touch, chose not to acknowledge it.
Imperious and haughty, she stopped in front of him, fanning her unpainted wings to hold her position. “Spymaster.”
This woman, he thought, might have given Mahiya the delicate angles of her face, the wild blue and green of her feathers, but she was nothing like the child she’d birthed, her eyes touched with a devouring rage. “You should speak to your daughter before you undertake this suicide mission.”
Her eyes widened before laughter filled the air, husky and soft. “Ah, such faith.” A twist to her lips. “Lead me to her.”
Jason was unsurprised both at her lack of worry about a possible ambush, and her complete disregard of his veiled warning to retreat. Love and hate both had a tendency to blind, to destroy reason. “She is not far.”
Guardian Fort was alive with activity by the time he returned to the temple, and it took a combination of fine timing and luck to bring Nivriti down without being detected. Mahiya wasn’t where he’d left her—she was standing on the steps to the temple, a crossbow in hand, the bolt notched and in position to fire.
He almost smiled. He knew the dangerous whip of anger in the tawny brightness was for him, for the way he’d left her, but it changed into shock as her gaze alighted on Nivriti.
The dull thud of the crossbow hitting the ground snapped Mahiya out of her stunned motionlessness. Bending reflexively, she picked it up without ever taking her eyes from the woman who walked toward her, dressed in what appeared to be fighting leathers of black, her wings the template from which Mahiya’s had been cast.
“Daughter.” A whisper-soft word, the woman’s fingers alighting on her cheek as her expression overflowed with a depth of emotion that ripped at Mahiya’s heart, her soul. “Forever beloved of my heart.”
This time, Mahiya didn’t worry about the crossbow when it dropped. Tears streaking down her face, she went into her mother’s arms and let those arms hold her safe. It didn’t matter at that moment that Nivriti was a monster, one who had torn out a man’s internal organs and brutalized a woman for no reason but that it would hurt her twin. Nothing mattered but that for the first time in her life, she was being held with love.
40
Nivriti murmured to her, her voice a lilting melody. “She thought to torment me by telling me of how you suffered, but the affirmation my precious child lived was the greatest gift she could’ve given me.”
Cupping Mahiya’s face as she drew back, Nivriti pressed her lips to Mahiya’s forehead. “I fought to stay alive and to stay sane, even as my wings rotted and my memories threatened to fragment, because of you. I never forgot you.”
“Neither did I,” Mahiya whispered, for no matter what she’d told herself over the centuries about her mother, whether good or bad, the one thing she had not done was forget. “You don’t have to go to war with Neha.”
Her mother’s expression changed, all softness erased. “Yes, I do. Or she will never allow me peace—my dearest sister needs to see I have grown fangs.” A smile Mahiya couldn’t read. “It is strange what grows in the dark underground, even as other things rot.” With that enigmatic statement, she snapped her head toward Jason. “I charged you to get her out of here.”
Jason stood unmoved, a dark sentinel. “I serve neither you nor Neha.”
Nivriti’s response at that plainly worded statement of loyalty was not anger, but a laugh of pure delight. “I see why you are drawn to him,” she said to Mahiya. “But remember, he is only a man and not to be trusted.” Her eyes glittered hard as diamonds as she spread her wings. “I shall see you soon, daughter.”
Mahiya stared up at the sky as her mother rose with flawless grace, her body showing no sign of her long captivity. “My mother has had years of freedom,” she said at last. “Her wings would’ve taken at least a year to regenerate.”
“Perhaps.” Jason’s tone held an unexpected note.
“What have you seen that I have not?” Blinded by emotion as she was, she knew she couldn’t trust her own judgment. But Jason’s? Always.
“Nivriti is too confident for an angel about to go into battle against one of the Cadre.” He looked out over the fort, tracking Nivriti’s army. “And she flies with too much strength and skill for someone who suffered centuries of imprisonment below the earth.”
“How would the ones who saved her,” Mahiya said slowly, “even have known where she was?” She didn’t bother to keep her voice low—the noise at Guardian was overwhelming as troops filled the air.
“Not all loyalties are what they seem.” Loose strands of Jason’s hair blew back softly from his face in the cool night wind. “Were Nivriti smart, she would’ve seeded at least one of her people in Neha’s inner court when that court first formed.”
And even archangels, Mahiya thought, touching her fingers to his, could make mistakes of trust.
Jason’s hand closed over hers. “Look.”
Following his gaze, she saw an angel rise to hover directly above Archangel Fort. From the glow of lethal power that surrounded her form, it could only be Neha. Mahiya twisted her head to the right, hoping that her mother was protected in the mass of fighters, but no, she hovered at the forefront of her troops.
Neha began to fly toward Nivriti as she flew toward Neha, Neha’s troops amassing above the fort. Those troops were an insult, a bare squadron. As the twins came to a halt above the city, Mahiya knew the populace below must be gazing upward in wonder and fear both. Because when an archangel glowed, people died.
Neha and Nivriti halted several feet apart, enough that their wings wouldn’t touch and yet that they could talk. Mahiya would’ve given anything to be up there at this moment, to know what it was they said to one another. But whatever it was, it seemed as if her mother threw back her head and laughed before sketching a bow so insincere, Mahiya could sense it from this distance.
Neha’s glow intensified . . . and Nivriti dropped the arm she’d raised above her head. Her troops swarmed toward the fort as Neha’s own forces flowed to meet them. Both groups avoided the two women in the center of the chaos. Neha and Nivriti continued to hover in front of one another, as steel clashed and crossbow bolts ripped through wings, locked in a battle of wills Mahiya couldn’t comprehend. To kill not only your sister, but your twin . . . I cannot imagine it, Jason.
They are fools. A harsh summation. They do not comprehend that what they were given was a gift not to be squandered.
Understanding sang a nocturne, melancholy and haunting, through her bones. Neha and Nivriti had been born as two halves of a whole. Had they remained locked together in friendship and loyalty as the centuries passed, Neha would have been an archangel with the most trusted of allies beside her. And Nivriti would’ve been the second to an archangel, the strongest of positions if one was not Cadre. More, they would’ve both had someone they could trust to tell the truth, no matter the question. Such a trust might well have saved them making the mistakes they had, given them a happier life.
But they had wasted that gift, allowed pride and conceit to tear them apart, until Neha was a woman without consort or child, and about to kill the sister of her blood. Meanwhile, Nivriti was a woman so consumed with rage that she’d rather chance never again seeing her child, than walk away from her quest for vengeance.
The glow around Neha turned white-hot.
“Angelfire,” she whispered, naming the deadly force that could kill even an archangel.
Jason shook his head. “Neha cannot create angelfire, but what she can create is just as deadly to the others in the Cadre.” Even as he spoke, a whip of green snapped out from Neha’s hand, a vicious thing as fast as the serpents that came so easily to the archangel’s hand.
Nivriti shut her wings and dropped at almost the same instant the snap left Neha’s hand, a move of such speed that Mahiya couldn’t follow it with the eye. “What was that?” She wasn’t sure if she was asking about Neha or Nivriti.
“The Cadre calls it the poison whip,” Jason responded. “A single brush against skin and it releases a deadly toxin into the bloodstream. As with angelfire, an archangel could beat a certain number of glancing blows, but an ordinary angel would die in seconds. A full strike with the whip to the heart or the head equals total death for even the archangels.” Jason’s eyes tracked the two women as Neha hit out with the whip and Nivriti dodged, her speed unnatural. “Did your mother also have power over snakes?”