Archangel's Heart (Guild Hunter 9)

As for their voices, no one would be able to hear them if they kept the volume quiet.

Elena, her own temper still shimmering a silver light in her eyes after she finally stripped off her damp clothing, pressed her naked body to his in a silent statement that they were one. Always. It calmed him enough that he could think. “We’ll find the answers hidden in this place, hbeebti. Even if we have to come back a hundred times.”

Rising up on tiptoe, Elena kissed him soft and tender. It was a delicate touch from his tough hunter, but he was used to such kisses now and then. Because Elena had a well-hidden core of softness that only came out with the vulnerable, and with those she loved. Stroking his hands over the sleek line of her back, down to the toned lower curves of her body, he sank into the kiss, sank into her.

It felt as if she breathed life into him, washing away the darkness that lingered so heavy on the horizon. Closing his wings around them to protect her even further, though his glamour hid them from all eyes, he kissed his lover, his warrior, was kissed in turn.

“I love you, Raphael.” A whisper against his lips, eyes full of ghosts holding his. “Don’t ever go.”

“Elena.” He pressed his forehead to hers. “You are thinking of your mother and your sisters again.” The loss haunted her, made her afraid of losing the people who mattered to her as she’d once lost Marguerite, Belle, and Ari.

Shields down, her face painfully bare, Elena traced his Legion mark with a single fingertip. “My grandmother’s body was never recovered after the bus crash in which she was meant to have died, did you know that?”

34

Elena hadn’t ever before spoken of how Marguerite had been orphaned. “You think she—Majda—was never on that bus, that she was taken and brought to Lumia.” The “ghost” who’d attempted to make an escape on a moonlit night.

Nodding, Elena continued to trace his mark, the wildfire reacting to her as it always did. “I managed to track down newspaper reports of the accident when I was a teenager.” She ran her hand down his jaw to place it flat on his chest. “It wasn’t hard since it was such a big accident, doubly so because so many of the bodies were washed away by the snowmelt-fed river at the bottom of the ravine. Easy and convenient accident to arrange if you were powerful enough.”

Raphael’s eyebrows drew together over his eyes; there was a problem with her theory. But he needed more information before he could be sure. “How did they know your grandmother was even on the bus?”

“She told the nun with whom she left my mom exactly which bus she’d be on—she didn’t want to take my mom since the long round trip would be too grueling.”

Stroking her hair, her back, Raphael said, “Elena, if a powerful angel wanted to take a human woman, especially one who was alone in a large city but for a child, he—or she—would just take the woman. No need to go to the trouble of staging an accident to cover it up.” The victim would just disappear.

Raphael had seen too many twisted immortals to believe such things didn’t happen.

Elena stared at him. “You’re right,” she said in the tone of someone who’d missed the obvious. “So I guess the ghost was just someone’s imagination and the Luminata overreacted because of guilt over something else.”

“Jean-Baptiste’s disappearance,” Raphael suggested. “Majda ran because her husband was taken.”

“Do you think Gian murdered him out of jealousy?”

“I wish I didn’t, but the facts line up too neatly for it to be otherwise . . . and Gian watches you with eyes that are—”

“Stalker-creepy,” Elena suggested, a shiver rippling through her but her voice razor-sharp. “He watches me like I’m a pretty bug he wants to put in a glass jar and keep.”

Gripping his rage in a fist that anyone would dare look at his consort that way, Raphael nodded. “Just so.” Gian would die as soon as they had the answers to Elena’s questions.

“Majda ran to protect her child’s life,” Elena said. “And she never made it back home, never made it out of the river at the bottom of the ravine.” She swallowed. “I’m glad. I’m glad she wasn’t trapped at Lumia, far from her child.”

He kissed away the tears that streaked her face. “Elena.”

Hands closing over his wrists, his hunter said, “She dressed my mother up in a pretty dress and coat, left her with a bag full of snacks and toys. She loved her baby.”

“Did someone keep the clothing, the shoes?”

Elena shook her head. “The nun took a photograph of my mother the day my grandmother died. She knew that once my mother went into the foster system, her history would be lost and she’d never know how much she’d been loved.”

More tears, her eyes haunted. “As a child, I didn’t understand how scared my mom must’ve been when her own mom didn’t come back for her. She was so small, so vulnerable.”

Kissing away her tears once more, Raphael said, “Your grandmother left her in safe hands, hands that cared for her long after others would’ve forgotten her.”

“It doesn’t seem fair, does it, Raphael?” Elena shook her head, the yet-damp strands of her hair brushing against the wings he’d curved around her. “Marguerite lost her mother, then she lost two of her daughters. No one can be expected to bear that much sorrow.” Her shoulders shook, a sob catching in her throat.