Archangel's Heart (Guild Hunter 9)

“He can’t vocalize at all?”

“No, the scarring is too severe.” A pause. “He says none of the new ones but Ibrahim bothered to learn the hand language if they didn’t know it already. Ibrahim is apparently terrible at languages, but he is dogged.”

The more Elena learned about the hurt novice, the more she liked him. As for the others who hadn’t bothered with a simple kindness for a living being in pain . . . “That’s what happens when the rot comes from the top. People turn into mindless sheep.” She got to her feet. “I want to talk to Hannah, too. She spent the most time in the Gallery, could’ve seen something she doesn’t realize the importance of.”

“Donael will know if there is a hidden part of Lumia beneath the final level of the Gallery,” Aodhan said as they left Laric’s library. “He was here when this map was created.”

“Last resort.” Elena played with a blade to keep her anger under control. “I don’t know if we can trust him, even if he doesn’t give off the creepy vibe.”

“Because if he’s been at Lumia so long,” Aodhan murmured, “he either knows of the secrets in these walls, or he has stayed deliberately blind.”

“Like you said, Gian didn’t appear in a vacuum. If Donael had stuck up for what was right when Gian began to take control—or even earlier, when Lumia first began to change, we might not be here today.” A focus on personal luminescence didn’t, in her book, excuse willful blindness to evil occurring right under your nose.

Archangel, she said, reaching out to Raphael, can you tag Elijah, find out where Hannah is? I need to talk to her. She told him what they’d discovered about a possible hidden underground section to the Gallery.

Sea winds kissed her mind moments later. Eli and Hannah are in their suite. It’s almost exactly on the opposite side of Lumia to ours.

Thanks. She followed Aodhan down the staircase.

There is a deep vein of fear within the brothers who live here, Elena, almost as deep as that in the town. It stinks up the air when I speak to those who might have seen Ibrahim in the moments before the attack.

I’ll take care, she said, because while she’d fight him always when he slipped back into seeing her as a vulnerable mortal, she also understood that fear was a new concept to Raphael.

He hadn’t tasted it for eons until he fell in love with her, until he tied his heart to that of a woman who could be wounded or killed by his powerful enemies. After all, Elena worried about him even though he was one of the most violently powerful beings in the world.

Telling Aodhan their new destination just before he opened the door on the lower level of the tower, Elena jerked back at the slap of wind that rattled that door, as if trying to rip it from his grasp. The storm wasn’t just holding, it had increased in size and violence. The lightning now fell like rain, punching into the earth over and over, and where it hit, it left behind only scorched earth. The stone walls of Lumia bore several new scars that she could see, but that stone was still holding up under the assault.

Heart thumping at the beauty of the primal display despite the danger of it, Elena looked at Aodhan. “Ready?”

To her surprise, he took her hand, gripped it hard. “Wings tight to your back, body low. The wind is strong enough to blow us off the path if we’re not careful.”

“Wait.” Tugging her hand from his grasp, she unstrapped her crossbow and gave it to him to hold, then pulled out the garrote bracelet she’d stuffed into a pocket at the last minute. It actually had a far longer length of thin wire inside it than was necessary for twisting it around someone’s neck.

She snapped the bracelet into two parts with the wire in between, tied one part to the front end of a crossbow bolt, was about to twist the other end over her own gauntleted wrist when Aodhan held up his. “I’m stronger.”

Because he was, Elena wrapped the metal wire over the top of his gauntlet and gave him this end of the bracelet to hold. They couldn’t afford to tie it to something on the tower side without first knowing if they’d have enough length to make that possible. “Grab on to something.”

After fixing the door open with what looked like a heavy chunk of rock meant for that purpose, Aodhan used his free hand to grip the staircase railing behind them and stretched out his body so that she had as much wire to play with as possible. And she shot the bolt. It went at too fast a velocity for the wind to impact, slamming home safely on the wall of the hallway at the end of the path.

While Aodhan maintained his position, arm muscles rigid, she quickly unwrapped the wire from his gauntlet, then together, the two of them got it hooked around the stairwell railing. The length proved just enough. The only problem was that the metal was so thin it’d shred their hands if they gripped it with bare palms. “I have an idea.” Racing upstairs, she cut out two pieces of Laric’s old rug using one of her knives, came back down.

Aodhan took one look at what she held and nodded. “I’ll go in front. Use my body as a wind shield and grip the back of my pants.”

Two seconds later, they headed out. And Jesus, the winds were brutal. A gust actually lifted Elena off her feet at one point, only her dual grip on the wire and on Aodhan keeping her on the path. Face and body wet on one side from the driving rain, she stumbled into Aodhan on the other end, colliding with the soft smoothness of his wings. “Sorry.”

He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her firmly out of the wind.