Archangel's Heart (Guild Hunter 9)

“The stairs would have to be impossibly steep, given the description Elena has given me of the Gallery,” Raphael said.

“Laric only caught a glimpse, so he cannot say.”

Blood pumping hot and dark under her skin, Elena looked at the healer. “Can you lead us to that door?”

He seemed to start at being addressed directly, but his hands began to move. Aodhan translated. “Laric wishes to stay with Ibrahim, in case he falls out of anshara and is in pain, as sometimes happens, but he can give us instructions.”

Raphael looked to Elena as Aodhan got those instructions. “I think we should wait until after the bell for the Luminata’s nightly contemplation. That time is sacred enough to them that Gian asked the Cadre itself not to disturb it.”

It was difficult to make herself wait when instinct was screaming at her that something monstrous lay beneath Lumia, but Elena nodded. It made sense to wait until the brothers had all scurried back into their rooms, leaving the hallways clear.

Thunder crashed outside seconds later, so loud it vibrated through Elena’s bones. Eyes locking with Raphael’s, she reached for his mind. You are not going out there.

He cradled the side of her face, just shook his head, the midnight strands of his hair framing a face of blinding power. And she knew. If that was the only choice, then Raphael would make it. Because he was an archangel. He stood a chance of survival even in the midst of the aberrant Cascade-born storm. If Lumia collapsed and the lightning hit her or Aodhan, they’d die.

Body rigid, she threw her arms around him and just held on tight.

It was twenty minutes later that Cristiano came by with a note for Elena.

The librarian insists he destroyed the book, that it was a “worthless item that should’ve never been” in the Repository of Knowledge. I don’t believe him, but I can’t call him a liar to his face without causing grave insult that the Luminata may use to stir up trouble, for we both know the world needs no more chaos right now. I will, instead, keep scouring the shelves in case they have forgotten something else.—Hannah

It wasn’t what Elena wanted to hear, but at the same time, the librarian’s caginess lent further weight to the fact that Hannah had inadvertently stumbled upon something important. Sliding the note into a pocket in an instinctive effort to keep it safe and away from prying eyes, she forced herself to leave Raphael—who was chatting to Aodhan—and went to sit next to Laric.

“Do you want to stay here?”

When the healer froze at her question, she simply waited. You didn’t push a broken, scared bird. That would just make it attempt to fly away. It was at least two minutes later that he finally lifted his hands, dropped them again to glance over at Aodhan. But the member of the Seven wasn’t looking this way, his concentration on his low-voiced discussion with Raphael.

Elena looked around, grabbed a notepad off a nearby side table, and gave it to Laric along with a pen, before retaking her seat. He held the pen oddly and she realized the scarring on his hands made it difficult for him to write smoothly.

He could, however, still write.

When he handed the pad back to her, Elena saw he’d written the words in painstakingly formed English: There is nowhere else where I will be left in peace.

Frowning, she said, “Do you want that? Isn’t it lonely?”

The healer said nothing for a long time. Then he wrote again: People are cruel.

Young, Elena remembered, he’d been so very young when he’d been injured. Regardless of his physical age, he was still that boy inside who’d been rejected by his lover, then looked on with pity and maybe even distaste by the immortal world. Still . . . “Do you know Jessamy?”

An immediate nod, those scarred hands writing carefully on the page: She is strong. I am not strong.

“I don’t think you’ve ever given yourself a chance,” Elena murmured and, acting on instinct, placed her hand on his shoulder.

He went stiff before slowly relaxing. But he didn’t pull away. That’s what she’d thought: this boy wasn’t like Aodhan, who’d shunned touch. People had simply stopped touching him. “Think about it,” she said. “There are a lot of unusual things in New York—you won’t stand out as much as you think.”

Grinning, she said, “The other day, I saw a man dressed as a chicken walking with a briefcase. He kept looking at his watch as if he was late.”

His surprise was such that she almost caught a glimpse of his face before he angled it so the shadows of the hood concealed him, clearly practiced at the maneuver. Picking up the notepad, he wrote: Angelkind does not want its mistakes out in the world.

Anger burned Elena’s blood, but she couldn’t tell him that wasn’t true. Even Jessamy had said something similar.

“Watching one archangel execute another in the skies of New York,” Jessamy had murmured, “is a far different case from seeing an angel with a malformed wing.” A soft smile that told Elena the other woman was at peace with who she was. “One is an otherworldly thing beyond mortal ken, the other far too close to their own reality. Angelkind cannot ever afford to be that real, Elena. It would shatter the foundations of the world.”

On the heels of that memory came that of Raphael’s bloody story about the angels who’d wanted to rule without any archangelic oversight.

We live in a world of predators and prey.

And the consequence of seeing an angel with a “mortal” ailment could be thousands, tens of thousands, of mortals dead after some idiot decided they could take on the angels and win.