Archangel's Storm (Guild Hunter 5)

Mahiya didn’t care about Neha’s vengeful game playing. She cared only about the cold, practical contract that underlay the ceremony of the vow Jason had spoken, her bones filled with a chill determination to complete this task without dropping the mask of inoffensive grace that was her most powerful weapon. No one considered her a threat. Neither would this spymaster.

Reaching the gauzy curtains of amber and gold that fluttered in the archway leading into the high central core of the palace, she took the time to tie them to the sides before waving her hand inward.

Jason remained in place.

“I will not have you at my back.”

Ignoring the prickling at her nape that warned her of lethal danger, she preceded him into the echoing central chamber that rose all the way to the roof. Her stomach threatened to revolt against the stink, but she brought her gag reflex under control through sheer grim determination and practice—Neha had left Mahiya in the palace to “keep Eris company” for hours after his murder.

“He was your father, after all. I give you time to say your farewells.”

For once, Mahiya did not think it had been a conscious cruelty—Neha herself had returned to sit with the body until an hour prior to Jason’s arrival, her fingers stroking Eris’s hair, the deep mahogany streaked with lighter strands as a result of all the time Neha had recently allowed him to spend in the searing sunshine of the courtyard.

“He is a creature of the sun, born on a clifftop overlooking the Mediterranean.”

However, this windowless, sunless room with its marble floor overlaid by a thick carpet in swirls of gold and amber had been the place where Eris spent most of his time. The chandelier overhead was a masterwork that glittered light across the entire expanse, made the carnelian in the walls glow with inner fire . . . and the crystallized blood on the floor sparkle with stomach-churning beauty.

That blood had dripped from a wide divan where Eris had so often mockingly “held court” when Mahiya came to him with a message. A glass of red wine spilled an ugly stain onto the swirling colors of the carpet, while a plate of fruit—exotic peaches and dark cherries from far off lands of cold and ice, figs and apricots from Neha’s own plantations—sat half eaten.

Flies buzzed over the silver plate, but they weren’t truly interested.

No, their attention was taken up by the rotting carcass of the man who lay broken half on, half off the divan, his wings spread out in a final dramatic display and his chest cracked open to exhibit a hollow body cavity. While the blood outside his body had crystallized into a brittle substance akin to shimmering pink rock salt, inside that hollow, it had hardened to the same dark, dark red as the cherries, evidence of the fact his body had attempted to repair itself and failed.

Death rubies.

The idea of wearing jewelry created from the blood of a dead angel revolted Mahiya, but it had been an accepted practice in times past, the gems worn as memento mori by the lovers of those angels who died in circumstances that led to the creation of the death rubies. Fitting that Eris should be beautiful in this way even in death—for in life he had been a man who was the embodiment of physical perfection, his skin shimmering gold, his eyes lapis lazuli blue.

Jason displayed no distaste at the sight of Eris’s mutilated body, his breathing even as he examined the remains of her “father.”

“Did I have the chance to strangle you in your crib, I would have done so in a heartbeat. Without you, she would’ve forgiven my transgression long ago.” A wineglass smashing onto marble. “Be careful when you sleep, girl. I have friends who may yet snap your neck for me.”

It was her most vivid memory of the man who had contributed his seed to her creation.

* * *

Ignoring the flies that buzzed around what remained of a man who had once been the toast of courts from ancient Greece to the Forbidden City, Jason leaned in close, making certain of his first impression that Eris’s heart had been removed, as had all his other internal organs. He could see a pile of indeterminate decomposing material to the right, guessed they might be the hacked-up remains of the organs.

That his head was still attached to his neck was a surprise—though Eris was universally considered too weak to have been consort to an archangel, that weakness had stemmed from his character, rather than the raw power contained within his body. He was more than old and strong enough to have risen by now were his brain intact.

Jason examined what appeared to be dried blood under one of Eris’s nostrils, the color near black, the substance clotted rather than crystalline. “Was a long needle found with the body?”

Mahiya shook her head, her expression devoid of the sorrow and distress he might’ve expected from a woman standing by the body of her dead father. “Nothing has been taken from this palace since Neha discovered his body.” A pause. “Do you wish me to search this room?”

“Yes.” Bending as she began to do so, he put his hand under Eris’s head and lifted, knocked on the bone with the knuckles of his free hand.

Mahiya paused in her search. “It sounds . . . hollow.”

“His brain’s been removed.”

Sari held neatly off the blood-matted carpet, the princess returned needleless from her search and spoke words he most assuredly had not expected to hear from a woman dressed in softest pink, her every move speaking of elegant femininity. “How?” Determined curiosity leaked through her facade of distant politeness. “His head is unmolested.”

Jason’s interest in Mahiya grew deeper, more intense. “A hooked needle thrust into the brain through the nose,” he said, describing a method used by the people of ancient Egypt as part of the mummification process. “That needle is then moved around until the brain is in a state that it can be extracted via the same route.”

From the thick area of dried material directly below the head, the brain might well have been turned into soup, allowed to drip out of Eris’s nose before he was turned back over and posed as he was now.

A small silence, and he wondered if he’d misjudged the internal strength of this princess raised in the hothouse that was the fort, but who watched him out of those eyes bright as a cat’s with a steely intelligence that fit neither her quiet acquiescence to Neha’s demands, nor the way she’d followed his own commands without argument.

Then she spoke, and he knew his instincts hadn’t steered him wrong. Mahiya might not be an opponent strong enough to concern him, but she was no pampered princess he could ignore. “So”—a considering look—“whoever did this came well prepared, not only with the blade he or she used to carve up Eris, but with the hook, perhaps other tools as well.”