Archangel's Storm (Guild Hunter 5)

Drawing up one knee, Elena hooked her arm around it. “Will you stay?”

Mahiya had considered that, ruled it out—New York was dazzling, a beautiful city, but with jagged edges that overwhelmed. “I think I would like to visit.” Taste it in small bites. “But this is not my place.”

Elena nodded. “She’s not for everyone, my city, but I adore her.” Undoing a lightweight crossbow from her outer left thigh, she placed it beside her on the roof.

“Were you on a hunt?” It astonished Mahiya that the consort to an archangel did such a thing, but it also astonished her how Raphael looked at Elena and how Elena looked at the archangel in return. The searing depth of their connection was something she’d never expected, no matter what she had heard of their bonding.

“No, I was running a training session at Guild Academy. My turn on the roster.” She lifted her face to the wind, and they sat in companionable silence for almost ten minutes before Elena shifted to look at her. “Jason,” she said in a quiet voice, “you will look after him, won’t you?”

Startled, Mahiya said, “He isn’t a man who needs anyone’s protection.”

“But,” Elena said, eyes of silver-gray incisive, “I think he needs you.”

Yes. The question was, would Jason allow her to give him what he needed, or would he shy, as a wild creature might? It wasn’t the best of analogies, for Jason knew the ways of sophistication and civilization as well as any court male. Yet, he was not of them, part of him still that boy alone in the middle of an ocean. “I feel such things for him,” she whispered, “that it terrifies me.”

“Good,” Elena said with a shoulder nudge. “You’d never fit in our club otherwise.”

She blinked at the startling statement. “What?”

“It’s for those of us who are insane enough to fall in love with seriously badass men more sensible women would run from screaming. You’ve now superseded Honor as the newest member.” Elena grinned. “I’ll teach you the secret handshake.”

Mahiya laughed, and it was the laughter one shared with a friend. Elena was consort to an archangel, had access to power beyond imagining. She had no need to cultivate a relationship with Mahiya, and yet Mahiya knew why she did so. Not only because of an inherent kindness that had made her feel welcome from the first, but because Jason was one of “theirs.”

Mahiya did not mind being adopted into such a family. There was joy here, loyalty, and best of all, no one wished to use her as a pawn in some political game. Oh, she had no doubts about Raphael’s instincts, but she also knew the archangel would treat her with the courtesy due to the lover of one of his Seven.

Except she wasn’t certain she was that lover, that her spymaster wasn’t simply waiting for her to find her wings. Don’t go, Jason. Words she’d never say, chains she’d never wrap around him, but oh, it hurt to think of never again feeling the rough heat of his touch, never again seeing that wild black fire in eyes of deepest brown.

* * *

Walking out of his study and onto the lawn, Jason by his side, Raphael headed for the edge of the cliff.

Hello, Archangel.

His lips curved. Hello, hbeebti. Glancing back over his shoulder, he saw his consort sitting on the roof with the princess Jason had brought home. The women had their faces turned toward one another, Elena’s hair a white flame, Mahiya’s ebony silk gathered neatly into a knot at the nape of her neck.

If he had ever considered the woman who would get through Jason’s shields, it would not have been this elegant princess from Neha’s land, with her flawless politeness and a personality that seemed a serene mirror without depth. And yet . . . Jason was his spymaster, skilled at seeing behind shields and beyond defenses. What do you think of Jason’s princess? he said to his consort.

That she has a will of iron, that she loves Jason with all her heart—and that there is far more to her than either one of us will ever know, she said as he turned his attention back to Jason. Nothing strange about that. Only you know all the pieces of me.

As Elena knew him, he thought as he and Jason came to a halt on the cliff above the Hudson. So many discussions he’d had with his spymaster on this very spot—Jason didn’t like being confined when he could be under the sky. “The princess,” he said, “has sanctuary here as long as she needs it.”

“Thank you, Sire, but I think she can safely live in the wider world.” Jason settled his wings. “She’ll have to be careful, but I am of the belief that threats aside, Neha is too proud to break her word. As for Mahiya’s mother, it’s a relationship she alone can learn to navigate.”

Raphael agreed with Jason about Neha. The archangel wasn’t mercurial like Michaela—honor meant a great deal to her, her own something she guarded. “Does the princess have somewhere to go?”

“Yes.”

Raphael let the breeze brush his face, weave its fingers through his hair, and waited, knowing Jason had something else to say to him.

“Sire.” Jason continued to look outward, toward Manhattan, his tone calm. “I release you from your promise.”

Raphael had lived a millennium and a half, had memories strong and weak. He remembered the exact day each of his Seven had sworn fealty—Jason had been so young, and yet there had been a contained strength to him that had spoken to Raphael. He had known the boy would become a man of tempered steel. And he had known that steel had a fatal flaw.

“I ask only one promise for my service.” Words Jason had said, his skin smooth and bare of the markings that would begin to appear in another decade. “I was not . . . formed correctly. Part of me is damaged and may one day shatter. When it does, I ask that you execute me cleanly rather than allow me to erode from the inside out.”

Raphael had never asked Jason about his past, but he had put the pieces together, understood that his spymaster had survived a childhood that would’ve left many too broken to function, and that he had scars that might never fade. Scars . . . and fractures. So he’d made that promise, and he had hoped never to keep it.

Now, a cool wind kissed his skin, his blood, the weight of the promise lifting from his shoulders. “I am glad of it, Jason.”

He continued to look out over the water, and just when Raphael thought Jason might speak again, he gave a near imperceptible shake of his head and kept his silence. Raphael didn’t know if Jason had found peace of a kind at last, or whether that peace was only a glimmer on the horizon, but he hoped the black-winged angel would never again have cause to seek such a promise from him.