Her eyes warmed. “All the way, cuddlebunny.”
43
Titus arrived with only three warriors the night before the block party was scheduled to begin. Elena didn’t have to be told that the small unit was both a gesture of trust and a display of his confidence in his own strength. Folding in his wings as he landed on the Tower roof, his warriors coming down behind him—two males and one female—Titus headed toward Elena and Raphael.
“Titus.” Raphael walked forward to meet the other man halfway and held out his arm. “You are welcome.”
Titus grabbed Raphael’s forearm, Raphael’s own hand closing over his in the clasp of warriors. “I am glad you are here to welcome me, Raphael,” he said, his words a boom that made Elena realize the archangel usually modulated his voice so as not to drown out everyone else in his vicinity. “You are a pup, but a strong one I’d have at my back in any battle.”
“And I would have you, though you are heading toward frail old age.”
Titus’s laugh at Raphael’s riposte was huge. “Well met, young pup. Well met.”
Breaking the handclasp with a deep smile, Raphael turned to Elena. “My consort.”
She stepped forward. “Archangel Titus,” she said, keeping it formal until he gave an indication that informality was welcome.
Her restraint was thanks to Jessamy. Elena had been in Remedial Protocol School that afternoon, since this was the first time she was welcoming an archangel to her city who had no consort and who was unrelated to Raphael, but who’d known Raphael as a boy and had, in fact, helped train him.
All of which, apparently, changed everything.
At this rate, she thought with an inward snort, she’d have the protocol thing sorted in, oh, another nine hundred years, give or take. “You made good time.”
Titus made his reply in the softer tone she was used to hearing from him. “A good wind.”
“If you and your people would follow us,” she said, hoping Raphael was right and Titus was laid-back enough that she could soon drop the protocol crap. It was making her head ache. At least she hadn’t had to put on a gown for this. “We have prepared suites for you.”
“A short moment to wash, nothing more,” Titus said. “I would explore your city. It has been an age since I have visited these lands.”
Elena led the group over the side of the roof and down to a guest balcony where Dmitri was waiting. He greeted Titus with the familiarity of old acquaintance and mutual respect, then led the escort through to their rooms, while Elena showed Titus to his. Turned out that since Raphael had a consort, he couldn’t do certain tasks himself if she was able, without it being taken as an insult.
“I hope everything is to your liking,” she said to Titus.
He surprised her by throwing back his head and laughing with the smile-inducing lack of inhibition she’d already come to expect from him. “Ah, you must forgive me,” he said when he caught his breath. “I see this role sits ill on you—you are meant for battle, not for such niceties.”
Elena grinned. “I can rock a dress when I put my mind to it.”
“Perhaps I will see this at the celebration you have planned.”
“You never know.” Walking forward, she held out her arm as Raphael had done, saying, “I’m not yet as immortal as you,” at the last minute as she remembered Raphael’s warning about Titus treating her as a blooded angelic warrior.
Titus clasped her forearm. It was hard enough to jar her teeth, but not hard enough to break anything. “You will be,” he said. “Then I will say I knew you when you were a fledgling.” Another huge laugh. “As I knew your consort when he was a pup.”
Leaving him to freshen up, she stepped out to join Raphael on the balcony. “You were right,” she said. “I like him. He’s like a hunter—only much more powerful.”
“You should trust your consort.”
Sliding her wing over his, she leaned her shoulder against his. “I wish the thing with Cornelius and Giorgio hadn’t happened, that we could go into this celebration without that ugliness.” Her heart hurt for Ash, too, though the other hunter seemed to have a serene peace inside her when it came to the loss of her brother and sister.
She’d returned Elena’s fierce hug after the funerals, murmuring, “Don’t be so sad, Ellie. Your sisters aren’t trapped in that house; they’re flying on their own wings.”
Elena couldn’t explain how Ash knew that the funerals had brought back visceral memories of the deaths of her own sisters, or how she knew about the horror that had taken them, but Elena held the other woman’s words close to her heart. Ash had always glimpsed more than anyone should, seen beyond this world. If she said Ariel and Mirabelle were no longer imprisoned in the blood-soaked house that had once been their childhood home, then Elena could do nothing but believe it.
Raphael slid his arm around her waist. “I feel your sorrow.”
“Just working through stuff,” she said, her emotions heavy but not agonizing. “Thinking about how some people are so kind and generous, others the opposite.” Not many would’ve reached out across their own grief to ease that of another, as Ash had done for her, and it was a kindness Elena would never forget. “The world would be a better place if we could erase all the Corneliuses and Giorgios from it.”
“I’ve lived long enough to understand that there will always be some ugliness in the world.” Raphael stroked a tendril of hair that had escaped her braid back behind her ear. “We cannot erase it, for it acts as the foil for joy, for goodness.”
“I guess I’m not old enough to accept that yet.” It didn’t matter that Cornelius and Giorgio were currently serving out their brutal and ongoing punishments in distant underground bunkers. “I feel so much fury for the pain caused, the scars left on the hearts of good people.”
“Never lose that part of yourself, Elena.” Raphael’s eyes held a lick of wildfire in their depths that spoke of the changes going on inside him. “Before you, I had become jaded, unable to see the light or the dark. It is not an existence to which anyone should aspire.”
Rubbing her cheek against his hand, she said to hell with shocking their guest should he step outside and drew her archangel down for a kiss. “To life.”
“To life, hbeebti.”
• • •