Archangel's Heart (Guild Hunter 9)

Elena tried not to grab on to that G. It could belong to anyone. She certainly didn’t know the names of every single Luminata in this place.

“Do you want me to see if I can get the volume back?” Hannah said, her interest unhidden. “The librarian can’t lie to me about its existence, since I handed it directly to him.”

“I don’t want you to put yourself at risk,” Elena began.

“Ellie.” Closing her hands over Elena’s, Hannah squeezed. “I’m good at taking care of myself and I also have Cristiano.” A deep smile. “He moves like a lazy cat and behaves like one when at rest, but he is a cagey, dangerous mountain lion at heart.

“Plus,” Hannah added, “I don’t think even the Luminata are arrogant enough to strike at the consort of an archangel. They know Elijah would annihilate this place, along with every single member of their sect.”

Elena wasn’t so sure. “These people take arrogance to a new level, Hannah. They’re used to operating without boundaries.”

“I will ask Titus to go with me, then,” Hannah said, clearly at peace with the fact she was no warrior. “He is restless in this place and I think he will find even a small diversion attractive.”

“Titus in a library?” It would be like finding Elena in one, to be honest. Titus was far more at home with a weapon, his body in motion.

“It is not his normal habitat, it is true.” Hannah laughed. “But there is a display of ancient knives on one wall that should be of interest to him.”

That answered the question of where at least some of the Gallery’s weapons collection was displayed. “Promise me you won’t go if you can’t get Titus to come along.”

“I promise,” Hannah said, a soft curve to her lips. “You know I am older and stronger than you?”

“Yes, but you don’t have a killer instinct.” For better or worse, Elena did. Perhaps she’d been born with it, or perhaps it had come to life in the months and years after the brutal murder of Elena’s sisters, when Elena learned that, sometimes, to fight a nightmare, you had to become an even more dangerous nightmare.

Leaving her fellow consort, Elena considered their next move. It was Aodhan who said, “Your advice to Hannah was sound.”

Her lips kicked up, the ache of memory retreating to the background in the face of the current reality. “And I should follow it?”

“It would be prudent.”

“We should get back to Raphael anyway, see if he’s dug up anything.” And so she could make sure he wasn’t planning to head out into the murderous lightning that pounded Lumia.

* * *

As it was, things had come to a dead end with the investigation.

None of the Luminata were talking and none of the Cadre who now knew of the incident—Raphael, Elijah, Neha, and Titus—could justify more extreme methods of questioning, as that would violate boundaries so important it might tear a permanent rip into the fabric of angelic society.

Returning with Raphael back to their suite, a suite guarded by Titus’s escort—who left on their return—Elena saw that Ibrahim was breathing easier. Laric sat beside him, his shoulders bowed and his hood tugged forward to shadow his face, but his hands gently ministering to the badly wounded angel as he did what he could despite his lack of training.

That was when she remembered. Archangel, I have to tell you something about Laric.

Raphael’s expression grew progressively darker as she shared the story of the deadly fire that had consumed the sky, catching a young angel in it.

I didn’t know there were any collateral victims, he said afterward, and I don’t believe Mother does, either.

I don’t think many people do. Elena wove her fingers through his. If he wants to leave Lumia, we can offer him a home, right?

A wild blue inferno met her gaze. Such a soft heart you have, Guild Hunter. Yes, we can offer this healer a place, but he will still have a hard life. Many immortals are unforgiving of physical imperfections.

The words echoed Aodhan’s earlier ones, and they weren’t cruel, simply factual. I know, she said. But I think if we can give Laric a place where he can grow strong inside, he might do much better than he’s doing here. He’s buried himself alive.

Jaw held in a grim line as an impossibly desolate shadow passed over his face, Raphael nodded before returning his attention to where Aodhan had gone to stand by Laric. The angel’s hands moved quickly. The smaller, slighter healer moved his scarred hands in turn, their conversation apparently intense.

That was when Elena noticed that Laric’s wings were much smaller bumps beneath his robe than they should be. Her eyes burned at the realization that the fire had done catastrophic damage to his wings, too—and yet he had the heart to heal others still. That was far more luminescent, in her mind, than anything else she’d seen in this place.

Swallowing the response, she went to sit by Ibrahim, gently touching her fingers to his hair. It was tightly kinked and so soft. “Come on, Ibrahim,” she whispered. “Don’t let the bastards get you down.”

The biting wind kissed her mind, touched with the salt-laced air of the sea. Aodhan asks us to come close.

When they joined Aodhan on the other side of Ibrahim’s supine body, the angel spoke in a soft voice. “Laric says there was something beneath the Gallery once.”

The silent healer nodded from where he stood beside Aodhan.

“He never went there, assumed it was for storage of unwanted things. He only has a vague memory of the trapdoor in the Gallery itself, but he remembers a door set into a wall near the Gallery entrance, which was sometimes open and from which he could see a flight of stairs.”