Archangel's Prophecy (Guild Hunter #11)(57)

“I’m pretty sure it’s just morning stiffness.” She scratched at her chest.

Catching her hand, he stared at the spot. “Elena.”

“Damn, was I scratching again?” A grimace. “You saw me naked in the shower—did you spot anything? I didn’t.”

“No, I saw nothing.”

“Then we keep on living.” A fierce vow. “We do not let the Cascade manipulate us into limbo.”

“Fear will not ruin us,” he vowed in turn.

Elena’s smile was of a warrior, full of teeth.

He took both himself and his consort into the air before dropping her so she could glide into flight. She swept out in a wide curve then back in to head deeper into the Enclave, while he flew toward the Tower to speak to Dmitri before he left for his meeting with Elijah. When he glanced back, he saw that a number of the Legion must’ve been crouching in the trees around their home. They rose into the air to join Elena, providing a silent escort as she flew toward Andreas’s property.

Raphael smiled grimly and flew on.

In his hand was a piece of lint he’d brushed off Elena’s shoulder when he took off her robe after breakfast. Gossamer soft, it was the color of her hair.

Elena looked to the Primary, who flew next to her on silent wings. “Why are you shadowing me?”

“We want to.”

Elena narrowed her eyes; sometimes she thought the Primary was deliberately using inscrutable language to perplex and confound, but then she’d remember the Legion weren’t human in any way, shape, or form. They weren’t angels or vampires, either. They were other, and their minds didn’t walk known paths.

“You’re here because Raphael wants you to be here.” Her archangel’s protective urges were riding a dangerous edge, but he hadn’t tried to chain her. No, he’d taken her to the sky and set her free. But the Legion were so much his that they acted on his emotions.

The Primary cocked his head to one side. “You also want us here.”

Elena went to say no she didn’t—then realized she didn’t actually mind her Legion followers. She liked them whereas she didn’t like Andreas all that much. “Did you spend the night in the trees? Why didn’t you go inside the greenhouse?” She often walked in there to find one of the Legion among her plants, exotic garden statues who woke at the sight of her.

“We like the winter. Many trees sleep, but they exist. And in the spring, new leaves are born fed by the energy of the leaves that sighed to the earth in fall.”

“Very philosophical.” Goose bumps broke out over Elena’s skin, an eerie sense of déjà vu thick in her mind. “Have we had this conversation before?”

“No. Perhaps we will have it in the future.”

Shaking off the chill, Elena flew on with the Legion silent and old yet paradoxically young.

“Elena?”

She looked over. “What is it?”

The Primary’s pale eyes held hers. “We remembered a memory. It is old.”

Skin too hot, her internal thermostat malfunctioning today, Elena had to force herself to break the eye contact so she wouldn’t fly off-course. “Tell me.”

“A memory of white owls who sit with a woman with hair of lilac. She smiled before the Cascade of Terror changed her. Then she bled tears of dark red.”

Shivering at the reference to the last time the Legion had woken, during a war that had “unmade” angelic civilization and sent the battered survivors into an eons-long Sleep, Elena said, “Do you know her name?”

A shake of his head. “We remember only that the owls cried for her after she was gone.”

Elena found her phone and sent a message to Vivek with the description. Please make sure it gets to Jessamy, she wrote.

Sure, Ellie, was the response. Any more creepy things you’d like me to forward?

Tell Aodhan I’m waiting to rewatch Psycho until he gets back.

I’m so glad I’m not in your film club. Messages will be sent.

Putting away her phone, Elena flew on, the Legion keeping pace with her slow flight. When she landed in Andreas’s front yard, it was to find the angel out in the snow. He was dancing through a martial arts routine using dual swords, and he was good. Better than good. Intellectually, Elena had always known that Andreas was powerful, but despite his position as a squadron leader, she didn’t tend to think of him as a warrior.

Seeing him stripped to the waist, however, his muscles moving fluidly and his wings—a rich amber leavened with gray—held with warrior precision as he manipulated the swords at brutal speed, she remembered something Jessamy had once said to her: “An immortal has many facets, Ellie. Millennia of existence create myriad strands of personality.”

Andreas wasn’t only shirtless, he was also barefoot.

Elena looked down at her boots, told herself she didn’t need to show off. She’d rather keep her feet warm and frostbite-free in the nice thermal socks Sara had given her as a gift. They had vampire smiley faces on them.

Finishing up the kata on a suicidal whirl of blades, Andreas came to a halt on one knee, his dark hair falling around the aristocratic lines of his face.

He looked up with a glint in his eye, and for the first time since she’d met Andreas, she saw the man Raphael knew. A warrior who fit seamlessly into an archangel’s forces, a leader who’d have a squadron’s respect, and a fighter who’d throw back a beer while sweaty and dirty.