Archangel's Prophecy (Guild Hunter #11)(86)

A moment of incomprehension before Jessamy’s face went still.

Galen strode forward at the same instant. “Sire.” His hands were fisted, his shoulders rigid. “The decision has been made.”

Elena didn’t try to get in the middle of that conversation—this was between an archangel and one of his loyal Seven. Raphael had attempted, if not to heal then at least to ease Jessamy’s twisted wing before. However, his healing power hadn’t been able to affect the malformation that kept Jessamy bound to the ground except when she flew up in the plane or in Galen’s arms.

“I will honor that wish.” Raphael closed his hand over Galen’s shoulder and squeezed. “But I would not be your archangel if I did not offer you this chance.”

Jessamy spoke for the first time since Elena’s words. “Laric?”

“He was caught in the energy released by the death of an archangel,” Raphael said. “According to Keir’s tests, his cells have altered in unusual ways that make those cells unlike ordinary angelic cells. It has also made them unrecognizable to my power—that may change as he grows older and his own healing processes restart, but for now, I can do nothing for him.”

Raphael’s eyes began to glow. Not only the cerulean blue that was his own but a ring of golden light that hadn’t existed prior to the energy surge. “The choice is yours.”

Jessamy ran her hand down Galen’s arm to his bunched hand. Unfurling it at her touch, he locked his fingers with hers. “What will happen to the power if I say no?”

“I do not know. It doesn’t feel too much for me, so it may simply stay until I use it. Or it may dissipate.”

Power enough to shatter the night and he wasn’t overwhelmed. No wonder Cassandra said he was changed—but he was guiding that change now, shaping it to his will. Yet Elena still felt a jagged rock in her gut . . . because what if the worst happened? Would Raphael fight the Cascade forces then? Or would he allow those forces to shape him into a cold and ruthless immortal untouched by mortal vulnerability?

Jessamy turned to Galen and put her free hand on his chest. Elena and Raphael both stepped away as the couple spoke in low voices tense with withheld emotion.

“What if we’re doing the wrong thing, Archangel?” Elena asked out of earshot of the other couple, suddenly afraid. Not only would a failure hurt Jessamy, it would be another darkness whispering to Raphael.

Eyes inhuman with power held hers, and when he spoke, his voice was different. Heavy with archangelic power. He sounded more like the archangel she’d first met than he had in years. But the words he spoke, they were her Raphael’s. “Hunter-mine. To not make the attempt would be a disservice to Jessamy. Especially after I could do nothing the first time we attempted to ease the malformation so it would not ache.”

Until then, Elena hadn’t known that Jessamy’s wing caused her physical discomfort. Not on a daily basis, and the pain was a dull throb rather than a sharp stab that made her cry out, but the muscles did spasm and lock up at times. The historian had described it as a bad cramp—to Elena, that would be an awful pain, but Jessamy had become accustomed to it over the centuries and centuries of her existence.

She didn’t seem to understand what that said about her strength, this slender woman who was no warrior and who, to this day, tried to avoid the fighting lessons Galen gave her so she would never be helpless against an opponent.

“Sire.” Stiff but resigned, Galen’s voice split the heavy silence. “Jessamy wishes to try.”

Raphael moved around to Jessamy’s back without further discussion—and that, too, was different. The Raphael she loved would’ve said something to reassure his weapons-master. Or maybe she was just jumpy and Raphael was too concerned with reigning in this wild power to waste his energies on anything that wasn’t strictly necessary.

“I need you to spread your wings as far as possible,” he ordered Jessamy.

One strong wing whispered out in a glow of delicate magenta and luscious cream against the pale sky-blue of Jessamy’s gown. The other stayed close to her back, the bones, muscles and tendons formed wrong and unable to stretch outward.

Elena and Galen both moved so they could see what Raphael was doing, one on his left, the other on his right.

“Describe it to me,” Jessamy said with the frustration of a historian missing out on what might be the making of a piece of angelic history.

“The sire is staring at your back,” Galen muttered bad-temperedly. “If I didn’t know that he was madly in love with Elena, I’d have to thump him for looking at you with such intensity.”

Jessamy’s laughter was a warm, gentle thing.

“His hands are full of light now,” Elena murmured. “It’s like the lightning we saw from Sara’s roof, not the blue of his usual healing energy.” Her heart thundered at seeing the violence of it, quite unlike the delicate dandelions that had floated back to him. “Archangel?”

“Sire, that is archangelic energy meant to level cities and battle others of the Cadre,” Galen said harshly at the same time.

“Yes,” Raphael said in a distant tone, “but it is also mine to mold.”

In front of them, the lightning became shot with streaks of healing blue. Elena shuddered inwardly at the sign that he continued to carry a touch of mortality, a touch of humanity. He’d always said that his ability to heal came from his love for her and how it had changed him on a fundamental level.