Archangel's Consort (Guild Hunter #3)(42)

Raphael shook his head. “I’ve had Jessamy doing some research,” he said, mentioning the woman who was the repository of angelic knowledge, the keeper of their histories . . . and one of the kindest angels Elena had ever met. “Come, we will speak of it inside.”

They walked into the house, turning in the direction of the library, a room that sang to the curious heart of her nature. The first time she’d entered it, she’d noticed only the books arranged on the wall -to—wall shelves on the ground level, the fireplace to the left, the gorgeous wooden table and chairs set below the window.

But like all angelic rooms, this one had a soaring ceiling—and that ceiling was a work of art, the wooden beams carved with painstaking attention to detail and inlaid with darker pieces that were perfectly contoured to fit. “Aodhan?”

“No,” Raphael said, following her gaze. “That was done by a human, a master at his craft.”

“Amazing.” She wondered at the pride the man must’ve felt to build such a room for an archangel.

Raphael stroked his hand down her hair, his touch oddly tender.

“Archangel?”

“I’m far more powerful than when Caliane disappeared.” His words held a haunting sense of pain, of memory. “But I am still her son, Elena. Thousands upon thousands of years younger.” faltered

Elena shook her head. “You were younger than Uram, too. Yet you won.”

“My mother is beyond Uram, beyond Lijuan.” Raphael’s words sent a chill down Elena’s spine. “She lived as an archangel for tens of thousands of years. There is no knowing what she has become.”

Thinking of what Lijuan had done to Beijing, the stench of smoke and death that was said to linger over the empty crater than had once been a vibrant, living city, Elena felt fear attempt to take a clawhold on her heart. She refused to allow it, her love for this archangel far stronger than any imagined foe.

“She doesn’t know what you’ve become either, Raphael.”

Her archangel’s expression didn’t change, but she knew he’d heard her. “Jessamy,” he said, “tells me that Caliane is likely in a half-dream state at present. She has some semblance of consciousness but may have no real knowledge of the acts she’s committing.”

“She could think this is all a dream?”

Closing his hand around the back of her neck, he tugged her closer. “Yes.” His kiss was more than a little dangerous. But we did not come here to talk about Caliane.

She pressed her lips to the hard angle of his jaw, anticipation burning away the last vestiges of the fear she’d felt as she fel . “Let’s get sweaty.”





Chapter 15





An hour later, Elena was a hell of a lot more than sweaty. Raphael had given her the no-holds-barred combat she’d asked for—and more. “You know what makes me real y mad?” she said, hands on her knees on the other side of the rough practice circle they’d set out on the lawn.

Raphael, shirtless chest gleaming with the lightest film of perspiration, pushed back his hair. “Enough talking,” he ordered. “Up.”

She bared her teeth at him. “It’s the fact that you’re not even breathing hard while I feel like I got done over by a pack of vamps.” But she rose to her ful height, because if she could learn to hold her own against Raphael for so much as a second, she’d be unbeatable against most vampires and humans.

He came at her without warning, a blur of speed. She wrenched out of the way and went down hard. Galen’s earlier training kept her from landing awkwardly on her wings, but they got crushed into the grass nonetheless as Raphael swept down to pin her. “Galen didn’t teach me that,” she said, chest heaving underneath him as he pinioned her hands above her head.

“What?” Heat blazed off him, his eyes glittering in a way she usual y only ever saw in bed.

She couldn’t help it. Arching up, she kissed him, flicking out her tongue to taste the aggressive maleness pumping through his body. “The thing you do with your wings.” Instead of answering, he kicked her legs wider and suddenly the position was a hell of a lot more intimate. “Raphael”—a husky censure

—“Montgomery is probably keeping an eye on us.”

“He would never be so il -bred.” A hot wet kiss against her neck. “The wings?”

She forced her brain into gear. “You use them. Galen taught me to keep them out of the way, so I wouldn’t nick them with knives or the short sword, but you use your wings for balance, and you even go slightly airborne to avoid blows.” She’d never seen anyone move with that kind of lethal grace. Galen was a different kind of a fighter—more brutal, harsher in his movements.

Another kiss, the feel of teeth. She hissed, went to hook her leg over him when he rose off her, extending a hand to help her up. “Galen taught you what was necessary for survival,” he said once she was back on her feet. “He had to focus on tactics he knew you could master in the timeframe we had before Lijuan’s ball .”

Reaching up to redo her ponytail, Elena nodded. “I figured. I’m guessing using wings like you do will take me considerably longer to learn.”

“At this stage,” Raphael said, walking over to pick up two short swords from where she’d left them on the edge of the practice circle, “your wings are more of a liability in combat.”