Archangel's Consort (Guild Hunter #3)(70)

“Tell me what you found.”

Elena glanced around the quiet but not deserted area. “Not here.”

Taking her into his arms, he rose up into the sky. The flight across the Hudson took only minutes, and then he was landing near the house of glass his consort so loved, his gaze on her as she flared out her wings to descend. Your control is improving.

“I’m nowhere near the level I need to be if I’m going to be effective in a hunt.” Tucking her hair behind her ears, she walked into the warm humidity of the greenhouse. “I sensed black orchids. It’s such a unique scent, it’s impossible to mistake.” Touching her fingers to a blush pink bloom, she shook her head.

“The purity of it bothers me for some reason—my perfumes contact is trying to get me a sample so I can figure out why.” Gray eyes solemn with concern met his as he closed the door behind them.

Instinct and experience told him to reject her worry, her care. An archangel did not survive by being weak. He survived by being more lethal than any other. Come here, Elena.

When she shifted to stand bare inches from him, he curved his hand around the back of her neck, rubbing his thumb over her pulse. “Not many know of this particular punishment.” But he did. He’d been there, a young child who’d understood even then that justice had to be served. “My mother did not wish to be a goddess like Lijuan or Neha. Neither did she wish to rule empires like my father.”

Elena’s hair fel in a silken waterfall over his arm as she raised her head so she could watch him as he spoke. She didn’t ask questions, but every part of her stood with him, unflinching against the darkness coming inexorably closer.

“But she was treated as a goddess, and she did rule,” he murmured, “as I rule.” He had learned about ruling from his mother, learned that there was a way to do it that would inspire both respect and awe without the debilitating fear that surrounded so many archangels. “She ruled Sumeria, but there was one particular city she treated as home. It was called Amanat.”

His hunter’s hand came to rest on his waist as lines formed on her brow. “I’ve heard about it. On a TV special about lost cities.”

“Amanat and its people disappeared when Caliane vanished.” Some say she took her people into Sleep with her, so that they would be there to welcome her when she woke. Most believe she murdered them all before she took her own life, for she loved them too well to leave them under another’s rule, and that Amanat is her grave.

Elena brushed the fingers of her free hand over the edge of one of his wings. He spread them wider, giving her easier access. A drop of water from a disturbed cluster of tiny white blossoms trickled along his feathers as, taking the invitation, she touched him with a firmer stroke. “Which do you believe?”

He settled her into the vee of his thighs, bracing her so both her hands would be free. “My mother,” he said, “loved things of beauty. Do you recal the ruby on the shelf in my Tower office?” The priceless gemstone was flawless in its faceted splendor. “She gave it to me for my tenth birthday.”

“She had impeccable taste.”

“Amanat,” Raphael continued, “was her jewel of jewels. She loved that city, truly loved it. I spent many of the happiest years of my childhood running wild above its paved streets.”

“Angels are so protective of their young,” Elena murmured, continuing to caress the insides of his wings with those hands that bore cal uses from weapons training—a warrior’s hands. He wanted none other on him.

“My mother,” he began, speaking of the dawn of his existence, “trusted the people of Amanat in a way an archangel seldom trusts anyone.” Memories of hot summer days spent flying above ancient buildings carved out of rock; of playing with mortal friends and being petted and adored by adults. “And they loved her. It was not the kind of worship Lijuan or even Neha inspires. It was ... untainted in a way I cannot describe.”

“You just did,” Elena murmured. “Love. What they felt was love.”

He bent his head a fraction, bringing one hand up to play with the curling tendrils of hair that licked at her temple. “She was a good ruler. Before the madness, she was what an archangel should be.”

His consort’s eyes softened to a warm, liquid mercury. “The histories Jessamy gave me to read, they said the same. That she was the most beloved of the archangels, that even the rest of the Cadre gave her their respect.”

He widened his stance, tucking her close enough that she nuzzled her face into his neck, one hand closing around his nape, the other continuing to caress the sensitive arch of his left wing. “The reason the people of Amanat loved her so”—he breathed in the spring and steel scent of his hunter—“was that she loved them in turn.”

Faded echoes of his mother laughing with the maidens who served in her temple, the sunshine of her smile as she gifted a maid about to marry with a dowry of gold and precious silks. “So when a group of vampires from outside came in and hurt two of Amanat’s women, she did not look the other way because the women were mortal and the vampires over four hundred years old.”

Elena’s body turned rigid, her breath warm against the hol ow of his neck.

He tightened his hold against the nightmare memories that stalked her. Elena.

“It’s okay, Archangel. Tell me.”