Archangel's Consort (Guild Hunter #3)(93)

It’s not a question of trust. I would not lose you to my mother’s madness.

Flying a fraction below him, so their wings wouldn’t tangle, she reached up with her hand. I won’t lose you to her, either. This feels like a trap, Raphael.

Raphael curled his fingers around hers, holding her in position. It may well be. And you would fly into it with me?

She infused her voice with wickedness. Trouble’s not only my middle name, it’s my first and last, too.

A blaze of electric heat as Raphael’s power swept out to cover her. She’d been shielded by it when they’d danced that most intimate of dances, felt it cut across her when he was angry, but never had it enfolded her with such brutal completeness, until her eyes streamed tears from the shocking force of it.

Shutting them tight, she squeezed his hand. I can’t see.

It won’t be for long. If the shield around the city is the trap, it’ll give us enough time to get back out.

With that, he flew, pulling her with him.

She knew the instant they hit the cool energy of the shield. The shock wave rocked through her entire body, but it was concentrated on where her fingers intertwined with Raphael’s, a wrenching pull that attempted to separate them. She knew if it succeeded, she’d be thrown out while Raphael disappeared inside the city she wasn’t sure wasn’t just a fancy mirage, a snare created by an archangel so old, it made her bones ache to even think about it.

Hold on.

She didn’t know which one of them said that, her body battered by icy rain that had turned brutal, her wrist bones threatening to break—Caliane was determined to smash them apart. Not on your f*cking life, she thought, and set her teeth against the pain of tendons that felt like they’d snap the next second.

An instant and an eternity later, they were tumbling out of the rain and toward the strange city at high velocity. A few months ago, she would’ve been helpless to stop her descent. But a few months ago, she’d been an angel newly fledged. Releasing Raphael’s hand so she wouldn’t drag him down with her, she stretched out her wings and began to beat upward in strong, fast movements, fighting the speed of her own tumbling body.

It became clear very quickly that her velocity was terminal.

Four seconds tops and she was going to find herself smashed to jagged fragments against the flat gray stone of the roof below her.

Elena.

She shoved up her shields when Raphael would’ve taken over. Conserve your strength. Then she poured every ounce of her own strength into averting what might well be a fatal fall given her age. Lose enough pieces and she was toast, but she’d been training hard. She had the skil . She just had to— Got it!

Her wings brushed the coarse stone of a building as she managed to shift her trajectory enough that she missed the roof and fel into the gap between two of the graceful gray structures. It gave her enough time to stabilize and get herself back up into the sky. She more than half expected Raphael to be furious with her for her defiance, but when she reached him, he was staring down at the city, his wet hair shoved off his face.

“What is it?” she asked, thrusting a hand through her own hair ... and realizing that no storm raged here. Rain lashed with unremitting force against the shield, but inside, the whole area was bathed in a golden light that almost succeeded in softening the stark edges of the buildings. “It needs flowers,” she found herself saying. “It doesn’t look quite right.” Unable to hold the hover, she made a control ed descent onto the roof she’d almost crashed into only a minute ago.

Raphael followed her down with far more grace. “It was once overrun with them.”

“With what?”

“Flowers.”

Walking to the edge of the roof, she looked down and saw an amazing array of carvings on the wall of the opposite building, the stone sparkling with hidden flecks of color that would turn this city into a bril iantly cut diamond in sunlight. Her heart slammed against her ribs. “What is this place?”

“The jewel in my mother’s crown. Though it is far from where it should be.”

“You know, most archaeologists believe Amanat never existed,” she said, staggered by the awareness of just how much power it would’ve taken to not only disappear, but move an entire city. “That it’s nothing more than a legend.”

A faint smile on Raphael’s face that didn’t reach his eyes. “I wonder at human archaeologists who do not speak to those of us who lived in these times of legend.”

Elena snorted. “As if any of you angels would answer their questions.”

You know us too well, Elena. Light words, but the way he stood, the way he looked at this strange city of stone and shadow, it spoke of lethal alertness.

Her own guard up, she continued to scan the area for any sign of Illium. They stood on one roof, but other roofs stacked up to her right, lodged directly into the mountains, as if they’d been carved out of rock, had stood there for centuries. Which was impossible. Except of course, she was dealing with an immortal of such power that she scared Lijuan.

And that scared the bejesus out of Elena. “Illium?”

“He’s dropping in and out of consciousness, but I can sense him.” Stepping off the roof, he flew down to the ground with a grace and strength that made her wonder what he’d become in another thousand years. Something extraordinary, of that she was certain. Unless . . . whatever it was that their relationship was doing to him ended up stealing his immortal life.