Archangel's Enigma (Guild Hunter)(15)

He tilted his head to the side. “No?”

“I’ve sworn a vow of celibacy. It wasn’t done on a whim, or without thought.” It had been a hundred years in the making. “The vow is part of my honor, part of what makes me Andromeda.” Not Charisemnon’s grandchild. Not Lailah’s daughter. Not just another jaded princess of the court. Andromeda. Scholar and warrior.

A low, rumbling sound in Naasir’s chest, silver eyes burning above her. “Rutting isn’t dishonorable.”

Her cheeks burned from within. “It is for a woman who has vowed not to indulge in it.”

He shifted to rub himself against the juncture of her thighs. Her breath caught, her inner muscles spasming on aching emptiness as the place between her thighs went damp. Nostrils flaring, Naasir leaned in close enough to nuzzle her throat. “You want me.” It was a satisfied purr of sound.

Her throat was so dry it took her several attempts to get the words out. “That doesn’t change my choice.”

Squeezing her wrists but not hard enough to hurt, he snapped his teeth at her again. “What will change it?”

The words just fell out past her lips, as they had a way of doing around Naasir. “Finding the Star Grimoire.” That was her escape clause—she’d be released from the vow should the Grimoire return to the world.

“What is a Star Grimoire?”

“A book.” A book lost in the mysteries of time, the reason she’d chosen that as the key that would unlock her vow. “An ancient book no one has seen for thousands of years. An angelic treasure.”

Naasir was quiet for a long time. “If I find this stupid Grimoire, will you rut with me?”

Her cheeks blazed hotter even as her nipples grew tight enough to throb. “You can’t find the Grimoire.”

“If I do?”

“If you do, you can do whatever you like to me,” she said recklessly.

His smile was pure sin, the fangs that flashed in the muted light gleaming white. Rising off her, he held out a hand and, when she took it, hauled her to her feet. “Who taught you the blade? Your style is not Galen’s.”

“My other mentor.” She saw him looking admiringly at her sword and passed it over so he could examine it.

Taking it, Naasir stepped away and sliced the sword through the air in a fast, dangerous rhythm. “Someone from Charisemnon’s Refuge stronghold?”

“No. I don’t have anything to do with my grandfather’s people.” Not yet. Not for fifteen more days. “It was Dahariel.”

An icy cut of sound as he halted his swordplay. “Dahariel is Astaad’s second.”

“Teachers and scholars aren’t tied to any one archangel unless they swear that allegiance.” It was assumed Jessamy was more loyal to Raphael than to any other archangel because of her relationship with Galen, but even so, others of the Cadre still came to her for information.

As for Andromeda, she’d proven her loyalty to unbiased scholarship over more than three hundred years of hard work and unrelenting discipline. Most people had forgotten she was of Charisemnon’s bloodline, seeing her as belonging only to the Archives.

Naasir bared his teeth at her. “Do you report to him?”

“No. I report to no one.”

“For this task? To find Alexander?”

“In accepting the task, I have agreed to keep Raphael’s confidence for the duration.” No one could compel her to betray any of the secrets she learned during her remaining days of freedom. And instinct told her that by the day of her four-hundredth birthday, this task would be over, one way or another. Events were moving too fast for it to be otherwise.

Naasir handed back her sword. “Dahariel is not a good man.” The words were harsh. “He hurts people. Sometimes he hurts people who aren’t full-grown.”

Andromeda flinched. “He may,” she admitted, “but he saved me.” She’d been a child who was a possession held jealously close yet rarely given any attention or nurturing. Dahariel alone had seen her as a person; the hawk-faced angel had put a blade in her hand and taught her what he knew best.

The blade will give you a way to earn your place in the world.

As it was, she hadn’t had to sell her sword to find precious freedom. But when she’d broken away from her parents while still technically a child, it had given her the confidence to believe she could protect herself on the skyroads. Her sword and a small pack of belongings was all she’d had when she arrived in the Refuge and petitioned Jessamy for the learning so long denied her.

Charisemnon used scholars but didn’t respect them. He respected only strength—and in his court, that meant cruelly hardened men and women who could mete out pain and torture and humiliation without blinking, who could make a living being beg and crawl and bleed. Lailah had learned that lesson at her father’s knee, and she’d raised Andromeda in a home as filled with brutal violence . . . and as redolent with the smell of sex.

The more deviant the better.

Andromeda’s parents were beyond jaded at this point.

I promise I will learn and I will treat the Library and the Archives with respect, she’d said to Jessamy that long-ago day. I will not harm any of the volumes. The last she’d had to add because it wasn’t every would-be scholar who came from parents who’d been banned from the Archives. I want to learn. To have a chance to be more than a puppet driven by pain and obsessive sexual need. Please, teach me. Please.