Archangel's Enigma (Guild Hunter)(29)

Spine stiff from the relentless discipline it took to stand firm against Lijuan’s power, Andromeda didn’t crumple. “Lady, as a fledgling historian, I took certain inviolable oaths. I cannot reveal Alexander’s possible location without compromising those oaths.”

“Your qualms do you credit, but as I have said, the world has changed.”

Though her flesh was icy from the renewed chill and her bones ached, Andromeda fought for courage, found it in the sudden memory of a sword dance with a silver-eyed vampire who wasn’t a vampire. Naasir thought she had a secret skin. Today, she’d wear the skin of a troubled young scholar and it would be her mask and her shield.

“May I have a night to consider my decision?” she asked. “It is a difficult one, for while my oaths are sacrosanct to me, I know Alexander’s strength is needed in this world.”

Lijuan’s face faded to almost nothing without warning, as did her body. “You are of the blood of an ally, so I will give you this chance.” An echoing, screaming, horrifying voice. “Go. Consider.” A wave of her hand as her body took form again.

Andromeda left before the archangel changed her mind. Her vampire escort was no longer outside the great doors, but Xi was on his way in. “General,” she said calmly, fighting the pounding urge to run until she had no more breath and the sinuous, screaming shadows of Lijuan’s throne room were far in the distance. “Am I forbidden from exploring the citadel? I’m curious to see Suyin’s creation.”

“Go where you will,” Xi told her. “If you need help to find your way, ask any of the people you meet.” A curt nod. “I must attend my archangel.”

Andromeda forced herself to walk away at a tempered pace, her heart beating so rapidly it was all she could hear. Xi’s acquiescence confirmed Andromeda’s suspicions that Lijuan didn’t intend for her to leave. Ever.

Even as the harsh truth settled in Andromeda’s stomach, she didn’t panic. That would get her nowhere. Once out of the central part of the citadel, she noted the number of guards, tried to pinpoint possible exits she could use, but had to admit the complex was too big and sprawling for her to believe she’d seen even a tenth of it in her explorations.

She tried to imagine what Naasir, renowned for his stealth, would do. He was impossibly beautiful when he moved, an apex predator who feared nothing and no one, and who had a dark, deadly grace.

You have secrets. You wear another skin, too.

Hand fisting against her abdomen, Andromeda fought back a sudden surge of raw emotion. It was silly, foolish. She’d known him for a flicker of time. It shouldn’t matter that she might never again see him, never again play games with him that threatened to unravel her hard-fought shell of civilized discipline.

But it did. It mattered.

Hours after that stabbing instant of loss, terror was a quiet tattoo in her head. Because this citadel was a fortress. She’d tired her feet to throbbing pain without discovering a single avenue of escape. Swallowing past the sour taste of fear and refusing to give up, she was padding down a quiet hallway when she heard it: a low, lyrical humming that caught at her heart, it was so evocative.

She followed the exquisite sound to a set of open doors at the far end of the hallway, knocked softly. “Hello?”

The humming trailed off. “Yes?” A gentle voice.

Entering, Andromeda found herself in a light-filled room decorated with white fabrics and colorful cushions. The angel who looked up at Andromeda from the sofa on which she sat, a sketchpad on her lap and her legs folded under her, had Lijuan’s sharp cheekbones and ice-white hair against cool white skin, though her eyes were a rich obsidian. A tiny beauty spot dotted the delicate skin just below the far edge of her left eye.

You have spots on your face.

The mental echo of Naasir’s growly, fascinated voice snapped her out of her stunned shock. Because this angel’s distinctive features, when added to the arching snow-white wings with bronze primaries that Andromeda could see behind her, made her identity impossible to mistake. “Suyin.”

Lijuan’s niece and one of the greatest architects the world had ever known.

The angel smiled, and it was startling to see such open, kind welcome on a face that could’ve been a duplicate of Lijuan’s but for the color of Suyin’s eyes and the beauty spot. “And who are you, youngling?”

Andromeda supposed she was young in comparison to an angel many thousands of years old. “Andromeda,” she said. “A scholar.”

“Ah.” Returning her eyes to her sketchpad, Suyin motioned her head toward the opposite sofa. “Sit, Andromeda,” she said in the same aged dialect she’d used earlier. “Tell me what you do here.”

Andromeda saw no reason to lie.

Pencil motionless on her sketchpad, Suyin looked at her with sad eyes once she was done. “My aunt will not allow you to leave.”

“I know.” It was no longer Lijuan she saw when she looked at Suyin. The other woman’s own spirit was too bright and too gentle both. “Have you been imprisoned here all this time?” It must’ve felt like living death to an angel who, according to the histories Andromeda had read, had loved to fly the world.

“I was given the choice to Sleep or to die. And in this, I was . . . lucky, for others who helped build this citadel and thus knew its secrets, were all executed.” Sorrow in every part of her as she flipped a page and began to sketch again. “I chose to Sleep, but I wake every few hundred years to see if this prison I built has fallen and I can fly to freedom.” The quiet horror of her pain made Andromeda’s eyes sting. “Yet each time I wake, my aunt is more powerful, more a nightmare.”