Archangel's Legion (Guild Hunter #6)(50)

“Wait, don’t tell me.” Bones having melted as a result of the way he was touching her, she revved up her brain and struggled up onto her elbow so she could see his expression as she tested her understanding of how archangels saw the world. “It would be considered extremely bad manners,” she said in the frigid tones of some of the stiffer old angels, “to attack a city while its archangel was at a ball thrown by an Ancient. Why, really, you might as well have been brought up by mortals, if you’re going to act that way.”

“Absurd, is it not?” Laugher in the intoxicating blue, his hand a possessive weight on her lower back. “Yet those rules of Guesthood are part of what keeps the world stable. Any archangel so ill-mannered as to step outside them in such an unspeakable fashion would find themselves ostracized. Eternity is a long time to be friendless.”

“Put that way,” Elena said, leaning down to steal a kiss just because she could, “it’s not absurd but totally rational. How else would anyone ever have a party, with the way certain archangels are always trying to backstab others.”

A smile curving his mouth, her archangel nodded. “Even Lijuan couldn’t bear such a shunning. She might be able to compel obedience through brute force, but she’d lose the respect that is as much her lifeblood as power.” Fingers idly caressing the lower curves of her body. “Can you guess the true irony of this particular situation?”

Screwing up her face, she was about to say no when it hit. Laughing so hard she had to wait until she could catch her breath enough to shape words, she said, “Lijuan isn’t invited”—not after trying to murder Caliane and her son—“but she’s such a stickler for the old ways, the others know they’ll have her on their ass if they break the rules.”

“Exactly.”

“I wonder if there’s an Angelic Etiquette handbook some—” Breaking off, she touched her fingers to Raphael’s right temple.

“What is it?” Incisive intelligence in his gaze.

“Wait.” She switched on the lamps that bathed the top half of the bed in a gentle light. Leaning back down, she went close to Raphael’s face, rubbed her thumb over the spot, his hair brushing against her fingertips. “There’s something on your skin.” Unable to let it go, she got out of bed to grab a wet facecloth.

Raphael was in the bathroom doorway when she turned from the sink. Asking him to bend down so she could wipe at the tiny speck, she tried twice, the second time with a dab of soap on the cloth in case he’d somehow been touched by the tip of a permanent black marker . . . except even as the thought crossed her mind, she knew she would’ve noticed it earlier.

The speck hadn’t been there before, and now—“It’s not coming off.” Her voice sounded even, despite the horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Shifting into the bathroom, Raphael examined his face in the mirror. Elena came up beside him, wanting to believe it had been a trick of the light. It hadn’t. So tiny, the speck would go unnoticed by most, but it shouldn’t be there. “Maybe it’s an insect bite,” she began, trying not to think about dead vampires and disease.

“No, we heal too fast for a bite to have any impact.” Expression grim, he turned to her. “Can you see it now?”

“No, it’s gone.” Crushing relief. “What did you do?”

“It is still there,” he said, and the relief curdled. “I’ve concealed it using the barest hint of glamour.”

“I wish Keir was still here.” The healer had had to return to the Refuge to deal with other matters, would meet them again in Amanat. “What if . . .” She couldn’t say it, couldn’t even imagine it, her horror too violent.

“What if it is the harbinger of disease?” Raphael said for her. “If it is, Keir would be unable to do anything, so telling him is a moot point. I am an archangel, Elena. We may go mad with age and time, or because of the toxin, but we do not get sick.”

His blunt words forced her to face the cold, hard fact that an archangel sick was a tear in the fabric of the world. That didn’t mean she was about to give up. “Jessamy,” she said. “She’d never betray you—we can ask her to search the Archives, see if there’ve been any similar cases in angelic history.”

“There is nothing to tell her yet,” Raphael answered with impossible calm. “It is but a single dark spot—if it’s the sign of a disease created by a new archangelic power, my body should be able to fight it off.”

“Of course, your healing ability.” She turned to go throw some water onto her face in an effort to still her racing heart, her hands trembling, but Raphael tugged her into his arms and against his chest, his wings enclosing her in a silken prison.

“It is all right, hbeebti.” His heartbeat strong and steady under her cheek as he spoke, his arms muscled steel. “I have no intention of leaving you to face immortality alone.”

“If this is death, Guild Hunter, then I will see you on the other side.”

He’d said that to her as she lay dying in his arms. Now, she whispered, “Wherever you go, I’ll follow.” She’d lost too many people she loved, survived too much death. “I can’t keep going. I can’t.” As if she’d turned a nightmare key, she heard the sound that had haunted her since the day Slater Patalis walked into her childhood home.