Archangel's Shadows (Guild Hunter #7)(22)

“Five minutes alone with Brooke,” Ashwini said, “and I’d know for certain if she was telling the truth.” Memory echoes were the strongest in old ones like the angel Nazarach, but with a little more effort, Ashwini could pick them up from those under four hundred. The latter limitation was why she could continue to work as a hunter—it was extremely rare for the Guild to be contracted to hunt an older vamp. The angels usually took care of any problems at that level themselves.

Unfortunately, the limitation wasn’t set in stone. Janvier was opaque to her—had always been that way—but usually, the better she knew someone, the more chance she’d connect with them regardless of age. And every so often, even a young stranger would set off her senses, drag her under. It was why she was so careful about physical contact.

Janvier ran his knuckles down the line of her spine. “If you find darkness in Giorgio’s blood slave, it’ll live in you forever. No, I won’t permit this.”

“Since when do you have the right to ‘permit’ me anything?” she said, turning away.

He grabbed hold of one of her wrists, his grip gentle but unbreakable. “Who was he?”

Her response was instinctive, her mind shying away from the agony of it all. “None of your business.”

Hauling her to him, Janvier held her wrist against his chest, his heart pumping steady and strong under the thin barrier of the T-shirt, his body so warm she wanted to stretch out into it like a cat before a fire. “We are beyond that, and you know it. That’s why you’ve been running so hard from me.”

“I seem to recall hunting you,” she said, her traitorous fingers curling into the heat of him.

He tugged her closer, and his voice, it held so many layers when he spoke. “I see such pain in your eyes, such loss.” Breath shallow and shoulders rigid, he whispered, “Did you love him so much?”

At that instant, she knew she could strike a blow that would be a sledgehammer to the strange, nameless, precious thing between them, the connection that had formed the first day they came eye to eye. He’d grinned at her as she notched a crossbow bolt in place, then blown her a kiss and moved with the rapid grace she’d come to associate always and only with him. She’d almost smiled in return before remembering she was there to bring him in to face a very irate angel.

That angel had pulled the hunt order seventy-two hours later, after Janvier made nice. She’d walked into the angel’s residence to find him laughing with Janvier, while the damn Cajun who’d led her into a swamp, before escaping with a slickness she’d reluctantly admired, lay sprawled in a heavy green armchair, long legs kicked out. It was the first time he’d called her cher, asking her when they’d play again.

Et quand en va rejouer, cher?

“I have photos of all my family on my phone,” she whispered, unable to destroy their relationship with a lie that would forever alter the honesty at its core. “You just saw Arvi’s that day . . . my brother.”

Janvier released a harsh breath, a shudder rippling through his body. “He’s at least twenty years older than you.”

“Nineteen,” she said. “I was a late-in-life oops baby.” A mistake, a regret. “In many ways he was my father. That’s why he talks to me like that, assumes I’ll do what he says.”

“Your parents?”

“You didn’t already hack into a database and look it all up?” It was stupid to avoid the question, but she’d been doing it so long it was habit.

Thumb moving over her skin, Janvier waited until she met his eyes to say, “That would’ve been against the rules.”

Ashwini couldn’t pretend she didn’t know the rules. “My mother and father died when I was nine.”

“An accident?”

“Yes. That’s when we lost our sister, Tanu, too.” The words were a lie wrapped in a devastating truth but this one secret she couldn’t share. Not today. Not until she no longer had a choice. “After they were gone, Arvi stepped up, took charge of everything.” She’d thought he hung the moon, her smart, handsome brother.

“Love does not cause such shadows as I see in you, my fierce Ashblade.”





9


Unable to bear the naked emotion in his eyes, because it was a mirror of her own, she used her Guild training to break his hold. The fact that she’d waited until now was another danger sign, another warning. “I didn’t fit,” she said, and it was all she could say right then without breaking completely.

Moving to the very edge of the cliff, the snow crunching beneath her boots, she turned the conversation back to what she could handle. “My brother is a neurosurgeon.” One of the most revered in the profession. “Dr. Arvan Taj does not do house calls, not for anyone. And he definitely doesn’t treat cattle.”

“Giorgio was once a renowned physician.” Janvier’s boots broke through the ice crust over the snow as he came to join her. “He was responsible for a number of significant breakthroughs in his time and remains respected in medical circles. Perhaps because it is only in the past four decades that he has chosen to abandon his vocation for the pursuit of a selfish pleasure that does not care who it hurts.”

Catching something unexpected in his tone, she frowned. “He called you mon ami. You were friends?”