Archangel's War (Guild Hunter #12) - Nalini Singh Page 0,17
seated position and began to tug the sheet up over her body. Wounded or not, his consort remained a warrior and that was how he’d treat her.
“Psst.” Elena pointed at the wardrobe. “Pants, Archangel. Only I get to admire that delicious view.”
Raphael raised an eyebrow, his lips tugging up slightly at the corners; in truth, he’d forgotten his own state of undress in his concern over her. “I live to obey, hbeebti,” he said, and found a pair of dark brown pants he often wore while sparring with Elena or his Seven.
“Ask me some day about a time more than a thousand years past when I was in a company of warriors who wore only paint on their skin when they went into battle,” he said afterward.
“Pictures or it didn’t happen,” she said, a little breathless as she finished tucking the sheet under her armpits.
He laughed, and he’d have thought that an impossibility only moments earlier.
Behind them, Keir and Nisia had shut the balcony doors, now pulled blackout curtains across them. Elena and Raphael rarely made use of those. Most often, the doors were shielded only by curtains of gauzy white. No one in the city was suicidal enough to land on this balcony and attempt to stare inside, but Raphael appreciated the healers’ care. Elena would choose when she wished to show herself—no one would steal that choice from her.
Nisia turned on the lights.
The bright light threw Elena’s emaciated form into sharp relief, too many shadows and hollows in her. Gut clenching and shoulders knotted, Raphael had to fight to keep his voice steady. “Ready?”
“They’ve both already seen all there is to see, so yeah, let’s do it.” The pragmatic words of a warrior, but her gaze was soft when it met his—vulnerable in a way she showed no one else in the world. “Come here first.”
Her hand was warm on his cheek, her kiss fierce. “I know I look like a bag of bones, but I’m me and we’re together.” Words that dared him to do anything but believe. In her. In them. “We’ll write our next chapter the way we want it—and we’ll keep on kicking destiny’s ass.”
He took another kiss, his hand fisted in her hair and his tongue aggressive. But when they parted, he was the one who felt owned. Branded.
Rising, his hair falling over his forehead, he said, “Not one chapter. Many.”
A quick grin. “A freaking tome,” she vowed. “Oh, and can you find me a phone? If I don’t call Sara, she’ll scalp me. Beth, Eve, my grandparents . . . Raphael, I have so many people in my family now.”
“Not one of whom will begrudge you the time it takes to have this consultation.” With that, he stepped back and dropped the glamour.
Keir and Nisia were seasoned healers who had seen much over the millennia of their existence, but both sucked in an audible breath at first sight of Elena and Raphael. Keir, his dusky face ageless, pressed his lush lips together and bent to kiss Elena gently on the forehead. The golden brown of his wings shimmered under the overhead lights.
Nisia, meanwhile, raised an eyebrow. “You haven’t been drinking my potion, I see.”
“I dunno.” Elena shrugged. “Maybe it’s internal parasites.”
Snorting, the healer shook her head. “It is good to see that being encased in a chrysalis hasn’t done anything to dent your winning personality.”
“Well, Elena.” Keir sat down on the bed on one side, the black silk of his hair cut in layers that brushed his jaw. “You are always my most interesting patient.”
“Hey, Raphael’s glowing like a lightbulb and his eyes are gold lightning.”
“In archangels, such strange things are expected.”
A gentle knock came on the door then, and Raphael realized Dmitri had told another person of their return. Opening that door without exposing Elena, he took in the tray in Montgomery’s hands. The vampire wore a black suit over a crisp white shirt, was as cool and collected as always . . . and the tray, it trembled.
“Thank you, Montgomery.” Raphael accepted the tray piled with food and drink. “My apologies for blowing up the house you kept so beautifully.” Neither Elena nor Raphael were of the kind to infuse a house with small domestic touches that turned it into a home—that was Montgomery’s domain.
A shaky smile. “I have three warehouses full of treasures. Now I will have room to display them.”
Setting the tray aside on a table inside the door, Raphael stepped out and then—for the first time in