Archangel's War (Guild Hunter #12) - Nalini Singh Page 0,3

Cascade’s machinations.

But though he’d punched his power into the earth, it swirled in the air around them, as if there’d been so much that even the earth couldn’t contain it.

Raphael cared nothing for that. His only focus was Elena.

The closed fan of her lashes threw shadows onto her skin, her lips soft, and he could almost believe she was simply resting beside him in their bed. But even in sleep, his Elena was never so motionless, never so serene.

A nightmare gnawed at him: that the worst had happened, that the chrysalis had succeeded in its purpose and created a being with Elena’s face, but without her soul, without her memories, without her laughter and her spirit.

His nails dug into the dirt, the grit hard and hot.

He forced himself to take in the rest of her. The chrysalis had been too small. He’d seen that for himself. It could not hold his hunter’s strong, lithe body, didn’t have space for the wings of the warrior who was his consort.

Cracked pieces of the chrysalis lay all around her. The inner surface of the broken pieces swirled with wildfire: white-gold with violent swirls of blue . . . and now, an opalescent shade that morphed from midnight to dawn then back again. Elena’s skin glowed brighter than the wildfire, as if she had a light within. The Cascade had tried to turn her into a repository of power, so that he would have a source of extra fuel when he went into the war on the horizon. It had tried to turn his Elena into nothing but a reservoir.

As if he would trade her for power.

As if he would be alive without her.

As if he wouldn’t give up eternity for her.

Raphael had stopped the horrific unwanted process. But to save his Elena’s soul, her memories, he’d had to do it while the chrysalis was too small. Her body hadn’t had time to grow. It was small, misshapen. She was badly hurt and he was responsible.

His hand fisted on the dirt, his eyes stinging.

He squeezed them shut and when he next opened them, his pupils had adjusted to the piercing golden light that drenched them. He saw his Elena again. Why were her knees . . .

Raphael sucked in a breath.

She was not misshapen, was not wounded in a way that would mean centuries of constant pain. She was whole. At some point, she’d managed to tuck her knees to her chest, curling her body around it. Like a child in the womb . . . but Elena was no child.

As he watched, she sighed and began to uncurl, a butterfly emerging from a too-small chrysalis. It seemed impossible even though he was watching it happen. And then he understood. Her body had made a trade.

Elena was whole—but at a price.

Her legs were long, the legs of his tall hunter who could haul him down for a kiss with a hand on his nape. Her arms were the right size to throw knives and shoot a crossbow and spar with him with skill and humor. Her face had begun to fill out, though her cheekbones still cut like glass against her skin.

Then came the price: she was far too thin from her shoulders down, her rib cage prominent and her collarbones jutting out. Thin didn’t do enough to describe it. She was emaciated, her bones held together by tendons and covered by a translucent layer of skin. That skin continued to glow softly from the inside out, making his tough-as-nails hunter seem to be some ethereal otherworldly creature dropped into the world before she was ready.

It’d infuriate her, but such a terribly fragile body—nothing but bone and tendon and a luminous inward light—could bend and curve and fit inside a too-small chrysalis without losing pieces of itself.

She had made the right trade because flesh could be nourished. Missing limbs might take an eon to regenerate for an immortal so very young . . . because the Elena in front of him was not mortal. Not with eyes of liquid silver.

Raphael didn’t care if she was mortal or immortal—whatever happened, they would go into it together. That was their promise. He worried about her physical body only to the extent that he couldn’t bear for her to be in pain. All he truly cared about was if she had come back to him; his Elena’s heart, his Elena’s soul, his Elena’s courage.

He’d given her a piece of his heart, but only so she could make