"Angels are resilient," he murmured, twisting to glide them back down.
"This place is huge," she said, glimpsing lights far in the distance. "How can no one know it exists?"
Raphael didn't answer until he'd landed on the balcony outside their bedroom.
"Immortals may disagree on many things, but on this we are united - our Refuge must never be known to mortals."
"Sara?" She clenched her fingers on his upper arms. "Did you do something to her mind?"
"No." Eyes of endless, merciless blue stared down at her, eclipsing everything else. "But if she speaks of it, I must silence her and all those she tells."
A cold knot formed in her stomach. "Even if that would break my heart?"
"Make sure she doesn't speak." He cupped her cheek, his fingers cool from the night air.
"And that will not come to pass."
She pushed away from him. This time, he let her go, let her walk to the end of the balcony and stare down into that ragged tear in the flesh of the earth. There were fewer lights now, as if the angels were bedding down for the night. "I'm not part of your world, Raphael. I'm still human inside - I won't sit back and let my friends be slaughtered."
"I would expect no less." He opened the doors. "Come, sleep."
"How can you expect me to sleep after saying something like that?" Swiveling on her heel, she stared at him.
He glanced back, a being of such power that she still couldn't accept he loved her. But was an archangel's love like a human's? Or did it cut deeper? Draw heart's-blood?
"I forget," he said, "that you are so very young." Moving to her, he stroked his fingers down her temple, over her jaw. "Mortals fade, Elena. It is a simple truth."
"So I should forget my friends, my family?"
"Remember them," Raphael said, "but also remember that one day, they won't be there."
Grief was a wild-eyed beast inside of her. She couldn't imagine a world without Sara, without Beth. The ties she had with her younger sister might've been eroded by the choices they'd both made, but that didn't mean Elena loved her any less. "I don't know if I have the courage to survive that kind of loss."
"You'll find it when the time comes."
The pain in his voice slid a dagger hilt deep into her own heart. "Who?"
She didn't really expect an answer. Raphael might be her lover, but he was also an archangel. And archangels had made an art form out of keeping secrets. So when he ran his knuckles down her face and said, "Dmitri," it took her several seconds to respond.
"He was Made against his will," she guessed, remembering the conversation she'd once had with Dmitri about children. Had the vampire watched his children grow old? Had he lost a wife he loved?
Raphael didn't respond this time, nudging her into the bedroom. "You must rest or you won't be fit for flight by the time of the ball."
She followed, shaken by the truth he'd forced her to face.
Raphael placed his hands on her shoulders. "Undo the straps." The heat of his body was a lush stroke against her, invisible, inescapable.
And that quickly, her wings were afire with sensation, with a need that obliterated all else. It took effort to breathe, to speak. "Raphael, are you inside my mind?" She was pulling out and undoing the straps that held the piece of fabric crisscrossed over her br**sts even as she spoke.
"No." Long, strong fingers playing over her collarbones, the dip of her breastbone.
"Such soft skin, Guild Hunter."
Every inch of her seemed to burn with a thirst that couldn't be quenched. "Then what's happening to me?"
"You are still becoming."
He slipped off her top, and she felt the rasp of every fine thread, shuddered against the fleeting brush of his fingertips.