eyes open a heartbeat later. She would escape this place and when she did, she would record this horror.
Of course, the vast majority of angelkind would find nothing wrong with the punishment. Being immortal wasn’t always a good thing. It meant the ones meting out the sentence had had centuries to think of suitable punishments . . . and that to fit the crime, sometimes that punishment was brutal. There was no point lashing an older angel when the wounds would heal within days.
Even Raphael, an archangel not known for cruelty, had once broken every bone in a treasonous vampire’s body. The unfortunate vampire, his body hanging together by stringy tendons and shattered bone that stabbed through his skin, had been left on display in Times Square for three hours.
To betray an archangel was to make a mistake that could never be undone.
The angel who’d made that mistake in Lijuan’s court was covered in bites within minutes, his skin streaming liquid red. He was also missing pieces. The frenzy continued until his screams of terror and pain eventually died down to whimpers, then to silence. That didn’t mean he was dead—Lijuan had given him her word that he’d live, and so he’d live.
Feathers flew into the air as the hounds began to rip at his wings for what appeared to be the fun of it, having already feasted on the flesh that had been their first target.
“How long?” she asked, her voice a rasp. “How long will his punishment last?”
“Until my goddess wills otherwise.” Xi finally released her wrist. “You know his crime deserved no less. Why are you shocked?”
Andromeda swallowed. “It has been centuries since I witnessed such a punishment.” Hundreds of years since she’d run from the terror-soaked home where she’d been born.
“Yes, you are a scholar,” Xi said, as if that explained everything. “Come.”
As they turned to reenter the citadel, Andromeda tried to temper her visceral response to what she’d seen, but she knew she was pale, her skin cold as frost. Not that Lijuan could be surprised by that. Fear, slick and choking, had been the archangel’s intention when she made sure Andromeda witnessed the punishment. A thin scream rose into the air at that instant, as if the angel had found a final dreg of strength.
Andromeda’s hands clenched. “He’ll go mad,” she said to Xi.
“An unavoidable side effect.” The general stopped without warning. His eyes were unblinking when they met hers. “Any one of the Cadre would have meted out a punishment as severe for such betrayal. Heng was a trusted member of the inner court.”
Thinking once again of the vampire in Times Square, Andromeda was forced to nod. And Raphael wasn’t the only other archangel who’d delivered pitiless justice. Astaad had once staked a duplicitous angel in a pit filled with poisonous beetles whose bite caused flesh to necrotize, and left him there for an entire month. As for Michaela, she’d ordered every part of an angel flayed off piece by piece, including his eyelids . . . and by the time the task was done, the angel had started regenerating enough that the cycle could continue.
A shiver crawled up Andromeda’s spine.
“I take your point,” she said to Xi through teeth that wanted to chatter. “Our world is a harsh one.”
Xi started walking again. “Immortality equals arrogance for many.”
Andromeda wondered that he didn’t see the irony of his own statement. Lijuan was unquestionably the most arrogant of all the archangels. She believed herself a goddess and perhaps she was: a goddess should be able to give life, and Lijuan had created a whole new entity.
Simply because the reborn were ugly mockeries of life didn’t change the fact that Lijuan had the ability to alter the very nature of mortals and immortals both.
This time when Andromeda entered the throne room, the guards closed the doors behind her, cutting off all evidence of the outside world. Watching Andromeda and Xi walk toward her, Lijuan glanced at Xi, clearly speaking to him as an archangel could with those she chose.
Whatever his report, it seemed to satisfy the Archangel of China.
Andromeda had braced herself for Lijuan’s attention, but the touch of those bloody eyes still caused her primitive, survival-driven hindbrain to attempt to take over.
“Now, scholar,” Lijuan said. “You’ve had a night to sleep on your decision. Will you share your knowledge of Alexander?”
Unspoken was the silent threat that if she didn’t, she’d suffer a fate similar to that of the unfortunate angel in the courtyard. “My Lady,”