childhood. She visited the space regularly, made sure her things were free of dust, told him stories about pieces when he was with her, but while she’d given her sister Beth anything she wanted from within, she’d never brought a single item home herself. Today, however, when he returned with the quilt and opened it over her, she tugged it closer and snuggled down.
He brushed his hand over the near-white silk of her hair, what he felt for her such a huge violence inside him that it had no name. “To the end and beyond, hunter-mine.”
Forcing himself out of the room, he shut the door quietly behind himself, then went to the screen mounted on one wall of the suite’s library. He could’ve used a phone to call Amanat, but Caliane didn’t trust in such things. She was barely comfortable with the system that allowed them to see each other as they spoke.
The face that answered on the other end was a familiar one: uptilted eyes of dramatic green, hair of a deep, deep red, skin that was close to translucent and wings of copper silk.
Tasha would never pass unnoticed through a crowd.
Her eyes widened at seeing him, a gasp exiting her throat. But the woman—and warrior—who’d been his lover when they were young angels first spreading their wings was already moving out of shot, and he knew she was getting his mother.
Tasha was as loyal to Caliane as Dmitri was to Raphael.
When Caliane appeared on the other side, it was with a frown marring her forehead. “What—” She cut herself off, her face softening in a way it only ever did for Raphael. Placing her hand on the screen on her side, she whispered, “My son. You are home.”
Raphael echoed her gesture on this side, placing his palm over hers. “We will speak further soon, Mother. I must take care of my territory now.”
Caliane had been an archangel longer than Raphael could imagine; she didn’t argue against his priorities. “That upstart vampire you call second needs to learn how to speak to his elders, but he has done you proud.” Regal and a touch haughty, Caliane’s words nonetheless held the approbation of an archangel who had never been afraid to have strong people around her. She had taught him how to rule by example.
Until the madness. Until the death.
“I never doubted he would.” He inclined his head. “I will go now.”
“Before you do—your consort?”
Once, that might’ve been a barbed question, but Caliane and Elena had made their peace. It would always be an odd peace with jagged edges, but that was what happened when two strong women collided and one of them was used to being obeyed in all things—while the other obeyed only the dictates of her conscience.
“She is resting,” was all Raphael said; he and Elena would have to speak when she woke, decide their next course of action. Until then, he’d share nothing of her physical state.
After ending the call, he looked into the bedroom. A glint of hair of near-white . . . and the muted glow of her skin beneath the quilt. His hunter was curled up on her side in a tight ball, her knees tucked to her chest and her spine curved, her head curled over her knees. The tattoo on her back pulsed with light in time with her heartbeat.
Jaw clenched, he fought the urge to shake her awake from that torturously constricted position that had permitted her to emerge from the chrysalis with all her limbs. He lost the battle. Elena.
A sleepy mumble from her mind, the warm steel of her presence a kiss.
Muscle memory, he told himself. That was all. But he touched the back of his hand to her cheek to reassure himself of the life of her.
Sighing, she snuggled deeper into the bed . . . just as droplets of fire fell from his wings to dance over the exposed side of her face. She shivered as first one small flame sank into her flesh, then another, but didn’t wake.
The power spread under her skin in a soft burst that made her veins pulse a luminous gold for a startling second before the effect faded into a softer radiance. Soft or not, his hunter remained very much “glow-in-the-dark.”
He could imagine her displeased scowl when she woke.
Leaning down, he pressed his lips to her cheek. “If it is any consolation hunter-mine, my wings continue to burn and my eyes are alive with lightning.”
Archangel. A soft, sleepy murmur from