were dancing in the lounge with the music up, and I had to go into the kitchen to check on the stew. I was away for two minutes. I don’t know how he—”
“Climb chair mama!” her son informed her with delighted pride.
They all looked up to the outdoor seating on the balcony. The woman’s face went bone white. “I’m going to go throw that in the Dumpster right now.” Wiping off her tears with the back of one hand, she looked from Elena to Raphael, finally seemed to realize who it was that had caught her boy. “T-t-thank you.”
“I’m glad I could help.” Elena’s voice was stronger, but Raphael saw the rigid tension in her neck, the dark blot of her dilated pupils.
“Go, be with your son,” Raphael said, giving the child’s mother permission to run—he could see the need in her eyes. No ordinary adult mortal liked coming face-to-face with an archangel.
Children were another story.
Young Seth, unaware he’d used up one of his lives as well as his mother’s, waved at them over his mother’s shoulder.
Elena waited until the twosome had disappeared into the building before she stepped close to Raphael. “Are the you-know-whats on my back still there?” she whispered, scared that talking about the impossible would poof it out of existence.
Her archangel nodded.
Breath shallow and fast, she dared look over her shoulder . . . to see unearthly wings of white fire electric with a storm of golden lightning. That lightning moved, dazzling and alive, but the shape of her wings remained unbroken. They were big, the same size wings she’d had before the chrysalis. “Touch it,” she rasped, not ready to believe she wasn’t hallucinating.
Maybe she’d hit her head hard when she landed, was now in la-la land.
Raphael made contact. Elena shivered, sensation arcing through her nerve endings.
“I feel no solid surface.” Raphael touched her again; when he withdrew his hand, it came out coated with tiny lightning strikes that sank into his skin. “Do you want to attempt flight?”
“Yes, I have to know.” A light flashed not far in the distance at the same instant. “I think we’re being paparazzied.” Regardless, she drew in, then spread out her lightning storm wings. “Wish me luck. Vertical takeoffs were never my forte.”
She was four feet off the ground before she realized what had happened. The pulse in her neck skittered, her skin hot. Home, Archangel.
I’ll fly under you.
Neither one of them had to articulate the reason why—Elena had no idea where these wings had come from or how long they’d last. But as she took to the sky, she felt no fear, only a bone-deep joy. The events of the past few minutes—such a short time—ran through her mind in a repeating loop.
“I can’t believe I asked you if I was levitating!” she called out to Raphael once they were high enough up that no one else was going to hear them.
I will be magnanimous and blame it on shock. It will be a hushed secret between an archangel and his consort.
Laughing, she swept to the left, then back around to the right to test her maneuverability. They function just like flesh and blood wings. Eyes hot, she had to blink to clear her vision. You gave me your heart, a heart that can process violent Cascade energies—you gave me back my wings, Raphael.
The salt-laced sea in her mind, huge and cold and of Raphael. I may have provided the raw material, Guild Hunter, but you made the choice. Wings of fire and lightning can fit in a chrysalis that is too small.
Despite her desperate desire to fly and fly, she went straight to their Tower balcony. After landing beside her, Raphael cupped her face and pressed his forehead to hers. There they stood, no words needing to be spoken.
When they did walk inside and down to the infirmary level, it was to run into Dmitri. He took one look at her and shook his head. “Don’t scorch the walls.”
Striding over, Elena hauled down his head and kissed him hard on the lips. “Today, even you can’t annoy me,” she said into his stunned face before releasing him.
A laugh sounded from not far down the corridor, where Dmitri’s wife had just emerged from Lucius’s office. Honor’s eyes were dancing. Dmitri, meanwhile, was looking at Elena in utter horror. “We will never speak of this again,” he said. “Ever.”
“I think he could use a hug,” Elena said to Honor.
“You two are awful together and I love you both.