Archangel's Heart

9

This part of Morocco was an arid brown and gold landscape broken up only by hardy mountain wildflowers, waving grasses, and occasional groves of deep-rooted trees that provided an unexpected kiss of green to the landscape, but it was spectacular in its starkness.

Elena had been looking forward to the feast to the senses that was Marrakech, noisy and crowded and her kind of place, but they landed even deeper inland, at a private airstrip a considerable distance from the city with which she was most familiar. From there, they flew on the wing over and into the Atlas Mountains and to a sloping peak on which sat a stronghold that was all graceful curves and arches.

Lumia was formed of thousands of small sand-colored bricks that blended into the landscape, and rather than being one big block, it was a sprawling stronghold with myriad pathways and sections that flowed into one another, giving the place a delicate and almost ethereal air. She also glimpsed two domes far apart, one of which looked like glass, the other opaque.

“It’s like the Taj Mahal,” she said to Raphael when he flew close enough. “This huge thing that somehow has an air of beautiful fragility.” The Taj, too, appeared to float against the sky.

“Lumia was designed on the principles of perfect serenity, as understood by the Luminata. Each brick, each pathway in the garden, all of it.”

While the courtyard gardens she could see from the air appeared to be manicured and green with precise placement of foliage, mountain flowers covered the hillsides that swept down to gorgeous golden meadows on which it appeared no development had ever taken place.

But for the Luminata complex, there were no other buildings or roads within sight. No vehicles. Not even people on less modern means of transport. She couldn’t even glimpse the walled border that Raphael had told her protected Lumia on three sides. There had been no wall on the side over which they’d flown, the mountains providing a natural bulwark. “When you said the Luminata like their privacy, you meant it. Are the borders patrolled?”

Raphael maintained his position at her side with a minute change in his wing balance. “The sect has a small complement of guards who ensure no one breaches Lumia’s peace, but for the most part, the people here—mortal and immortal—know that these lands are forbidden to all except by invitation.”

“They have a lot of land if we can’t see the walls.”

“Not so much in the scheme of things. Perhaps an hour’s flight from the mountains to the far border at most.” Eyes of unfathomable blue met her own. “Is it all you imagined?”

Elena took another look at the compound getting closer with every wingbeat. “I’m not sure. I think I was expecting something more like the Refuge Library.” Stately and with a heavy sense of age about it. “Or maybe an austere monastery. This is more grand in a way. Peaceful and quietly lovely, but with an awareness of its own beauty.”

She deliberately “nudged” at him with a wing, their primaries barely brushing. “What about you? Is it as you remember?”

Raphael hadn’t flown wingtip to wingtip with anyone for a long time before Elena. Smiling deep within at the playful contact, the youth he’d once been rising to the fore, he nudged her carefully back. He was far stronger than Elena, and while she had incredible grace in the air, she’d only been in flight for a mere flicker of time.

Laughing as his nudge spun her to the left, she said, “Whoop!” and flipped over onto her back for a moment that had his heart crashing against his ribs as he prepared to catch her fragile not-yet-fully-immortal body.

If she hit the earth from this altitude, she’d break. She’d die.

But she angled her head down in a gentle curve, her body following, and was right-side-up again in a matter of seconds.

“I am going to kill your Bluebell,” he said, dropping two feet so they were wingtip to wingtip again.

A grin. “How did you know he taught me that?”

Raphael just raised an eyebrow.

Laughing again, his unrepentant consort blew him a kiss. “Don’t kill Bluebell. He’s teaching me to do a downward spiral roll right now.”

“Clearly, Aodhan is not the only one suffering pangs of boredom.” Raphael felt his lips kick up, the stab of fear retreating under a wave of memory featuring an intrepid little boy with wings of extraordinary blue. “Did he tell you who taught him the spiral roll?”

Elena’s mouth fell open. “It was you!” she guessed.

“The Hummingbird wouldn’t speak to me for a month afterward,” Raphael admitted with a grin of his own. “As for Lumia, the stronghold doesn’t appear to have changed in the time since I overflew it—and the splendor of the landscape, yes, that fits what I know of the Luminata way.” He’d never truly thought much about the sect, but when he had, it had been to see them as removed from life but not ascetic in the way of the monks Elena had referenced.

“As a very young man,” he told Elena, one long-ago memory sparking another, “I once met a mortal mystic, as you did the holy man. He was thin—only tendon and muscle over bone, no fat. Just enough flesh to sustain his mortal body.” Raphael remembered wondering how anyone could survive in such a state. “He had a long gray beard, and his skin was cured by the sun from all the hours he’d walked the landscape, but his soul, it emanated perfect contentment.”

Raphael been a young and arrogant angel at the time—akin to a mortal youth who’d left home for the first time—but in that instant, he’d felt humbled. “I felt he knew far more than I could ever imagine, though his lifespan could not have been more than six decades to my two hundred at the time.”

He’d ended up walking with that mystic for miles, curious and respectful and aware for the first time in his existence that immortals weren’t necessarily the pinnacle of existence. “Unfortunately, the lessons I learned in my days of walking by his side didn’t hold in the millennium that followed. I had forgotten him until this instant.”

“Don’t knock yourself, Archangel.” His consort’s voice held both her warrior spirit and her fierce love for him. “I learned things as a teenager and young hunter that I forgot in the years that followed. Life isn’t static, and sometimes, we don’t realize the value of knowledge or even of people, until farther down the track, when we’re mature enough to truly understand.”

At times, Raphael’s hunter consort surprised him with her perceptiveness about mortals and immortals both. “The Luminata,” he replied, “they’re not and have never been like my mystic or your holy man. Their members join after at least one thousand years of existence—no one younger is permitted to become an initiate. And by that stage, they are used to a certain way of life.”

“I get it.” Elena swept down on a wind current, her joy in flight an incandescent light he could nearly touch. The deep blue of her sleeveless gown glittered in the sun, almost as bright as the blade that glinted with jewels high on her arm.

Her hair was a shining banner of silken near-white.

Montgomery had done well, having chosen a gown with a sleek and tight silhouette that caught no air and created very little drag, but the skirts of which Elena could unzip at the sides once on the ground, freeing up her stride. There was also a cunning opening high up on her thigh on the right. It was only three inches and could be closed with tiny buttons that looked decorative.

But when open, it allowed Elena to wear her crossbow strapped to her thigh—as she was doing now. Not to mention the forearm gauntlets that held her throwing blades as well as a limited number of crossbow bolts, the long knife she wore against her spine under her dress, and the gun hidden in an ankle holster she wore over her boots.

Guild Hunter Elena Deveraux, Consort to the Archangel Raphael, would be landing at Lumia not as a pretty accessory as some older angels were apt to expect, but as a woman deadly in her own right.

Raphael smiled in grim satisfaction.

The Luminata have given up the world, his warrior consort said in his mind, but their version of giving up temptation is the comfortable immortal version rather than the austere mortal one.

Just so. Raphael moved to join Elena in her meandering flight over the landscape around Lumia. It was dead certain they were being watched—by the Luminata’s guard, by the Luminata themselves, by any archangels who’d arrived before them—but what did he have to hide? The world knew that the Archangel of New York loved his consort.

That he’d fly with her for no reason but to fly with her gave no one any extra ammunition. That didn’t mean he’d lower his guard. Not here. Not with the Luminata an unknown and the Cadre a danger he knew too well. Aodhan, stay high. Alert me of any approach.

I see other wings in the sky in the distance. A pause. Silver wings. Solid silver.

Alexander. No one else in angelkind had wings like those of the Ancient who was once again the Archangel of Persia. Is he alone?

No. I see two other pairs of wings. I will need to get closer to identify them.

Stay with us. He wanted any watchers to be aware that his consort would never be alone, because while he knew Elena could defend herself, he also knew immortals had a tendency to see her mortal heart first, her weapons second. We’ll find out soon enough. Then he rose high, only to drop down beside Elena in a hard, fast dive that required precision timing.

“Show-off.” Admiration glinted in her eyes.

And he felt young again, as he felt only with Elena. Not the archangel responsible for millions of lives, mortal and immortal, but a man with his lover. Raphael with Elena. “I must not disappoint our audience.”

“Good point.” Elena pulled her crossbow free, retrieved a bolt from the forearm gauntlets Deacon had modified for her so she could carry five bolts on her even when it was impossible for her to wear a full quiver. “How about a game, since we’re early anyway?” She shot a bolt toward the earth without warning.

Raphael collapsed his wings, dropped like a bullet . . . and caught the bolt. Then he raced up to catch a second she shot across the sky, went sideways to catch a third.

The voice that came into his mind as he caught the final one, which she’d shot so close it nearly grazed his wing, was a familiar one. Ancient and commanding and with more than a touch of arrogance. My grandson has just fallen in love with your consort, Raphael. He tells me he wants a lover who shoots at him, too.

Lips curving, Raphael winged his way to Elena to return her bolts to her. As she slotted them away, having already strapped on her crossbow with the ease of long practice, he told her what Alexander had said. She grinned, the wind sweeping her hair back from her face. “Boy has good taste.”

Alexander and his grandson—named Xander, in honor of his grandfather—were now visible in the distance. Alexander’s golden hair and silver wings marked him out well before the Ancient came close enough for his face to be clear. As for Xander, he was an amalgam of his parents but he was also very clearly Alexander’s grandson.

His hair was a rich, dark brown, his skin a brown so light it was dark gold, and his wings a deep black that faded into darkest brown with touches of gold—but spread out, those wings bore an underside of purest silver.

Your grandson flies well, he said to Alexander. I’m surprised you brought him with you. At two hundred, Xander was young, green, and Alexander had already lost his son.

Sire, Aodhan said at the same instant. Alexander’s third. I recognize him. Valerius.

The name was familiar to Raphael: Valerius was one of Alexander’s most loyal angelic generals, a man who’d been loyal to that family line for so long that to think of Valerius was to think of Alexander. You break the Luminata’s laws?

Alexander was close enough that Raphael could see the shake of his head. The children of the Cadre are always permitted to any such meeting, so long as they are less than two and a half centuries of age. Anger and sorrow hardened his features. My son is dead, so my grandson is permitted to attend.

Raphael hadn’t known that rule—but then, he’d never needed to know it. Are you certain he’ll be safe?

Not answering, Alexander came to flank Elena, maintaining a respectable three feet of distance between their primaries. The Ancient was nothing if not traditional. “Consort,” he said in greeting.

“Archangel Alexander,” Elena replied, since she and Alexander didn’t have a relationship of informality, as she now did with Titus. “No offense, but why did you bring that gorgeous kid?” She nodded at the young male, who’d dropped to fly low over the landscape.

Alexander could’ve pointed out that Xander was two hundred years old, give or take a year or two, while Elena had barely passed the three decade mark, but they all knew immortals didn’t age as mortals did. Xander wasn’t actually the kid Elena had named him, but neither was he considered full grown. He was a stripling—around twenty, maybe twenty-one years of age in human terms.

For angels, their third century of life tended to be the defining moment between childhood and adulthood. Some angels were considered true adults after two centuries and a quarter, others required a little more seasoning. From what he knew of Alexander’s bloodline, Raphael wagered the stripling would transition to adulthood in a quicksilver heartbeat. Mere decades at most.

But today, in this moment, he remained a youth.

“It heartens me that you and your consort both ask after the safety of my grandson,” Alexander said. “Perhaps there is hope for the Cadre.”

You know I will not betray you unless you do the same first, Raphael said, connecting Elena into the conversation through his own mind. You are the reason one of my Seven is currently able to live freely with his mate.

Ah, the wild creature. Alexander’s lips curved. As for Xander, I can see to the safety of my grandson better than anyone else—and when I’m not there, Valerius will be. Xander will be better protected than if he was at home.

Raphael wasn’t so certain. The world has changed since you were last awake, Alexander. Laws have been broken, lines crossed. You know this better than anyone.

Eyes of pure silver met Raphael’s, the lines of Alexander’s face brutal in their hardness. Anyone who touches him will die by my hand, Raphael. I will then annihilate their lands and lines until no trace remains of their blood. This is a promise of which everyone will soon become aware.

Elena glanced at Raphael but didn’t speak, not until he said, We are private now, Guild Hunter.

He won’t change his mind, she said. And I don’t think it’s arrogance—he lost his son, wants his grandson in his sight so he can protect him.

Raphael understood, but he also understood that Alexander couldn’t always be with Xander. Are you available for babysitting?

Elena smiled. Ah, what the heck. It’ll keep me from missing Izzy.

The youngest member of his consort’s Guard was closer to one hundred than two hundred, but it wasn’t that big of a gap when it came to angelic growth. The difference between a young mortal of eighteen or nineteen and one of twenty, twenty-one.

“Your grandson is welcome to keep company with my consort and Aodhan,” Raphael said aloud. “He will, of course, fall further in love with Elena, but the boy will have to risk a broken heart if he wishes to learn to dance with a warrior consort. She may even shoot bolts at him to keep herself amused.”

Alexander’s laughter was unexpected, a warm, full-blooded sound that had his grandson sweeping around and up toward his grandfather. “Raphael, I envy you.” With that, he dropped to meet his grandson, and the two of them angled toward Lumia.

He did not take offense at the offer, Raphael said to Elena. So you may well find yourself with a young pup at your side. Valerius is an ancient general, a little rigid personally, but brilliant with strategy. Where Xander goes, he’s apt to be close.

Elena frowned. Is Aodhan okay with Valerius?

I will ask.

When Aodhan came down to join them, in their slow sweep toward a landing, he said, “I have only had minor contact with Valerius through the centuries, but he has always struck me as honorable. I don’t foresee any problems.”

Then they were landing in what appeared to be a central courtyard, the pavings of a lighter stone than the walls of Lumia, the plantings around the courtyard simple grasses kept ruthlessly in control.

Alexander and Xander were already down; Valerius landed beside Aodhan. When the general held out his forearm in the way of warriors, Raphael felt Elena tense, touched her gently on the back. It is no attempt at one-upmanship or insult, but rather the opposite, he said to her. Given the gap in their ages, Valerius likely isn’t aware of Aodhan’s abhorrence for touch.

Aodhan didn’t hesitate. He responded by clasping his hand over the gauntlet that covered the general’s forearm, while the general did the same, his hand closing over Aodhan’s leather gauntlet. Only someone who knew Aodhan really well would’ve caught the stiffness of his wings, the relief that colored his eyes when the contact ended.

“Consort.” Alexander came over just as Elena finished unzipping the sides of the bottom half of her dress enough to permit her free movement. “Allow me to officially introduce my grandson. Xander, this is Elena.”

The young male’s smile was shy and it did put Raphael in mind of Izak, or Izzy as Elena called him.

“Consort.” Xander bowed his head low as befit a youth of his age in the presence of an archangelic consort; the fact he was an Ancient’s grandson made no difference. Warriors earned their own standing and Raphael knew Alexander well enough to understand that the Ancient would expect nothing less from his blood.

Even Rohan, his beloved son, had gone through the same training as any young soldier. When he made general, it had been through his own skill and efforts.

“Xander.” Elena held out her forearm.

The young male seemed stunned for a second before he responded to clasp her forearm. “You honor me.”

Elena grinned. “Finally, someone who sees my greatness.” The laughing dryness of her tone made even Alexander’s lips curve up.

Elena had just released Xander’s forearm, the youth even more in her thrall if his expression was anything to go by, when Luminata whispered out of the walls around them.