Because Michaela loved attention and the media loved her.
To say that Michaela was beautiful was an understatement. With skin the shade of finest milk chocolate and wings of delicate bronze, her hair a waist-length tumble of brown and gold, and her eyes a hypnotic green, she was the definition of breathtaking. Throw in a body that turned mortals and immortals alike into slaves and it hadn’t surprised Elena to learn that Michaela had been the muse of artists and emperors through the ages.
The artists were mostly alive, since Michaela liked those who paid homage to her beauty—no, that was bitchy. The truth was that Michaela did have a reputation as a generous patroness of the arts. But the emperors and other powerful men who’d been her lovers, well, they were pretty much all dead as doornails. The second-to-last one had died at Raphael’s hands in an exchange of angelfire above New York that had left Elena broken and on the cusp of her own death.
It kind of pissed Elena off that Michaela had been partially responsible for her meeting Raphael right back at the start. Without the other archangel’s poisonous encouragement, her lover would’ve never turned into an insane serial-killing nightmare. One who’d ended up ripping out Michaela’s heart and replacing it with a glowing red fireball that may well have fouled her bloodstream with a noxious poison.
“Our pregnancy theory,” Elena said to Jessamy, concerned what the poison, if it did lurk within Michaela, would’ve done to a child in the archangel’s womb. “You heard anything to confirm that?”
“Nothing,” Jessamy replied, then bit her lower lip. “I shouldn’t gossip, but I so want to know.” Switching her attention to Raphael, the other woman asked if Jason had discovered anything.
“There is not even a faint whisper of an angelic babe in Michaela’s territory. Though that doesn’t mean anything—Michaela has properties hidden in multiple difficult-to-reach locations.”
“If there is a child, I hope he or she is safe and healthy.” With those gentle words, Jessamy went to sign off. “I just heard Galen land. He’s been out for hours with the current batch of trainees—I want to make sure he gets something hot into him.”
Saying good-bye to the kindest angel she knew, Elena waited until the screen turned black before heading out of the library and toward her greenhouse, Raphael by her side. Licked by the rich sunlight of late afternoon, the glass shimmered in welcome.
“Dahariel must know if Michaela gave birth.” Astaad’s second was no longer Michaela’s lover, but he had been at the critical time.
“Not necessarily.” Raphael’s answer had her frowning. “It’s the archangel who makes all the decisions when the other parent is not their official consort.”
“Not exactly fair.”
“No, but archangels have enemies.” Raphael’s voice turned to midnight, his eyes dark. “Given the current state of the world, I wouldn’t blame Michaela if she didn’t trust anyone with the safety of her child, even the father of that child.”
“He is a cruel bastard,” Elena admitted grimly, well aware of Dahariel’s penchant for torture. “I wouldn’t trust him with my baby, either—if I had a baby. Which won’t be for many, many, many, many moons.”
The white gold of his wings shimmering in the sunshine, Raphael opened the greenhouse door for her. “Your body is not yet strong enough to bear an immortal child. In our terms, you are a baby and I am robbing the cradle.”
Elena stepped into the humid warmth of one of her favorite places on the earth. “Rob away, Archangel.” She was painfully glad she couldn’t physically have a child for decades at least—according to Keir, it was more apt to be a hundred years. Terror gripped her when she thought of trying to keep a child safe, of protecting that vulnerable life from harm.
If she ever had to watch her child be hurt, ever had to bury a tiny innocent who’d looked to her for love and protection . . .
She swallowed.
At times like this, she understood why her father was the way he was; not only had he lost his hunter mother to violence, but he’d then had to bury two beloved daughters and an equally cherished wife. It had killed something vital in him. What had been left hadn’t been enough to love a daughter who walked into possible death every time she went to do her job. He’d been fine with her younger sister, Beth—maybe not the father he’d once been, but not awful, either.
It was only with Elena that he’d become so . . . hard. The daughter who lived with danger on a daily basis instead of staying safe, staying protected.
Yes, sometimes she understood Jeffrey.
“The memories haunt you today.”
Elena began to snip off the spent blooms on a cheerful pot of daisies that had been a gift from Illium. “I guess it’s probably because I’m thinking about Morocco.” Putting the neatly snipped off blooms in the hand her archangel held out, she showed him where to drop them so they’d return to the earth.
Only the dry, brown flowers uncurled the instant they touched his palm, gaining color and softness until he held a palmful of bright yellow daisies.
3
“Well,” he said, “this is interesting.”
Elena’s lips twitched, the ache of memory retreating under the brilliant life of today. “Give those to me and touch the dried flowers I haven’t yet cut off.”
Nothing happened.
And the next time she put dried up blooms in his hand, they stayed dry. It wasn’t a surprise—from what they’d been able to gather, all the Cascade-born abilities seemed to come and go without warning, like a signal that only transmitted in intermittent bursts. Even Elijah couldn’t always call animals, though the ones with whom he’d already bonded tended to hang around even when he couldn’t “speak” to them.
“Ah well,” she said with a sigh. “You’ll be useful again one day.”
Flexing his hand after dropping the dry blooms in a garden she’d created in one corner of the greenhouse, Raphael made a blue flame dance on his palm. “As always, I am glad to be of some use to my consort.”
Elena grinned. “Maybe while you’re meeting with the Cadre,” she said, “I can do some research on my roots.” She shrugged. “I don’t have much to go on, but there can’t be too many local families with this”—she gestured to herself—“combination of hair and skin, right?”
Her mother’s coloring had been very similar; she’d told Elena once that the near-white of her hair as well as the dark gold of Elena’s skin came from her grandmother. The memory unfurled like a film reel inside her mind . . .
* * *
“I had a photograph of my maman.” Marguerite cut up fabric for a sparkly black skirt Belle wanted. “The nun who helped me in the first days after my mother died had saved it, kept it in a secret place, only giving it to me when I was eighteen and no longer a foster child.”