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 a mind caught in deepest sleep but aware of him and what he meant to her.
The hand clenched around his heart stopped squeezing. Sleep, hbeebti. I will be home soon.
He stopped long enough to pull on a sleeveless tunic, and put into his pocket a set of small sample bags Keir had left behind. “Your scientists,” the healer had said, “will no doubt appreciate any samples you are able to retrieve from the chasm.”
As he took flight from the balcony off their bedroom, he paid attention to the performance of his wings, checked his speed. Everything felt as it ever had, as if he had flesh and blood, feathers and bone and tendon under his command.
Satisfied with his ability to control his body in the air, he swept across the glittering sunlit skyscrapers of his city, past the showy forms of trees ablaze with one last burst of color before their winter slumber, and over the chilly waters of the Hudson. Calmer now, it glimmered under the early afternoon sunshine, sparkles dancing off its surface.
He could see Illium’s wings from here, the wild blue vibrant even against the crystalline blue of the sky, the silver filaments bright shards. The angel held a hover near the edge of the cliffs. He’d also ordered members of his squadron and of the Legion to create a wide barrier around the dangerous hole in the ground.
No unauthorized wings moved in the air above, and no one walked anywhere in sight. Illium, have there been any reports of casualties in the Enclave?
No. I had members of the squadron fly over the area—they reported no fallen or wounded individuals.
Angling his body to wing high above Illium and the others, Raphael took in the wound in the earth. From so far above, it was a dark blot in the landscape, a scar that should not exist.
No power swirled in or around it. No lava glowed.
Dropping down, he landed on the very edge of the hole. Illium and the Primary soon came to land on either side of him. When he glanced at the Primary, he saw a strange thing: the Primary was now almost completely colorless. The transition had begun before Raphael went to sleep in the bed beside Elena.
The second becoming, that’s what the Legion had told Elena when she asked why they were losing the colors that had begun to appear in some of them. As Elena had regressed back into humanity, the Legion had regressed into the grayness that was the color palette with which they’d risen from the lightless deep.
But Elena was no longer mortal, and yet the Primary remained colorless. “Has the second becoming ended?”
The Primary tilted his head to the side. “No,” he said after a pause to consider the question. “We are deciding.”
Putting the matter aside for now, Raphael looked into the chasm created by the power that was ice in his veins. Such a cold, cold power. A power that whispered in his ear that Lijuan was an imposter and he was the true god.
The one who should be worshipped.
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A kiss of heat inside him, a pulse of defiant life. A piece of Elena’s heart, refusing to surrender him to the immortal cold.
Raphael fisted his hand. “I’m going to fly down and ensure there are no hidden dangers.” As he would not become a mindless tool for the Cascade, he would not build his and Elena’s home on poisoned soil.
Illium stirred. “Sire, you just emerged. I’d rather you didn’t disappear back into the black hole.”