The angel with eyes of aged gold and a face of pure beauty—gaunt now in a way angels rarely became—was too young to give Raphael orders. Their relationship was far different from the one Raphael had with Dmitri. Raphael had held Illium as a newborn, known him as an unwieldy child angel with wings he could barely control.
He’d watched the youth Illium had become fall so madly in love that his heart had broken forever with the loss of his mortal lover. And he had known Illium as a young warrior who mourned the loss of a friend who had been trapped inside his own torment for two hundred years.
All these things and more made up the ties between Raphael and Illium. “I have nothing to fear down there,” he said, for the greatest risk was in his blood, in the power that sought constantly to shape him into a weapon of chaos.
Lijuan believed herself a goddess, so he must be a god.
The Cascade was nothing if not a blunt hammer.
“If I cannot contact you”—Illium set his jaw—“I’ll fly in to search for you.”
“Let us hope it doesn’t come to that.” Raphael stepped into the chasm, his wings spread to control his descent.
His primaries didn’t come close to touching the edges.
In places, the walls around him were glassy. Either the energy he’d released had solidified natural minerals into a glassy surface, or pieces of their home had become bonded to the earth. Here and there, he saw the odd item he recognized—a spoon, part of a stair railing—but the majority had been pulverized.
Sorrow sang an unexpected song in his heart. The Enclave home was where he’d first made love to Elena. It was a place all of his Seven had called home many times over their lifetimes. It was where he’d begun a friendship with Elijah. And it was the house in which his mother had come to stay after waking from madness.
But . . . he’d built this home as a lone archangel. He would rebuild it as one half of an unbreakable pair.
Most of the earth is simply compacted, he told Illium. I should be able to churn up the dirt so that the walls collapse inward, eliminating most of the hole. What space remains, we will fill using soil excavated from other areas.
That new skyscraper being built in Soho, Illium said. Tons of earth just sitting around. I’ll put a squadron on standby to bring across as much as we need.
Raphael continued his descent. There were no scorch marks, nothing that indicated a raging fire. Just crushed and broken things that spoke to the violence of the power inside him. Halfway down, he halted and placed his hand against the soil, felt a faint warmth—it was an echo, an imprint left behind by the energy that crawled across his wings and lived in his bloodstream.
He kept on dropping.
A glint caught his eye. After tracing his way back to the spot, he laughed at what he saw. Carefully digging out the leather-bound book with gold lettering on the spine, he dusted it off and put it in a side pocket of his pants. Elena would be aghast that of all their books, it was Imani’s tome on angelic etiquette that had survived unscathed.
He picked up nothing else on the way down and was soon standing with his feet on the earth where he had awoken with Elena. Pieces of the chrysalis lay broken around the imprint of his consort’s body. Crouching down, he reached out to touch one.
It crumbled into dust so fine it was mist in the air.
Nothing but a discarded shell. Devoid of Elena’s energy, it could not exist. He took a sample of the dust for the scientists in any case, stored it away with Imani’s worthy tome.
As he rose back to his feet, he found himself searching for a mind so old it made his bones ache. Cassandra?
Silence. Not even the distant murmur of a presence. Yet he had no doubts the lava shield had been hers. Perhaps she hadn’t even been aware of it, the act done by the last vestiges of her conscious mind. He would have to speak to Elena, confirm whether she sensed any remnants of the Ancient’s consciousness. The archangel with the terrible gift of foresight had always spoken to his hunter the most.
For Elena was Cassandra’s prophecy.
After taking another look around to ensure he’d missed nothing, Raphael spread out his wings and began the flight upward. He scanned the walls as he flew, but the only other thing he recovered was a spoon that had been bent and twisted into such a strange and complicated shape that he thought Elena would find it intriguing.
As he slipped it into a pocket, he considered whether she would want to decorate their new home herself . . . and laughed at the sudden impression of utter horrified negation that came through loud and clear. Guild Hunter? He hadn’t realized he’d reached for her until her response.
Go away. Am sleeping. A grumble of words. Woke up at nightmare image of having to choose paint colors and carpets for formal dining and living areas. I can make a nest of our suite, but then you’re on your own. Her mind was already fading as she spoke the last words, her body too exhausted to do anything but rest.
But she’d left him with a smile on his face. The two of them would put their stamp on the house in ways that mattered, with items that held meaning to them, but otherwise, they would rely on Montgomery. As Raphael had done once before. A relatively new archangel at the time, he’d been content to live in the first iteration of his Tower—his household staff had consisted only of his cook, Sivya, and her assistant. It was Neha on whose advice he’d built the Enclave home.
“This land is young as you are young,” she’d said on her visit. “It suits you—but your Tower is a rough construct. Some in the Cadre will look down their nose at your lack of a formal court and consider you weaker because of it. You must build a residence fit for an archangel.”
During the build—to which Raphael had lent his strength—he’d begun to notice that nothing was ever out of place at certain times of day. Tools were clean and sharpened; water, mead, food, and blood supplies provided like clockwork; broken items replaced and the detritus taken away.
When he’d asked Dmitri who was responsible, he’d been introduced to a dark-haired vampire who met his eyes only in flashes, the physical scars of his human life as a low servant yet apparent on his face and upper body. But even then, Montgomery had not flinched at being in the presence of an archangel.
By the end of the build, Raphael had such faith in the quiet and hardworking vampire that he’d put Montgomery in charge of furnishing the entire house. That was when Montgomery had flinched. “But, sire, I am only a servant!”
“You are a man who notices the smallest detail. I have faith in your ability to create a home suitable for an archangel.”
It had taken Montgomery a year. He’d asked if he could go to Neha’s court, to Titus’s, to Uram’s, to Lijuan’s, so he could see examples of an archangelic home, and Raphael had sent him off with suave and sophisticated Trace as a guide.