Nalini Singh - Archangel's Consort

Raphael closed his hand around the side of her head, tangling his fingers in the wet silk of her hair. “He doesn’t deserve your protection.” Jeffrey deserved nothing from his oldest living daughter but her contempt.

“Maybe not.” Elena acknowledged, leaning into his touch. “But he’s also Beth, Evelyn, and Amethyst’s father—and they seem to love him.”

“You ask the impossible.”

“No, I ask for what I need.” She held her ground where even other angels would’ve backed down. “What I need , Archangel.”

He had allowed her freedom beyond anything he might’ve imagined, but this he would not do. “I will come with you.” He gripped her chin when she would’ve argued. “I will not land. That is the only concession I’m willing to make.”

She folded her arms, her eyes silver in the storm-light. “It’s not much of a concession, but we don’t have time to argue.”

He spoke into her mind as they flew out into the tempest of wind and rain once more. Hear this, Elena—if he crosses the line, I will break him. I do not have that much patience.

Less than fifteen minutes later, and very aware of Raphael sweeping across the sky above, Elena turned and walked up the steps to her father’s house. Again, it wasn’t a maid who opened the door. “Gwendolyn,” she said, shaking off the rain from her wings. “I just came to have a chat with Eve before I head out of the city.” She didn’t want her youngest sister to believe she’d been forgotten. It was a hurt she’d never inflict on anyone of her own.

“Come inside,” Gwendolyn said, concern on that discreetly made-up face. “You must be so cold.”

Elena stood dripping in the hallway. “I’m sorry, I’m wet.”

“Give me a moment.” Gwendolyn disappeared and returned with a towel, handing it to her.

Elena wiped off her face and did the best she could to squeeze the water out of her ponytail. “I’ll stay in the hallway—don’t want to ruin your carpet.”

“It can be cleaned.”

Somewhere in the midst of patting down the parts of her wings she could reach, Elena became aware that Gwendolyn was staring at her. “I must look a sight,” she said with a laugh, expecting a polite response.

What she got was nothing she could’ve predicted.

“I always wondered,” the other woman said in a husky voice, “what was so wonderful about her that he couldn’t let go, that he had to keep a mistress who reminded him of her.”

Elena felt the ground open up beneath her feet. She did not want to be having this conversation with her father’s second wife. “Gw—”

“I see it now,” Gwendolyn continued, deep white grooves around her mouth. “There’s something in you, something she must’ve given you—and it’s something I’ll never have. That’s why he married me.”

Acutely uncomfortable, Elena nonetheless couldn’t just stand by in the face of such raw pain. “You know how he reacted when I wanted to attend Guild Academy.” It was her enrolling at the Academy without his permission, permission he’d never have given, that had led to the fight in which he’d called her an “abomination” before throwning her out of his life. “Yet he allows Eve to go. That’s because of you—he listens to you.”

Gwendolyn hugged herself, tiny lines flaring out at the corners of her eyes. “The worst thing is—I love him. I always have.” Turning, she began to walk down the hallway. “He’s in the study.”

“Wait, I just want to talk to Eve.”

The slender woman tucked a wing of raven hair behind her ear as she glanced back. “I’ll bring her down, but you can’t avoid speaking to him, you know that.”

Maybe not, but she could delay it as long as possible. So she waited for Eve to come down and spent a good half an hour with her sister, answering the questions on hunting that Eve had built up since their last meeting—and letting her know she could call Elena anytime.

Afterward, they spoke of other, more painful things.

“I miss Betsy,” Evelyn whispered, her hand a rigid little fist. “She was my best friend.”

“I know, baby.”

Eve’s eyes shone wet as she threw herself into Elena’s arms, seeming far younger than her years, the acknowledged baby of the family. “Mom thinks I don’t know, but I do. We looked the same. Everyone said so.”

Elena didn’t know what to say, how to heal that hurt, so she just held Evelyn tight and rocked her until the tears passed. “Shh, sweetheart. I don’t think Betsy would’ve wanted you to make yourself sick like this.”

“She was so nice, Ellie.” A gulping sob. “I miss her every day.”

Elena understood to the deepest core of her soul. She missed Ari and Belle and Marguerite every second of every day. “Why don’t you tell me about her?”

It took a while for Evelyn to find the words past her tears, but when she did, it was a dam breaking open. She spoke not only about Betsy, but about Celia, too, the girl who had “played the clarinet the best out of everyone” and who hadn’t laughed when Eve made a mistake during class.

Elena sat still and listened, coming to the sobering realization that Eve hadn’t spoken to anyone else about this, damming up her pain. She could understand why when it came to Jeffrey, but Gwendolyn’s love for her daughters was palpable. “Why didn’t you talk to your mom about Betsy and Celia?”

“She’s sad all the time anyway.” Wise words from a child with solemn gray eyes. “Do you mind if I talk to you?”

“No, of course not.”

A direct look, clear of tears now. “I used to think you must be mean, and that’s why Father didn’t ever invite you to stay with us.”

Elena’s heart stabbed with pain. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. But you’re not. You’re nice.” A fierce hug from those solid little arms. “You can come stay at my house when I have one.” It was whispered in her ear.

Elena held the unexpected emotional gift to her heart a few minutes later as she pushed through the door to her father’s study without knocking. She found him standing at the open French doors, staring out into the rain. Not knowing why she didn’t turn around and leave, she closed the door behind herself and crossed the room to stand against the opposite doorjamb, three feet of space between them.

Outside, the rain fell down in silver sheets, blotting out the world. She didn’t know if it was the conversation she’d had with Gwendolyn or something else, but she found her lips parting. “Mama loved the rain.”

“Come, chérie, dance with your mama.”

The damp, squishy feel of earth between her feet, her chest bursting with giggles as she ran outside with Beth by her side. “Mama!”

Laughter, sweet and carefree as Marguerite twirled in the rain, her skirts flying out around her in an unruliness of color.

“Mama. Pretty.” Beth’s soft voice, her hand curling into Elena’s as they jumped in the puddles around their mother’s spinning figure.

“Yes.” The word was clipped. “She was happy in the rain, but she couldn’t survive the storm.”

Stunned that Jeffrey had actually replied, she didn’t know what to do, what to say. She found herself rubbing a fisted hand over her chest, as if she could brush away the years-old hurt. “She wasn’t strong. Not like you.” Marguerite had been the light and the laughter, the wildfire in their life.

A bitter laugh. “She wouldn’t have needed to be if I’d been there that day.”

This conversation wasn’t going as she’d predicted, and she felt scared, lost, a child again. Gripping at the doorjamb, she thought back to that fateful day when everything had fractured, remembered that her daddy had been missing. “You went to pick Beth up from her sleepover.” She’d always been grateful for the kindness of fate that meant her sister had been spared the butcher’s attention.