Nalini Singh - Archangel's Kiss

Raphael played his fingers over her abdomen, his ring catching the light. “Your injuries?”

“Nothing to worry about.” Her thigh ached enough to remind her of Anoushka’s attack, but the cuts on her arms had scabbed over.

“Can you move?”

She spun out, reaching for the blades hidden in the butter-soft black leather arm sheaths she was wearing openly tonight, protocol be damned. The skirts of the dress parted like liquid, as if attuned to her every move. She lobbed a knife toward the archangel who watched her.

Catching it with lethal ease, he threw it back. She tucked it into the arm sheath, before testing how difficult it would be to get to the gun strapped to her left thigh. Not hard at all. “No problems.”

As she rose, the dress fell seamlessly around her body, all the slits elegantly concealed. “What are the chances I won’t need to use my weapons tonight?”

Raphael’s answer was terrifying in its starkness. “Lijuan’s reborn walk the halls.”

The ball was held outdoors in a massive courtyard framed by low buildings full of light, food, and musicians, the hypnotic strains of the ehru lingering in the air. Looking around, Elena couldn’t do anything but admire the stunning simplicity of it all—the thin, rectangular paving stones beneath the revelers’ feet had been washed until they gleamed a creamy white, the entire area lit with delicate lanterns in a thousand different hues, their light reflecting off the star-studded night sky.

Cherry blossom trees in full bloom— impossible —spread their lush pink arms over the courtiers, their limbs twined with lights that twinkled like diamonds. Elena picked a single perfect blossom from her hair. “I can feel the truth whispering beneath,” she said, scenting the barest hint of rot, of death, “but on the surface, it’s magical.”

“A queen keeps a court that is spoken about. A goddess keeps a court that is never forgotten.”

Wings filled her vision as angel after angel flew down for a graceful landing, all of them dressed in clothing that accentuated loveliness beyond mortal ken. Even the vampires, their own faces a study in the most sensual symmetry, stood enthralled. The few mortals who’d been invited or brought as dates fought not to stare, but it was a losing battle.

Elena might have had the same reaction—had she not been standing next to the most compelling man in the room. Raphael had chosen to wear black tonight, the severe color throwing his eyes into vivid focus. He was at once a being of unearthly beauty and a warrior king who wouldn’t hesitate to spill blood.

“I didn’t expect her to attend.”

Following his gaze, she saw Neha, a queen dressed in a silk sari of unembellished white, her hair pulled off her face in an austere bun. Those dark eyes burned with hatred as she stared at Michaela.

Michaela appeared unconcerned, her body caressed by an exquisite ankle-length gown in the colors of sunset, her fingers curled around Dahariel’s forearm. The male angel wasn’t smiling, his expression as detached as that of the predator brought to mind by his wings. But there was no mistaking the sexual heat between the two.

Elena looked away, her eyes colliding with Neha’s as the Archangel of India glimpsed her and Raphael. Elena froze at the contact. What lived in Neha was older than civilization, a cold, cold creature without soul or sentience. She watched, her blood turning to ice as Neha began to move toward them with jerky footsteps quite unlike her usual sensual grace.

Wings rustled as Aodhan and Jason emerged out of the night to flank them.

Neha ignored everyone but Raphael. “I will forgive you, Raphael.” Flat, toneless words. “Anoushka broke our greatest law. For that, she died.”

Raphael stayed silent as Neha turned and left without another word, heading toward a circle of vampires with brown eyes and skin that spoke of an ancient land of heat and a sleek, hidden violence, much like the tigers that prowled its forests.

“How much,” Elena said, withdrawing her hand from its position over the butt of her gun, “of that did she actually mean?”

“None and all.” Neha will act as an archangel, but hate is a poison in her soul.

Releasing the breath she hadn’t been aware of holding, Elena let her gaze drift forward, to the steps that led up to what was, without question, a throne. Lijuan sat on a masterfully carved chair of what was almost certainly ivory. Three men stood beside her—Xi, with his wings of red on gray; a Chinese vampire with a flawless face; and the reborn who’d served Elena and Raphael that first night. But he was no longer the sole one of his kind.

They stood on the edges of the crowd, a silent army with eyes that tracked all movement. There was an odd sheen to their gaze, a hunger that made her instincts rise in warning. Flesh, she thought, remembering the report she’d read sitting in Jessamy’s sunny classroom, they lived on flesh. “Her reborn surround us,” she said, wondering how the other guests couldn’t smell the rot, the musty smell of a grave desecrated.

Raphael didn’t shift his gaze off Lijuan, but his words told her he was conscious of everything around them. “An angel without wings is a creature maimed, prey brought to ground.”

She took a deep breath, mind awash with the images of that sunset in the wildflower garden, Illium’s sword a silver blur as he amputated the wings of Michaela’s guard. It was instinct to tighten her own wings even further before turning her attention toward the throne once more.

To find Lijuan looking straight at her.

Even from this far away, Elena felt the bone-crushing impact of that gaze. She wasn’t surprised when the archangel rose, and the gathering fell silent.

“Tonight,” Lijuan said, her voice carrying effortlessly on the eerily warm air currents, “we celebrate a new beginning for our race, the Making of an angel.”

Heads turned, following Lijuan’s gaze, until Elena felt the weight of stares from every side. Some were curious, some angry, others malevolent. And one . . . Her nape prickled. Evil. It stroked over her, a malignant kiss she wanted to reject with every breath in her. But she stayed silent, unmoving. Let them think her unaware, let them believe her an easy target.

“Elena,” Lijuan continued, beginning to move down the steps and toward them, “is a unique creation, an immortal with a mortal heart.” The crowd parted in front of her, watching her progress . . . except for an awestruck human/vampire couple who didn’t get out of the way fast enough. “Adrian.” It was less than a whisper.

The reborn male—the one with skin that spoke of the savannah—tore out the human woman’s heart, sinking his fangs into her neck at almost the same instant to tear open her jugular. She was still standing when Adrian reached over to rip out the male’s throat, wrenching the vampire’s body apart with his hands until the unfortunate male was nothing but a pile of discarded meat. The dead human female lay beside the lumps of flesh, steam rising from the viscera as Adrian—hesitating for a second, as if tempted to lick up the blood that had soaked into his skin—took out a handkerchief and began to wipe off the mess.

Moving past the butchered couple as if nothing had happened, Lijuan came to stand in front of Elena. “That mortal heart, some would say, is a weakness that will steal the gift Raphael has given you.”

“Better a mortal heart,” Elena said in a quiet voice, “than a heart that feels nothing at all.”

A smile, almost girlish, and all the more terrible for it. “Well said, Elena. Well said.” A single clap of her hands, an unspoken command. “To mark this occasion, this meeting between the ancient and the barely born, I’d like to present you with a remembrance—a gift from the old to the new, one so special, so unique, that I have kept it hidden even from my own court.”