Nalini Singh - Archangel's Storm

Heart thudding hard enough to bruise against her ribs, she shut the door on those thoughts lest they betray her, and followed Jason into a large bathing chamber below the level that held the receiving area. Curls of steam rose from the clear water. “This was meant to be turned off,” she said, sensing the fine tendrils of hair at her nape beginning to curl from the humidity. “I’ll take care of it after we leave.”

Not responding, Jason began to walk the edges of a bathing pool so large, it could’ve easily accommodated five adult angels. Ancient by design, the chamber had been put in when the palace was constructed for Eris’s incarceration, and he’d made good use of it. Many a time when she’d been sent by Neha to see if he needed anything, it had been to find him lounging in the bath.

“Has Neha not slit your throat yet?” A bored sigh, his wings spread as he leaned against the edge, arms lying on the painted tiles carried from Italy by angelic couriers. “A pity.”

The stab of memory wasn’t enough to distract her from catching the subtle twist of Jason’s hand as he slipped something into his pocket. “What’s that?”

No surprise or guilt on his face. “I assume this is Eris’s?” he said, retrieving the object.

Walking to stand nearer to him than she had till then, she examined the thick gold ring set with tanzanite, dangerously conscious of the penetrating intensity of the spymaster’s eyes. “Yes.” Only centuries of practice kept her voice from cracking under the silent, inexorable pressure. “Not a favorite, so he may well have forgotten it here.”

Jason placed it in her hand. “I would not want to be accused of stealing.”

Mahiya felt color tinge her cheeks at the gentle, lethal words. “My apologies. I didn’t mean to imply anything of the kind.” What she’d meant to imply was that he was hiding something from her. That, she couldn’t permit.

“Look at her, Eris. She has your father’s eyes—they are so unique.”

Words Neha had spoken in a venomous murmur when Eris angered her a century ago. By that time, Mahiya had already been well aware of the single reason for her continued existence. However, Eris was now a corpse who could no longer be tortured with the serrated knife that was the presence of his illegitimate child, and Nivriti lay dead in some forgotten grave, her flesh rotted to dust and her bones bleached white.

The only one left who’d be pained by the mere sight of Mahiya . . . was Neha.

Mahiya had to keep the archangel from remembering that as long as possible. She was almost ready to escape the fort. Almost. But almost wasn’t good enough when an archangel hated you with a spite that had survived three centuries, a spite that was a caustic flame dipped in poison. The only purpose she currently served was in keeping watch on Jason. The instant she failed in that task, she’d join her mother below the earth, the maggots feasting on her flesh.

Jason said nothing to her apology, shifting to walk back out and upstairs to the main door. He didn’t shorten his stride to accommodate her, and she found herself almost running to keep up, the neat folds of her sari flaring out in front of her. Breathless, she wondered if he sought to humiliate her before the guards. If he did, he’d be in for a long wait—the guards had seen her in far more humiliating positions.

The crack of a whip.

Fire on her back, sticky liquid trailing down her broken flesh.

Jason came to a sudden stop ahead of the still-closed doors, his voice shattering the memory of the punishment meted out to her in Neha’s inner courtyard, the whip wielded by the Master of the Guard.

“My rooms?” he asked, his voice so pure, she found herself wondering, not for the first time, if he ever lifted it in song.

“In the palace across the courtyard,” she said, barely managing to keep her wing from sliding across his as she halted her own forward momentum.

Jason was not a man any woman would touch without invitation.

Now, reaching out, he opened the door and waited for her to exit. Courtesy, she thought—he’d given her his back earlier, had clearly written her off as a threat. She was too practical to be insulted. If Jason wanted to hurt her, she could do nothing to stop him. Hundreds of warriors, angelic and vampiric, might live in the fort, but the only offensive or defensive training Mahiya had came from what she’d been able to glean by covert study of their training sessions.

And no one, not even a woman determined to protect herself in any way she could, could learn to be a master fighter simply by watching, then attempting to copy those movements in the privacy of her bedroom or up in the isolation of the mountains. However, to ask for help would be to pay a price she couldn’t ask anyone to pay.

Her first fledgling friendship as an adult—two hundred years ago—had resulted in the angel in question having both his arms and his wings excised for an outwardly unrelated offense. Mahiya would never forget the way his blood had coated the stone of the warriors’ courtyard, darkening the granite to near-black even as his screams echoed off the walls of the surrounding barracks.

Mahiya had understood the brutal lesson, had never again attempted to build bonds with those in the fort, until many believed her a creature of conceit. Better that than to have their screams ringing in her ears as that young angel’s did to this day, though he was long healed.

“No one ever sees Jason coming. No one.”

The overheard words reverberating in her mind as she reached the courtyard, she heard him say something to the two angels at the door before he reappeared at her side. She glanced at his wings as they crossed over to the mountainside palace, expecting to see them silvered by the waning moon as were the black filaments in her own wings, but there was only darkness at Jason’s back—if she hadn’t known him for an angel, she’d have thought the spymaster a vampire.

Blinking, she stared, though it was a rudeness. “How do you do that?”

He didn’t ask her to explain what she meant. “A natural gift honed by time.”

Conscious that this predator—fascinating and darkly intriguing—was deadlier than any other she’d faced save Neha, she walked up the steps of the palace where Jason would stay for the duration. Though it wasn’t overtly guarded, only a fool would assume it wasn’t under constant watch.

When she walked through the open doors and turned to welcome Jason inside, he paused. “You live here.”

“Yes.” And had done so since she returned from the Refuge school, but it wasn’t home and never would be.

Soon, she promised herself , soon I will have a home where I will be safe, free from Neha’s bitter hate and the shadow of a father who didn’t know the meaning of fidelity.

Lowering her head in an apparent gesture of subservience lest Jason see too much, she said, “I’ll show you to your room.”

He followed her upstairs and into the sprawling room that overlooked the courtyard. Once, that had been the room she’d shared with Arav, believing herself loved. Desperate for happiness, she hadn’t wanted to see the truth until it slapped her in the face.

“You have been a most amusing diversion.” A laughing, condescending pat on the cheek at her bewildered expression. “And rather delightful. But Neha has approved my territorial proposal, and I’m afraid I must return to my lands and cease partaking of your pleasures.”

That heartbreakingly young, naïve girl was long gone, but Mahiya refused to allow the poison of Neha’s hatred to infect her—she knew full well Arav had only used her as he had because he’d divined her pain would please the archangel. That was a stain against his honor and said nothing of Mahiya’s own. She would love again, and she would love with all her heart, living her life in a brilliance of hope and joy.