Nalini Singh - Archangel's Enigma

Empty shells repainted in Charisemnon’s image.

For the first time, she understood that perhaps her parents were together because no one else could understand what they’d survived. A broken kind of love, but love nonetheless.

Gut churning and skin going hot, then cold, she put on her uniform: dark brown pants and a lighter brown tunic with the pattern of a tree printed in black down the front left side—the same kind of tree under which she’d loved with Naasir. The memory a secret held inside her, she pulled her hair back into a tight braid and strapped on her sword.

No more time.

Naasir. Fight for Naasir. Don’t allow them to steal him from you.

She stepped out, striding down the hallways into Charisemnon’s inner court. The smell of alcohol, as well as of strong narcotic substances that had an effect on immortal physiology, lingered in the air, a number of courtiers still slumped over the tables where they’d been last night.

Wings trailed limply on the sticky floor, and a glutted vampire slept on a chaise longue with his arm possessively around a slender mortal boy who couldn’t have been more than sixteen. Hearing a grunt, she looked up and saw one of her grandfather’s angelic generals copulating with a female vampire who already bore bruises from his meaty grip, but who seemed to be enjoying being fucked on a dining table.

Carrying on through the court without stopping, skirting sleeping and fallen bodies and ignoring slurred propositions, she walked to the great doors beyond. Carved with exquisite care and inlaid with gold and precious stones, the doors were as striking as her grandfather’s heart was rotten. The guards—sharp eyed and alert—opened them for her at once, and she continued on to the inner sanctum.

She swallowed her revulsion before pushing through the unguarded door at the end, having to fight her way through hanging silk curtains to the bedroom. Charisemnon lay in bed, his previously healthy and muscled body shriveled and marked with scars. The disease he’d spread had turned on him like a vicious dog. The fact he was regaining his health, regardless, was no surprise.

He was, after all, an archangel.

The scars would eventually fade. The rumpled mahogany silk of his thinned-out hair would thicken, his muscle mass return. He’d be a beautiful man on the outside again, a dark-haired archangel with skin of deep gold and eyes the same shade but for slivers of brown within, his flawlessly shaped lips lush with sensual promise.

Mortal and immortal alike did not always wear their ugliness on their skin.

Keeping her eyes scrupulously off the barely budded girls who lay naked around Charisemnon, Andromeda looked straight into her grandfather’s face. “Sire,” she said, the address sticking in her throat.

“Ah, my dear Andromeda,” Charisemnon replied in a voice that had gone scratchy after his illness. “My steward tells me you are settling in.”

“Yes, sire.”

Charisemnon didn’t immediately respond, distracted by a girl who’d awakened. Those girls, Charisemnon’s young concubines, were so brainwashed that they would stab each other in the back to stay in his good graces.

When they became too old for his tastes, the girls became courtiers and ladies’ maids who groomed other girls to take their place. It sickened Andromeda, but she could see no way to stop it. She’d tried speaking to the newer crop of girls, offered to find them a way out, but they’d laughed and told her they felt lucky to be in the court.

“If I serve the sire,” one pretty child had said, “my value will increase when it comes time for marriage. My husband will be honored to marry me.”

The sad thing was that she was right: Charisemnon had conditioned his people to accept his perversions as honor. All Andromeda could do was keep watch for any girl who didn’t appear to be so willing. If and when that happened, she’d find a way to help her.

“I have a task for you, granddaughter,” Charisemnon said, one hand on the newly blossoming breast of the child in bed with him.

Nausea twisted her gut. “Sire.” All she had to do was stay alive. If she was alive, there was hope. Naasir was fighting for her. She’d fight for him. Until her last breath, she’d fight and she’d hold on to her sanity and her soul.

“Hmm.” Charisemnon’s smile was twisted. “I had intended for you to prove your bloodline to the court this morning, for none of my line can be seen as weak.”

“You have witnessed my skill with the sword.”

Charisemnon waved that away. “You are known as a scholar. A princess of the court needs be more ruthless.”

Sweat broke out along Andromeda’s spine. “Yes, sire.”

“As I say, that was my plan, but it’ll have to wait for your return.”

Andromeda didn’t feel any relief at the reprieve, aware worse could be waiting. “My return?”

“It appears Alexander wishes to speak to you.”

Too stunned and off-balance to hide it, she just stared at her grandfather.

Charisemnon’s smile deepened, as if he enjoyed her shock. “He feels you deserve a reward for your part in saving him.”

Chest tight and skin cold, Andromeda stepped carefully. “My actions did not have a deleterious effect on your relationship with the Archangel Lijuan?” She’d been waiting for that particular ax to fall since her return.

Charisemnon pushed away the girls. Trained and obedient, they slipped out of bed and headed out without anything to cover their naked flesh. Leaving the bed himself while she averted her eyes, Charisemnon pulled on a robe the color of aged merlot and turned to her.

“It could have and you will be disciplined for not clearing your actions with me,” he said, and all at once, he was no longer a man with sickening appetites but an archangel, his power blinding. “However, as Alexander clearly has gentle feelings for you, there’s no reason we can’t capitalize on that.”

“You wish for me to cultivate Alexander?” she asked, her expression polite and respectful, though she felt as if she was attempting to balance on a tightrope so thin, it cut into the soles of her feet. “Would that not anger Lijuan and threaten your alliance?”

“Alexander is an Ancient.” Charisemnon poured himself a drink from an opaque bottle. “If we can gain his favor, Lijuan becomes less important.”

Andromeda didn’t fool herself that her grandfather was taking her into his confidence. “Of course, sire.”

Charisemnon’s lips flattened after he put down the glass, his eyes chips of ice. “Lijuan should never have taken a child of my bloodline, and she should’ve informed me of her plans for Alexander.”

Ah. Andromeda knew she meant nothing to Charisemnon as a person, but as a symbol of his rule, yes. Lijuan had crossed a line there. But even that, she suspected, wouldn’t have been enough without the latter transgression.

Tightening the robe of his belt, Charisemnon sneered. “I would have been able to ensure the success of the mission. She was a fool to disregard me.”

“Yes, sire.” Andromeda waited to see if there was anything further, but Charisemnon dismissed her after stating that Alexander would be at her parents’ home the next day and she was to fly there today in readiness.

Fighting not to throw up in relief at the temporary stay of torture, Andromeda left at once, turning down an offer of an escort from the Master of the Guard. She was a warrior scholar and the mate of a wild chimera; she could get herself from one side of the territory to the other without guards.

Taking off, she stayed below the white cotton-candy clouds, low enough that she could see the lands over which she flew. It took about thirty minutes to get out of the city at the center of which stood Charisemnon’s sprawling stronghold, and into the wilderness of this awe-inspiring territory. A herd of antelope ran below her for at least a mile, as if racing her shadow, and she saw elephants walking with regal pomp, hippos swimming in the rivers, groups of baboons chattering and fighting below the widely spaced trees.