If the archangel had had vulnerabilities, they’d been named Anoushka and Eris.
Reaching into his pocket, he retrieved the small object he’d secreted away even as he passed Mahiya the heavy gold ring. He’d taken the masculine ring exactly for that purpose but hadn’t actually expected her to catch the movement. Something else to add to his growing mental file on the princess who watched him with eyes that saw far too much for a woman who’d been cloistered within sumptuous palace walls her entire adult existence. Now, he used his extraordinary night vision to examine the find he hadn’t returned.
7
The ring was a woman’s from the look of it: fine strands of gold woven around an opal at the center. Quite aside from the feminine quality of the design, the ring was too small to have fit even the little finger of Eris’s hand. And, Neha was known to dislike opals, considering them a bad omen, so it couldn’t be hers.
Mahiya’s ring finger . . . yes, it would fit. However, he had the niggling feeling that opals were not the princess’s chosen gemstone. Clearly, he’d seen something his conscious mind couldn’t articulate, but that made him certain that should Mahiya be free to exercise her will, she would wear bright, cheerful jewels like citrine and peridot, aquamarine and canary diamonds.
“Amesyst. Is that how you say it?”
“Almost. Here, listen to me say it again. Amethyst.”
Lashes lowering, rising again at the fragment of memory, he focused on the piece of jewelry once more. It was the sort of quiet, pretty ring a woman might wear constantly, an everyday item, perhaps something with sentimental value. Modest, but with a fine color to the opal and a touch to the design that spoke of a master jeweler Jason knew in Jaipur, it was unlikely to belong to a servant, even had maids been permitted within Eris’s palace.
And, given Eris’s proclivities, an innocent explanation for the presence of the ring was so unlikely as to be an impossibility. However, if another woman—a lover—had indeed been permitted within the walls of Eris’s luxurious prison, it could not have been done without the goodwill and silence of at least one pair of guards.
“A silver tongue, he has ever had it.”
Add wealth to Eris’s gift of charm, plus perhaps a certain history with the guards, for many in the elite unit had served centuries, and it may have been enough to induce them to forget who it was they served. Neha had always draped her consort in the most expensive furs and silks, the most dazzling jewels—if he had “lost” a piece or two, the archangel wasn’t even likely to notice, much less care.
Even without the inducement of money, it might be that the men had felt sympathy for the husband who had strayed. In most angelic unions, it would’ve meant the end of the relationship, not a lifetime of confinement, the sky forever out of reach. Yes, Jason could see how the guards could’ve been persuaded to look the other way while Eris entertained.
As for the initial contact, a still-loyal servant could’ve carried the messages after Eris caught a glimpse of the object of his attentions through the stone lace of the smaller balcony that faced the courtyard.
Having memorized the pattern of the ring and ascertained that it carried no engraving on the inside, he slipped it away. He didn’t yet have enough information to uncover the name of the woman who’d worn it, but he knew where to look. Not in the inner court . . . or not in the center of the inner court. She’d be on the edges, a beautiful woman who felt she hadn’t received her due. Someone who’d both be flattered at Eris’s attentions and full of enough pride that she sought to cuckold an archangel.
After all, she’d been audacious enough to wear an opal in Neha’s court.
It was a game no one of age and honed intelligence would dare play, so she had to be young and impressionable enough to fall for Eris’s blandishments. To strip the veil off her identity would mean entering the battlefield of court, which Jason had no intention of doing. It was Mahiya of the cat-bright eyes, and silence as haunting as a wolf’s midnight song, who had the necessary skills to navigate that particular terrain.
“Or maybe the killer used extra garrotes as ties?”
Not much fascinated Jason after a lifetime spent unearthing secrets and listening to the darkest truths, but he found himself returning again and again to the problematic Princess Mahiya, a woman who didn’t fit her environment and who had secrets in her gaze older than they should be.
It mattered little. She was an intellectual curiosity, one that would lose its luster once he knew every facet of her. Of that he was certain. Nothing and no one had managed to get under his skin since the day he dug a deep hole under the shade cast by happy yellow hibiscus flowers, the seagulls cawing and fighting overhead.
Stretching out his wings with that truth in mind, he flew off Guardian Fort and along the ridgeline before winging his way high into the dark gray skies, the clouds yet heavy enough to conceal him from detection. It was here, far above land, that he felt more at home than anywhere else in the world.
“Slower, Jason!” A hand gripping firmly at his ankle as he tangled his wings and threatened to plummet.
“Father!”
“I have you, son. Spread out your wings slowly . . . yes, like that.”
Catching his other ankle, his father pulled him farther into the sky. “I’m going to release you again. Ready?”
Taking a deep breath, Jason said, “Yes,” and felt his stomach tumble as his father opened his fingers.
He was falling!
Except this time, instead of fighting the wind, he turned into it, allowing it to sweep him out over the sparkling waters that surrounded their home, a shimmering blue green so clear he could see the darting orange and red stripes of the fish swimming through the coral reef.