“No.” He’d find them on their own when they didn’t expect to be questioned. Right now, he wanted the answer to a different kind of question. “You’ve become cooperative beyond the call of duty.”
A shallow court smile—one he realized he despised after having glimpsed a real one last night when she admitted to watching for him. “You,” she murmured, “are my best hope of escaping this hell.”
It made him wonder just how far she’d go.
16
“Tell me who gains from Shabnam’s death.”
Mahiya felt a sudden, frustrated urge to scream when Jason used the haunting clarity of his voice to speak those words. She’d deliberately baited him with her sweetly poisonous reply, wanting to incite a response, to shatter the obsidian ice that surrounded him until it felt as if she spoke to a black mirror.
“Is there a lady who waits to take her position?” he clarified when she remained silent.
“There are always those who wait.” She wrenched the strange madness under control, for what did it matter to her if Jason preferred to live a step distant from the world? “But Neha chooses who she will—an aspirant could kill off the entire group and fail to gain a place.” Her scarf lifted on the wind as they walked upstairs to take the high terrace path, flicked over Jason’s arm, his chest, before falling back neatly by her side.
I am jealous of a piece of fabric. Foolish when he does not even see me. “Sorry.” Last night on the balcony, when this deadly shadow of a man had made the clear effort not to hurt her feelings, her fascination with him had altered into something both tender and far more dangerous. The way he’d looked at her after his return, she’d hoped . . . but clearly, his actions had been nothing more than a quiet kindness.
The realization made her heart ache.
“You cannot leash the wind,” he said, his gaze an impenetrable depth she couldn’t fathom.
“No, I suppose not.” She broke the eye contact that was too much, too strong, too visceral. “It would’ve been better had Shabnam disappeared if this action was politically motivated,” she said, forcing herself to concentrate. “Her killing may well make Neha sympathize with her intimates and choose the next lady from within their ranks.”
“Might they gain an extra boon?” Jason’s wing was so close, she could see the fine black filaments that made up each midnight feather.
Her fingers curled into her palms. “No.” Though she was in no doubt that were such a thing a possibility, Shabnam’s “family” might well have sacrificed her with cold-blooded calculation. “Shabnam was worth more alive—she’d been with Neha a long time, had her trust and liking.”
“Your wings are dragging.”
“What? Oh.” Cheeks heating at the reminder one might give to a child, she raised her wings so that the edges no longer trailed on the red sandstone of the terrace.
Then he spoke again, and her embarrasment transformed into the most bittersweet of emotions. “You need to work on strengthening your wings in every detail. If Neha’s temper turns, it may come down to a race to a safe hiding place until I can work out a political solution to your freedom.”
“I am just over three hundred years old, Jason,” she said, using his name of her own volition for the first time, the small intimacy filling her mind with all the other fragile moments she’d dreamed of experiencing with the nameless, faceless lover she’d imagined in her darkest hours. One with whom she’d fly, see the world, build a life, build a home, fill it with laughter and love and happiness such as she’d never known.
“Even were I to have trained for endurance flying every day of my existence,” she said, holding onto that dream with every ounce of her strength in the face of harsh reality, “I couldn’t outfly Neha, even for the shortest flicker of time.” Neha was an archangel who had lived millennia, her power vast. She’d crush Mahiya like an insect and never notice.
“And a hiding place?” Mahiya shook her head. “I won’t let her bury me again. Better I die fighting for my freedom than to turn into Eris, dead in chains.” It was a fierce vow. “I will not allow her to pin my wings to the wall as Lijuan does to the butterflies she collects.”
Jason felt a dark wildness come to life within him at Mahiya’s impassioned declaration, but the response that came out of his mouth was almost icily calm, the words he’d wanted to speak hidden deep inside the silence that had been his existence for so long. “Lijuan would like to add me to her collection.”
Mahiya stumbled on a rough part of the terrace, would have fallen if he hadn’t shot out a hand and gripped her upper arm. Ignoring his hold, she stared at him. “Did she say that to your face?”
“Such unique wings you have, Jason. A pity if you should die in battle, those midnight wings destroyed. A quiet, measured death in the arms of a lovely girl ripe with her womanhood would be so much easier, do you not think?”
“She offered me a peaceful death.” He forced himself to release Mahiya, his need for touch a clawing thing inside him. “She’s been much more vocal about Illium.”
“Blue tipped with silver, yes, his wings are stunning,” Mahiya murmured. “I saw him once when he accompanied Raphael on a visit.”
Jason glanced down into eyes bright even in the shadows of an archway, and had the sudden realization the brilliance was an indication of emerging power. One no one had noticed because the change, like every aspect of Mahiya’s power, had to have been incremental. “Your own wings are just as unique.”