“She is, indeed, though you know her.” A smile shared between the two. “I’m afraid my beloved is not a court creature,” he said to Jason. “However, she is so good at her job as a cryptographer that Neha forgives her the eccentricity.”
“I know of her work.” Everyone in Jason’s profession knew her name. “I’ve even attempted to lure her away a time or two.”
The other man laughed, his eyes twinkling. “Ah, I must admit, I was aware of that. She was very flattered, but we are loyal.”
While the spymaster in him was disappointed in that fact, the Jason who was one of the Seven understood the decision.
“Now Neha tries to lure you away.” Rhys’s tone was warm, but the icy calculation in his eyes made it clear he considered Jason a threat to the security of the fort.
Jason said nothing to that—silence was often a better weapon than words. Instead, he chose to direct Rhys’s attention to another threat. “The fort hosts a visitor who wants to be consort, it seems.”
Rhys didn’t turn to look at Arav. “There are always pretenders.” A hardness in his tone betrayed the blooded general beneath the mask of courtesy, before he excused himself to talk with a female angel Jason knew to be another one of Neha’s inner council.
“Tell me about him,” Jason said to Mahiya.
Mahiya’s response was quiet, with an undertone of steel. “I have come to realize exactly how much you like to give orders.”
Jason considered her words as he watched the intriguing flow and interplay of the people in the room. “You aren’t my equal,” he said, and it was a test.
She fisted, then flexed the hand he could see. “I carry the information you need about the people here.” The smile she sent him was a creation of such feminine complexity he knew he was seeing and understanding only half of it. “At least for this moment”—a shadow flitting over her eyes—“I hold the cards.”
Jason had no reference point for how to behave with a woman who was not his lover and yet already knew him better than any lover ever had. Such intimacy, he thought, was a thing of give and take and constant balance.
“Dance with me.”
“I’m making breakfast. Yavi!”
His father with his arms around his mother’s waist, twirling her around the kitchen, their wings sweeping out to send Jason’s hair back from his face as he sat playing with his blocks on the floor.
“Put me down!” A laughing command. “Yavi! The pancakes are burning.”
Bending her over his arm, his father claimed a smiling kiss. “Say please.”
“Tell me about him . . . please,” he said to this woman with whom he might never dance, but who had a claim on his loyalty nonetheless.
Shooting him another impenetrable look, she turned her face forward, and he thought he’d missed something, a moment, an emotion slipping through the cracks, water through his fingers . . . as his mother’s severed head had once slipped from his hands to hit the floor.
“I’m sorry, Mama.”
“For the most part, Rhys is what he appears.” Mahiya’s voice cut over the dull thud of sound that had followed him through time. “He has been with Neha for over six centuries and is not ambitious—except if anyone dares threaten his position at her side.
“Eris as consort-in-name posed no such threat,” she added as the same thought passed through his mind. “Rhys knew that when it came time to discuss politics and war, power and strategy, Neha would seek his own counsel. Arav, however, is a very able general himself, has led Neha’s troops in battle. More, he is as efficient at dealing with angelic politics as Rhys.”
The other man looked up at that instant, as did Neha. This time, the archangel flowed toward Jason. “I have never seen you dressed thus,” she said, her approval patent. “All of Raphael’s Seven do clean up well, even that barbarian general of his.”
“I will tell Galen you said as much,” Jason said, knowing the weapons master didn’t give a damn about what any woman but one thought of him.
Gaze shifting to Mahiya, Neha said, “You do not greet Arav,” in a tone rimmed with frost.
20
“We met in the courtyard.” Mahiya kept her voice even, refusing to give Arav the satisfaction of seeing her stumble. Maybe her courage came from having Jason’s dark strength beside her—but she didn’t think so. Arav was the one individual who could make her forget reason and step perilously close to insult.
“Insult to a guest is an insult to me.”
Something Neha had said long ago to the child Mahiya had been when she’d returned to the fort for a visit during a break in her schooling. She’d never liked those visits, her time at the school with Jessamy the happiest of her life. The censure that particular day hadn’t been personal, and yet the way the archangel had looked at her had made the tiny hairs on the back of her neck prickle in warning.
The instant Neha had left, she’d run back to the nanny who looked after her when she was at the fort, the same one who’d later told her nothing she’d ever do would please Neha.
“Why doesn’t the lady like me?”
Her nanny’s stern face set into a frown before she gave a curt nod. “You’re old enough to know. Though you must never repeat this in public, your father is Eris, Neha’s consort. Your mother was Neha’s sister, Nivriti.”
She was small, didn’t immediately understand. “They shared a consort?”
Horror filled her nanny’s expression. “Never speak such filth, child.” Putting away the tunic she’d been folding, she shut the dresser. “Your mother seduced a man who was not her own, and she bore the fruit of their ugliness.”