“Thus she may well have gathered far more support than we realize.” Jason nodded. “Anoushka’s death had a deep impact on Neha, could have caused her to lapse in her oversight of Nivriti’s incarceration.”
Mahiya looked down at the ground, lines marring her forehead, glanced back up. “Or . . . Neha might have left my mother to rot for years without bothering to check up on her—isolation is a punishment she likes to use.”
Darkness roared within him, a violent wave of black fire. “No one will ever again imprison you,” he said quietly, aware he was making a promise that might well put him in the firing line of an archangel.
Mahiya’s face shone with a radiance that held him captive. “I know.” Spreading her wings, she touched her fingers to his cheek, the tenderness in it as powerful as a knife blade, until he had the disorienting sense his world had forever shifted.
“Give me tonight,” he said, wrenching calm from chaos. “I may be able to shed more light on the situation.” He had contacts and people across this territory—he just hadn’t known the right questions to ask until this moment.
Breaking the touch that connected them, Mahiya gave him a funny laughing look. “You’re wonderful.”
His defenses ignited. “Mahiya, don’t see more in me than there is.”
She tilted her head a fraction to the side. “Perhaps I am my mother’s daughter after all—I have decided on you, Jason. And if that is a foolish choice, it is also one I will never regret.”
He clamped his hand over her wrist when she would’ve turned away, holding her to him. Instead of struggling, she stilled, her eyes glimmering with determination and another emotion far more dangerous.
“I can’t give you what you want,” he repeated, some unknown thing tearing and ripping inside him at the thought of having to sever his connection to her, when it was the first time in his life he’d trusted even a part of himself to a lover.
A soft smile. “Did I make any demands, hmm?” Lifting her free hand, she ran her fingers along his jaw. “I have so much love inside me, Jason. So much. And I have never been allowed to shower it on anyone—no one has wanted it. Let me stretch the wings of my heart with you.”
He could feel his fingers tightening on her wrist, forced himself to loosen his hold. “Will it be enough to love and not be loved?” he asked, knowing it was a brutal question. “To give and never receive?”
Her smile grew impossibly more luminous. “You have no idea what you give me.”
Jason didn’t release her wrist. This could only end in tears—there was no other possibility. But when he would’ve spoken, she pressed her fingers to his lips. “Do not be arrogant, and I shall not have to be sharp in return.” Teasing words but her intent was pure steel. “I am a woman grown,” she said. “I know who I am, and I understand the choices I make—if what you can give me isn’t enough, I’ll walk away. I will not blame you for my choice, so let it be my choice.”
Jason released her wrist before he did damage to bones so fragile under his strength. Regardless of her eloquent promise, his instincts raged at him to end this, protect her from pain of which he’d be the cause. But the quiet challenge that vibrated in every inch of her body made it crystal clear she wouldn’t easily accept his decree. No, this princess who had lived a life that would’ve broken most, and come out of it believing in hope, in love, was made of far tougher stock.
Mahiya would fight to hold on to him.
A strange violence of emotion crashed inside him . . . and he knew he wouldn’t make the rational decision. Not when it came to Mahiya. “I didn’t tell you something,” he said, wishing the pathways inside him had not been stunted by the lack of light, that he was capable of giving her what a man should give his woman. “Venom did find fresh tracks in some of the other tunnels.”
No exultant victory on Mahiya’s face at his unspoken decision, just a silent joy that scared him on a level nothing had touched for an eon. “And old as the tunnels are,” she said, “some exits and entrances must’ve been forgotten, left unguarded.”
Jason recalled what Venom had said.
“Only reason I even know the ins and outs of the entire labyrinth is that when I was first Made, I was . . . closer to the otherness in me. I can’t work out how anyone else would’ve known some of the oldest parts of the tunnels—but that’s where I found the footsteps.”
“Twin siblings,” he murmured, “one of whom had an affinity for snakes, would’ve turned those tunnels into their playground.” Where Neha might have forgotten the complexities of the underground system, Nivriti had had nothing but time and the driving desire for vengeance to hone her memory. Still—“I don’t see Nivriti using them for a large-scale attack. It’d take too long to bring in her people one at a time, leave them vulnerable to extermination if they were spotted.” A fire within the tunnels would annihilate.
Mahiya wrapped her arms around herself. “I want my mother alive, but should Neha die, the entire territory will be thrown into chaos, millions of lives at stake.”
Jason shook his head. “Only another of the Cadre can kill Neha. Had Nivriti joined their number, the whole world would’ve stood witness.” All ascensions to the Cadre initiated worldwide phenomena that could not be ignored, as if the archangels were locked into the very fabric of the planet.
On the day that Raphael crossed the border, the seas had turned a violent, impossible blue, as had every river and every lake across the world. Even the rain that fell from the sky was a glorious gemstone blue, and when it shattered, it left behind a sparkling residue, faceted diamond dust in the palm.