Jason, you must speak. They won’t listen to me, no matter how much sense I make. The fact was, they dismissed her as a child. Their pride is the weakest point for both.
Jason stirred. “If you wish to duel to the death,” he said in a quiet, steely voice that demanded attention, “we will get out of the way, but in your current condition, you will end up wrestling on the ground, amusement for the mortals. I am certain no archangel or angel has died so ignominious a death.”
Silence.
Then Nivriti raised an arm and the remainder of her troops formed around her, even as Neha’s own troops stood down. The archangel’s lips twisted into a cold smile. “Run while you can, little sister. I’ll make sure we meet again.”
Nivriti’s responding smile was as dark as the blood dripping from her eyes. “Be assured I’ll be waiting.” With that, she swept around, her troops closing behind her in a black guard. Mahiya.
Mahiya started at the command from her mother, but that shock was nothing to when she heard Jason’s voice in her mind. Go with her. It is the safest place for you.
She wanted to argue, wanted to shake him, tell him her place was by his side, but he was already turning toward Neha. Far more, she realized, was in play than the needs and desires of a princess who had never had a kingdom to rule or a man to love, until she gave her heart to an enemy spymaster with wings of midnight.
Even so, he could’ve taken an instant to reassure her that he would find her.
Agony wrenched through her at the sight of him getting further away with each wingbeat. Biting her lips, she stilled the urge to call out after him. She’d already laid her heart at his feet—she would not beg. Because while she didn’t expect Jason, his scars soul deep, to love her as she loved him, she understood he must choose to be with her free of any other consideration.
It wasn’t enough, would never be enough, if all he felt was a responsibility to watch over her because she had no one else. Now that the latter was no longer true . . . Swallowing, she reached out one last time with her mind and set him free. Take care of yourself, Jason.
Her mother’s squadron parted to allow her into the center, closing behind her to form an impenetrable wall.
* * *
Jason forced himself not to turn and watch after Mahiya. He knew that at this moment, he was the known, the familiar. If he asked her to come with him, she would. Once she’d spent time with Nivriti, however. . . .
No, he would not steal the familial relationship she had the chance to forge, not even if it caused an agonizing hollowness inside him to lose the mental connection with her as she flew out of range, protected by her mother’s people. He would give her time and space enough to decide if she wished to walk beside him now that her life had a whole new dimension.
Having flown escort to Neha while Rhys made certain of Nivriti’s retreat, he kept an eye on the archangel’s damaged wing as she brought herself in to land in front of the Palace of Jewels. When she dipped to the side as she came in, he deliberately landed too close to her, so that her stumble would be blamed on his clumsiness rather than taken as a sign of weakness by the others landing around them.
Pride, as Mahiya had said, was an integral component of Neha’s nature.
Righting herself by pushing off his body, she ignored him as she entered her private apartments, but he knew that to leave now would be to undo any good he’d done. So he walked out to the courtyard to help deal with the injured—just because angels and vampires were hard to kill didn’t mean they didn’t hurt. A man who knew how to inject morphine and other pain relief medication was always useful in battle conditions.
When Neha’s private guard summoned him two hours later, the courtyard was close to cleared, the injured moved into internal rooms. Taking his leave of the healer under whom he’d been working, he entered the palace to find Neha seated on the thronelike chair at the head of the central room. The archangel had bathed and was dressed in fresh clothing, her wounds bandaged.
Those bandages told him both that the wounds were healing at a far slower rate than they should—and that Nivriti was no longer an ordinary angel.
“So, now you are a peacemaker?” Neha’s tone was dangerously neutral.
“You are one of the more rational archangels,” he said, and in spite of her acts after Anoushka’s death, the words were true. “To lose you would create more problems than it would solve.”
“Exactly how rational do you believe me to be?” A subtly calculated look.
“Enough to take and use what Lijuan could teach you about accelerating the emergence of your new abilities,” he said, “without allowing yourself to fall into her web.” It was a wild shot in the dark.
“Finally,” Neha said in a sinuous whisper, “we come to it. That was why you were so eager to assist me, was it not?”
“I am a spymaster.”
Neha’s smile was cold. “And to ask you to act in any other way would be akin to asking an eagle not to eat a rabbit.” Picking up a baby eyelash viper that had slithered across the floor to her, she draped it over her shoulders, absently stroking its yellow orange skin. “Yes, Lijuan has been most neighborly of late.”
Jason could guess. The trauma of Anoushka’s death had left Neha prime pickings for a predator like Lijuan. “I have wondered one thing,” he said.
Neha raised an eyebrow.
“Whether Lijuan can somehow siphon power, or is attempting to learn how to do so, from others in the Cadre.” It was a theory so nascent, he hadn’t even mentioned to Raphael. “Her offer to assist you would then make more sense.”