Raphael had changed with the times. Unlike many of the older angels, he didn’t look down his nose at the modern world, believing the old to be better. His Tower was fully integrated with current technology, with Illium in charge of ensuring that continued uninterrupted. The blue-winged angel was fascinated with both mortal and immortal ingenuity and had the kind of agile mind that could quickly process new concepts.
So Raphael wasn’t stuck in the “stone age,” as Illium had been heard to mutter about certain other vampires and angels. He had, however, long believed that mortals were safer in their ignorance of the bloody details of the immortal world. The irony of the fact that he was standing in the same room as two former mortals, one his heart, the other his closest friend, wasn’t lost on him.
Neither was the cold truth that mortals could not play in their world.
Dmitri’s friendship with Raphael had cost him his cherished family, the vampire spending a thousand years in purgatory. Elena had broken her back when Raphael had hauled her into an immortal problem, her body a bleeding, shattered doll in his arms. Without the kiss of immortality, his hunter’s light would’ve been extinguished that violent day above Manhattan when he fought Uram. “Humans,” he said, “cannot become used to demanding an answer from the Tower and getting it.”
Elena’s eyes, the gray ringed by a luminous rim of silver that whispered of her growing immortality, were open, without shadows, when they met his. “I know.”
The two of them had been negotiating their viewpoints—her mortal heart against his immortal mind—since the day they met, but it was no longer a pitched battle. “Then why suggest a response?” he asked, conscious his consort’s ability to understand the people of this city was oftentimes better than his own.
“Because it can work if we do it right.” She tapped her foot, her forehead creased in a frown. “I say Dmitri calls a couple of the reporters who stuck around during the battle, the ones who risked their lives to cover it—and who, incidentally, made the Tower look damn good.”
Dmitri nodded slowly. “I’ll have a quiet conversation with them, bring them into the inner circle, shape the story as we wish.”
“I don’t know that manipulation is necessary,” Elena countered. “The city is on our side. Give them a sign that the Tower knows that, that’s all—people just want to feel included, to feel as if they have a part to play.”
“Try it,” Raphael said to Dmitri. “The Cascade will bring many more such decisions our way, so we must begin to establish what works.”
An hour later, news hit the networks that the tortured woman reported to have run out of Central Park had been the victim of a cowardly attempt by their enemies to disrupt the city’s recovery. While no one from the Tower appeared to confirm the reports, the Legion made an impressive flyover across the city that night, accompanied by two full squadrons led by Illium.
A half hour after that, Raphael’s second told him the mood in the media had altered from fear to proud outrage. “‘No one has the guts to hit us head-on,’” Dmitri said, reading out a comment on an article. “That encapsulates the direction of the conversation.” Sliding away his phone, he came to stand beside Raphael on the edge of a high Tower balcony. “Elena was right.”
“There, Dmitri, you did not melt at admitting that.”
His second laughed and the sound was one that was becoming familiar again after a thousand years of silence. It wasn’t only his city that was healing, Raphael thought, his eyes catching the refracted light that betrayed Aodhan’s presence in the sky; his people were, too. And it had all begun with a single, vulnerable mortal who did not accept that to be an archangel was to be always right.
35
Janvier didn’t sleep for the ten hours that Ash was out, motionless and so deep in her mind that the life of her was a muted shadow. She finally stirred as the city was awakening, the high-rises wreathed in mist and coated with a light layer of snow he’d watched fall an hour before through the sliding doors off her bedroom.
Stretching against him, she made a sound in the back of her throat. He imagined it was his name, knew he was fooling himself. But then she turned to nuzzle his throat. “I knew it was you, cher.” A sleepy, drowsy statement.
Janvier wanted to smile, to tease her in delight about his name being the first word on her lips, but he couldn’t stop the convulsive shudder that shook his body, his arms locking around her.
“Shh.” Wiggling until she could get both arms around his neck, Ash held him to her in a bruising grip that still wasn’t tight enough for him. “I’m sorry,” she said, rubbing her cheek against the roughness of his. “I didn’t know that was going to happen.”
He couldn’t speak, the hand that had been choking him for the past ten excruciating hours slow to release its punishing grasp.
Ash continued to murmur apologies, pressing soft, unexpected kisses along his temple and jaw. “Mujhe maaf kardo na, cher.”
The private, intimate intermixing of language, it broke through the icy fear, made the choke hold ease, his breath no longer jagged rocks in his lungs. Shifting to brace himself on one forearm, he thrust a hand into her hair. “What did I tell you about apologies?”
He’d never forget those ten endless hours, but neither would he forget her dazzling, sinful smile as she said, “I’m not sleepy anymore.”
Naked joy in his blood, he hauled her up over him, her unbound hair creating a curtain of black silk around their faces as they drank one another in. “Where did you come from?” Ash whispered in the hushed space. “I wasn’t looking for you.”