Authors: Nalini Singh
A solemn nod. “I see.” Going down on her knees, she picked up one of the coconuts he’d collected. “Perhaps you should plant them a little farther up the beach.”
He patted the sand over the coconut he’d buried, the sound of the waves lapping at the wet sand a familiar music. “Why?”
“The sea might wash them away otherwise.”
Considering that, he decided she was right. “Will you help me carry them?”
Her smile made him feel warm inside in a way nothing else ever did. “I was hoping you’d ask.”
Jason could barely remember what that warmth had been like, the echo of his mother’s love faded and dull, but he knew it had been something piercingly beautiful to the heart of the boy he’d been, and so he knew such beauty existed. Mahiya didn’t even have that. For her sake, he hoped that Neha had found herself unable to execute her twin, as she’d been unable to execute her consort.
“Will you tell Neha?” Mahiya’s question was nearly silent. “What we’re considering? That. . .my mother might be alive?”
31
“N
eha alone knows the truth of our supposition,” Jason said, thinking through the matter, “and if we are right, and your mother is already free, telling Neha cannot disadvantage her.” The vampire with scarlet hair was unlikely to be the only one of her people Nivriti had found, gathered together. “Neha may also have an idea of where Nivriti might have located her base of—”
Mahiya made a sudden tight sound in her throat. “If it is my mother, I know why she killed Arav.”
So did Jason. The man had hurt Mahiya, hurt Nivriti’s child, deserved punishment. Jason found he had no argument with that, and the realization made him halt, consider who Mahiya was to him. He had no answer to that, but he suddenly saw one to her earlier question. “I will not speak to Neha about this.”
Mahiya shuddered, shook her head. “No. If she murdered Shabnam, I can’t protect her.”
“This isn’t about protecting Nivriti.”
Mahiya’s eyes searched his face. “What is it?” Closing the distance between them, she placed her hand on his chest. There was tenderness but nothing proprietary or possessive in the touch, and he knew she spun no moonbeams in the air, expected nothing from him but the man that he was.
Something tense and waiting in him relaxed. He didn’t want to end this with Mahiya, but it was a decision he would’ve been forced to make had she sought to claim him, sought to see in him a future he couldn’t build with her. Not in the way Dmitri had with Honor, Raphael with Elena.
“A hostage,” he said, his hand on her lower back. “If we give Neha this information, we give her a hostage.”
Mahiya’s eyes widened in pained understanding, but she shook her head. “You risk breaking the blood vow, Jason.” A fierce whisper. “It could mean your death.”
“There is time yet.” Until he was certain Nivriti lived, this fell under his mandate, his silence no threat to the vow. “And I will not put you in harm’s way.” He’d made his choice, and it was this woman with her eyes as bright as a creature wild and dangerous for whom he’d raise his sword, not an archangel full of centuries-old hatred.
Mahiya’s lower lip quivered. “You must not.” Her fingers brushed his jaw, her mouth soft on his own. “Thank you for putting me first. No one else ever has, and I will never forget that you did so.” Her voice cracked. “But you yourself said Neha might know where my mother might be hiding. I cannot buy my life with Shabnam’s blood screaming for justice. If we are right, then my mother killed her as surely as she killed Arav. But this time, for no reason.”
“There was a reason—Shabnam was Neha’s favorite.”
Mahiya lifted a trembling hand to her mouth. “Akin to a child destroying a sibling’s favorite toy out of jealousy or spite.”
A scream ripped through the fort on the heels of her horrified words.
* * *
N
o angelic or vampiric body awaited them this time, but there was carnage nonetheless. Thrown across what seemed like every inch of the public audience hall were the limp, mangled bodies of at least twenty of Neha’s pet snakes, the columns that held up the structure splattered with blood.
“This took time.” Mahiya knelt down beside the thick body of a tree boa whose dry leathery skin continued to gleam a dramatic green. “The snakes aren’t tame as such—they come only to Neha’s hand. Tracking and patience, this required both.”
Hearing the sadness in her tone, Jason met her gaze in wordless question.
“After Guardian,” she said with a tight smile, “I can’t avoid the fear that curdles my stomach at the sight of Neha’s creatures, but I will not allow that fear to rule me.” Grim determination. “I try to remember what I’ve always known—that left alone, these creatures would avoid me as I’d avoid them. They did not deserve to be slaughtered.”
A wash of wind, Neha coming to land behind them, the anger on her face shot through with grief. Not saying a word, she stepped to the edge of the audience hall and simply looked, as if taking note of every single snake that had been butchered. And they had been. The boa Mahiya had been crouching beside appeared an exception, but closer examination showed it to be only half of the snake.
After being hacked into pieces, the reptiles had been flung around the audience hall. Such a thing would be impossible to do in daylight, but this particular area would’ve been all but deserted in the darkest part of night—the early discovery had occurred because of a lover’s spat that had sent a male vampire aimlessly wandering the fort.
“Do their bodies tell you anything?” Neha asked with frigid politeness.
Jason shook his head. “Only that the blade used was most probably a butcher’s cleaver.” A simple, sharp cut. “Is there any pattern to the ones who were harmed?”
Neha’s gaze lingered on several of the mutilated snakes. “They were the most docile—older pets who had become used enough to humans that they wouldn’t have slithered away at being approached.” Her wings held neatly off the blood-streaked floor, she said, “I must care for them.” Reaching back, she took a woven basket from the lady-in-waiting who’d arrived with her.
Not saying a word, Mahiya took a second basket and helped Neha gather up the remains. The silence was acute, Neha’s anger a pulse he could almost sense against his skin. But that wasn’t what Jason listened for, what he watched for. Because he was almost certain that out there in the shadows, within sight of the audience hall, stood someone who laughed at Neha’s distress.
However, not even his eyes, with their extraordinary night vision, could penetrate the thick clouds of black that coalesced inside the arches and doorways he could see from this vantage point. Starting a search for the watcher would be pointless. He or she had the advantage of having planned an escape route, would be long gone by the time Jason reached their hiding place.
Instead, he stood guard, never losing sight of where Mahiya was at any moment, regardless of his focus on the shadows.
“Come.” Neha said nothing else as she took flight, basket in hand.
Mahiya rose after her, and Jason followed, rising above them both in order to keep watch. However, Neha didn’t go far, landing on a small mountain plateau perhaps five minutes later. In the center of the open space stood a flat gray stone set atop a number of other stones shaped to brick smoothness and slotted in to create a squat pyramid.
Placing both baskets on the flat stone, Neha bent down and whispered something so soft, the wind buffeted her words away before they reached Jason. The first tendril of smoke appeared from below the baskets a second later.
By the time Neha stepped away from the little pyre, flames licked out of the baskets, and he understood the archangel had gained power not just over ice, but over fire. Ice could harm, but fire . . . fire was annihilation and violence on a level beyond. And Neha could now drop the flickering yellow orange death from the sky.
32
D
mitri ensured Honor was comfortable in the four-poster bed she’d made up with sheets of crisp white speckled with tiny blue forget-me-nots. Returning to the country with as much stealth as possible, they’d headed immediately to the house Jason had told Dmitri of on his and Honor’s wedding day. The instant Dmitri saw the place, he understood why Jason had been so certain no one would ever come upon them unawares.
It was a fortress created by nature itself.
The mountain had no roads—he and Honor had hiked in up the highly specific path Jason had shared. Any deviation from that path would’ve sent them to impassable cliffs, dangerous rock faces loose with gravel, hidden traps. Built of stone and wood, the house was a part of the environment, while up above was a dark green canopy that let in stray beams of sunlight while concealing the house from aerial view.
Added to that was a sophisticated security system that would alert Dmitri to anyone in the forest or in the sky.
It was the safe place Jason had promised, a place where Dmitri’s wife embraced her new existence as a near immortal. The toxin that would turn her into a vampire had been introduced into her system three hours earlier, with Raphael having left New York under cover of night to fly here to perform the task—a task the archangel would do twice more several weeks apart.
Dmitri would’ve trusted no one else with Honor’s Making, and Raphael had kept his faith, treating Honor with utmost courtesy. Now, only two neat fang marks on her wrist remained as a memento of a choice that would alter her existence, but Dmitri knew the toxin had already begun to reshape her cells, though she wouldn’t feel the burn of the process for another few minutes.
He intended her to be under by then. Everything was ready. From one honey golden arm ran a saline drip he’d set up using medical knowledge he’d accumulated out of curiosity, staving off the boredom of an immortality that had been forced on him. There was another line, one that led to a carefully calculated drip of morphine, intended to offset the pain of the transformation.
“Sleep,” he whispered as the haunting midnight green of her eyes began to blur. “I’ll be here when you wake.” It would take roughly three months for the process to complete this way, but it would be a gentle change, not the agony that had turned him into an animal bound in chains that rubbed his skin raw, his flesh exposed to the filth of the room where he’d been kept. “Dream of me.”
“As if,” she whispered with a sleepy smile, “I would dream of anyone else.” Her lashes fluttered shut, her breathing falling into the even rhythm of deepest sleep.
Caressing fine strands of hair off her cheek, he checked to make sure her vital signs were as they should be. Now came the hardest part—the waiting. Honor would need no nutrients for the first few days, and her body had stopped producing waste the instant the toxin hit her bloodstream, everything burning up in the massive surge of energy needed to begin the transformation.
After those first three or four days, depending on how fast the change progressed, he’d bring her to a hazy wakefulness so she could drink just a few drops from him. The blood kiss was a step he’d repeat, until her final feeding would be a true one. For most Candidates, it was a clinical process, the blood introduced via a feeding tube, but for Honor, it would be an intimate journey.
His wife would always wake in his arms, safe and loved.
“Come back to me,” he whispered in the language of their long-ago homeland, part of him deathly afraid now that he couldn’t hear her voice, the husky intimacy of her laughter silent.
He didn’t know how he would bear the quiet, but he’d find a way, because she would hurt if he initiated a premature waking. And Honor was never, ever to be hurt. Not so long as Dmitri lived.
33
T
wo and a half hours after discovering the mutilated bodies of Neha’s pets, Jason called Raphael from a mountaintop touched with the dawn. “One of my people just sent through a report that indicates the possibility of Lijuan making the reborn again is now in the near-certain range.”
Jason’s man was situated not in Lijuan’s home fortress, but at another of the archangel’s strongholds. The distance from the origin made every piece of information suspect, but this particular rumor had been gaining momentum for weeks, until the highly intelligent vampire was sure it had been born in truth. The most recent whispers had been dangerously explicit in their detail.
“I cannot believe her a fool.” Ice in Raphael’s voice. “It was one of her reborn who first attacked her in Beijing.”
“It’s being whispered that she’s no longer choosing candidates from within her court, but from the peasants, those who look upon her as a demigoddess.” Lijuan was a good empress in many ways—her people always had enough to eat, and she meted out justice with a fair hand. However, she preferred to keep the majority of her people in a cultural and technological state that had remained unchanged for centuries.
“Why should I create discontent by permitting them to know of things beyond their reach? It is not as if they live long enough for it to matter.”
Words she’d spoken to Raphael four hundred years ago while Jason had been in the room, her decision that of an archangel who’d been alive millennia and who considered mortals little more than a disposable workforce. Yet age alone couldn’t account for her choice. Caliane was
far
, far older, and from all the reports Jason had had from Naasir, her people were well-learned and within her city lay a sprawling library open to all.
No, the desire Lijuan had to keep so many of her people in ignorance came from within her, as did her power to reanimate the dead to shambling, horrifying life. And it was this archangel who might well be teaching Neha how to handle her destructive new abilities. Jason had to find out the content of those lessons.
If Lijuan had groomed herself an ally to assist her in her malignant games, the earth might yet become a place of endless horror. A place where fire fell from the sky and the dead hunted the living for flesh, warm and blood drenched.
* * *
M
ahiya was sitting on a bench in the pavilion in the courtyard in front of her palace, her magnificent wings spread on the marble behind her when he returned from speaking to Raphael. She said nothing until he came to stand beside her. “I keep thinking of her.”
Jason didn’t need her to tell him who she meant. “It’s a natural thing. Nivriti was your mother.”
Her head lifted, a slight hesitation to her as she said. “Your mother, Aurelani, is she alive?”
“No.”
“Wake up, wake up, wake up!”
Hidden from prying eyes by the spread of her wing and the columns of the pavilion, she reached a hand up to close it around his. “I’m sorry. I’ve made you sad.”
“No,” he said. “You didn’t. It happened an eon ago.” His emotions had aged, taken on a hue he couldn’t describe.
“Will you tell me about her?” Tawny eyes looked up at him, her lashes casting lacey shadows on her cheeks.
Until Mahiya, he hadn’t ever spoken of his mother to anyone, and even then, it had been in the guise of a romantic tale. He didn’t know if he could speak of
her
, of the mother the famed Aurelani had been to him, the scar tissue inside him a jagged barrier. “Ask me again another day.”
“All right.” With that gentle agreement, Mahiya leaned her head against his side. “I asked Vanhi to tell me stories about my mother this morning.” Her fingers squeezed his. “She told me many things, including about the lake palace that was her favorite place in all of this land. It’s not so very far from here. An hour’s flight.”
Jason looked down at the black silk of her hair, his mind filling with images of a desolate building covered with moss, its windows and doorways gaping maws. “Abandoned.”
“Yes. When my mother was supposedly executed.” A quiet exhale. “It was made to last, the palace. Built of marble within the crater of a mountain, the ‘lake’ is filled by the monsoon rains. I don’t know if it still stands—”
“It does.” He told her of his previous flight to this territory. “I came in as the sun was setting, and something caught the light. When I turned and circled, I saw only the shimmer of water—it took me a minute to find the building half hidden within the lake.” Covered by moss as it was, the water palace merged into the deep dark green of the lake, its camouflage perfect.
“We have the whole day,” Mahiya said, her body warm against his own. “Neha is in seclusion—I do not know for whom she mourns, if it is for the people lost or her pets, but I’ve seen her like this before. She won’t reemerge before dark, will not think to ask where we have been.”
“Come,” he said. “It may take me a few passes to locate the palace.”
* * *
M
ahiya stared down at the building that had become a chameleon over the centuries, hiding in plain sight. Covered not only by a dark green moss that echoed the color of the water, but by fine vines of the same shade, it appeared nothing so much as a floating clump of greenery. Desolate as this place was, few angels would pass over it, and those that did wouldn’t be tempted to linger. It was a testament to Jason’s curiosity that he’d discovered it.
“I didn’t have time to land then,” he said, hovering beside her with an ease she envied. “We can’t count on its stability.”
“It’ll hold,” she told him. “It was built to withstand water, to endure through centuries.” Diving without waiting for him, she headed toward what she guessed had once been a large balcony or courtyard that hung out over the water. A dark blur passed her a second later, and Jason had landed, his wings folded back, before she touched down.
A storm swirled in irises gone a turbulent black. “That wasn’t smart, Mahiya.”
Fascinated, she stared. Never had she seen him angry, and the leash he kept on his anger even now made her wonder at the depth of his control. “I knew you were faster,” she said. “And that you would’ve stopped me had you glimpsed anything that indicated danger.”
The storm crashed, dark and violent. “You shouldn’t have such faith in an enemy spymaster.”
“I don’t. I have it in you.” Reaching out to touch his wing, she smiled at this man who was an enigma she would never get the chance to solve and yet who grew deeper into her heart with each breath. “Let’s explore.”
Jason should’ve held his ground, forced Mahiya to acknowledge that she’d acted with rash impatience, but he had the thought that unleashing his anger on her at this instant would be akin to smashing the most fragile glass. He saw the confusion behind the eagerness, saw that she didn’t know if she wanted her mother alive or not, for if Nivriti lived, she had a sadistic streak of violence.
“Stay close.” Reaching back, he drew his sword from its sheath.
Mahiya raised a hand as if she’d touch the obsidian blade that seemed to roil with black flame, before dropping the blade and falling in step beside him. Deciding against using the vine-shrouded door in front of them, he walked with quiet steps around the side of the palace. They had to be careful of their footing, the moss slippery.
The palace had been designed to sit above the water level, but it was clear the monsoon rains had been strong enough to overwhelm it in years past. The marks of those deluges were waves of brown on the discolored marble of the building. It was probable the lake had some mechanism by which the waters could be bled off to other waterways—he’d seen such in other parts of Neha’s land. But this palace and its surrounds had lain fallow for over three hundred years, any blockage in the system untended.
A doorway allowed sunlight to spill into the room beyond.
“Wait.” He entered with care, taking in every desolate corner before nodding at Mahiya to enter.
“There’s nothing here.” Disappointment turned her voice leaden as she took in the debris and moss and the dried remnants of sludge that had come in when the waters rose. While the air wasn’t damp, the sunshine probing deep, the layers of dirt created a musty, earthy scent that made it clear this room had seen no other living presence for centuries. “The furniture must’ve been made of wood, rotted.”
“Yes.” He stepped to a shadowy doorway leading inward. “If I were hiding within, I would choose the core.” Where light would be least likely to escape come night.
Mahiya’s wing brushed his as she took her place beside him once more.
The rooms that followed were as bleak as the first. Stripped of furniture, carpet, and paintings, they were hollows broken and echoing, though Mahiya was able to guess at the functions of some from the placement of windows devoid of glass and doors long destroyed.
“It must’ve been magnificent when alive,” she whispered. “Like a jewel on the water at night, the lights reflected in the lak—”
Warned by her sudden silence, he followed her gaze and saw color.
Crimson.
Shiny and sleek, a ribbon that might have come from a woman’s dress.
“Lovers,” Mahiya murmured, picking up the decadent hue that did not belong in this lonely palace devoid of laughter, “may be using this as a pace for discreet assignations.” It was patent she fought hope.
“Perhaps.” It was too old and without comfort to tempt most, but he’d known young angels to do startling things.
“It’s soft.” She rubbed her fingers along the ribbon. “It can’t have been here long or the damp would’ve seeped in, turned the satin rough when it dried.” Her voice was near soundless, her wings held tight to her back to give Jason as much room as possible as they moved through the palace.
Two rooms later, he held up a fisted hand.
Mahiya halted.
Not moving a muscle, Jason
listened
. But the wind, it didn’t whisper the name of Mahiya’s mother, nor did it warn of danger. Still, he’d sensed something, and a second later, he knew what it was.
Sensuality, luxuriant and potent, and a perfume a woman might wear.
The cause of the silent warning identified, he dropped his hand but put his finger to his lips. Nodding, Mahiya held her silence as he reached out to part a doorway of vines . . . to reveal a room as disparate from the others as a ruby was from a hunk of rock. Here, the marble had been cleaned with scrupulous care, until in spite of the permanent staining, the walls gleamed.
Light came in through a skylight devoid of glass and half covered by vines. Rain would easily penetrate the green barrier, but there was little threat of it this time of year. Certainly, whoever had set up this room was unworried about potential water damage to the rich indigo carpet that lined the floor or the cushions of gold-shot silk scattered over the bed in the center.
A small vanity stood against another wall, hairpins and jewels scattered across the surface. In front of it was a stool on which a woman might sit as she readied herself. “No vampire could’ve brought this in.” Not with the single road up the mountain buried under a landslide old enough to have scraggly trees hugging its jagged slope.
“Jason.”
Turning at the shaken whisper, he saw Mahiya’s reflection in the mirror above the vanity, her fingers clutching at something.
An envelope.
Written on it was a single word:
Daughter
* * *
M
ahiya knew Jason had been right to insist they fly to a safer location before she opened the letter, but by the time they landed in a remote field dotted with a scarcity of trees and surrounded by nothing but balls of dusty foliage rolling across the endless vista, she felt as if her skin would split.
Then they were there and it was time. Back against a spindly tree that nonetheless provided shimmering gray shade, she stared at the red seal of the letter, while the black-winged angel who was no longer her enemy stood a dark sentinel. He said nothing, giving her the time to find her courage, break the seal.
My dearest Mahiya Geet,
I had faith you would find this. You and your dangerous black shadow. I thought to kill him for you at first—
Mahiya swallowed a cry, thrusting her knuckles against her mouth.
—but I realized upon further reflection that he is the only thing standing between you and Neha. And it is deliberate. So, then I must tell you I approve. You have made a better choice than I.
Her heart clenched at the pain inherent in that simple confession.
I am sorry I cannot be here to greet you, my beloved child. But this part is done. It was a test of my strength and skill. A warning, too, but we both know Neha is far too arrogant to listen, to understand.
This place is for you—stay here, be safe. Your spymaster will protect you. If he needs must return to Neha, be assured I will make certain he comes back to you unharmed after the real game is played and won. You cannot be in the court at that time. Neha will slit your throat and rip your beating heart from your chest, if only to wound me.
Your residence in this place will not be for long. Soon I will hold you as a mother should hold her child, while Neha bleeds heart’s blood and her people scrabble in panic and terror. I have had three hundred years to plan my vengeance.
Nivriti