Authors: Nalini Singh
Now, princess,
he said and her title sounded like an endearment.
They’ve exhausted their energy for the time being.
41
M
ahiya pumped her wings upward, making certain to keep to her mother’s side of the battle line, so as not to provide Neha with an easy target. Jason gave her an almost imperceptible nod when she reached him, and she knew he was relinquishing the reins, an acknowledgment that she knew the players far better than he did.
“You are destroying the city,” she said to Neha. “You are killing your own people.”
Wings continuing to glow, Neha looked down, frowned, and waved a hand. A thin layer of ice formed over the places where the noxious green of Nivriti’s web had begun to bubble through roofs and walls . . . and people. It froze, then seemed to break off in inert pieces. Neha waved her hand again, but the fires Jason hadn’t smothered continued to burn, the archangel’s ability to create ice apparently exhausted.
It wasn’t only fatigue that marked both women.
Neha’s wings and body bore raw wounds from the same acid, her cheek gouged on one side to reveal her jawbone, her left wing sporting a palm-sized hole that would’ve crippled most angels. Meanwhile, blood of near black seeped from Nivriti’s nose and ears, even the corners of her eyes, the poison in her bloodstream attacking her from the inside out.
“Your forces are decimated,” she said to her own mother, wanting Nivriti to turn around, to see how many of her people were dead or viciously injured. “And you are fading.”
Nivriti swept out a hand, the burst blood vessels in her eyes having turned her gaze crimson. “Get out of the way, child.”
“I am not the child here.” Mahiya held her position, speaking to them both. “You are at a stalemate, and soon, you’ll be wrestling each other on the ground with the mortals watching as they would a circus act.”
Frozen silence from both Neha and Nivriti.
Then her mother started to laugh, and it was awash with near-manic delight. “That would certainly not do for your vaunted dignity, sister dearest.”
“It would suit you very well” was Neha’s cutting response, grooves of pain bracketing her mouth as one of the minor tendons in her left wing appeared to give way. “You have ever wanted to perform.”
Nivriti shrugged, wiped her bloody nose on her sleeve. “At least I did not believe a great act for truth and take a man who did not love me as my consort.”
“No, you only bore his child and stayed faithful while he rutted like a tomcat.”
Mahiya had the strangest feeling of being caught in the middle of a sibling squabble. Except this squabble had already cost hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives. “My father,” she said with a deliberation designed to offset their emotion-fueled dialogue, “was a man beautiful enough to enchant a heart of stone, but he was not strong, was not worthy of either one of you.”
“My daughter speaks the truth.” A great bitterness in Nivriti’s expression, an ugly thing that could eat a person up from the inside out. “I did you a favor, sister. He was lifting the skirts of one of his no doubt many whores inside your fort when I came to rescue him. So I returned with a few gifts.”
Neha hissed and snapped out the poison whip, but weakened as she was, it didn’t go far. “It was not your place to render judgment.”
“You dare say that?” Nivriti attempted to spray her with the acid, failed. “After you played judge and jury?”
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.
* * *
J
ason 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.”
“Well, well, well.” Neha rose and walked down the shallow steps below her throne to shake her head. “Such a waste that you will never rule. Yes, the helpful Lijuan thought to play me.” A flash of teeth. “But she forgets, I have played this game for millennia, too, and I know how to get what I want.”
Jason was near certain there was, in truth, no true secret to accelerating the development of power, that Lijuan had simply taken advantage of the Cascade effect. At least nine thousand years of age, she’d had millennia to mine the Refuge library for such secrets, even had she not come into her power at a time when several Ancients yet sat on the Cadre. They could well have told her of the Cascade.
Such a plan would befit the Archangel of China’s intelligent, devious mind, but to bring it up now would be to make Neha look the fool, so he kept his silence and considered his report to Raphael. Though he couldn’t speak of the Lijuan–Neha connection, he could now discuss Neha’s new abilities—her display over the city had made them public.
“If you wish to keep my favor, Jason,” Neha said, sari whispering along the carpet as she walked to the window that looked out over the courtyard garden, “you will discover how Nivriti was able to do what she did, and then you will tell me.”
“I do that and I become part of your personal war. Raphael would not be pleased.”
“Do you always do what pleases Raphael?”
Jason knew the arch question was meant to prick his pride, but the fact was, he served Raphael out of choice, not compulsion. “I will leave your territory tonight,” he said, his tone even.
Neha’s wings flared, the indigo filaments catching the light, before folding neatly to her back as she turned to hold his gaze. “Tell me, when did you gain the ability to use shadows in such a fashion?”
He said nothing, for she could expect no answer. The truth was, what he’d done tonight was only one aspect of his strength—he could use the black lightning in a far more violent way. “Do you wish me to carry a message to Raphael?”
A sigh, a faint smile. “Tell him his spymaster’s faultless service has made me rethink our quarrel. I say Raphael is no longer my enemy.” She allowed the viper to crawl down her arm, twine itself over her skin. “Safe journey, Jason. I will attempt not to hurt Mahiya too badly when I find her.”
* * *
“I
will attempt not to hurt Mahiya too badly when I find her.”
Jason understood Neha’s words had been meant to torment him. It wasn’t the first time someone had attempted such, but it was the first time they had found their mark. No matter his decision to give Mahiya time with her mother, he knew that was not what he was going to do, even if part of him said he used Neha’s taunt as an excuse.
Flying high and fast, he made certain no one tracked him from the fort. Only when he was dead sure he was alone in the skies, did he come down on the dawn-lit grasses of a jagged mountaintop, the biting winds attempting to rip his hair from its tie. Ignoring the chill whip of air, he took out his cell phone and put through a call to Raphael.
Raphael was quicker than Neha, perhaps because he’d been directly impacted by the events of that spring. “The world was in tumult when Caliane rose to wakefulness,” he said the instant he heard of Nivriti’s ability to harm Neha. “The chaos was put down to the disruption caused by her waking, but what if it was the confluence of two events, the reappearance of an Ancient concealing the emergence of an archangel?”
“I thought the same,” Jason said, recalling the violent storms that had hit the world, the sea rising in a fury, the plates of the earth shifting, ice falling when it should’ve long thawed, “but I didn’t sense the same depth of power in Nivriti that I do the Cadre.” The prickling consciousness of being in the presence of something
other
.
“And Neha would’ve known if her sister had become Cadre,” Raphael said. “One archangel always recognizes another—but from what you say, it appears she is in the dark about the origin of Nivriti’s abilities.”
“Yes. It could be that as Neha’s twin, Nivriti has a capacity to harm her that no other angel possesses—along with a certain resistance to Neha’s own abilities.” Twins were beyond rare in the angelic population, and Neha was the first archangel he knew of who had been born with another. “We have no guideline against which to judge the bond that ties them to one another.”
A short pause. “Should Nivriti believe herself Cadre, she’ll seek to join our number soon enough,” Raphael said thoughtfully. “Unlike Neha, the rest of us are not disadvantaged by a blood connection—it’ll take but a single meeting to answer the question of her strength. For now, continue to have your people keep a watch on her, on them both.”
“Sire.” Ending the call, Jason turned his ear to the wind, listening for the fading echoes of a retreating army . . . and the shimmering, stubborn hope of a princess whose presence he missed tucked against his mind.
42
M
ahiya didn’t know what she’d expected of her mother’s base, but it wasn’t a fortified palace complex hidden in a mountain valley a bare four hours away on the wing. However, it made perfect sense—Nivriti couldn’t have covertly flown a fleet in the dark over a much longer distance. The vampiric ground troops, their journey longer, had traveled to the city in vehicles that wouldn’t stand out on the roads and now retreated in the same fashion.
They brought with them the dead and the less critical of Nivriti’s injured, Rhys and Nivriti’s senior general having negotiated a short window in which the fallen could be retrieved. While Nivriti was constrained to depart the city immediately, she’d sent half her angelic battalion to the ground—supervised by Rhys’s men—to rescue and carry home the worst injured, vampires and angels both. That unit was approximately two hours behind them, the ground vehicles almost half a day.
This complex, Nivriti told Mahiya after they landed in the predawn dark under the watchful eye of the small squadron she’d left to stand guard, had once been hers—and was now again. “Neha allowed it to fall into ruin.” A pleased statement. “The surrounding village dried up without the palace’s custom, and so the area is a barren, forested wasteland.”
“A perfect place to hide an army.” Entering the palace, Mahiya took in the ancient tapestries, as well as the paintings that had been created using the walls themselves as a canvas—of elephants and horses ridden by sword-wielding vampiric warriors, and angelic maidens shy of smile but with weapons in their hands.
The once brilliant colors were now pale ghosts, the jewels worn by warriors and maidens both dull rocks. It was clear the tapestries and the carpets that covered the stone floor were as old as the paintings, but the surviving pieces had had the dust beaten out of them to reveal works of faded splendor. The walls and floors of the palace itself had also been scrubbed until the beauty of the building, full of intricate carvings and lacework windows, made further adornment an indulgence not a necessity.
“Neha’s greatest weakness has always been arrogance,” Nivriti said after pouring a glass of water from a nearby pitcher, drinking it down. “She has never believed I could be her equal, and so she left no guards on me or on the places that have always been, and will always be, mine.” Words as hard as the stone of her stronghold. “Now she has learned better.”
An angel, his left wing dragging as a result of a burn across its upper half, walked in then. “My lady,” he said. “I am sorry to interrupt, but we must talk about our defensive plans with so many injured.”
Nodding at the male, Nivriti waved Mahiya away. “Go find a place to rest, child.” Her eyes dropped to the crossbow still in Mahiya’s hand. “You will not need that here, but I’m glad my daughter is not a useless ornament.” With that, she was gone.
Mahiya took the chance to explore the palace. What she found was that it was as close to an impregnable fortress as you could get and still be a place that was clearly home for Nivriti and her people. High perimeter walls, but soft rugs on the floor. Weapons everywhere she looked, but a kitchen that permeated the rooms with mouthwatering smells.
When she made her way to a balcony at the back of the palace, she saw both a working well and healthy fruit and vegetable gardens
inside
the defensive walls. Though the skies were still gray, a vampire had already begun to work the gardens, and he told her the water in the well was sourced from an underground reservoir. “No way for anyone to poison it.”
Such precautions wouldn’t protect the stronghold against aerial attack, but the mountains around the valley were set up with ground-to-air weaponry Mahiya guessed had been hidden until the assault on Neha, and there was only one road leading in. It was a place meant to hold under a siege, she thought as she walked back inside the palace.
Though no one appeared to be paying attention to her, guards came out of nowhere to redirect her path when she tried to go down a particular corridor. They also took her crossbow, saying they’d get it cleaned for her.
Using her best princess smile, she said, “Of course,” and left without argument.
It took an hour of watching and waiting, but the lingering guards were eventually called away on another task, and it took her but ten seconds to make it to the doors and through. The rooms beyond were locked with old-fashioned bolts and padlocks, bars on the small windows cut into the doors.
A sudden chill in her bones, she looked into the first window.
A bloodsoaked and unconscious angel lay within, his wings pinned to the floor by bolts pounded through the feathers, tendons, and muscle. Horror a crushing weight on her chest, she forced herself to walk to the next cell—to find a vampire hanging from his wrists by thick chains, beaten and bloodied, his head slumped forward on his chest. She recognized them both from Archangel Fort. Neither was powerful enough to be immediately missed, but both were old enough to have knowledge of the inner workings of the fort.
“Mahiya.”
Having heard the tread of Nivriti’s boots, she didn’t startle. “You broke these people.”
“Neha would do the same to mine.” Ice, rigid and brutal. “She did far worse to me.”
It was at that instant that Mahiya admitted the thought she’d nurtured in a secret corner of her heart—that the murders of Eris and Audrey, Shabnam and Arav, had been an aberration, that her mother did not harbor the ugliness of cruelty in her bones. “Will you release them now?”
“No.” Nivriti reached through the bars to wrap that sticky green web around the vampire’s throat.
“Mother, stop.” She gripped Nivriti’s hand, pulled, but it was too late, the substance already on the prisoner.
As Mahiya watched horrified, his skin and muscle and bone dissolved into bubbling white until the body fell away from the neck. The only mercy was that the male never gained consciousness. “That’s . . .”
“More merciful than what Neha would’ve done to him had he crawled home.”
“Your power was to do with birds.” It was the plea of a child desperate to save something of her dream of her mother. “With living things.” Not this sadistic death.
The smile that touched Nivriti’s eyes was tinged acidic green. “The ability died,” she said flatly. “But buried in the earth, I found comfort in other creatures.” She shifted to the cell that housed the angel. “They sacrificed their lives when I needed sustenance, and shared their strength with me.”
“No! Please!” Again, Mahiya attempted to halt Nivriti as her mother—almost desultorily—flicked the deadly green web onto the angel.
But her mother was over three thousand years old, her power vast even in the aftermath of battle. It was an unequal contest, one Mahiya could not win. Trembling, she forced herself to watch, to
remember
this death, as the angel dissolved into nothing. He and the vampire both deserved epitaphs, both deserved not to be simply erased out of existence.
Sighing, Nivriti went to touch Mahiya, shook her head when Mahiya stumbled back. “How did you stay so soft under my sister’s loving hand, hmm?”
Because I didn’t want to end up like her . . . like you.
Her heart broke again, as she realized that some childhood dreams had no hope of ever coming true.
“Never mind. I am here to take care of you now.” Nivriti looked over her shoulder. “Escort my daughter to her room. She should rest.”
Mahiya allowed herself to be shown to the clean and, by the standards of the palace, luxurious room. It was clear she was being given honor as Nivriti’s child.
“I am here to take care of you now.”
Sitting down on the four-poster bed, grief a knot in her throat, she wrapped her fingers around one of the carved wooden posts that had been polished until they shone, and then she thought. About who she was, what she wanted to do with the immortal existence that stretched endlessly in front of her.
Regardless of what Nivriti believed, she was no child. She had fought for her freedom from an archangel. Jason had helped her achieve that freedom, and perhaps she wouldn’t ever have gained it on her own, but even faced with seemingly insurmountable odds, even after a lifetime with an archangel who wanted to crush her spirit, she’d refused to surrender. And with her spymaster, too, she was the one who’d driven a bargain when she held but a single fragile card.
“You need to give me something in return. I can’t surrender the most valuable piece of information I have without gaining something equally valuable in return.”
She’d spoken those words, demanded he treat her need for freedom with respect.
But now, once again, she found herself in a prison. There were no locks, no ill will from Nivriti,
but her mother had made it patent she saw Mahiya as a babe. Someone who’d be kept safe in this palace, have her wings clipped, and be shut away or ordered into silence when it came time for the adults to talk. Protected from the harsh realities of life.
“Escort my daughter to her room.”
Already, Mahiya could feel an oppressive sense of suffocation constricting her rib cage. “It is too late, Mother,” she whispered, and it was a decision she’d needed to make before she could carry on with her life. “I have not been a babe for a long time.”
Sadness tore through her veins at all they had lost, the time they could never reclaim. But there was also a sweet, sweet relief, the leaden guilt in her stomach at the thought of abandoning Nivriti leavened by the knowledge that to build a relationship with her mother, she’d have to leave her. It was the only way to force Nivriti to see her as a woman grown. A woman who loved a spymaster with wings of black.
Had Jason known? That had she flown away from Nivriti on the battlefield, she’d have forever wondered what her life might’ve been like with her mother? That her guilt at deserting a woman who had survived a nightmare, and who looked at Mahiya with love in her eyes, would’ve been a constant pain in her chest?
Her lips curved, because of course he had—Jason thought four steps ahead. Hope bloomed, but fingers tightening on the post, she forced herself to be rational, to remember he’d parted from her without any indication he intended to find her again. Even if he did, he couldn’t guess that she’d have come to her decision, be ready to leave only hours after arrival. Loyal as he was to Raphael, he’d most probably already left the subcontinent to make his report.
Which meant Mahiya was on her own.
Drawing in a deep breath, she stood and took stock of herself. She was a little tired from the flight to the palace, but not exhausted, as the army had moved at a slower pace to accommodate their injured brethren. Nevertheless, it would be smart to rest, regain her full strength—except that she wanted to leave now.
Even the most loving restraints were still chains that sought to hobble her.
Departing now did give her one small advantage—the secondary angelic unit, with their injured cargo, had arrived as she was being escorted to her room. Her offer of help had been declined, and from their condescending smiles, she was fairly certain it was because the guards thought she’d faint when she saw the damage, never realizing the things she’d witnessed in Neha’s court.
Everyone else who could be spared was tending to the wounded, the palace’s defenses the thinnest they would ever be. It was her best chance to slip away—because the fact was, she didn’t think her mother would simply let her go. Not when Nivriti believed her a child unable to care for herself. Mahiya’s eyes burned, and she wondered if her mother’s blindness was willful, if she tried to find the babe who had been stolen from her so very long ago.
Swallowing the wave of raw emotion, Mahiya pushed aside the curtains on the balcony doors, saw that the early morning sunlight was crystalline. She’d be spotlighted against the blue sky . . . but no one had forbidden her from taking flight. Decision made, she walked into the bathroom and washed her face, tidied her hair into a tight braid, then opened the balcony doors and stepped out.
There were any number of angels outside, and one flew toward her at once, his wings a dyed black that told her he’d been part of the assault. “Princess,” he said with the curt courtesy of someone who had far more important things on his plate. “How can I serve you?”
“I’d just like to stretch my wings a little before I rest.” Widening her eyes, she gave him a hesitant smile. “I assume it’s safe to fly in the area above and around the palace?”
As she’d wanted, he focused on the second question and didn’t bother to wonder why she’d want to stretch her wings after four hours of flight. “As safe as we can make it.” Frowning, he directed a trio of angels with a complex set of hand signals. “However, I’m certain Lady Nivriti would prefer you remain safely in your quarters.”
He was a general of some kind, she thought. There was too much authority in his tone for an underling. Instead of obeying as he clearly expected, she straightened her spine and said, “Are
you
ordering
me
to remain in my rooms?” channeling the dead Anoushka at her spoiled best. “Perhaps you’d like to put me on a leash and lead me around like a pet, too?”
Weariness washed across the general’s face, and she had to fight to keep from wincing in sympathy—she wouldn’t like to be dealing with this version of herself, either, especially after a battle that had cost him so many of his people. But if she didn’t get out now, she could be stuck in this painful purgatory for weeks, even months, smothered by a maternal love blind to the truth of the life Mahiya had survived.
“Please wait,” he said, not giving ground in the face of her outrage—which meant he wasn’t a general, but probably
the
general. “I will find you an escort.” Turning, he flew off to the left.
Well, that was stupid.
Snorting at his assumption that she’d stay where she was put, she stepped off the railingless balcony, swept over the courtyard, and instead of spiraling out in wide circles, went straight up as she’d seen Jason do so many times. If she could get above the fine layer of white cloud before anyone noticed what she was doing, she could confuse and maybe distract any pursuers long enough to get away.