“How is Dmitri?” Neha now asked, the edge in her voice sharp as a scalpel.
Jason’s reply was unexpected. “Have you still not forgiven him for returning to Raphael?”
Neha laughed again, the gleaming blade transmuted into the first real amusement Mahiya had heard from her since Anoushka’s execution. “I thought the two feral pups deserved one another, and I was right, was I not?” Not waiting for an answer, she added, “He should, however, have invited me to his wedding,” the words holding a dangerous politeness.
“Yes, he should have, but a vampire from your court did attempt to kill him only days past.”
Neha raised her head, her smile as cold as the blood of the cobra curled up in a basket in one corner of the terrace. “Does he believe I would hide behind one such as Kallistos?”
“The fact is,” Jason said, “Dmitri has always liked you better than most of the rest of the Cadre—but, and regardless of the brief truce born of my presence here, you and Raphael are not the best of friends at present.”
“Playing politics, Jason?”
“I’m very good at it.”
A small silence. “Of course you are.” The anger was replaced by cool approval. “A spymaster who could not understand the nuances would be useless.”
Jason didn’t say anything in response to that self-evident truth. What he did say was, “When Dmitri discovered why I came to your territory, he asked me to convey his sympathy. He says he will always remember Eris as a swordsman who was a welcome sparring opponent.”
Mahiya had seen Eris dance with a blade within the confines of his palace, the grace of it dazzling. Once, she had even seen Neha and Eris together in the courtyard, their swords and bodies moving with a harmony that—for a single piercing moment—made it painfully clear how the two could’ve fallen in love.
“I had forgotten,” Neha murmured, “that Dmitri and Eris had that in common. Two such different men connected by the blade.”
“He also charged me to ask if you would welcome him and his bride once you are receiving guests again.”
“If he spoke so prettily, I would be most astonished,” Neha said, but Mahiya could tell she was pleased by the request, for the leader of the Seven was meant to be a cynical, hard-hearted bastard who trusted no one. Yet he respected Neha’s honor enough to bring into her territory the woman he’d made his wife.
“Tell him,” the archangel said, “that I will not be displeased if he and his wife should pay their respects. My quarrel is with Raphael, not Dmitri.”
Jason nodded. “I will pass on the message. Do I keep you from your people?”
“No.” Neha shook her head and stepped a wing-length away. “I have postponed the public audience. You will escort me to Guardian where I plan to remain overnight with Eris.”
Wings spread, she executed a flawless vertical takeoff, Jason rising at her side. Mahiya was slower, found herself lagging behind, but she made no effort to catch up, her stomach lurching at the thought of being at Guardian. Instead, she let her eyes linger on the gentle bustle of the city below. It had had another name once, but after so many centuries in the shadow of Archangel Fort, it had become Archangel City.
Not surprisingly, the city reflected Neha’s tastes. Though—aside from the residences of powerful vampires or angels who lived outside the fort—the buildings were mostly small and single leveled; they were graceful structures of stone that had withstood the march of time. Like any city, Archangel had narrow alleys as well as wider thoroughfares, but nothing was broken or ugly, dirty or derelict, the water in the lake running clear and so fresh it was drinkable.
On Mahiya’s other side, hugging a natural ridgeline, sprawled the fort, and it too bore the stamp of its mistress. Guardian Fort was modest in comparison. It was also connected to the main fort by subterranean passages men had apparently died to keep secret—Mahiya only knew about them because Eris had let something slip on one of the rare occasions when he’d drowned his rage in a bottle.
“Instead of attempting flight, I should have waited for my opportunity and used the tunnels!”
“Tunnels?”
“To Guardian, you stupid girl!”
Eris had refused to say anything further on the topic, but she’d managed to get Vanhi to confirm the existence of the tunnels. However, the vampire, with her maternal ways, had known of only one entrance—inside the Palace of Jewels, a location that might as well be on the moon.
In front of Mahiya, Neha and Jason circled the higher fort, and she was struck by the span of Jason’s wings, by the clean efficiency of his flight technique, not a motion wasted. He wasn’t a man she ever wanted after her in the sky—escape would be impossible.
Putting on a burst of speed, she came in below them to land in Neha’s private courtyard within the fort that made a chill bead of sweat roll down her spine even now. However, that wasn’t the reason for her descent: It would not do for her to rise higher than the archangel—that lesson she’d learned on the fateful day a hundred years after her birth, when she’d officially crossed the line into adulthood and lost the protection afforded by Neha’s unwillingness to harm the young.
The lesson had been a brutal one, the Master of the Guard instructed to strip her back of skin. Mahiya had long understood she lived on Neha’s sufferance, having learned the truth from a nanny who thought she should know her place in the scheme of things, the gift of knowledge a rough kindness.
“Never forget that nothing you do will ever please her. To her, you are not a child to be protected, but a constant reminder of a betrayal that humiliated an archangel. Focus on survival.”
As she’d hung from the whipping post, blood trickling down her back, Mahiya had understood something else. That Neha wanted to break her until she was a living warning on the price of disloyalty. Enough people knew the unspoken secret of Mahiya’s heritage that the warning would be understood.
I will survive and I will survive whole.
The vow was one she’d made even as the whip fell again and again. And it was one she had kept, refusing to let Neha twist her into an ugly mirror of Neha’s own hatred. Allowing the archangel to believe she’d succeeded in cowing Mahiya was a strategic move on the chessboard that cost her nothing but pride . . . and pride was a useless tool in the fight for her very existence.
Jason landed after Neha, but that was to be expected—he was clearly acting as her guard in this moment. He ignored Mahiya’s presence, sparing her not so much as a glance.