“Very well.” Flaring out his wings with that suspiciously quick agreement, he made a vertical takeoff so fast that she had no hope of catching him.
Compelling . . . and deadly.
It was a truth she could not permit herself to forget, no matter the temptation to touch the blade. Too much was at risk—her entire existence, her very life. Jason was a dream she’d have to save for another life . . . but first, she had to make it out of this one alive.
Losing him above the puffy white clouds that had crept across the sky, she returned her gaze to the pathway of red stone and to the small palace she’d warned Jason not to enter. Neha was secluded at Guardian, would not return till morning. Jason had left Mahiya alone. She’d have no better chance to grab the brass ring.
The trickle of sweat down her spine a chilled bead, she stepped forward.
None of the guards attempted to stop her—Neha often called her in when she wanted something done. But then, Mahiya only ever entered the front rooms. Today, taking advantage of the fact that no guards were permitted within, she continued down the corridor and toward the room at the very center of the palace, a room within which she could sense things that made her hindbrain skitter in warning, jibbering at her to run!
Mahiya wrenched the primal urge under control. This wasn’t her first foray into the forbidden section. The last time had been in the depths of the night, while Neha was actually inside the room at the center. It had taken gut-clenching courage and grim determination, her heart pulsing in her mouth with every jagged breath. What she’d seen that night had been disturbing, but the discovery hadn’t been enough to complete her plan.
Today, the smooth marble walls weren’t encrusted with ice, her breath didn’t fog the air, and her bones didn’t hurt with the pain of extreme cold. Touching her fingers to the marble, she walked quickly and silently down the long final corridor, the door to the room within sight. It had been so hardened with ice the previous time, she hadn’t been able to glean the handle.
Now, the knob shone bright gold. Mahiya went to put her hand on it, hesitated at the last instant. This was far too easy. Forcing patience, she hid herself in a small alcove while she considered the situation from every angle—to discover what Neha was up to, she had to get inside that room, but getting inside that room might well mean her death. Because Neha was an archangel, with abilities both secret and overt.
Her most overt one was the way she could control and manipulate reptilian creatures of every kind. Like the golden vine snake wrapped around the doorknob. Mahiya’s heart punched against her ribs as the creature flicked out its red tongue and she realized what she’d taken for an ornate design was a living being.
A poisonous living being.
Because one of her more covert abilities was the fact that Neha could create poison glands in nonvenomous species. Touching that knob would have meant a bite that left Mahiya paralyzed and helpless for hours.
However, that was unlikely to be the only security feature, because while Neha was an angel of old, she was in no way blind to the benefits of modern technology. Now that Mahiya was thinking properly instead of being driven to act by the knowledge of how quickly her time was running out, she realized that even were the door unlocked, Neha would have set it with a silent alarm that alerted her to any trespass.
Once inside, would an intruder find the room unoccupied . . . or herself surrounded by hundreds of snakes irritated to hissing anger at being disturbed?
A hint of noise, a whisper.
Freezing, she hoped whoever it was—a maid?—had only entered to take care of something in the front rooms.
“So,” said a tempered, familiar voice from the left of the alcove, “you seek to unearth Neha’s secrets.”
A bolt of terror hitting her bloodstream, she shifted into the light to face Jason. “I came to get something I’d forgotten,” she said, then considered her empty hands. “I didn’t find it.”
Near-black eyes watched her without blinking. “You’re very good at lying, but I’m even better at detecting it.” Turning his attention to the closed door guarded by the vine snake, he looked at it for several careful seconds before shifting on his heel and saying, “We need to talk in privacy.”
It wasn’t an invitation.
Mahiya would’ve liked nothing better than to refuse the order, but if he mentioned this to Neha, she’d be dead and nothing else would matter. Frustration, fear, and anger boiling a caustic brew in her veins, she followed him out into the light, blinking against the brightness . . . to find that he was no longer beside her.
“It wouldn’t do for Neha to learn that I’d been in there,” he said several minutes later, having rejoined her once she reached a more public area.
“How did you get in?” Even as she spoke, she remembered all those guards simply not seeing him.
His only answer was to glance at her wings, ask, “Can you do another vertical takeoff?”
“Yes.” She was slow, not weak. “Where are we going?”
“Follow me.” Rising into the sky, he held his position until she joined him, then swept out across the city, farther, until they were flying over villages where excited children ran and waved at them, and stacks of blue pottery sat ready to be decorated, while sleepy cattle dozed in a rare green pasture fed by a stream nearly concealed by tall grasses.
I will miss this.
It was a thought that made her heart ache with sorrow. This land of desert and color and hidden oases was all she’d ever known. She couldn’t imagine living in a place without rolling sand dunes, the sight of camels with their swaying walk as familiar as those of the regal elephants. Animals were treated with affection and care under rules Neha had set in place long ago, and many roamed over land set aside for them, as with the herd of camels below, their necks bent as they grazed.
A lone herder, her long skirt and hip-length tunic a sun bright yellow, looked up, raising her hand in a wave. Mahiya waved back, struck once more by Neha’s many—sometimes violently opposed—aspects. She was a queen, could be cruel, but she was also beloved by her people for her generosity and fairness, the angels from her court welcome wherever they went.
Should Mahiya land in the village below, she would be received with warmth, given tea hot from the pot and savories fresh from the oven. There was fear in the populace, of course, but it wasn’t crippling, simply a quiet acknowledgement that the immortals were stronger and more dangerous, that it was better to live peacefully with them, to serve when called than to rebel.