“Tell me about him,” Jason said to Mahiya.
Mahiya’s response was quiet, with an undertone of steel. “I have come to realize exactly how much you like to give orders.”
Jason considered her words as he watched the intriguing flow and interplay of the people in the room. “You aren’t my equal,” he said, and it was a test.
She fisted, then flexed the hand he could see. “I carry the information you need about the people here.” The smile she sent him was a creation of such feminine complexity he knew he was seeing and understanding only half of it. “At least for this moment”—a shadow flitting over her eyes—“I hold the cards.”
Jason had no reference point for how to behave with a woman who was not his lover and yet already knew him better than any lover ever had. Such intimacy, he thought, was a thing of give and take and constant balance.
“Dance with me.”
“I’m making breakfast. Yavi!”
His father with his arms around his mother’s waist, twirling her around the kitchen, their wings sweeping out to send Jason’s hair back from his face as he sat playing with his blocks on the floor.
“Put me down!” A laughing command. “Yavi! The pancakes are burning.”
Bending her over his arm, his father claimed a smiling kiss. “Say please.”
“Tell me about him . . . please,” he said to this woman with whom he might never dance, but who had a claim on his loyalty nonetheless.
Shooting him another impenetrable look, she turned her face forward, and he thought he’d missed something, a moment, an emotion slipping through the cracks, water through his fingers . . . as his mother’s severed head had once slipped from his hands to hit the floor.
“I’m sorry, Mama.”
“For the most part, Rhys is what he appears.” Mahiya’s voice cut over the dull thud of sound that had followed him through time. “He has been with Neha for over six centuries and is not ambitious—except if anyone dares threaten his position at her side.
“Eris as consort-in-name posed no such threat,” she added as the same thought passed through his mind. “Rhys knew that when it came time to discuss politics and war, power and strategy, Neha would seek his own counsel. Arav, however, is a very able general himself, has led Neha’s troops in battle. More, he is as efficient at dealing with angelic politics as Rhys.”
The other man looked up at that instant, as did Neha. This time, the archangel flowed toward Jason. “I have never seen you dressed thus,” she said, her approval patent. “All of Raphael’s Seven do clean up well, even that barbarian general of his.”
“I will tell Galen you said as much,” Jason said, knowing the weapons master didn’t give a damn about what any woman but one thought of him.
Gaze shifting to Mahiya, Neha said, “You do not greet Arav,” in a tone rimmed with frost.
20
“We met in the courtyard.” Mahiya kept her voice even, refusing to give Arav the satisfaction of seeing her stumble. Maybe her courage came from having Jason’s dark strength beside her—but she didn’t think so. Arav was the one individual who could make her forget reason and step perilously close to insult.
“Insult to a guest is an insult to me.”
Something Neha had said long ago to the child Mahiya had been when she’d returned to the fort for a visit during a break in her schooling. She’d never liked those visits, her time at the school with Jessamy the happiest of her life. The censure that particular day hadn’t been personal, and yet the way the archangel had looked at her had made the tiny hairs on the back of her neck prickle in warning.
The instant Neha had left, she’d run back to the nanny who looked after her when she was at the fort, the same one who’d later told her nothing she’d ever do would please Neha.
“Why doesn’t the lady like me?”
Her nanny’s stern face set into a frown before she gave a curt nod. “You’re old enough to know. Though you must never repeat this in public, your father is Eris, Neha’s consort. Your mother was Neha’s sister, Nivriti.”
She was small, didn’t immediately understand. “They shared a consort?”
Horror filled her nanny’s expression. “Never speak such filth, child.” Putting away the tunic she’d been folding, she shut the dresser. “Your mother seduced a man who was not her own, and she bore the fruit of their ugliness.”
Me, Mahiya thought, the fruit is me. “I’m ugly?”
A sigh, a softening in her nanny’s face. “You are not ugly, child, but you remind my lady of that ugliness. It is a testament to her kind nature that you are given all the rights and privileges of a princess.”
The latter, of course, was a lie. But even Mahiya would concede that Neha’s treatment of her while she’d been a minor had been scrupulous. Perhaps there’d been no warmth, but there’d been no abuse, either. She’d attended the Refuge school, studied in its libraries—and there, she’d had access to Jessamy’s kindness and guidance, felt what it was to be loved, for the Teacher loved all her students.
Then she’d come “home,” turned a hundred . . . and learned that Neha’s cruelty had simply been saved for the adult that hopeful, innocent child had become. The man who stood beside Neha was proof enough of that cruelty—even if the archangel hadn’t ordered the seduction, she hadn’t warned Mahiya about Arav’s duplicitous courtship, either, making certain that Mahiya’s first taste of romantic love would be a bitter one.
“You didn’t tell me you had spoken with Mahiya.” Neha’s voice was silk over steel.
Arav’s cheeks creased in a smile that glowed with charm. “We passed as I was on my way to speak to you.” He favored Mahiya with a condescending look of approval. “I did not say how glad I am to see you looking so well.” Raising his glass, he took a sip of wine, the square ring on his index finger flashing vivid blue in the candlelight, the stone a rare form of tourmaline.
“He is like a peacock, spreading his feathers and squawking loudly . . .”
“Thank you,” she said with a smile so dazzling, it took Arav visibly aback.
Small crystalline sounds silvered through the air as the glass bangles on Neha’s wrist moved against one another. “Come. Let us be seated.” Her gaze landed on Jason. “As guest at the fort, you sit on my left. Arav can entertain Mahiya—they are great friends.”