“No, sir. I was flying past when he plummeted, came to see if I could help.” A small pause as he glanced around at the other guards present. “I think Ishya and Gregor—who went to get a lantern—would’ve been on the doors at the time.”
Jason spoke to the petite, competent Ishya next, was told that yes, she and Gregor had seen Arav walk outside for a cigar. “However,” the vampire said, “he didn’t remain by the palace. I heard him comment to another guest that he’d walk off the dinner while he waited to speak to Lady Neha.” Ishya nodded at the courtyard garden, left in heavy darkness as a frame for the glittering Palace of Jewels. “As our task was to monitor the door, we didn’t follow his path. Jian was on the other side of the courtyard, may have seen more.”
“I saw the glow of his cigar in the dark,” Jian confirmed, his uptilted eyes speaking of the edges of Neha’s territory, where it brushed up against Lijuan’s, his wings a dusty white speckled with amber at the edges. “Once I recognized him as an invited guest, I continued on in my perimeter check. He’d vanished by the time of my next pass.”
Gregor returned with the portable outdoor lamps then, and Jason waited until the strong light sources were set up to talk to the vampire. He supported Ishya’s story but added, “I did see someone fly down toward Arav as he disappeared out of view, but he didn’t raise an alarm so I thought it must be a friend.” When asked for specifics about the second angel, all he could say was, “A woman . . . maybe. Or a slender man.”
“Thank you.” Leaving the mangled remains lit to garish brightness, raw red and wet pink over broken feathers of mottled brown, he nodded at Mahiya to make certain no one disturbed the scene, and walked inside the Palace of Jewels. Neha paced within, her anger so frigid it had frosted the mirrors.
So.
“Games,” she hissed. “Someone is playing games in my court.”
Yes. It was only the pattern that was proving elusive. Eris had been Neha’s consort, Audrey the woman who’d thought to cuckold an archangel, Shabnam a lady-in-waiting Neha had mourned with genuine sorrow, and Arav a suitor the archangel had been playing on a leash for her own amusement.
Jason accepted his initial conclusion had been false; Neha was innocent of the murders of Eris and Audrey. Rather, she’d been framed with a cunning that had fooled him and Mahiya both. A smart opponent, then, and one with enough skill and power to evade elite guards and lure both a lady and an experienced general to their deaths.
“A woman . . . maybe. Or a slender man.”
It could still be either. The lure didn’t have to be sexual, not when immortals played games of power.
“You will find the person responsible,” Neha ordered, her breath white in the chilled air. “You have the resources of the fort at your command.”
He understood he was being given freedom beyond that which he’d first been offered. “Are you aware of any reason why Arav might have been a target?”
“He was not even meant to be here,” Neha said, wings sweeping across the frost-lined floor, the tips glittering with broken-off flecks of ice. “He came to pay his respects after hearing of Eris’s death, stayed to press his suit.” She shook her head, her voice becoming strangely quiet. “He must’ve believed me cold of heart indeed, to think I would welcome a courtship when I stood vigil over my husband’s funeral pyre only this morn.”
Arav’s murder had been a chance opportunity, then, no finely tuned plan. “This will take longer than I initially estimated,” he said. “I may have to leave your territory for a period to take care of certain other matters.”
Neha’s eyes hit him full force, her skin incandescent with the lethal power that made her one of the Cadre.
21
“Do not break your word and my faith, Jason.”
“I have never lied to you,” he said, noting the ice that had begun to crawl up the walls, just as Mahiya had described. Mastery over the elements had never before been part of Neha’s repertoire.
It seemed many archangels were evolving.
“No,” she said at long last, the chill in the room retreating a fraction. “Unexpected for a spymaster, but you have honor. It is why I accepted your blood vow.” At that instant, she was the Neha of old, before Eris, before Anoushka. A deadly immortal, but one with a mind unclouded by bitterness or rage. “If you do need to be absent, make it fast.”
“I’ll attempt to negate the need.” Already working out how that could be done, he took his leave and exited to find that Rhys had arrived, along with a forensic team that was as modern as the fort was not.
He would’ve preferred his own team, but his instincts argued against Rhys’s involvement in the murders. Jason had studied the man, understood he was an angel from another time. Though he was imminently capable of killing Shabnam, he wouldn’t have left her with her br**sts exposed. “Any signs of life?” Arav was a very powerful immortal—he could conceivably regenerate his head, missing arm, and torn-off wing.
Rhys shook his head. “We’ll give it the night, but his blood’s begun to crystallize. He’s not rising from this.”
Jason sensed the same. The insult from the high-velocity fall had obliterated the other damage, but he had the feeling Arav’s internal organs had been ripped out, along with his spinal cord. Jason could survive such an insult to his body, was certain Rhys could, too, but Arav hadn’t been in that league. “Did the same forensic team cover Shabnam’s death?”
“Yes—the report would’ve been ready tonight but for this,” Rhys answered. “However, Neha allowed no one to touch Eris. He was cremated without any kind of a forensic examination.”
Before, when all signs had seemed to point to Neha, that oversight hadn’t mattered. Now . . . “I need them to retrieve another body,” he said, making the decision to risk trusting the other man, “and I need everyone to stay silent on it.”
Rhys’s eyes darkened. “My lady—”
“Cannot know.” Jason told Rhys what he suspected about the woman whose crumpled body had lain exposed to the elements for far too long.
Rhys thrust a shaking hand through his hair. “The fools!” It was a judgment spit out in a low tone that wouldn’t reach beyond Jason. “Audrey was a woman of little wit, but to attempt to make a laughingstock of an archangel? Had she found out, Neha would have—” He bit off his words, suddenly the grim-faced general whose loyalty was to Neha.