Mahiya stared up at the sky as her mother rose with flawless grace, her body showing no sign of her long captivity. “My mother has had years of freedom,” she said at last. “Her wings would’ve taken at least a year to regenerate.”
“Perhaps.” Jason’s tone held an unexpected note.
“What have you seen that I have not?” Blinded by emotion as she was, she knew she couldn’t trust her own judgment. But Jason’s? Always.
“Nivriti is too confident for an angel about to go into battle against one of the Cadre.” He looked out over the fort, tracking Nivriti’s army. “And she flies with too much strength and skill for someone who suffered centuries of imprisonment below the earth.”
“How would the ones who saved her,” Mahiya said slowly, “even have known where she was?” She didn’t bother to keep her voice low—the noise at Guardian was overwhelming as troops filled the air.
“Not all loyalties are what they seem.” Loose strands of Jason’s hair blew back softly from his face in the cool night wind. “Were Nivriti smart, she would’ve seeded at least one of her people in Neha’s inner court when that court first formed.”
And even archangels, Mahiya thought, touching her fingers to his, could make mistakes of trust.
Jason’s hand closed over hers. “Look.”
Following his gaze, she saw an angel rise to hover directly above Archangel Fort. From the glow of lethal power that surrounded her form, it could only be Neha. Mahiya twisted her head to the right, hoping that her mother was protected in the mass of fighters, but no, she hovered at the forefront of her troops.
Neha began to fly toward Nivriti as she flew toward Neha, Neha’s troops amassing above the fort. Those troops were an insult, a bare squadron. As the twins came to a halt above the city, Mahiya knew the populace below must be gazing upward in wonder and fear both. Because when an archangel glowed, people died.
Neha and Nivriti halted several feet apart, enough that their wings wouldn’t touch and yet that they could talk. Mahiya would’ve given anything to be up there at this moment, to know what it was they said to one another. But whatever it was, it seemed as if her mother threw back her head and laughed before sketching a bow so insincere, Mahiya could sense it from this distance.
Neha’s glow intensified . . . and Nivriti dropped the arm she’d raised above her head. Her troops swarmed toward the fort as Neha’s own forces flowed to meet them. Both groups avoided the two women in the center of the chaos. Neha and Nivriti continued to hover in front of one another, as steel clashed and crossbow bolts ripped through wings, locked in a battle of wills Mahiya couldn’t comprehend. To kill not only your sister, but your twin . . . I cannot imagine it, Jason.
They are fools. A harsh summation. They do not comprehend that what they were given was a gift not to be squandered.
Understanding sang a nocturne, melancholy and haunting, through her bones. Neha and Nivriti had been born as two halves of a whole. Had they remained locked together in friendship and loyalty as the centuries passed, Neha would have been an archangel with the most trusted of allies beside her. And Nivriti would’ve been the second to an archangel, the strongest of positions if one was not Cadre. More, they would’ve both had someone they could trust to tell the truth, no matter the question. Such a trust might well have saved them making the mistakes they had, given them a happier life.
But they had wasted that gift, allowed pride and conceit to tear them apart, until Neha was a woman without consort or child, and about to kill the sister of her blood. Meanwhile, Nivriti was a woman so consumed with rage that she’d rather chance never again seeing her child, than walk away from her quest for vengeance.
The glow around Neha turned white-hot.
“Angelfire,” she whispered, naming the deadly force that could kill even an archangel.
Jason shook his head. “Neha cannot create angelfire, but what she can create is just as deadly to the others in the Cadre.” Even as he spoke, a whip of green snapped out from Neha’s hand, a vicious thing as fast as the serpents that came so easily to the archangel’s hand.
Nivriti shut her wings and dropped at almost the same instant the snap left Neha’s hand, a move of such speed that Mahiya couldn’t follow it with the eye. “What was that?” She wasn’t sure if she was asking about Neha or Nivriti.
“The Cadre calls it the poison whip,” Jason responded. “A single brush against skin and it releases a deadly toxin into the bloodstream. As with angelfire, an archangel could beat a certain number of glancing blows, but an ordinary angel would die in seconds. A full strike with the whip to the heart or the head equals total death for even the archangels.” Jason’s eyes tracked the two women as Neha hit out with the whip and Nivriti dodged, her speed unnatural. “Did your mother also have power over snakes?”
“No, birds.” Her fingers spasmed on his as the poison whip came within what looked like a hairsbreadth of Nivriti’s face.
Suddenly the sky was full of fire. Their wings crisped, angels screamed and fell, crashing onto city roofs. Jason knew that while their bodies might be broken and burned, the majority would survive. So long as the head remained attached to the body and the flames were extinguished before they reached the internal organs, the charred, blackened remains would continue to breathe, continue to suffer.
“Neha’s new ability,” Mahiya whispered.
The fire winked out as quickly as it had exploded across the sky, but Nivriti’s troops had been decimated, though Nivriti herself had been fast enough to avoid the cauldron of flame. Now, she did something with her hands and a web of acidic green identical to Neha’s poison whip snapped out to wrap around the archangel, wings and all.
Neha fell.
Right when it appeared she’d crash onto the burning city below, she snapped the bonds, halted her descent, but Nivriti did not relent, continuing to entangle her in that clinging green web. It seemed to Mahiya that she heard Neha scream in rage as the archangel broke the bonds again and again before releasing the poison whip once more.
Nivriti dodged, wasn’t fast enough this time, and the poison touched the edge of one wing. However, contrary to the known impact of the poison on ordinary angels, she didn’t sicken and fall. Instead, she shot higher into the sky.
Neha followed, her wings ablaze with power, her hands wreathed in green. Nivriti turned, dropped a net of green filaments that wrapped around Neha, encasing her entire form. The archangel struggled, a fly caught in a web, and again she fell, but this time, the green turned white and cracked off her in pieces brittle as glass.