Chapter 3
You are always my most interesting patient.
—Healer of Healers, Keir (After the Chrysalis)
His own brain on the fritz—because surely this was just some strange hormonal imbalance that had struck Elena as part of her struggle with having lived a millennium—Raphael just held his consort while she cried over the buried seed of a tree, then he took her inside and got her warmed up.
All the while, however, he thought of the last woman he’d seen sobbing over something so nonsensical: a senior scholar in his mother’s long-ago court. A woman of great intellect and poise who was not known for being emotional.
As a youth of only a hundred or so, Raphael had walked around a corner one morning…
and discovered her crying hysterically over the beauty of a shattered vase.
The vase hadn’t been an irreplaceable piece of art.
It hadn’t, in fact, been in any way different from literally hundreds of other vases of fired clay used to hold candles for passage through the stronghold.
Not understanding, he’d grabbed and attempted to give her another such vase.
Her look of betrayal had been a spear through his gut.
So he’d alerted his mother using the mental bond they’d shared since he was a child, then lingered awkwardly until her arrival. Caliane, meanwhile, had taken one look at her distraught scholar and smiled. “Ah, my son. We will be celebrating some good news soon, I think.”
He wondered if he should bring up the possibility with Elena, unlikely though it was.
At present, his consort—wrapped up in a soft robe—sat at the sunlit table in their library happily eating breakfast. She even did a little seat dance after finishing off a triangle of buttered toast.
Not a tear in sight. It was probably safe to bring up the topic.
He’d already closed the doors to the library to alert Montgomery that they were not to be disturbed, and now took a seat next to the woman who had forever altered the trajectory of his existence.
“I’m starving.” Elena pointed at the plate of mini pastries in front of him. “Pass me one?” A kiss brushed over his jaw as he turned toward the plate. “You are so gorgeous, I want to bite you.”
Smiling because how could he not, he got her the pastry, then stroked his hand down her back as she bit into it. “Hbeebti?” His heart was a staccato drumbeat.
“Hmm?” Elena finished the pastry, paused, then decided to start working her way through a stack of pancakes.
Their table didn’t usually groan with such bounty unless they had guests—they were both fairly simple in their tastes when it came to breakfast—but Elena had spoken longingly of these items after she stopped crying, so he’d put in an apologetic order with Sivya.
“I’m very sorry for the late notice,” he’d said as he poked his head into the kitchen.
The gentle angel who was their cook had waved him off. “Finally, I get to create a big breakfast. You two must’ve been training hard. I’ll do eggs as well. You can start with that alongside fruit and toast while I prepare the rest.”
Elena had already devoured said eggs and toast.
“Here.” Deciding discretion was the better part of valor, he scooped fresh fruit salad into a bowl and slid it over. “You like this mix with the papaya.”
“Oooh, yes.” Elena stabbed a fork into a chunk of fruit with one hand while picking up a smoothie with the other.
Raphael made sure she was topped up with everything, until she at last sat back with one hand on her abdomen. “Wow, I haven’t been that hungry since my Chrysalis days. Guess the immortal tapeworm is back.” She began to laugh. “Remember how Nisia messed with me about parasi—”
Her eyes going huge, she sat bolt upright and stared at Raphael. “No.”
He winced. “All signs point to a certain conclusion.”
“But I’ve been taking the leaf!” Elena gulped down the rest of the smoothie. “A leaf a day keeps the you-know-what away!”
“You missed a day last month, remember?” Raphael only did so because she’d been joking about playing with fire. “When we flew to visit Jason and Mahiya and you forgot to take it with you.”
“We’d better be careful,” she’d said with a grin even as she let him hitch her up so that her naked thighs clasped his equally naked waist. “Nisia did warn us about a super-parasite after all.”
Elena stared at him, swallowing hard. “I only missed one day.”
“Super-parasite,” he dared say. “We’re very compatible.”
A small, strangled sound from Elena, her hand sliding to her abdomen again. When she looked at him, her eyes held a stark fear that made him hurt for her.
“It will be all right, hbeebti.” He cupped her cheek with one hand, pressing his forehead to hers. “We’re in this together, come what may.”
A gulp of air. “We have to go see Nisia.” Words that trembled. “I need to know.”
“Let’s go now.”
“You have the Cadre meeting,” she began.
“I’ll cancel. This is more important.” No doubt the others would be annoyed—but so be it. It wasn’t as if they were in a time of war or uncertainty.
Elena rose, took a deep breath, and said, “I’m fine. It’s fine. Let’s go do this.” She picked up a pastry on her way out, groaned.
Still, neither one of them gave audible shape to the possibility that hung in the air, not daring to tempt fate.
Raphael spoke to Nisia mind to mind while still in flight, asking her to meet them in their private Tower suite. She arrived as they did and, after taking one look at them, put down the small bag she’d brought along. “What’s happened?” she asked, open concern in her expression.
Diminutive, with soft brown eyes and wings of a deep cloud-gray spotted with white, Nisia’s question held none of the acerbic bite with which she’d lashed them more than once.
Elena’s hand clamped down on his as they stood in their living room in front of the closed balcony doors. “I missed a leaf and I just ate about five days’ worth of breakfast at once and I’m still hungry.” It came out in a rush.
Nisia, to her credit, just said, “Sit in that chair.” Then she took a small device out of her bag. “I could use my healing abilities, but this is highly efficient, especially in the early stages.”
Elena sat.
“Hold out your hand.” Nisia took that hand and touched the medical device to the very tip of Elena’s index finger. Before engaging it, she said, “It’ll take a blood sample. You won’t even feel a prick.”
A tiny droplet of red bloomed on Elena’s finger when Nisia lifted the device, and Elena just stared at it as if she could divine its secrets. The wound beneath it would already be gone, healed over by Elena’s immortal cells.
“How long will it take?” Raphael asked, sweat having broken out along the back of his neck.
When he put his hand on Elena’s shoulder, she shook herself out of her stunned state and raised her own hand to hold on to his wrist.
“It’s done.” Nisia turned the small, narrow screen toward them.
It was a vivid green with a scattering of black writing on it: Congratulations. The healer slid the device into her bag. “A small super-parasite will be making its arrival on the planet in thirty-four weeks, give or take a few weeks. Immortal or mortal, birth still comes when it comes.”
Picking up the bag, she said, “We’ll talk further once you’ve had a chance to absorb the news.
” The merest glimpse of a smile. “I wish I were Aodhan, that I could paint the looks on your faces, but—all humor aside—I understand this is a shock.” Her voice gentled, becoming deeply kind in the way of healers near and far.
“Come to me with any and all questions—for now, I can tell you that the readings are as expected at this point in the process.”
The healer left.
Raphael, his legs shaky, sat down on the floor, his back to the balcony doors, and Elena’s hand held in his as she leaned down from the chair.
Then she was sliding down to sit beside him with his arm around her, the two of them staring at the wall opposite.
It bore a breathtaking painting of Elena in flight, blades out.
A gift from Lady Sharine, the Hummingbird.
He slowly became aware of the tremor in her spine, the way she had her hand pressed over his heart. “Elena-mine?” He nuzzled the top of her head. “How are you?” The simplest and most important question.
Because there was a reason Elena used birth control when it was beyond uncommon for angels to do so—theirs was a race with a birth rate so low that decades—even centuries in rare cases—could go by without a single child being born.
If he was remembering correctly, it had been eighty years since the last angelic birth.
“I don’t know,” Elena whispered. “My brain’s all fuzzy.”
He cuddled her close, wrapping his wings around her.
“Do you want me to ask Eve to come to New York?” Elena and her sister remained incredibly close, notwithstanding that Eve was attached to Illium’s team on the other side of the world.
“Or Keir?” Nisia was a wonderful healer, but Keir had watched over Elena during her transition from mortal to immortal, helped her understand her new body—the bond between the two was of a different magnitude.
But Elena shook her head. “No…I just want to sit with the news for a while before we share it with anyone else.” Her fingers opened and closed against his heart. “Right now, it doesn’t even feel real.”
“No,” Raphael admitted, “it doesn’t.”
They sat there, wrapped up in each other as the sun warmed their backs…and in Elena’s womb grew a child stubborn and strong.
* * *
Elena dreamed of a room drenched in blood that night, and even in the dream, she knew this was wrong. It had been centuries since she’d fallen into the abyss, but today, she couldn’t escape it.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Blood beading on a fingertip that belonged to Belle’s murdered and brutalized body, only to drip to the floor in a loud crash of sound.
It hurt, that sound. A reverberation that wouldn’t stop.
She clapped her hands over her ears, but her hands were wet, and when she brought them down, she saw that they were soaked in her big sister’s blood.
“No, no.”
She tried to wipe it off, but smears of red covered every wall and counter in the kitchen, the red dripping downward until the lake of it reached her ankles and began to crawl up her legs.
Elena screamed and scrabbled back, but someone was gripping her shoulders, a fetid breath in her ear. “There you are, sweet little hunter. I’ve been waiting such a long time for you to return.”
Elena!
The storm-lashed ocean crashing into her mind, the scent of steel and salt in her every breath as her eyes snapped open.
“I have you.” Raphael crushed her close to the hard warmth of his chest. “You’re safe, you’re home.”
Her throat felt scraped to the bone, and she knew she’d been screaming. “I went back. To Belle and Ari and Mama. To that day.”