Chapter 15
He had to die, my love…And so must I—that is why you came to kill me, is it not? You can’t kill me, my sweet Raphael.
—Mother to Son (In the time of Madness)
Elena searched his face, her body long and lean and strong against him. “Tell me what’s hurting you.” A tender demand.
“I’m afraid, Elena. So deep-down afraid that it gnaws on my bones.”
“Caliane,” she said with a roughness in her tone that was an eon of love and knowing. “And Nadiel.”
“Yes.”
Madness.
The specter that had haunted him his entire adult existence.
His parents had spiraled into madness one after the other.
They’d become strangers to him, strangers who’d hurt others—and him.
The same son his father had carried on his shoulders and proudly talked about to his friends.
The same much-loved child his mother had spent hours playing with even though she was an archangel with countless calls on her time.
“I’m remembering things I’d long forgotten.” He released Elena so he could pace, opening and snapping his wings closed as he did so. “Memories I’d shuttered away because they were too painful.”
He stared out at the rolling red vista of the desert that was this part of Marduk’s territory.
“When I was very small, my mother once flew hours with me in her arms because I was missing my friend who had moved to a distant part of the territory with his family.” He’d lost that friend in a long-ago battle, but he well remembered the other boy—as he remembered how safe he’d felt in his mother’s arms.
“My father used to call me his Rafi.” His eyes burned. “I haven’t thought about that for centuries upon centuries. Nadiel was the only person in my entire existence who ever called me by that name. Rafi died with Nadiel.”
Elena used her forearm to wipe away her tears. “You’re afraid you’ll hurt our child in madness.”
He braced his hands against a wall, pushed himself back. “We long ago decided that if we fell, we’d fall together.
“But now…it’s not just about us any longer.” He went to her, slid his hand to the back of her neck. “And I’m an archangel, Elena. No one can stop me but another archangel. Not even the consort I adore with every breath in my body. I could murder you. Murder our child. And no one could stop me.”
Elena could feel Raphael’s terror as a cold wind against her skin, but she hadn’t loved this man this long to break under what, to him, seemed the ultimate truth.
“Illium and Titus together could stop you.” Two archangels against one, all three battle hardened.
“And if I asked, they would. Because it would save your life.”
His hand clenching on her hip. “That’s not how archangels work.”
“Raphael, since when have you and Illium ever had a normal archangel-to-archangel relationship?” The slightest upward tug of her lips.
“When it’s just us, when he doesn’t have to maintain a front for others of the Cadre, he still treats you exactly as he’s always done.
” With a respect so deep that it was clear no one would ever budge Illium from his loyalty to the man who had been there for him since childhood.
“He also still flirts with me in the complete confidence that you won’t blast him with angelfire. ”
She cupped her archangel’s hard jaw. “As for Titus—he’d cut off his own head if it would keep Lady Sharine from being hurt, and losing you to madness would hurt her. So he’ll make sure that doesn’t happen—even if he has to risk your wrath by invading your territory to keep you in check.”
She held the violent, beautiful blue of his eyes. “We’ve never followed the rules, so why start now? No isolation, Archangel. We lean on the people we love—and that includes telling Dmitri to call Illium and Titus if you start to go off the rails and I’m compromised.”
Raphael’s hands flexed, then tightened once more on her hips.
“To admit to such weakness…it goes against everything I’ve ever been taught about what it means to be Cadre.
” His wings opened in a glory of white gold.
“But then, it was once implied to me that I should murder you because if I did not, you would make me weak.”
Elena scowled, well aware who’d given him that “advice.”
Hauling him down, she kissed him until they lost their breaths. “We’re as bad as each other when it comes to independence, but we’ve been blessed with countless people who are loyal to us, who love us. If we let them, those same people will surround our child in love armed to the teeth.”
Another kiss, this one hard and fast. “I’ll hold you to account, and you hold me to account.
Because if you’re afraid of madness, I’m terrified I’ll suffocate our child with my protectiveness.
” All she wanted was to keep them safe—but she knew that, at a certain point, safety became a cage.
“Call me out and I’ll call you out. We do this together. ”
“Together,” Raphael said, his voice as rough as hers had become.
“Always.”
* * *
Despite the hovering knowledge of his mother’s possible descent into madness, Raphael felt far more settled when he and Elena sat down to dinner with Marduk and Tiamat that night in the other couple’s private dining room.
They were, all of them, in casual tunics and pants, this a meal between friends.
As for the dining table, Marduk had made that himself—a slab of dark wood polished to a shine but with all its “flaws” left untouched.
Rippled edges, knots, cracks in the wood.
The legs, he’d carved, each one a different dragonish being.
Raphael would have just such a table in his own library, but this was one of a kind.
“Where’s Andreas?” he asked the other archangel as Marduk poured them all mead. “I thought you mentioned he was going to be here for the ball.” The deadly angel who’d once served Raphael was now Marduk’s trusted second.
Marduk’s grin was sly. “Andreas is distracted with Caliane’s Knife.”
Elena sucked in a breath. “Celesta is in the stronghold?”
It was Tiamat who answered. “Not on duty,” she clarified. “She sought leave to come to the stronghold on private business—they are both in the far wing handling said private business.” A smirk. “I do not know if Andreas is happy or terrified.”
Raphael’s shoulders shook, mind and body more than ready for conversation that was light of heart. “It took them long enough.”
“Celesta told me she would’ve felt as if she were robbing the cradle had she moved any earlier.” Tiamat’s eyes shifted in that way that was impossible to define—a wholly unique…ancient strangeness. “I believe she calls him the Infant when she wishes to spark a particularly heated sparring session.”
Elena put down her mead with a grin. “I feel like we’re peeking into their bedroom gossiping this way.”
“Oh, but there has been no bedroom yet.” Tiamat waved a hand, her grin as wicked. “They are still in the knives and flirtation stage. There might be blood involved—she is a vampire after all.”
Long ago, Celesta had been Raphael’s babysitter.
She’d already been Caliane’s Knife back then, so the fact she considered dangerous, trained, and highly intelligent Andreas too young made sense.
He also knew something had happened between the two at some point in the past, but Andreas had always refused to elaborate on what.
All Raphael knew was that one mention of Celesta could make the lethal angel flush like a youth.
“I wish them well.” He raised his tankard.
Marduk clanged his own to Raphael’s. “As do I. Andreas has been a second I’ve been proud to have at my side. He deserves a companion who will keep him on his toes.”
As Raphael noted Marduk’s phrasing—phrasing that seemed to indicate the relationship was coming to an end—the other archangel glanced at Tiamat.
His smile was deeper than Marduk ever gave to any other, until it warmed even the striking ice blue of his eyes.
“Do you remember our own knives and flirtation stage? You almost took out my eye.”
Tiamat rolled her own eyes. “I did not. I have perfect aim. I knew full well the blade wouldn’t get through your natural armor—which is why I aimed just slightly away from your eye.”
Marduk scowled. “All I did was bring you flowers.”
“Which you’d pulled from my garden.” Tiamat’s scowl was dark…before she threw back her head and laughed.
Marduk did the same, the sound so deep it was a vibration in the bones.
Elena touched Raphael’s thigh. They’ve been having this play-argument all their lives together.
As we will ever argue about how you shot me in the wing when I was only trying to court you.
Ahem, you were in psycho mode at the time. You should thank me for staying behind to offer first aid.
Grinning, he lifted her hand and kissed the back.
Lips twitching, she tangled their fingers before the two of them returned their attention to their hosts. When Marduk first wakened, Raphael could’ve never imagined that he would ever see him like this—so at peace, his wildness not tamed but simply…content.
Because Marduk knew he walked with his mate by his side.
A flicker in his peripheral vision. When he focused again, it was to see a white owl with golden eyes sitting on Marduk’s shoulder, its huge orbs blinking.
Neither Marduk nor Tiamat reacted.
Elena-mine?
Owl sighting. Cassandra’s around.
But there was no aged voice in their heads, no sense of the slipstreams of time, and the owl vanished in a matter of seconds. Perhaps she was just attracted by this dinner party and wished to join us.
With Qin. Elena’s voice was melancholy. I hope they’re together, that they’ve managed to stay one this time.
Movement at the doors. “Sire.” A blond vampire bowed deeply. “Archangel Suyin has been sighted on the border. She brings a guest.”
Marduk nodded in acknowledgment, and the vampire whispered away. “It’s Jinhai,” he said afterward. “She asked if she could bring him—he is a power, that boy, and he must learn to be in society. Should he one day ascend, we do not wish for an insane member of the Cadre.”
Raphael considered who Zhou Jinhai had been when he was first discovered just under a thousand years ago and wondered if that was enough time to undo the damage wrought by Jinhai’s megalomaniacal mother, damage so ruinous that Jinhai’s psyche had split into two, Quon his stronger and far more vicious “brother.”
Another child. Another insane parent.
Elena’s hand squeezing his. “We’re not alone and neither is Jinhai,” she reminded him under her breath while Marduk was saying something to Tiamat.
“His mother—though to call her that is an insult to the term,” she said with a curl of her lip, “chose to surround herself with sycophants—or those so blindly loyal that they never called her on her mistakes. We choose strength and treat our friends and compatriots as equals. So does Suyin—Jinhai is learning from her.”
“You are right, Guild Hunter.” He slid his arm over the narrow back of her chair, a chair designed to accommodate wings. “I will be glad to see them both.”
The conversation meandered at that point, with neither Marduk nor Tiamat bringing up their decision to Sleep again soon. That was to be expected. Sleep was an intensely personal choice.
Still, Raphael was glad of this private dinner that he knew deep within would be the last such with the couple from another age. He would miss them in a way he could’ve never predicted.
Lifting his tankard, he said, “To friends.”
“To friends!”