Chapter 35
Misha. Caterina.
—Two cherished names woven into a tapestry of the Milky Way in Honor and Dmitri’s home
At just over seven months along, Elena was finally getting to the stage where people were giving her a second look, but were too polite to ask if she was putting on weight.
The latter idea had probably gained further veracity in Tower circles when vampire after angel after vampire caught her eating one thing or another in hallways, up in the air, or just hanging around in various break rooms and offices.
Yesterday, a warrior with curls of darkest brown and playful brown eyes had busted her eating an entire pizza, piece by glorious piece.
Sam still smelled of snow falling on apples to her hunter senses, a scent as fresh and unique as the man he’d grown up to be. Spotting her pizza feast, he’d grinned a grin that held the mischievous heart of the boy who’d been her first friend at angel school, and said, “Where are the pickles?”
Smartass.
A smartass whom she’d made fetch her the jar of pickles because once reminded of them, she’d begun salivating for one.
“I even gave him a slice of pizza,” she told Honor today while the two of them sparred in the same basement sparring room used by Raphael and Dmitri during their bouts.
“But only”—she blocked a hand strike—“because I knew I had a delicious box of potato-and-spinach pakoras waiting upstairs. Izzy flew to my favorite vendor to grab them for me.” Her stomach rumbled. “Oh, now I’ve done it. Our little spark is hungry again.”
“Feeling among the warrior types is that you’ve just decided to kick back for a bit, have a season away from training and hunting like they all do now and then,” Honor said as she blocked Elena’s retaliatory strike. “They don’t understand about being hunter-born.”
“Yeah.” Her internal drive to hunt meant Elena had to stay in peak condition. Because not being in peak condition would mean she’d end up with her head ripped off—because not hunting wasn’t an option. She didn’t know how Vivek had done it, stayed sane all those years when he couldn’t hunt.
The year in the Refuge would be doable—just—only because her body had, over the centuries, become accustomed to an immortal timeline.
It gave her a few months’ more wiggle room before the need to hunt became a frenzied compulsion.
If need be, however, she’d fly to the closest territory, which happened to be Caliane’s, and get in a hunt. Talking of her hunting capability…
She attempted a full-speed pass at Honor.
Her fellow hunter just stood there, a statue in black workout tights and a dark navy sports bra, her soft black hair scraped back in a high ponytail. “Nope. Not playing.”
Having pulled up hard, her hand a centimeter from the other woman’s throat, Elena threw up her hands. “Ugh!”
It was ridiculous. No one would spar at full speed with her these days—the men wouldn’t even get on the sparring mat with her.
“Don’t want to die,” had been Izzy’s cheerful response.
“Today is not a great day for my funeral, Ellie.” Sam, that traitor.
Even languid Janvier had smiled a regretful smile at her. “Ellie, mon amie, how will you explain my dead body to my Ashblade, hmm?”
No one seemed to believe her when she said Raphael wouldn’t murder them.
At least Honor, Ashwini, and the other women had been more sensible—but even they drew the line at full-speed combat. “I feel like I’m moving in molasses,” she complained.
Honor rolled the deep green of her uptilted eyes as she said, “So sad. Watch, I’ll play my tiny violin for you.
” She rubbed her forefinger and thumb together.
“You’re moving at normal speed, not hunter-born, you ingrate.
And here I am, putting my body in the line of archangelic fury to give you a workout. ”
Then she moved.
Elena avoided a kick that would’ve knocked off her head had Honor been coming at her at full speed, then pushed the other woman’s leg aside and threw up a kick of her own. Honor caught it with one hand, twisted, and Elena twisted her whole body over with a gleeful “Hell yeah!”
Grinning as she came down on both feet, she said, “That’s more like it.”
“Don’t tell Raphael I cracked and gave you what you wanted,” her fellow hunter snarled with a pointed finger. “I’ll be one extra-crispy-fried vamp before either of us can blink.”
“Pinky promise.” Elena lifted her tank top away from her skin in an effort to cool down. Because much as it galled her, it was taking her more effort to even maintain normal speed these days. “Can you throw me a towel?”
After doing that, Honor grabbed them each a sports drink. “I still can’t believe you’re at seven months.”
“Can’t hide it much longer.” Elena used the towel to wipe the back of her neck, pushing her braid aside in the process. “The bump is going to bump.”
She oofed just then, as the kiddo poked her with an elbow or a foot. “If Raphael were here, he’d be smiling proudly right now.” It was adorable, how besotted her archangel was with their baby.
“He’ll be a good father.”
“Yeah.” Of that, Elena had no doubts; her ovaries melted at the idea of seeing him holding their child. “So, another round?”
“You want to do the flexibility training instead?” Honor held up her hands when Elena scowled. “No, not because you’re pregnant—though seriously, Ellie, why do you still have abs as a pregnant woman?”
She poked with zero force at Elena’s abdomen with the privilege of a friend who was welcome to make such contact. “Honestly, where is all that food going? Also, don’t show those abs to other pregnant women unless you want to get murdered. Pregnancy hormones don’t have time for that shit.”
Elena would’ve snorted the sports drink out of her nose if she hadn’t already finished the bottle. “Hey! They’re not abs!” She lifted up her tank top again. “See? It’s more kind of a faint outline of where muscle used to be.
“Nisia says the spark is fine, and that she’s seen other warriors carry this way before.” She rubbed her belly again, a goofy smile on her face. “Wow, I’m growing a kid in there. Wild.”
Honor was laughing when Elena looked back up. “Those are definitely abs, and yes, it’s wild.” A faraway expression in her eyes, an eerie weight to the air that made the hairs rise on Elena’s arms…but not in fear.
“I had children once,” Honor murmured. “In another life.”
Elena was startled only by the plain statement of a truth she’d already figured out a few centuries back—at least on the other life part. Even as a mortal, Honor had had a sense of age to her, a sense of maturity that didn’t align with her actual years.
As if she’d lived a whole other life and come out of it wiser and better. “Boys? Girls?”
“One of each.” Honor’s expression shifted, returned to the sharpness of today. “Why aren’t you calling me a weirdo for believing in past lives?”
“I pretty much died and woke up an angel,” Elena pointed out.
“Then I got wrapped up in a cocoon like I was captured by a giant spider and came out of that like a newborn baby with fresh new skin and no wings at all. Trust me when I say I have great respect for all the things I don’t know about the energies that power our world. ”
Honor’s lips curved, the sorrow in the deep green of her eyes softened by humor. “Yeah, I guess after all that, a soul returning to this world doesn’t seem like a big deal.”
Elena could’ve let it go at that, let the moment die in humor, but she said, “I like to think people get second chances.” Her chest was tight as she admitted that. “I like to think my sisters, Ari and Belle, got a second chance after they died so young.”
That Belle got to dance again, be all limbs and grace on a stage.
And Ari, with her camera and her wit, that she’d had the chance to travel the world, capture image after astonishing image.
“Me too, Ellie.” Honor’s voice was husky. “I’ve always thought my babies must’ve been given a second chance—I was, after all, and they were far more innocent.”
“Will you tell me about them?” Elena asked. “One day, when you want to.”
Honor nodded slowly. “Maybe one night while your little one sleeps safe and sound, and we’re having a beer on the balcony as we watch the city come alive in all its color and energy—because they were that to us, two bright stars that lit up our lives.”
Us.
The word made Elena wonder.
The training room door swung inward right then, a tall, broad-shouldered warrior in the opening. “Don’t kill me,” Izzy said in a tone that had deepened over the centuries. “I’ve been sent down by the sire to make sure you’re not overexerting yourself.”
He ducked the knife Elena threw at his head. It slammed quivering into the doorjamb above—where she’d actually aimed.
“Just the messenger!” he yelled before backing away, his golden curls shining in the overhead light—as if he weren’t one of the deadliest warriors in the Tower these days.
“I want danger pay!” he yelled before making a hasty retreat.
Elena glared at the doorway. “Excuse me, Honor. I need to go deal with a situation.”
“Strangling your consort might seem like a good idea,” Honor said through her very badly hidden laughter, “but remember, you love him.” She grabbed her communications device as Elena strode out of the room.
“I’m going to call Dmitri and share the gossip that Raphael is about to be the victim of a homicide. ”
Where are you? Elena demanded of her archangel.
Hiding from your wrath. The sea crashed into her mind. Why do you think I sent one of your favorites?
Elena would not laugh. But her lips twitched. I’m stopping by the armory to get more knives.
I restocked it with a set from the maker in Queens.
Still going to strangle you. But she was full-out grinning now. You still haven’t told me where you are.
I am not an imbecile, hbeebti.
A snort escaping her, she did burst out laughing then—surprising Mist, the slinky gray cat that was Greta’s.
“Sorry, Mist.” Elena crouched down to scritch the cat behind his ears. “He’s too clever for his own good.”
“I know.” And there he was, crouched opposite her, his wings spread on the carpet behind him, and his eyes twinkling. “Am I still in mortal danger?”
“I know where you sleep,” she threatened, but it was without temper. “I’m looking after myself, Archangel.”
Raphael exhaled. “I know, Elena-mine. I just feel so helpless that this one thing, I cannot help you do. You must carry our babe all alone, take the entire risk of it.”
Rising to her feet when Mist wandered off, she tilted her head to the side after he closed the distance between them. “What aren’t you telling me?” They’d loved each other too long for her not to read him like an open book.
So she knew this wasn’t about the mortal cells in their baby’s body—cells that had all but vanished from the baby’s bloodstream. What remained was of a ratio similar to those in Elena’s bloodstream. Which made sense to everyone only in that it meant their child was about as explicable as Elena.
Raphael took her hand, tugged her against him, nuzzling his face into her neck. It was a sign of vulnerability he’d show no other, only did it in this hallway because it was otherwise empty.
He was hurting, she realized. Deep inside, in a place he’d never shown her. Distressed, she stroked his hair. “Archangel?”