Archangel's Enigma by Nalini Singh
At least if he found the Grimoire, he could court her in truth. He wanted to seduce her, wanted to make her melt. Mostly, he just wanted to keep her.
*
Andromeda woke to skies streaked with the vivid violets and golds of sunset.
Still wearing the robe she'd discovered on the back of the bathroom door, she got up to find her wings rested and her feet no longer as sore. Maybe she was getting stronger now that she was nearly four hundred. Rubbing her eyes on that sleepy thought, she wandered into the bathing chamber and threw cold water on her face before drying off and going to explore the options in the closet.
There were four gowns in various rich shades, three tunic and pants sets, and even a pair of jeans and a shirt. She chose a black pants and tunic set, the stark lines of it offset by the delicate silver pattern painted around the neckline. It reminded her of the color of Naasir's eyes.
Where was he?
Dressing as that question pounded in her blood, she gathered up her crazy mass of hair--thanks to falling asleep while it was yet damp--and somehow tamed it into a braid, then slipped her feet into a pair of outdoor slippers. There were also boots in the closet in various sizes and she knew she'd be wearing a pair when she and Naasir departed Amanat.
Why wasn't he here yet?
Leaving her sword in the room--she didn't think Caliane would be impressed by a visitor who came to pay her respects wearing a blade--she stepped out to look for Isabel. The other woman wasn't in her home, so Andromeda stopped a passing man to ask for directions to the temple. She used the language she'd heard spoken when Avi showed her to Isabel's courtyard.
Beaming, the handsome ebony-skinned citizen of Amanat replied in the same tongue, offering to act as her escort to her destination. "Thank you," she said, "but I'd like to go slowly and fully absorb this wondrous city."
Cheeks creasing again, he gave her what she needed and she carried on.
The light show of sunset had begun to fade to a paler palette, but there was yet no need for the tall standing lamps that bordered the pathways. When she peered up, she saw that despite the weathered iron that gave the impression of having grown old apace with Amanat, the lights within were electric.
Amanat was clearly being upgraded for this century. Either Caliane was more forward-thinking than Andromeda had believed, or she had a forward-thinking advisor. Andromeda would bet on the latter. It was apt to be Avi's beloved Jelena. As loyal to Caliane as Avi, Jelena was keenly interested in new inventions and technologies, and had often come to the Library seeking access to manuals.
Carrying on down the path, Andromeda saw a small black puppy, his coat smooth and shiny, running toward her. When he flopped down in front of her as if exhausted, she laughed and picked him up--whereupon he regained his energy and was a wiggling, excited bundle determined to give her wet puppy kisses.
Andromeda held him for some time, his warm body and the fast beat of his heart a reassurance, something familiar in an unfamiliar place. Her childhood may have been unorthodox in ways that had scarred her, but it had also been joyous because of the myriad animals who'd been her refuge, her friends, and her companions. They didn't lie, didn't look at her in disappointment for her scholarly inclinations, never made her feel as if she was a mistake.
It was a good thing Andromeda was so clearly her mother's daughter--it avoided awkward questions about the other side of her bloodline. Andromeda had always wondered if Lailah had chosen Cato in part because he'd permit her to exercise her tendencies without limits. After all, he was exactly the same.
If you were mine, I wouldn't let you rut with others.
Her face flushed just as the puppy wriggled to be put down. Placing him on the ground, she watched him race away on stubby little legs, but her mind was on a predator with silver eyes.
Naasir was like the animals who'd kept her sane during her otherwise friendless childhood. She didn't think he'd take the comparison as an insult--not when he had the same honest core. He was far, far better than most "normal" people she'd met in her near-four hundred years of life.
"Andi!"
She jerked up her head at the call to find Isabel waving to her from in front of a set of wide doors that led into the temple carved into the side of a mountain. A number of exhausted-appearing young women flowed out of the temple and toward nearby homes.
Deep orange tunic and pants offset by a green fabric belt tied to the side, a bright pink gi-style top matched with wide-legged white pants, a vivid blue tunic that came to mid-thigh paired with black leggings, those were three of the more conservative outfits.
Biting back a laugh, Andromeda joined Isabel by the doors. "Warrior clothes?"
Affectionate amusement in Isabel's eyes. "I think they consider anything with pants, or that shows the legs, as scandalous and warrior-like." Unlike her drooping students, Isabel didn't appear as if she'd broken so much as a sweat. "Caliane is walking the orange grove at the other end of the city. We'll fly to her."
"An orange grove in this climate?" Andromeda said before she realized the shield around Amanat allowed Raphael's mother to control the temperature within. "Does she ever lower the shield?"
"Not since a maiden was killed by one of Charisemnon's diseases." Isabel's lips flattened into a thin line as Andromeda's stomach dropped. "He thought to use Kahla as a carrier, but she died before infecting anyone. It broke Caliane's heart."
"I'm so sorry," Andromeda said, nauseated at knowing the murder had been done by a member of her family . . . and terrified what Caliane would do to her for it.
"It wasn't your doing." Isabel squeezed her shoulder. "You are as innocent as Kahla."
Flaring out her wings on those quiet words, Isabel took off.
Andromeda followed, knowing full well that Caliane might not be as forgiving.
Deep in the orange grove, the Ancient wasn't dressed in one of the flowing gowns in which she was so often depicted in scrolls and illustrated manuscripts. Instead, she wore faded brown leathers similar to Avi's, her midnight black hair pulled back in a braid much like Andromeda's.
"Isabel," Caliane said in greeting when the warrior-angel landed, her voice hauntingly pure. "Are my maidens improving?"
"Like snails, my Lady."
Caliane's smile was unexpected and startlingly beautiful, her lips soft pink against skin of pure cream. "You must be patient--they are hothouse flowers suddenly exposed to the wind and the rain." Her smile faded. "Would that it wasn't necessary to teach them thus, but the world is changing into a dark place where the innocent are no longer safe."
Isabel bowed her head slightly in a gesture of respect. "I bring you Andromeda. She is Naasir's friend, of whom I spoke to you earlier."
"Ah." The excruciatingly pure blue of Caliane's eyes, eyes she'd bequeathed her son, locked with Andromeda's. "Charisemnon's grandchild." Daggers of ice in that voice that could be a beautiful, horrifying weapon. "And yet you show the good taste of escaping from Lijuan to help save Alexander's life."
"My Lady." Not sure what else to do or say, Andromeda bowed deeply--unlike Isabel, she wasn't a trusted warrior but a much younger guest.
"Is there a reason I shouldn't execute you this instant for the crime done in my city?"
Blood a roar in her ears, Andromeda dared meet Caliane's eyes. "If blood alone is what defines us, no child born is born in freedom."
Caliane's wings glowed for an endless heartbeat before subsiding. "Well said, fledgling. And do not look so terrified--I am not in the habit of hurting children for the crimes of their elders." The archangel glanced at Isabel while Andromeda tried to keep from shaking. "Go, Isabel. I know you must do your flight over the city."
"Lady." Isabel left with another small incline of her head.
"She watches over my city as diligently as if it is her own," Caliane said conversationally as she motioned for Andromeda to join her in her walk amongst the rows of trees that made up the grove. "I've told my son I will tempt her into staying with me, but he is confident i
Andromeda took a moment to think. Some older angels could take grave insult at a single wrong word, and she had no desire to end up eviscerated. "Your city is astonishing," she said, doing nothing to hide her wonder. "For me, it's like being shown a treasure box." She could spend weeks just walking the streets of Amanat, listening to the lilt of its people's voices. "But Naasir is meant for wilder places and less civilized adventures."
"Like my son." Caliane's love for that son was a piercing arrow to the heart. "Raphael collects the wild of heart to him."
"He is the archangel who is least stuck in time," Andromeda ventured to say. "Even Michaela, who so often plays to the cameras, keeps a court that works much the same today as it did a hundred years past."
The pure white of Caliane's wings seemed to glow even in the muted light; Andromeda was grateful that they no longer glowed in truth, because when an archangel glowed, people generally died.
"He is my son," Caliane said quietly. "And he is Nadiel's son. Together, we created a child who will one day fly higher than both of us."
Having the sense that Caliane was speaking more to herself than to Andromeda, Andromeda kept her silence.
"Now he makes me even prouder by seeking to protect Alexander." A cold tension in Caliane's regal features. "I Slept during that time, but Jelena tells me that Alexander once thought to raise an army against Raphael."
Andromeda took her life into her hands. "Yet he didn't in the end," she said. "I think he was tired and he saw Raphael as a young interloper. War was the easy answer to his need to find a reason to go on living in the world. In the end, he showed his wisdom and left the world to the young."
Caliane pinned Andromeda with eyes aflame with power.
Her throat dried up, her pulse a rabbit in her chest.
25
"As I did in my time," Caliane said at last, turning her attention back to the glossy green trees as they continued to walk. "Alexander was my compatriot, but we were never friends. He was a terror as a child, always breaking his bones and skinning his knee, while I was a girl who preferred to keep my dresses clean and to have civilized tea parties free of dirty boys."
Andromeda felt wonder unfurl in her. Caliane's memories came from a time so long ago that there was no one else awake in the world who knew them. "Is it lonely?" she asked impulsively. "To be the only Ancient in the world as Alexander once was? The only one with memories of times long gone?" Lijuan might believe herself an Ancient, but even if she was older than anyone knew, her age came nowhere close to Caliane's.
Caliane didn't strike her down for the impertinent question. Rather, the Ancient smiled. "I see why you are Naasir's friend, scholar. You are as recklessly courageous as my son's leashed tiger."
Naasir isn't leashed, Andromeda thought. He simply chose to give his loyalty to Raphael--and she had a feeling Raphael understood that. Their relationship wouldn't otherwise be so strong.
"Yes," Caliane said after a minute's quiet. "It would be a pleasure to have a compatriot to speak with of times no one else remembers--perhaps I will invite Alexander to Amanat when he wakes. He grew up into a great general, and despite his foolishness in threatening my son, seems to have learned a modicum of civilized manners along the way."
Andromeda realized Caliane was saying more than her words told. There was a hidden undertone to her statement. Caliane and Alexander hadn't been friends, but instinct told Andromeda they'd been more than strangers. Not lovers; that wasn't it. It could be as simple as the fact they'd sat on the same Cadre--perhaps they had exchanged dry insults across a negotiating table, all the while conscious that in the end, only an Ancient could understand another Ancient.
"Do you know of any secret places lost in time where he might Sleep?" she asked, hope burning inside her. "Could he have hidden himself under the earth as you did?" If so, the Sleeping archangel was safe.
But Caliane shook her head. "No, Alexander didn't have an affinity for the earth."
Andromeda's brain clicked--despite having risen from the sea, the Legion, too, were rumored to be of the earth. Raphael must've inherited some of his mother's gift, though his had manifested in a different form. "If not earth--"
"Hush, child." A deep frown. "My memories are tangled skeins I must unravel."
It was over a half hour later, the world gray, that Caliane said, "Metal. Alexander's affinity was to metal. He could make iron flow like water and draw gold and silver out of the earth."
Andromeda's eyes widened. That fact was in none of the Histories.
"When he was a cocky youth, he pulled gold out of the earth in front of me and fashioned it into a bracelet." Caliane shook her head. "He and Nadiel had such a rivalry . . . but Alexander grieved with me when my love's heart no longer beat, and he remembered who Nadiel had once been."
Andromeda heard the thickness of grief in Caliane's voice even now. What must it have cost her to be forced to execute her insane mate? Andromeda couldn't imagine the depth of her pain. About to gently excuse herself and leave Caliane to her private memories, she heard the Ancient draw in a breath.
"If I know Alexander, he will have built himself a vault of metal in a hidden place." Caliane's voice was so confident it confirmed Andromeda's belief that the two Ancients had been closer than anyone realized. "It would've been impregnable to everything except angelfire when he went to Sleep, but Jelena has been teaching me about the new machines using hot light."
"Lasers?" Andromeda guessed when Caliane paused.
"Yes. I think such a machine could cut through Alexander's metal, even if Lijuan was not there to use the poisonous black rain she spews from her hands."
It was news Andromeda didn't want to hear. "Will he wake when disturbed?"
"To wake from Sleep is normally a long and slow process," Caliane told her. "If Alexander's subconscious terms you a threat when you first disturb him, you may end up dead before you can explain anything. I would recommend you waste no time once you have his attention."
Andromeda swallowed, but felt no temptation to step back, attempt to hide. Far better that her last moments be spent with the most incredible man she had ever met, working to save the life of an Ancient, than to feel her soul shrivel away in her grandfather's court.
*
Naasir was climbing through the treetops of Kagoshima under early evening starlight, the resident monkeys chattering at him for invading their territory, and Amanat almost within sight, when everything went quiet. The monkeys in the trees, the wild horses below, the birds in the sky. Naasir.
Holding himself in position, not even a breath stirring the air, he listened. The hairs rose on the back of his neck, the early warning system one civilized beings had learned to ignore. Naasir didn't.
So he caught the unfamiliar scents on the breeze, heard the beat of wings snapping out to land. Turning very carefully, he made his way soundlessly through the trees. The monkeys didn't give him away--they might scold him bad-temperedly, but when it came to animal against other, they saw him as one of them.
They also knew who belonged this close to Caliane's territory and who didn't.
The wings Naasir could see below definitely didn't. It appeared he'd underestimated Lijuan's generals--it was pure luck the light squadron had arrived too late to pluck Andromeda from the sky. Pressing himself down along the branch, Naasir strained his senses to hear what the four angels were saying.
". . . go inside?"
"Negative." The tallest male sliced out a hand at the sole female angel's question. "We don't want to start hostilities. Philomena was clear that Lady Lijuan has other priorities. Our task is only to retrieve the scholar."
The angel on the left, the one who had skin as dark as Naasir's, nodded. "She must be here--the last sighting from one of our people in the country puts her above the southern end of Kumamoto. There's no other safe haven nearby, and she's too young to have the enduranc
"Agreed," said the final man, and though his dialect differed from the others, it was familiar enough in the basics.
When Naasir was yet a child, Dmitri had told him he must learn as many languages as possible, so no one could keep secrets from him. This wasn't the first time that advice had held Naasir in good stead.
"We watch and we wait," said the angel who seemed to be the leader. "She can't stay here indefinitely."
The woman appeared dubious. "Amanat is a jewel for any historian."
"But she has certain responsibilities in the Refuge. If she does decide to stay, we'll reconsider our options."
"Can we afford to wait?"
"Philomena wants her as soon as possible, but we can wait tonight. If she doesn't leave with the dawn, I'll contact the general."
Naasir listened further, learned the squadron intended to spread out around Amanat, covering one quadrant each. He thought about taking them down one at a time, but if they were used to checking in with one another within short periods of time, he'd betray his hand. Deciding to leave them to their surveillance and wanting to ensure the four didn't suspect he'd spotted them, he retraced his steps until he was about an hour out from Amanat, then ran toward the city openly.
Unlike Andromeda, he didn't have to wait for an escort to enter Caliane's territory. The city shield knew him, opened automatically in a welcome that was a ripple of archangelic power over his skin. The only person who could revoke his access was Caliane.
He picked up Andromeda's scent the instant he hit the temperate air of Amanat; it was a shiny, delicious thread in the active mix of a thriving city.
"Naasir!"
He waved at the friend who'd called out to him from the second story of a nearby building, but didn't stop. Isabel's cool, clean scent crossed with Andromeda's at one point, then both scents ran parallel toward the walled courtyard Isabel used as a sparring ground.
He grinned when he heard the clash of swords.
Loping up a wall on one side of the sparring ground, he crouched on top and watched Isabel and Andromeda dance with blades. His former partner in Amanat was good . . . but Andromeda was better. He hadn't expected that. Neither, he saw, had Isabel. Naasir knew her, could read her expressions, tell when Andromeda's moves surprised her.