Archangel's Storm

information to uncover the name of the woman who’d worn it, but he knew where to look. Not in the inner court . . . or not in the center of the inner court. She’d be on the edges, a beautiful woman who felt she hadn’t received her due. Someone who’d both be flattered at Eris’s attentions and full of enough pride that she sought to cuckold an archangel.
    After all, she’d been audacious enough to wear an opal in Neha’s court.
    It was a game no one of age and honed intelligence would dare play, so she had to be young and impressionable enough to fall for Eris’s blandishments. To strip the veil off her identity would mean entering the battlefield of court, which Jason had no intention of doing. It was Mahiya of the cat-bright eyes, and silence as haunting as a wolf’s midnight song, who had the necessary skills to navigate that particular terrain.
    “Or maybe the killer used extra garrotes as ties?”
    Not much fascinated Jason after a lifetime spent unearthing secrets and listening to the darkest truths, but he found himself returning again and again to the problematic Princess Mahiya, a woman who didn’t fit her environment and who had secrets in her gaze older than they should be.
    It mattered little. She was an intellectual curiosity, one that would lose its luster once he knew every facet of her. Of that he was certain. Nothing and no one had managed to get under his skin since the day he dug a deep hole under the shade cast by happy yellow hibiscus flowers, the seagulls cawing and fighting overhead.
    Stretching out his wings with that truth in mind, he flew off Guardian Fort and along the ridgeline before winging his way high into the dark gray skies, the clouds yet heavy enough to conceal him from detection. It was here, far above land, that he felt more at home than anywhere else in the world.
    “Slower, Jason!” A hand gripping firmly at his ankle as he tangled his wings and threatened to plummet.
    “Father!”
    “I have you, son. Spread out your wings slowly . . . yes, like that.”
    Catching his other ankle, his father pulled him farther into the sky. “I’m going to release you again. Ready?”
    Taking a deep breath, Jason said, “Yes,” and felt his stomach tumble as his father opened his fingers.
    He was falling!
    Except this time, instead of fighting the wind, he turned into it, allowing it to sweep him out over the sparkling waters that surrounded their home, a shimmering blue green so clear he could see the darting orange and red stripes of the fish swimming through the coral reef.
    Above him, he heard his father’s joyful exclamation, and he laughed.
    It wasn’t that Jason couldn’t fly. He’d just never had need to practice the more advanced techniques, to go any farther than the roof of their home or up over the trees. However, if he wanted to accompany his father to the small uninhabited island he could just see in the distance—where his father harvested fruits his mother particularly liked—he would have to learn to ride the currents and conserve his energy.
    “Father!” It was a delighted cry this time. “I’m doing it! Can you see me?”
    “I knew you could do it, son! Well done!” His father swept out in front of him on wings of pure black but for the deep brown at the tips of his primaries, angled against the wind for a second before sliding into another updraft and circling back to their atoll.
    Copying him, Jason found that it wasn’t hard at all if he did what his father had taught him and thought first.
    “Efficient flight is as much about intelligent choices as brute strength.”
    Now Jason made a conscious decision to change his angle when he realized his father’s greater size gave him an advantage . . . and it worked! Until he felt like he was being carried on the winds. He couldn’t wait to show his mother, and when he saw the pale purple of her tunic in the distance as she flew up to join them, he pushed himself to go even faster, his wings shining blue black in the sunlight. His father said Jason was meant to be a night scout, like he had been in his youth, before he decided to pursue his passion for music and the instruments that created it.
    Jason wondered when he’d be allowed to fly alone during the night. He thought he might like chasing the stars, but it would get lonely after a while. Cold and lonely.

8
    S tanding on the railingless balcony outside his Tower office, Raphael considered the report he’d just had from Naasir.