Archangel's Storm

down her spine even now. However, that wasn’t the reason for her descent: It would not do for her to rise higher than the archangel—that lesson she’d learned on the fateful day a hundred years after her birth, when she’d officially crossed the line into adulthood and lost the protection afforded by Neha’s unwillingness to harm the young.
    The lesson had been a brutal one, the Master of the Guard instructed to strip her back of skin. Mahiya had long understood she lived on Neha’s sufferance, having learned the truth from a nanny who thought she should know her place in the scheme of things, the gift of knowledge a rough kindness.
    “Never forget that nothing you do will ever please her. To her, you are not a child to be protected, but a constant reminder of a betrayal that humiliated an archangel. Focus on survival.”
    As she’d hung from the whipping post, blood trickling down her back, Mahiya had understood something else. That Neha wanted to break her until she was a living warning on the price of disloyalty. Enough people knew the unspoken secret of Mahiya’s heritage that the warning would be understood.
    I will survive and I will survive whole.
    The vow was one she’d made even as the whip fell again and again. And it was one she had kept, refusing to let Neha twist her into an ugly mirror of Neha’s own hatred. Allowing the archangel to believe she’d succeeded in cowing Mahiya was a strategic move on the chessboard that cost her nothing but pride . . . and pride was a useless tool in the fight for her very existence.
    Jason landed after Neha, but that was to be expected—he was clearly acting as her guard in this moment. He ignored Mahiya’s presence, sparing her not so much as a glance.
    Something foul bubbled in her stomach, and she knew herself for the most pathetic kind of fool. What had she expected? That he’d continue to treat her with that inexplicable, alluring respect after it became clear exactly how little she mattered to Neha?
    “Jason.” Neha inclined her head in regal acknowledgment before entering the palace she used while at Guardian, ready to begin her vigil by Eris’s lifeless body.
    Swallowing the anger within her that could ruin everything, Mahiya said, “Do you wish to return to Archangel Fort?”
    A nod, and he rose again, in a burst of blinding speed.
    Her heart leaped into her throat.
He was faster than Neha.
Her own rise felt childish and painful by comparison, but she got airborne and made her way to the fort through the crystalline blue skies while Jason went so high he wasn’t even a dot in the distance, reappearing at the last minute to arrow down to a clean landing in front of her—their—palace. The area appeared deserted, the guards having decamped after removing Eris’s body.
    Jason folded back his wings, waited for her to do the same. Then he turned to her. “Do you not,” he said in a tone calm and measured, “have enough respect for yourself to not allow Neha to treat you like something scraped off the bottom of her shoe?”
    The shock of the unexpected blow was so absolute, it felt as if he’d punched a fist into her rib cage, crumpling her bones inward where they ripped and tore and made her bleed.
    *  *  *
    J ason realized he’d made a mistake the instant after he spoke, as Mahiya’s face paled to a sickening shade, her breath jagged. It had been a long time since he’d spoken without thought, and he knew he’d allowed his anger at Mahiya’s acceptance of the treatment meted out to her by Neha to color his thinking.
    Shifting a fraction closer, he spread his wings as if stretching them. “We are watched.” He made his tone a whip. “Do
not
break.”
    She blinked at the harsh order, and then it was as if a rod of steel had been thrust through her spine, her tawny eyes wild with fury. “A test, spymaster? If so, I failed.”
    So at last, I see you again, Mahiya.
“I could have spoken with more care, but that would not change the heart of my question.”
    Her fury now tightly controlled, she walked not into the privacy of the palace, but through the delineated pathways of the courtyard garden, the area bright with lush blooms that mocked the desert climate, the water running down the sides of the pavilion offering a cooling wash of air. “Am I meant to thank you for calling me a spineless coward?”
    “No,” he said, his own anger far more tempered but no less dangerous. “But you must know that weakness, real or