Archangel's Storm

determination. She wasn’t a woman who would easily break . . . and he was not a man who would ever shatter a woman’s spirit. However, there were other ways of getting what he wanted—and he didn’t have time to play games. “We both know I hold the cards here.”
    “You swore a blood vow to me,” she pointed out, though her skin had paled under the soft shade created by the fine leaves of the tree under which they stood. “You cannot cause me harm.”
    “Remember the words we spoke,” he said, crushing his primal response to her refusal to surrender. “I am charged only with unearthing Eris’s murderer and protecting your family’s interests as I do so. And it appears you have traitorous intent.”
    She clenched her jaw. “What will you tell her?”
    “It depends on whether or not we can come to an accommodation.” So long as he completed his task and discovered the identity of the killer, he was not bound to report everything he found to Neha.
    A hardened jaw, flinty eyes. “And what is your price, my lord?”
    The last two words may as well have been an insult. “Tell me about that room,” he said, his gaze dropping to lips thin with anger, “about what goes on within.”
    “I don’t know,” she grit out. “I’ve never been able to get inside.”
    True enough, he thought, watching a face that was incredibly expressive if you took the time to learn the subtle movements that betrayed her every thought. And Jason had taken the time. “But you’ve seen something.”
    Her wings rustling restlessly, she blew out a deep, shuddering breath. “Ice. It coated the walls, covered the door. My breath frosted, and I could feel my blood beginning to freeze.” She shivered. “My veins . . . they stood out against my skin, and when I pressed down, they felt hard.”
    Angels were built for flight, and as such, did not feel the cold as mortals did. And what Mahiya was describing was a cold so terrible, it was an impossibility in this particular region. Yet, as far as he knew, Neha’s archangelic abilities did not include the capacity to manipulate the elements.
    “Was Neha alone in the room?”
    The tiniest hesitation.

12
    “I ’ve never seen her enter with anyone.”
    Very cleverly put, but Jason had been playing this game centuries longer than Mahiya. “Have you heard her speaking to anyone while she’s within?”
    “If I tell you everything,” she said in a tone so resolute, it was granite, “it won’t matter if you betray me to Neha. The end result will be the same.”
    Jason considered why a princess might need to hoard dangerous knowledge. “You need a bargaining chip,” he guessed. “For what?”
    “Why are you doing this?” A hunted look in her eyes, the pupils vivid black against cat-bright irises. “Stripping me bare?”
    That look, it hit the part of him he preferred to pretend didn’t exist, but he didn’t back off, didn’t soften. He needed to know who Mahiya had heard in that room with Neha, because if what he suspected was true, the world might yet drown in horror such as no one could imagine.
    The princess twisted away to give him her back, her wings sweeping in graceful arches to the dusty earth, in direct contrast to the rigid stiffness of her spine. “I’m going to die soon if I don’t find a way out.” The words were as stark as the land that surrounded them. “Neha will never voluntarily set me free to live my own life, and she no longer has any reason to keep me alive—I was only ever useful as a means to torment Eris.”
    “And as a surrogate to punish,” Jason said, all of the pieces he’d glimpsed coming together to form an ugly, twisted whole. “Where do you plan to go?”
    She turned on her heel, showed him two empty palms. “Where can I go?” Rippling anger in every word. “I want only a life away from this prison of hate, be it in a hovel, but only another archangel can stand against Neha, so it
must
be one of the Cadre.”
    “Lijuan is the closest.”
    Blind terror racking her frame, so vicious and deep that he made the rarest of moves and reached out to touch her, squeezing her upper arm. “Mahiya.”
    “Not Lijuan.” Her voice was hoarse, as if she’d been screaming.
    “You’ve attempted it before,” he guessed, the warmth of her skin lingering on his palm though the contact had been fleeting. “What happened?” There were a thousand horrors in Lijuan’s court, a thousand nightmares given flesh and blood form.
    Mahiya