Archangel's Storm

honed.
    “It was a choice made in the aftermath of glory,” he said, the emotions from that night vivid in his mind. “I won’t ever try to talk you out of it”—he wanted a thousand lifetimes with her—“but I find I have just enough of a scrap of goodness inside me to not railroad you.”
    She smiled, his wife with her heart that belonged to him, a gift beyond price. “I still can’t believe you’re here, that we’re here.” Sliding into his lap, she laid her head against the bare skin of his shoulder. “I keep expecting it all to disappear.”
    “It won’t.” That was a promise he’d spill blood to keep. “Eternity or a single mortal lifetime, we’ll walk the road together.”
     

14
    H aving spent the remainder of the day listening unseen to courtiers and soldiers, mortals and vampires, angels young and old, Jason used the cloak of night to conceal himself as he flew over the fort. He was near certain of the identity of the person who had murdered Eris. However, he needed two further pieces of information—Mahiya was currently attempting to gather one of those pieces in the trenches of Neha’s court.
    Sweeping down to land near the exquisite courtyard garden where the beautiful had gathered tonight ostensibly to share their sorrow, he allowed the pool of darkness he’d chosen as his landing place to seep into him. Regardless of what some whispered, Jason couldn’t create shadows from thin air, but he could extend and amplify the smallest tendrils of the dark until he simply didn’t register in most people’s vision, or if he did, it was as a ghost image caught out of the corner of the eye.
    He hadn’t always been so at home in the shadows.
    “How can I be a night scout if I’m afraid of the dark?” His lower lip quivered as he walked beside his mother, helping her collect shellfish from the beach half a morning’s flight from their home.
    “Everyone’s scared of the dark when they’re young.” Tugging him to a shallow rock pool, she showed him a hermit crab crawling around with its home on its back. “You love the dark sometimes—like on the night flight you took with your father.”
    “There were stars then.” They had reminded him of the sparkly jewels his mother used to wear when the visitors came. No one had visited for a long time, probably because his father was always so angry. “It wasn’t really dark.”
    His mother’s amethyst dress floated in the breeze. “You already see better in the dark than I do—you helped me find my lost earring two nights ago, remember?”
    Jason nodded. “It wasn’t hard.” The black pearl with the pretty blue shimmer had kind of twinkled at him in the dark.
    “Not for you, my smart boy.” Laughing in that way that made him laugh, too, she said, “One day, you’ll see so well at night, it will be as if you walk in daylight. You’ll never again be scared of the dark.”
    His mother had been right. By the time he was a hundred and fifty, his night vision had developed to the point where he had the sight of a nocturnal predator. The dark was home to him, and now he wrapped it around himself as he stood watch.
    The open space was lit only by the flickering light from hundreds of candles, many cradled protectively in colored glass holders that turned the marble of the buildings around the courtyard into a dreamscape. As for those who stood within—laughter was muted, the hues less vibrant than might be expected in an archangel’s court, but that was the only bow to Eris’s death.
    No one would guess that his funeral pyre blazed tomorrow.
    Yet regardless of the many painted butterflies who held glasses of champagne and spoke with elegant gestures while subtly jockeying for position, he had no difficulty pinpointing Mahiya. Dressed in a silk sari of blue green embellished with a thin gold border, she moved through the crowd with the ease of someone on familiar ground.
    Right then, she halted, angling her head in his direction, her gaze so intent he imagined he could glimpse the brilliant tawny brown even from this distance. There was no way she could’ve sensed him, but he was certain she had. When she moved again, it was with a fine layer of tension across her shoulders. An enigma was Mahiya, with the manners of the court elite and the instincts of a hunter.
    Looking away to sweep the crowd with his gaze, he confirmed that Neha remained with Eris’s body. Jason had had confirmation that she’d granted Eris’s family