Archangel's Storm

guidance, felt what it was to be loved, for the Teacher loved all her students.
    Then she’d come “home,” turned a hundred . . . and learned that Neha’s cruelty had simply been saved for the adult that hopeful, innocent child had become. The man who stood beside Neha was proof enough of that cruelty—even if the archangel hadn’t ordered the seduction, she hadn’t warned Mahiya about Arav’s duplicitous courtship, either, making certain that Mahiya’s first taste of romantic love would be a bitter one.
    “You didn’t tell me you had spoken with Mahiya.” Neha’s voice was silk over steel.
    Arav’s cheeks creased in a smile that glowed with charm. “We passed as I was on my way to speak to you.” He favored Mahiya with a condescending look of approval. “I did not say how glad I am to see you looking so well.” Raising his glass, he took a sip of wine, the square ring on his index finger flashing vivid blue in the candlelight, the stone a rare form of tourmaline.
    “He is like a peacock, spreading his feathers and squawking loudly . . .”
    “Thank you,” she said with a smile so dazzling, it took Arav visibly aback.
    Small crystalline sounds silvered through the air as the glass bangles on Neha’s wrist moved against one another. “Come. Let us be seated.” Her gaze landed on Jason. “As guest at the fort, you sit on my left. Arav can entertain Mahiya—they are great friends.”
    Mahiya felt an ineffable tension radiating off the man next to her, though his expression remained opaque, and she knew it was because of her. She also knew she couldn’t allow him to make an enemy of an archangel in an effort to spare her from Arav’s attentions. “Actually,” she said with a quick smile, “I see scholar Quinn across the room. I’ve just read his newest treatise, and I promised him I would talk with him about it.”
    Neha didn’t bristle—the vampire was one of her favorites. That mattered less than the fact that Jason was no longer a blade about to be unsheathed.
    *  *  *
    “A ll in all,” Mahiya said to Jason after the tea had been served and they were readying themselves to return to their palace, “it was not so terrible a dinner party.” Quinn had been a lovely companion, and Neha had been so engrossed in conversation with Rhys and Jason that she’d ignored Arav most of the night. “Arav has no idea who he’s dealing with—Neha’s playing with him as a cat does with a mouse.”
    Jason’s response to her murmured supposition was silence. She didn’t read anything into it. He was, she thought as they walked out and began to cross the courtyard, thinking about the subject before he replied. “Temperature’s dipped.” Still, the night air was relatively balmy—though when she glanced up, it was to see the stars hidden by fat clouds that threatened rain.
    When something fell from that sky, she thought it must be a bird, it was such a tiny thing. But then it grew bigger and bigger and—“Jason!”
    However, Jason had already seen. Instead of running toward the body that had just crashed to the earth in a splatter of blood and bone that sprayed guests closer to the impact site, he shot straight up into the air, chasing the one responsible for the carnage.
    Mouth dry, Mahiya watched him go, a black arrow soon invisible against the night, then made her way to the body, taking care not to step in the gore. She shut out the sound of a woman screaming about the blood on her face, the deeper voices of the men who called out to one another in a panic, the snap of the wind as others took off in pursuit, and swallowing her gorge, she focused only on the identity of the body.
    That square ring of rare blue tourmaline, those mottled brown wings . . .
    For a second, her brain couldn’t quite process what it was she was seeing, and then all her synapses fired, connections made, and she realized the angel without a head and likely without internal organs, was . . . “Arav.”
    *  *  *
    J ason was fast, an ace at vertical takeoffs, but his prey had disappeared by the time he breached the heavy layer of dense waterlogged clouds. Given the limited time frame and Jason’s speed, he guessed the killer had flown just out of visual range, then dropped in a steep dive to slip into a hiding place.
    Cocking his ear to the wind, he listened to where it had been interrupted, used it to track as one of the hunter born might use a scent. The ephemeral trace ended abruptly in