Archangel's Storm

not spin hopes out of air and a dark sensuality that had marked her deep within. Jason had promised to help her escape, but she had no further claim on his protection. “So you see,” she said to Venom, “I must leave you here.”
    The vampire frowned. “Are you certain the message was from Neha? I saw her flying down toward the city not long ago.”
    “Yes. We are to meet at the ruined temple just outside the walls of the fort.” Still, uneasy with the unexpected choice of venue, she reached into a hidden pocket in her tunic to retrieve the small card. “It is her hand.”
    Taking the card, Venom rubbed his thumb over the script. “Yes, you’re right. But her writing’s not so ornate as to be impossible to forge. I don’t like the feel of this.”
    All at once, she knew why Venom had come to the palace, and her heart twisted. “Jason told you to watch over me.” It did something to her to know that Jason cared enough about her to have asked another of the Seven to keep her in his sights. No one had watched over her since she left the Refuge and the protection of those who undertook the welfare of angelic young. She was not so proud as to refute the emotions his care engendered in her.
    Venom gave her a faint smile in answer. “It says you have fifteen minutes till your meeting.”
    “I thought to arrive early.”
Give myself room to settle so that nothing Neha does will goad me into a fatal mistake.
    “Indulge me,” Venom said, “and arrive exactly on time.”
    Glancing up, she raised a hand and plucked his sunglasses off his face before he realized her intent. The way he moved away from her was a sinuous, beautiful,
fast
thing, but she held her position. “You had only to ask,” he said, pushing back disordered strands of hair as he rose from his combat-ready crouch, his green eyes vivid and hypnotic against the desert brown of his skin, warm and of this land.
    “I thought to read your eyes.” Mahiya handed back his sunglasses, a faint niggling at the back of her mind. “But that was foolish,” she said, the odd sense that she was missing something gone before she could pursue it. “I do not know anyone who might read such eyes.”
    Sliding the shades back on, Venom began to walk away from her. “Remember, arrive exactly on time.” Then he picked up his pace and was gone in a quicksilver snap of movement that was nothing human.
    Yet no matter how fast he was, he could not make it to Guardian before she did. Even so, she flew up to the palace roof to wait, having decided to give him the time he’d asked for, her sense of “wrongness” amplifying the more she thought about the situation. But not attending the meet wasn’t an option, not when it
had
most likely been Neha who’d sent the note—the archangel knew Mahiya had a sickening fear of Guardian . . . and she knew why.
    Please no! Please!
    It was the only time she had ever begged. It was also the only time she’d seen an expression of horror on Neha’s face, as if she could not believe her own actions. It hadn’t stopped her though . . . and Anoushka had been standing beside her all the while, her mother’s cold-eyed shadow.
    Only two minutes to go till the meeting.
    Spreading out her wings, she swept off the roof and up into the clouds, angling toward the ruined temple. In this, Neha had erred. Though Guardian made Mahiya’s skin sticky with fear sweat, the temple held only happy memories.
    Those memories a talisman, she swept over Guardian and its sentries. Some distance from the fort’s protective walls to the south lay the crumbling ruins of a temple that had been built long ago to honor the archangel who had ruled here before Neha. Neha wasn’t responsible for the destruction. It had simply fallen out of use some years after the archangel in question had been killed in a battle against another of the Cadre.
    While one entire side had collapsed, the roof having crashed onto the paving stones below, the other half was more or less upright. Ten sturdy columns held up the remainder of the roof, the holes in it scattering sunshine over the floor below to create a mosaic of light and shadow.
    Landing outside the temple, Mahiya took a deep breath of the thinner mountain air and folded her wings . . . just as a step sounded behind her. She twisted on her feet to find herself face-to-face with a Venom whose skin gleamed with sweat, his formerly pristine white shirt now damp and molding itself to sleek muscle, his