Archangel's Storm

them a little farther up the beach.”
    He patted the sand over the coconut he’d buried, the sound of the waves lapping at the wet sand a familiar music. “Why?”
    “The sea might wash them away otherwise.”
    Considering that, he decided she was right. “Will you help me carry them?”
    Her smile made him feel warm inside in a way nothing else ever did. “I was hoping you’d ask.”
    Jason could barely remember what that warmth had been like, the echo of his mother’s love faded and dull, but he knew it had been something piercingly beautiful to the heart of the boy he’d been, and so he knew such beauty existed. Mahiya didn’t even have that. For her sake, he hoped that Neha had found herself unable to execute her twin, as she’d been unable to execute her consort.
    “Will you tell Neha?” Mahiya’s question was nearly silent. “What we’re considering? That. . .my mother might be alive?”
     

31
    “N eha alone knows the truth of our supposition,” Jason said, thinking through the matter, “and if we are right, and your mother is already free, telling Neha cannot disadvantage her.” The vampire with scarlet hair was unlikely to be the only one of her people Nivriti had found, gathered together. “Neha may also have an idea of where Nivriti might have located her base of—”
    Mahiya made a sudden tight sound in her throat. “If it is my mother, I know why she killed Arav.”
    So did Jason. The man had hurt Mahiya, hurt Nivriti’s child, deserved punishment. Jason found he had no argument with that, and the realization made him halt, consider who Mahiya was to him. He had no answer to that, but he suddenly saw one to her earlier question. “I will not speak to Neha about this.”
    Mahiya shuddered, shook her head. “No. If she murdered Shabnam, I can’t protect her.”
    “This isn’t about protecting Nivriti.”
    Mahiya’s eyes searched his face. “What is it?” Closing the distance between them, she placed her hand on his chest. There was tenderness but nothing proprietary or possessive in the touch, and he knew she spun no moonbeams in the air, expected nothing from him but the man that he was.
    Something tense and waiting in him relaxed. He didn’t want to end this with Mahiya, but it was a decision he would’ve been forced to make had she sought to claim him, sought to see in him a future he couldn’t build with her. Not in the way Dmitri had with Honor, Raphael with Elena.
    “A hostage,” he said, his hand on her lower back. “If we give Neha this information, we give her a hostage.”
    Mahiya’s eyes widened in pained understanding, but she shook her head. “You risk breaking the blood vow, Jason.” A fierce whisper. “It could mean your death.”
    “There is time yet.” Until he was certain Nivriti lived, this fell under his mandate, his silence no threat to the vow. “And I will not put you in harm’s way.” He’d made his choice, and it was this woman with her eyes as bright as a creature wild and dangerous for whom he’d raise his sword, not an archangel full of centuries-old hatred.
    Mahiya’s lower lip quivered. “You must not.” Her fingers brushed his jaw, her mouth soft on his own. “Thank you for putting me first. No one else ever has, and I will never forget that you did so.” Her voice cracked. “But you yourself said Neha might know where my mother might be hiding. I cannot buy my life with Shabnam’s blood screaming for justice. If we are right, then my mother killed her as surely as she killed Arav. But this time, for no reason.”
    “There was a reason—Shabnam was Neha’s favorite.”
    Mahiya lifted a trembling hand to her mouth. “Akin to a child destroying a sibling’s favorite toy out of jealousy or spite.”
    A scream ripped through the fort on the heels of her horrified words.
    *  *  *
    N o angelic or vampiric body awaited them this time, but there was carnage nonetheless. Thrown across what seemed like every inch of the public audience hall were the limp, mangled bodies of at least twenty of Neha’s pet snakes, the columns that held up the structure splattered with blood.
    “This took time.” Mahiya knelt down beside the thick body of a tree boa whose dry leathery skin continued to gleam a dramatic green. “The snakes aren’t tame as such—they come only to Neha’s hand. Tracking and patience, this required both.”
    Hearing the sadness in her tone, Jason met her gaze in wordless question.
    “After Guardian,”