Guild Hunter 05 - Archangel's Storm

archangel who’d been alive millennia and who considered mortals little more than a disposable workforce. Yet age alone couldn’t account for her choice. Caliane was
far
, far older, and from all the reports Jason had had from Naasir, her people were well-learned and within her city lay a sprawling library open to all.
    No, the desire Lijuan had to keep so many of her people in ignorance came from within her, as did her power to reanimate the dead to shambling, horrifying life. And it was this archangel who might well be teaching Neha how to handle her destructive new abilities. Jason had to find out the content of those lessons.
    If Lijuan had groomed herself an ally to assist her in her malignant games, the earth might yet become a place of endless horror. A place where fire fell from the sky and the dead hunted the living for flesh, warm and blood drenched.
    *  *  *
    M ahiya was sitting on a bench in the pavilion in the courtyard in front of her palace, her magnificent wings spread on the marble behind her when he returned from speaking to Raphael. She said nothing until he came to stand beside her. “I keep thinking of her.”
    Jason didn’t need her to tell him who she meant. “It’s a natural thing. Nivriti was your mother.”
    Her head lifted, a slight hesitation to her as she said. “Your mother, Aurelani, is she alive?”
    “No.”
    “Wake up, wake up, wake up!”
    Hidden from prying eyes by the spread of her wing and the columns of the pavilion, she reached a hand up to close it around his. “I’m sorry. I’ve made you sad.”
    “No,” he said. “You didn’t. It happened an eon ago.” His emotions had aged, taken on a hue he couldn’t describe.
    “Will you tell me about her?” Tawny eyes looked up at him, her lashes casting lacey shadows on her cheeks.
    Until Mahiya, he hadn’t ever spoken of his mother to anyone, and even then, it had been in the guise of a romantic tale. He didn’t know if he could speak of
her
, of the mother the famed Aurelani had been to him, the scar tissue inside him a jagged barrier. “Ask me again another day.”
    “All right.” With that gentle agreement, Mahiya leaned her head against his side. “I asked Vanhi to tell me stories about my mother this morning.” Her fingers squeezed his. “She told me many things, including about the lake palace that was her favorite place in all of this land. It’s not so very far from here. An hour’s flight.”
    Jason looked down at the black silk of her hair, his mind filling with images of a desolate building covered with moss, its windows and doorways gaping maws. “Abandoned.”
    “Yes. When my mother was supposedly executed.” A quiet exhale. “It was made to last, the palace. Built of marble within the crater of a mountain, the ‘lake’ is filled by the monsoon rains. I don’t know if it still stands—”
    “It does.” He told her of his previous flight to this territory. “I came in as the sun was setting, and something caught the light. When I turned and circled, I saw only the shimmer of water—it took me a minute to find the building half hidden within the lake.” Covered by moss as it was, the water palace merged into the deep dark green of the lake, its camouflage perfect.
    “We have the whole day,” Mahiya said, her body warm against his own. “Neha is in seclusion—I do not know for whom she mourns, if it is for the people lost or her pets, but I’ve seen her like this before. She won’t reemerge before dark, will not think to ask where we have been.”
    “Come,” he said. “It may take me a few passes to locate the palace.”
    *  *  *
    M ahiya stared down at the building that had become a chameleon over the centuries, hiding in plain sight. Covered not only by a dark green moss that echoed the color of the water, but by fine vines of the same shade, it appeared nothing so much as a floating clump of greenery. Desolate as this place was, few angels would pass over it, and those that did wouldn’t be tempted to linger. It was a testament to Jason’s curiosity that he’d discovered it.
    “I didn’t have time to land then,” he said, hovering beside her with an ease she envied. “We can’t count on its stability.”
    “It’ll hold,” she told him. “It was built to withstand water, to endure through centuries.” Diving without waiting for him, she headed toward what she guessed had once been a large balcony or courtyard that hung out over the water. A dark blur