Archangel's Consort (40 page)

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Authors: Nalini Singh

BOOK: Archangel's Consort
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It won’t be for long. If the shield around the city is the trap, it’ll give us enough time to get back out.
With that, he flew, pulling her with him.
She knew the instant they hit the cool energy of the shield. The shock wave rocked through her entire body, but it was concentrated on where her fingers intertwined with Raphael’s, a wrenching pull that attempted to separate them. She knew if it succeeded, she’d be thrown out while Raphael disappeared inside the city she wasn’t sure wasn’t just a fancy mirage, a snare created by an archangel so old, it made her bones ache to even think about it.
Hold on.
She didn’t know which one of them said that, her body battered by icy rain that had turned brutal, her wrist bones threatening to break—Caliane was determined to smash them apart. Not on your fucking life, she thought, and set her teeth against the pain of tendons that felt like they’d snap the next second.
An instant and an eternity later, they were tumbling out of the rain and toward the strange city at high velocity. A few months ago, she would’ve been helpless to stop her descent. But a few months ago, she’d been an angel newly fledged. Releasing Raphael’s hand so she wouldn’t drag him down with her, she stretched out her wings and began to beat upward in strong, fast movements, fighting the speed of her own tumbling body.
It became clear very quickly that her velocity was terminal.
Four seconds tops and she was going to find herself smashed to jagged fragments against the flat gray stone of the roof below her.
Elena.
She shoved up her shields when Raphael would’ve taken over.
Conserve your strength.
Then she poured every ounce of her own strength into averting what might well be a fatal fall given her age. Lose enough pieces and she was toast, but she’d been training hard. She had the skill. She just had to—
Got it!
Her wings brushed the coarse stone of a building as she managed to shift her trajectory enough that she missed the roof and fell into the gap between two of the graceful gray structures. It gave her enough time to stabilize and get herself back up into the sky. She more than half expected Raphael to be furious with her for her defiance, but when she reached him, he was staring down at the city, his wet hair shoved off his face.
“What is it?” she asked, thrusting a hand through her own hair ... and realizing that no storm raged here. Rain lashed with unremitting force against the shield, but inside, the whole area was bathed in a golden light that almost succeeded in softening the stark edges of the buildings. “It needs flowers,” she found herself saying. “It doesn’t look quite right.” Unable to hold the hover, she made a controlled descent onto the roof she’d almost crashed into only a minute ago.
Raphael followed her down with far more grace. “It was once overrun with them.”
“With what?”
“Flowers.”
Walking to the edge of the roof, she looked down and saw an amazing array of carvings on the wall of the opposite building, the stone sparkling with hidden flecks of color that would turn this city into a brilliantly cut diamond in sunlight. Her heart slammed against her ribs. “What is this place?”
“The jewel in my mother’s crown. Though it is far from where it should be.”
“You know, most archaeologists believe Amanat never existed,” she said, staggered by the awareness of just how much power it would’ve taken to not only disappear, but
move
an entire city. “That it’s nothing more than a legend.”
A faint smile on Raphael’s face that didn’t reach his eyes. “I wonder at human archaeologists who do not speak to those of us who lived in these times of legend.”
Elena snorted. “As if any of you angels would answer their questions.”
You know us too well, Elena.
Light words, but the way he stood, the way he looked at this strange city of stone and shadow, it spoke of lethal alertness.
Her own guard up, she continued to scan the area for any sign of Illium. They stood on one roof, but other roofs stacked up to her right, lodged directly into the mountains, as if they’d been carved out of rock, had stood there for centuries. Which was impossible. Except of course, she was dealing with an immortal of such power that she scared Lijuan.
And that scared the bejesus out of Elena. “Illium?”
“He’s dropping in and out of consciousness, but I can sense him.” Stepping off the roof, he flew down to the ground with a grace and strength that made her wonder what he’d become in another thousand years. Something extraordinary, of that she was certain. Unless . . . whatever it was that their relationship was doing to him ended up stealing his immortal life.
No.
She repudiated the thought as her own feet touched the ground but knew it wasn’t a truth she could ignore.
“What do you see, Guild Hunter?”
For a moment, she thought he’d guessed the direction of her thoughts, but then she followed his gaze. This lost city, its stone walls carved with ethereal, delicate art she recognized as so ancient as to have no modern equivalent, slumbered around them, an elegant lady perfectly preserved. “It should be crumbling into pieces, but everything’s ...”
“As if the city is simply sleeping through a long night,” Raphael murmured.
Elena nodded. “Yeah.” Followed the thought through to its logical conclusion. “Raphael, what happened to the people who lived in Amanat at the time it went to sleep?”
Without discussion, they walked through the first doorway wide enough to accommodate wings, and found themselves in some sort of a temple full of light despite being carved into a mountainside. Elena didn’t know what she’d expected to see, but it wasn’t what they found.
32
 
They lay in peaceful repose, small groups of women curved
around each other, faint smiles on their faces, as if they were having the most pleasant of dreams. “My God.” Stunned, she kept watch as Raphael walked across the stone floor inlaid with precious gems of sparkling fire and dazzling brilliance, his wings leaving droplets of water in their wake.
When he bent to touch his fingers to the neck of a maiden—the word fit better than any other given the woman’s gauzy, flowing garment of softest peach, her tumble of curls laced with ribbon—who lay in graceful repose on a silk cushion of gold-shot ivory, she walked to join him.
“We’re right below the dais,” she murmured.
Because that dais was set only a few feet above the rest of the floor, coming to just below her breasts, she could see across the sweeping breadth of it, see, too, the square of stone that was a different color from the rest. It was, she knew without being told, the place where the statue of a goddess—not a god, not in this place that sang of feminine power—had once stood.
“She is warm.” Raphael rose to his feet. “The Cadre of my mother’s time was wrong—she took her people into Sleep, not into death.”
Elena shoved her hands through hair that was frizzy with damp. “Raphael, this kind of power . . .”
“Yes.” Walking up the steps cut into the side of the dais and to the empty space she’d already noted, he stared down at the square imprint. “The populace of Amanat once had their own gods and goddesses, but when Caliane claimed it as her home, they became her people, their devotion complete.”
“Did she sing them to that devotion?” Elena asked, able to hear the soft breaths of the sleepers now that she was listening for it. It raised the hairs on the back of her neck and nothing was going to get those hairs to go back down—not until they were out of the unnatural grasp of this city frozen in time.
Raphael shook his head. “No. Amanat was hers from long before I was born.”
Elena thought of all she’d read about Caliane in the history texts, all Raphael had told her, remembered, too, that his mother had been called the Archangel of Grace, of Beauty. “The love always went in both directions.”
“Yes.” Crouching down, he touched his fingers to the square of stone that spoke of absence. “Illium.”
Elena began to circle the stone walls below the dais, searching for an entrance. Nothing, the gray walls seamless. Then . . . a tiny blue feather lying at her feet.
Illium.
Tucking the feather into a pocket, she focused on the wall directly in front of where she’d found it. She felt nothing under her palms on the first pass. Or the second. But on the third . . . “Raphael, I think there might be a seam here.”
He was beside her an instant later. “I played in this temple as a young boy—I may remember how it opens.”
“Here.” She stepped away to stand guard while he ran his fingers over the spot.
As she watched, he appeared to press down on specific areas of the stone, though she couldn’t differentiate any one section of the wall from another. But the instant after he lifted his hand, the stone cracked open with a groan that spoke of great age, releasing a puff of dust that had Elena coughing as she ducked to poke her head inside.
At first, she saw nothing, the area beneath the altar was so dark.
Then her nose picked up the wicked bite of some exotic liqueur. Lime, she thought, it had the tart sweetness of lime, kissed with a richer, more languid flavor. It was a scent she hadn’t realized she associated with Illium until that second. “He’s here.”
“Be ready.” A brightness of blue.
In the lingering flash, she saw Illium’s crumpled form in the corner, his head tipped against the stone wall, his wings crushed under his body. “What’s she done to him?”
“Go, Elena.” Taut words. “I need to remain here to ensure the door does not close.”
Blinking against the aftereffects of the blaze of light, she stepped down into the cavern—it went deeper than the floor outside, until even Raphael could’ve stood upright—and made her way through the dark space by feel, stumbling over Illium when she miscalculated.
Please be okay.
Crouching, she touched his leg, his thigh, his chest, then finally, found her fingers on his face.
“Come on, Sleeping Beauty. I can’t carry you out of here.” He was too heavy with muscle, and under no circumstances did she want Raphael to leave the doorway—it would snap shut the instant he did, of that she was as sure as she was of her own name.
No response from Illium.
Leaning closer, she gave in to the urge to press her cheek against his, trembling in relief at the warmth of his skin. “Illium, you have to wake up. I need you to protect me against Dmitri.”
A change in his breathing, fingers brushing against her hip, then ... “Liar.”
Thank God.
She got to her feet, one of her hands around his. “Up, Sunshine, now.”
Illium mumbled something, but she could tell he was attempting to obey. He got himself on his feet after a few tries, but then all but collapsed against her. Bracing his front against her own, she let out an
oomph
before managing to manhandle him enough that she could wrap an arm around his waist, pull his own muscular arm over her shoulders.
“Walk,” she ordered, gripping at the wrist of the arm around her shoulders.
His wings lay heavy against her own as he spread them in an instinctive attempt to find his balance. The intimate slide was not something she’d have allowed even Illium under normal circumstances. Today, she held him even tighter, muttering orders in the voice of a drill sergeant in an effort to keep him conscious as she hauled him out of the pit where he’d been dumped, her back and shoulders straining against his muscled weight.
“Elena.”
Only when she heard Raphael’s voice did she realize she’d reached the doorway. “He’s dazed,” she told her archangel.
Illium lost consciousness again right then, becoming a dead weight.
“I’ve got him.” As Raphael reached in to haul the blue-winged angel up out into the light, Elena made a mistake. She put her hand on the wall and took a moment to catch her breath. At the same instant, Raphael shifted just out of the doorway, turning to set Illium down against the outside wall.
The door slammed shut.
The shock of the absolute pitch-dark was so sudden and unexpected that Elena didn’t scream, didn’t cry out, didn’t do anything but stare at the door that she
knew
was there, though she couldn’t even see her own fingers in the extremity of the blackness. There was no light. None.
Raphael?
she tried after a couple of seconds, her brain kicking itself back into gear.
Silence.
It didn’t scare her—she knew he was on the other side, working with single-minded focus to get her out. All she had to do was stay in place and fight the disorientation caused by the utter lack of sensory cues to aid perception. “Nice and easy,” she told herself, shifting very carefully to lean against the wall, her wings tucked neatly to her back. The quiet within the stone room was . . . tomblike.
That was when she heard them.
Whispers. So many whispers. Around her. Inside her.
Drip. Drip. Drip.

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