The back was open but for the fine straps that held the top together—and the long line of the spine knife Elena had slipped into a decorative black and gold metal sheath. Because of course, he’d had to go retrieve her weapons before anything else. She wore the harness below the dress, not because it equaled a more aesthetically pleasing appearance, but so no one could tear it off her without first tearing off her dress.
“Priorities,” she’d said to him when he questioned the dangers of having the leather and metal rubbing against her skin. “And Deacon lined the leather of the harness, so I can wear it against my skin without issue.”
That lethal blade wasn’t her only weapon.
She wore a gun in one thigh sheath, a hunting knife in the other. Both of which she could reach for through invisible slits built into the froth of her gown’s skirt. All of Elena’s gowns had such adjustments.
Raphael was pleased.
He didn’t want the spine knife to be her only choice: guns might not kill strong angels, but a bullet shredding flesh would hurt even the most powerful angel at least a little. It’d give her a second or two to get into a better defensive position should all hell break loose. “You can reach your gun?”
Elena had it in her hand almost before he saw her move.
A sharp grin, then she lifted her bare foot and placed it on his thigh. Circling her ankle with one hand, he watched her hike up her dress to put the gun back into place in the sheath she wore on her upper thigh. “Montgomery makes the tailor do mock-ups of my gowns and I move in the mock-ups to make sure the adaptations work.”
Sliding his hand up the smooth skin of her thigh, Raphael made himself a promise that he’d be the one taking off the sheath tonight. “I have your blade.”
He allowed her to slip away her foot, then rose to close and buckle up the soft leather straps of the sheath on her upper arm. That sheath glittered with jewels, the buckles brilliant gold. The hilt of the blade itself was as encrusted with jewels, a suitable “show” weapon for an ordinary consort.
Elena wasn’t ordinary.
And the blade he’d given her could separate a wrist from an arm without the least problem. “Will you wear your hair sticks?” Jason’s princess had given the weaponized sticks to Elena, and Raphael had brought them in with the gown.
In return for Mahiya’s gift, Elena had gifted the other woman a crossbow commissioned for the princess that was designed to support her personal style. According to Jason, Mahiya used it every day, not wanting her skills to become rusty.
“Yes,” Elena said. “I want to have my hair up so the long knife on my back is visible. The sticks give me another hidden weapon.” She twisted up her hair with quick, practiced hands, slid in the sticks to hold the twist in place.
Willing to step out of the bathroom and the shield of glamour at last, she padded to their bedroom and found a case of cosmetics before returning to the bathroom. “This should only take a couple of minutes.”
Raphael loved watching Elena ready herself to head out into the world—even more, he loved that while she could spend ten minutes getting the position of a weapon just right, it really did only take her a minute or two to “paint her face” as she put it.
“It’s a weapon, too, you know,” she said as she focused on dusting her eyelids with finely shimmering color. “The face, I mean. Distraction and obfuscation. Took me a while to understand that.”
Raphael admired his hunter-consort’s wings of midnight and deepest blue and dawn and so many shades from black to white gold. “Michaela is an expert at it.” The other archangel had long ago learned to use her extraordinary beauty to blind others to her power and ambition.
“Yeah, she’s good.” Elena picked up a small flat disk that she opened to reveal some kind of hard-pressed powder. “Sara’s been helping me learn ‘next level’ stuff—beyond my usual routine.”
“I would not think the head of the Hunters Guild would care much for such niceties.”
“You kidding? Sara has to deal with powerful immortals every day.”
And those immortals, Raphael realized, often put too much emphasis on beauty and aesthetics, forgetting a hunter’s skill was her greatest weapon. “What has your friend taught you?”
“I’ll show you in a minute. Mahiya taught me something, too, the last time she and Jason came over to stay.” A pause. “Don’t look at me in the mirror. I want to surprise you.”
“I will admire the curves of your body instead.” And he did, particularly the long, nearly bare sweep of her back.
Not long afterward, she put down a tiny pot and turned toward him: a warrior princess who looked at him with eyes of wild silver that appeared huge in the dark gold skin of her face, her cheekbones razors and her throat a long line.