“I wish I could disagree,” Raphael said in a tone as grim. “But honor is no longer what it once was.”
Astaad stroked his neat black goatee, nodding slowly in silence.
Elena’s blood chilled without warning, her spine stiffening. She caught a sensual, smoky perfume the next second. Not too thick, not cloying. Just right.
Curling her fingers into her palm to still the itch to go for a weapon, she kept her expression neutral with sheer strength of will as Michaela came to stand beside Astaad. “How is Dahariel?” she asked the other archangel. “I have not seen him these many months.”
This is interesting.
Archangel, you have a talent for understatement.
15
Astaad raised a thin black eyebrow. “My second is as strong and hale as he ever was. He hasn’t succumbed to a mystery illness, gone mad from the toxin, or had an accident befall him.”
Michaela threw back her head and laughed and it was an exquisite sound. Her eyes were sparkling when she looked at Astaad again, her amusement apparently genuine. “Ah, you know how to wound me, old friend.” She sent Raphael a fond glance. “Not all of my lovers have come to such terrible ends.”
The implication was clear but Elena was no new consort easily manipulated by venomous barbs. “If you’ll excuse me,” she said to Astaad before shooting Raphael a smile, “I see Hannah calling me over.”
Raphael held her in place with the gentle pressure of his fingertips on her lower back. “In fact, if you could excuse us both,” he said to Astaad and Michaela. “I must speak to Elijah before dinner begins, on a matter to do with our shared border.”
“Of course. We will talk again.” Astaad lifted Elena’s hand to his lips for a good-bye that fit him. She’d come to realize that the Archangel of the Pacific Isles had a decidedly romantic side. She could see why Mele and his other women adored him.
“Careful, Raphael,” Michaela murmured with a touch of malice in her tone, “or I’ll start to think you do not like me.”
“Has there been a man born who does not like you?”
Raphael’s question seemed to delight the female archangel. She was beaming when they left—and didn’t seem to realize that Raphael had simply posed the question, not answered it. “So,” Elena said once they were out of earshot, “the Bitch Queen is still intent on hitting on you.”
“Sadly, she will remain forever unfulfilled. I do not sleep with spiders who eat their mates after sex.”
Elena bit back a laugh, couldn’t quite manage it when Raphael leaned in to say, “I prefer women with knives.”
Laughter rippling out of her, she kissed him quick and fast, and as she drew back, she saw Favashi take in the interaction from where the Archangel of Sumeria stood with Neha. There was something sad about Favashi’s lovely face at that instant, a terrible, deep-down sadness. It was gone a heartbeat later, wiped away to be replaced by archangelic impassiveness.
“You said Favashi and Rohan were close once.”
“Very,” Raphael responded. “He would’ve stood by her side had she accepted it, but Favashi has never been satisfied. She wants the strongest, the most powerful. Alexander’s son was a powerful general but he wasn’t enough for her.”
“I think she’s regretting that choice.” Her heart hurt for the other woman. “He had a good life before Lijuan murdered him, didn’t he?”
“He had a life many a man would covet,” Raphael reassured her. “The evidence of that stands beside Alexander.”
“Yes.” Xander was young and green, but it was obvious even on short acquaintance that he’d been deeply loved and had known stability all his life. The murder of his parents hadn’t broken him. It had dented him a little, but he’d recover, especially since he had his grandfather by his side.
“Hannah,” she said, the two of them having reached the other woman and her consort. “I’m so sorry but I used you as an excuse to escape a certain conversation. Please talk to me.”
Tucking her arm through Elena’s, Hannah smiled. “You may use me as an escape from Michaela any time you wish.” Her lips twisted into a very un-Hannahlike expression. “Do you know she tried to seduce Elijah once? After we’d been together for a century!”
Elena’s jaw dropped. “No.”
“She apparently thought he’d have tired of his ‘little artist’ by then.” An arch look. “Unfortunately for her, Elijah has an astonishing appreciation for art.”
Elijah smiled a slow smile at his consort’s teasing, his golden hair shining under the lights that poured down from the chandeliers above and his wings a sweep of pure white. “It has always been about the art,” he said in a solemn tone that made his lover’s eyes dance. “I am Hannah’s most devoted patron.”