“But I didn’t and he could not help me once others learned of my transgression.”
Illium’s words dashed cold water on the heat of her self-protective response. She couldn’t do the same to Raphael, couldn’t make him helpless in the face of her pain. Taking a shaky breath, she placed a fisted hand on his chest and knew it was time to stop hiding from the damage she’d done.
• • •
About to tell Elena that they wouldn’t leave this balcony until she told him the truth, Raphael was silenced by the light weight of her fist against his chest.
“In the Refuge,” she began, “I heard what they said: that you were the most powerful youth anyone had ever seen.” Her voice was raw emotion, her features bleak. “You became Cadre at the end of your first millennium—it makes you extraordinary. And now . . .”
He saw it then, the torture she’d been inflicting on herself, and had to willfully temper his anger that she’d do this, cause herself harm in such an insidious way. Releasing his grip on her chin so he wouldn’t inadvertently hurt her, he ended the statement she’d begun, not bothering to conceal his fury. “Now others are gaining vicious powers, while I appear to have gained only a negative ability.”
Stubborn as always, his consort held his gaze. “It’s true and it’s because of me.” Visceral pain. “I’m your assassin—no one else!”
16
Elena could push him to the edge faster than any other, but Raphael fought his rising anger to say what she’d forgotten. “My ability is the only one that has had any impact on Lijuan.” The Archangel of China had been stunned that he’d managed to cause her physical harm.
“Yes, but we both know it won’t be enough.” Skin pale from the way she held herself, all taut muscle and tendon, Elena dropped her hands to her sides. “Not against Lijuan’s reborn and not against Neha’s ability to create fire and ice, just to name two of the others. You said it yourself.”
He’d never meant for her to take his words as an indictment. Even more, he’d never expected Elena, brash and honest, to hold such damaging thoughts within . . . but he should have. His hunter, after all, had held the horrific loss of her family inside herself for nearly two decades, keeping it even from her trusted best friend.
“I,” he said, infuriated with her even as he wanted to bring Slater Patalis back to life so he could send him to a torturous death, “do not make a habit of hiding accusations behind the words I speak to my consort.” That she may have believed such of him had rage lacing a film of red across his vision. “And I will not tolerate you concealing your thoughts from me in this way.”
A glint in his consort’s eye. “I told you—don’t speak to me like I’m some soldier you’re disciplining.”
“I would break every bone in the body of any soldier who dared lie to me.” Elena had never held her tongue around him, even when it might’ve been the smarter option, and he had no intention of allowing that to change.
Violence in those eyes of silver-gray. “You’re making me want to go for a blade.”
He raised an eyebrow, well aware she’d read it as a taunt.
Releasing a hissing breath, she thrust her hands into his hair and, tugging down his head, pressed her lips to his instead of slicing cold steel across his flesh.
He took the kiss, demanded more, demanded everything. Even angry and on edge, she was his, would always be his. Wrapping his arms around her as their tongues lashed against each other, their bodies primed for a furious intimate battle, he said, Tighten your wings, and took her into the air, spreading his glamour to cover her, until they were invisible to the world.
• • •
Chest heaving, Elena broke the kiss to see that Raphael was flying them across the river toward Manhattan. “Let me go. I have my own damn wings.” And she was pissed with him for the way he’d spoken to her.
“Not yet.” He kissed her this time, the hand he thrust into her hair unraveling her braid as he used the grip to hold her mouth to his own.
She could’ve escaped if she’d truly wanted to, her training as a hunter as well as that under Galen having given her more than one dirty trick, but she wanted to fight with him. So she bit at his lower lip and when he responded by deepening the kiss, his arms steel around her, his tongue licking at the roof of her mouth, had to battle her body’s instinctive response, the place between her thighs slick.
Wrenching away her head, she glanced down . . . and saw he’d taken them high, high above Manhattan, to an altitude she couldn’t yet reach on her own. Her eyes widened. “No.” She glared at him. “I told you I will not dance with you above the—” Her words ended in a scream as he flipped them so their heads pointed toward the city . . . and closed his wings.