Archangel's Legion(72)
The depth of her sudden dislike made Elena pause, wonder if she was being fair . . . but then Tasha put her fingers on Raphael’s forearm as she brought up another shared memory. Elena didn’t play games like this, and in any other situation, she would’ve called the woman on it, but there were far more important things in play tonight. Still, she wasn’t sorry to see the back of Tasha when the other angel was called away by a friend.
Raphael’s head jerked up without warning a second later. “Lijuan is here.”
Looking up, Elena saw nothing but starlight. “You can sense her?”
It appears my ability has another aspect.
An instant later, the sky kind of . . . rolled overhead, akin to a heat wave in a desert. Then an angel with wings of flawless dove gray and hair of pure white, her dress an ethereal black, was landing in the center of the courtyard in a graceful descent. The crowd gasped, tension crawling across the large space like the blood Lijuan so often brought with her.
Stay with me, Elena. Raphael cut through the frozen mass of guests, his target not Lijuan but Caliane.
The blade from her thigh sheath already discreetly in hand, Elena made sure to keep Lijuan in her line of sight as they moved through the gathering. Will your mother take this as a hostile act? Elena wouldn’t blame her if she did.
It’s a possibility. She may, however, decide upon chill politeness.
Here’s hoping for a win for angelic etiquette. Two seconds later and they were there.
Caliane’s face a mask of icy fury, she acknowledged Raphael with a glance before stepping out into the now empty—but for the single uninvited guest—center of the courtyard.
“You do not observe the rules of Guesthood.” Caliane’s words were coated in frost and when Elena’s breath misted in front of her, she realized the drop in temperature wasn’t only metaphorical.
Lijuan smiled, her hair flying back from her face in a wind that affected nothing else. “On the contrary.” She raised a hand. “I bring you a gift.”
Ten winged warriors landed behind her with military precision, all dressed in dark gray with Lijuan’s red symbol on their chests.
Raphael stepped toward his mother. Elena.
Understanding the message, she came to a stop slightly behind and to the left of Caliane, while Raphael flanked the Ancient on her right. As if they’d been waiting for exactly that, a squadron of fighters in the midnight blue of Caliane’s forces landed behind them.
“The gift,” Caliane said, actual frost beginning to coat the hem of Elena’s dress and the tips of her wings, “is unsuitable and must be declined.” It sounded like a rote response, except that Caliane’s razored voice had come a hairsbreadth from slicing flesh.
“A pity. They are a well-trained unit.” Smile deepening against skin so thin Elena could see her skull beneath, Lijuan didn’t break eye contact with Caliane.
Elena wondered if Raphael’s mother heard the screams she always did when looking into those pearlescent eyes, as if Lijuan held within her a thousand trapped souls.
“I,” Lijuan continued, “also bring reparation for the damage I did your city on my previous visit.”
Two of her men carried forward a chest, opening it to reveal a pirate’s ransom in gold and gemstones. “A sign of my goodwill.”
“The damage done cannot be so easily repaired,” was Caliane’s frigid response. “The breach is final.”
Audible gasps, the guests closest to the confrontation flinching as if in anticipation of violence.
Elena tightened her grip on her blade, her fingers chilled but functional. Raphael?
My mother has just told Lijuan that no matter how long they live, there can never be anything but enmity between them.
Not a surprise, and nothing that explained the panic she could see on the faces of those who stood nearby. It’s not done to say it so bluntly?
Not unless one side is anticipating another betrayal.
Oh. Caliane, she realized, had just called Lijuan a liar in front of a crowd of the most powerful angels and vampires in the world.
Lijuan’s smile didn’t fade, but Elena saw a slick of black begin to crawl across the eerie paleness of her irises. “It disappoints me to hear that.”
“It disappoints me to have to say it, but your welcome was also a steep disappointment.”
Another round of flinches, but this time Elena had caught the insult buried in what seemed, at first, an incomprehensible statement. She’s talking about the fact Lijuan attacked her right after she rose from her thousand-year Sleep.
The crashing sea of Raphael touching her mind, clean and strong and wild. It’s a shadowy line, so not all may agree, but it was a questionable act at best.