The sound of tires on gravel, Beth being driven home from elementary school. Elena dropped her bag and ran. She knew. But Beth must never know. Beth must never see. Grabbing her sister’s small body in her arms, she pushed past the man who’d once been her father and out into the bright sunshine of a cloudless summer day.
And wished she didn’t know.
Elena dressed with quiet determination the night of the ball. But the past, it lay like a thick black blanket over her, heavy, suffocating. She wanted to claw at her neck, to gasp in desperately needed air, but that would betray weakness. And here, any weakness would be blood to the sharks that circled below the music that permeated the city.
Turning, she spied the sweep of blue the tailor had designed for the ball. It was a dress. But it was a dress for a warrior. Already wearing panties and the spike-heeled black boots that came up to her thighs, her weapons strapped to her body, she picked up the dress, the fabric like water against her fingertips.
“You tempt a man into mortal sin.”
She sucked in a breath as she saw her archangel, his chest bare, his legs clad in formal black pants. “Look who’s talking.” He was beauty cut by time, a lethal blade honed through the ages.
Lifting the dress, she stepped into it. The material slid against her legs as she drew it up, the top half pooling at her hips. Raphael prowled to her, his eyes skating over the naked flesh of her breasts. Possession glittered in those eyes, and that was all the warning she got before the storm of his kiss, the touch of his fingers . . . the angel dust that filtered into her very pores.
She held the kiss when he would have broken it. “Not yet.” Then she took her archangel, drinking in the taste of him until it suffused her veins, infiltrated her cells.
“You,” Raphael said against her mouth when she finally set him free, “will kiss me like that tonight.”
It was an order she could live with. “Deal.”
Stroking both hands down over her breasts, Raphael lifted the two pieces of fabric that made up the top to her shoulders—after crisscrossing them below the neck—and began to tie a knot at her nape.
“I guess,” she said, licking her lips, feeling her thighs clench, “I don’t need makeup now.” Angel dust shimmered like diamonds on her skin.
Placing one hand on the naked plane of her stomach after ensuring the knot was secure, Raphael pressed a kiss to her nape, bared since she’d put her hair up in a tight bun. She’d considered spearing that knot with chopsticks, but her hair was too slippery to hold the ornamentation. Instead, she’d tucked in a small hairpin detailed with the image of a wildflower.
Simple. Perfectly adapted. Hard to kill.
It had been a gift from Sara, tucked beside the ring Elena had asked her best friend to order. The amber had come from a dealer who’d owed Elena a favor, the specific piece one she’d seen in his private collection. Balli had paid up the favor because it had been a matter of honor, but she knew it had to have hurt. Of course, once he saw where his amber had gone . . . The thought of his round face wreathed in smiles made her heart lighten.
Raphael played his fingers over her abdomen, his ring catching the light. “Your injuries?”
“Nothing to worry about.” Her thigh ached enough to remind her of Anoushka’s attack, but the cuts on her arms had scabbed over.
“Can you move?”
She spun out, reaching for the blades hidden in the butter-soft black leather arm sheaths she was wearing openly tonight, protocol be damned. The skirts of the dress parted like liquid, as if attuned to her every move. She lobbed a knife toward the archangel who watched her.
Catching it with lethal ease, he threw it back. She tucked it into the arm sheath, before testing how difficult it would be to get to the gun strapped to her left thigh. Not hard at all. “No problems.”
As she rose, the dress fell seamlessly around her body, all the slits elegantly concealed. “What are the chances I won’t need to use my weapons tonight?”
Raphael’s answer was terrifying in its starkness. “Lijuan’s reborn walk the halls.”
38
The ball was held outdoors in a massive courtyard framed by low buildings full of light, food, and musicians, the hypnotic strains of the ehru lingering in the air. Looking around, Elena couldn’t do anything but admire the stunning simplicity of it all—the thin, rectangular paving stones beneath the revelers’ feet had been washed until they gleamed a creamy white, the entire area lit with delicate lanterns in a thousand different hues, their light reflecting off the star-studded night sky.
Cherry blossom trees in full bloom—impossible—spread their lush pink arms over the courtiers, their limbs twined with lights that twinkled like diamonds. Elena picked a single perfect blossom from her hair. “I can feel the truth whispering beneath,” she said, scenting the barest hint of rot, of death, “but on the surface, it’s magical.”