“Good.” She needed time to get her own head around her new reality before explaining it to anyone else. “Was that what you wanted to tell me?”
“No. One of the dancers heard the vamps are placing bets on you surviving a year.”
“What’re the odds?”
“Ninety-nine to one.”
Elena didn’t have to ask which was the winning side. “What do they know that I don’t?”
“Rumor is, Lijuan has a habit of feeding her guests to her pets.”
6
Raphael watched Michaela lift the crystal wineglass to her lips with the effortless grace of a woman who’d had centuries to perfect her elegant facade. Impartially speaking, she was beautiful, perhaps the most beautiful woman in the world, her skin a flawless shade akin to the most exotic coffee swirled with cream, her eyes a green that put gemstones to shame, her hair a tumble of black threaded with bronze, brown, a hundred shades in between.
Stunning—and she used her looks as effectively and as unemotionally as others might a gun. If men, mortal and immortal, had died because they’d fallen prey to that beauty, that was their mistake.
“So,” she now purred, venom coated in honey, “your hunter survived.” When he didn’t say anything, she made a moue of disappointment. “Why keep it a secret?”
“I didn’t think you were that interested in Elena’s survival.” Only her death.
To her credit, Michaela didn’t pretend not to understand. “Touché.” Raising her wineglass in a toast, she took a small sip of the golden liquid. “Will you be very angry if I kill her?”
Raphael met those poisonous eyes of vibrant green, wondering if Uram had ever seen through to the vicious heart of the woman he’d called his consort. “You seem to have a fascination with my hunter.” It was a deliberate statement. Elena was his, and he would protect her.
Michaela waved off the words. “She made interesting prey, but now that she’s lost her abilities, the sport will be far too easy. I suppose I should just let her be.”
It was a very smooth, very calculated offer. “I think,” he said, not correcting her erroneous assumption, “Elena is more than capable of looking after herself.”
Michaela’s cheekbones cut sharply against skin men had died to touch. “Surely you don’t think her my equal?”
“No.” He waited, watched her face suffuse with pleasure, with satisfaction. “She’s something utterly unique.”
For a single icy instant the mask slipped. “Be careful, Raphael.” A predator looked back at him, one who’d clean blood off her fingers with chilly fastidiousness, even as she watched her victim writhe in agony at her feet. “I won’t sheathe my claws because she’s your pet.”
“Then I’ll ask Elena not to sheathe hers.” Taking a sip of his own wine, he leaned back in his chair. “Will you be at the ball?”
A blink and the mask returned, pristine and perfect. “Of course.” She ran a hand through her hair, the move pushing her breasts against the olive-colored fabric of a dress that bared just enough to tempt most men to madness. “Have you ever been to Lijuan’s fortress?”
“No.” The oldest of the archangels lived in a mountain stronghold secreted within China’s extensive borders. “I don’t think any of the Cadre have.” Though Raphael had managed to get several of his men inside over the centuries. At present, that task was Jason’s, and each time he returned, Raphael’s spymaster brought more and more disturbing news of Lijuan’s court.
Michaela swirled the liquid in her glass. “Uram was invited there once when he was much younger,” she told him. “Lijuan took a shine to him.”
“I’m not sure whether Uram should’ve been flattered or not.”
A soft, intimate laugh. “She is rather . . . inhuman, isn’t she?” This, coming from a member of the Cadre, spoke to the extent of Lijuan’s “evolution.”
“What did Uram tell you of her stronghold?”
“That it was impenetrable and filled with countless treasures.” Her eyes sparkled, whether in contemplation of those treasures or from the memory of her lover, Raphael couldn’t say. “He said he’d never seen such artwork, such tapestries and jewels. I don’t know that I believed him—have you ever seen Lijuan wearing even a diamond?”
“She has no need to.” With hair of purest white and eyes of a strange pearlescent gray that he’d seen nowhere else on this earth, Lijuan was unforgettable without ornamentation. And these days, Raphael thought, the other archangel’s attention was fixed on a world the rest of them couldn’t even begin to fathom. She hadn’t left her stronghold at all this past half year, not even to meet with her fellow archangels. Which made the ball all the more extraordinary. “Has she invited the entire Cadre?”