“Elena, col apse your wings.” Raphael dropped just below her and went vertical, as Il ium did the same on her other side.
Realizing what they intended to do, she snapped back her wings. One strong masculine hand closed on each of her upper arms at the same instant—
as they came in for a tight landing in the courtyard where people might once have waited to enter the shrine. Or maybe ... Bending down when Il ium and Raphael released her, she brushed away the leaves and dirt to uncover traces of a gritty white substance. “I think this might’ve been a sand garden.”
Neither of the men spoke, moving away toward the building. Looking up, she glanced around. Given the size of the shrine, it was possible that the sand garden may have been part of a larger garden—complete with velvet green grass and trees planted after the utmost thought and care alongside a smal bubbling stream, perhaps a tiny Japanese maple or two with leaves that would turn a bril iant orange red come autumn.
So quickly nature takes over, she thought, rising to her feet and dusting off her hands. Now, though enough light came in through the canopy that they could see what they were doing, it was soft and shaded by the time it hit the ground, and the roots of several forest giants had not only overwhelmed the sand garden, they appeared to have gone under then cracked upward through the floors of the shrine itself.
Walking to one huge root, she put her hands on the wood and vaulted over, her wings trailing across the knotted surface as she did so. “Find anything?”
she cal ed out to Raphael, unable to see Il ium.
He glanced over at her from where he stood by the entrance. She took a startled step back. His eyes . . . “Raphael, talk to me.”
That unearthly glow continued to shine unabated as he held out his hand. “Come here, Elena.”
Walking careful y over the twisted and broken remains of two low steps, she reached out to take his hand, let him pul her up beside him. “What do you see?”
That inhuman gaze focused on something in the forest. “I see nothing, but I hear her.”
Raphael.
Elena shivered. “I heard that, too.” Looking down at their clasped hands, she realized the glow from his skin was traveling over hers in a glittering wave.
“What’s happening?”
Raphael shook his head, silken strands of midnight black hair sliding across his forehead. “I do not know. But I know that my mind is clearer when you stand beside me.” His eyes continued to smolder with that preternatural fire, as if he was burning huge amounts of power ... to keep Caliane at bay, she realized.
She dropped one of the knives from her arm sheath down into the palm of her free hand. “Do you stil want to look inside the shrine? The debris in front of the door isn’t too bad.” What little she knew about Japanese shrines said this was unlikely to have been the main entrance—but from what she’d seen
in the air, the front was inaccessible.
“Yes.” He returned his attention to the ruins. “My mother was Cadre. She is adept at games, may wel be trying to lure me away from here because it is her resting place.”
Glancing around, Elena frowned. “Where’s Il ium? Inside already?”
“I cannot hear him.” Raphael’s tone was sharp.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Elena said, hand tightening on the hilt of her dagger. “Not here, with the static.” But her heart thudded double-time. Not Il ium, she thought, not the angel who’d become one of her closest friends.
“Wait.” Raphael held her back when she would’ve headed down to where she’d last seen the blue-winged angel. “I wil go first—there are things here you have no hope of defeating.”
“Go.” She wasn’t stupid, no matter that worry for Il ium had her frantic. The angel had become one of her people, someone she’d fight to the death to save. “Be careful Archangel.” Because if she loved Il ium, what she felt for Raphael was beyond words, beyond her ability to describe. A huge, powerful, near-painful emotion, it simply was.
“Death holds no al ure for me, Elena.” The power of him cut against his skin, a cold white fire. “Not when I have yet to sate my hunger for you.” Turning, he walked not to where she’d last glimpsed Il ium, but into the bowels of the shrine. “He came in here.”
Fol owing, her entire body on alert, she paused by a long, pitted column that bore flecks of what appeared to be rust-colored pigment and checked in the shadows around its side. Seeing nothing, she continued on, the rustle of her and Raphael’s wings the only—“Wait.” Gripping Raphael’s arm, she stopped him when he would’ve gone farther into the depths of the building.
When he glanced back at her, she leaned forward to brush the dirt off a cracked but stil -standing column using her fingers. “Do you see?” It was a whisper.
Raphael reached out to trace the shape of the dragon carved into the eroded surface. “This should not be part of this shrine. Everything about it is wrong.”