The words chil ed the embers of passion. “Lijuan’s that powerful?”
Yes. “But her power has twisted and changed from our last confrontation. It now carries total death, even for immortals.”
“You were scored on your wings and shoulders before the chest hit.”
“I think that type of a glancing blow would’ve kil ed a weaker, young angel.” His hand closed around the back of her neck, gave a little squeeze. “I’m old enough and strong enough that she needed to strike me either in the head or in the heart.”
“God, Raphael.” The idea of his death made her scrabble inside in panic. “I can’t lose you.” She’d lost two of her sisters, her mother, and in every way that mattered, her father. If she lost Raphael, that would be it. She wouldn’t make it.
“I live Elena.” Quiet words, his arms holding her close. “Because of you.”
She jerked up her head. “What?”
“My mother said even my blood carries your mark.” Reaching up, he ran his finger down the shel of her ear.
“I thought she was being insulting.”
“No.” Raphael thought back to when he’d first met Elena, when he’d first begun to feel the impact of the nascent bond between them. “Lijuan told me you would make me a little mortal and, in so doing, kil me.”
Guilt colored her expression. “I have made you weaker, Raphael. You heal slower—”
He pressed a finger to her lips. “I should’ve considered the source. Everything came from Lijuan.”
“I don’t understand.” Lines formed on her brow as she spoke. “You’re saying she somehow twisted the truth? Tried to sabotage you from the get-go?”
“I don’t think she would have thought of it in that fashion.” Moving his hand down to curve around her throat, he rubbed his thumb over her pulse ... over the mark he’d put on her.
Elena arched into the touch. “She does seem to like you in that weird, creepy way of hers.”
“Such flattery wil go to my head, Guild Hunter.”
“Someone’s got to keep you humble.”
“Lijuan deals in death,” he told her, her laughter sinking into his skin, an invisible mark of her own. “A mortal is very much alive and of the moment.”
Humans didn’t have the luxury of wasting years or decades, their lives beginning and ending in a firefly flicker.
Elena’s eyes went wide, that thin ring of silver not apparent in this light, but he knew it was there, a silent meter of how deep immortality had grown into her cel s. “The change in you,” she said, “whatever it is, means you have the ability to resist her powers?”
“Not only resist, but neutralize.” Giving him an incredible advantage against the most powerful member of the Cadre, barring his mother. So long as he managed to get to safety long enough to recover from a strike, Lijuan could not kil him.
Elena whistled. “She knew. She knew that might happen.”
Raphael wasn’t so sure. “I think she had an idea of it, but I also believe part of what she told me was the truth—she did once have a lover who threatened to make her mortal.”
“And,” Elena completed, “she chose to kil him because he endangered her power. He scared her.”
“Yes.” He watched the expressions fly across her face. Such passion in that mortal heart, such a hunger for life. “Come here, Elena.”
She leaned down until her hair created a soft intimacy around their faces. “You worry that you have the seeds of madness in you”—a soft whisper husky with passion—“but you’l never become what she is. Never. ” Because Raphael had chosen to love when it had seemed the worst possible option.
His gaze was a cold mountain lake and the cool heart of a gemstone. “We may have unleashed a horror, Elena.”
She knew they were no longer talking about Lijuan. “If we’d kil ed her in cold blood as she Slept, or as she stood weakened before us, we’d be no better than monsters ourselves.”
“Then we wait.”
Epilogue
Three days later, Raphael looked across the semicircle of the Cadre at a glowing Michaela. Whatever the nature of her relationship with Astaad’s second, it seemed to be making her happy—for the time being at least. Flanking her sensual beauty were Charisemnon and Astaad himself.
Elijah had taken the seat to Raphael’s left, while Favashi sat next to the South American archangel. Neha reclined with regal grace beside her, Titus on her other side. Then there was Lijuan ... on Raphael’s right. It was the first official meeting of the Cadre the Archangel of China had attended in over a year.
Elena had asked him if Lijuan would be held to account for Caliane’s attempted murder, had been stunned when he explained that because the Sleeper lived, there had been no crime. Such was the ruthless world of the most powerful immortals.