They are fools. A harsh summation. They do not comprehend that what they were given was a gift not to be squandered.
Understanding sang a nocturne, melancholy and haunting, through her bones. Neha and Nivriti had been born as two halves of a whole. Had they remained locked together in friendship and loyalty as the centuries passed, Neha would have been an archangel with the most trusted of allies beside her. And Nivriti would’ve been the second to an archangel, the strongest of positions if one was not Cadre. More, they would’ve both had someone they could trust to tell the truth, no matter the question. Such a trust might well have saved them making the mistakes they had, given them a happier life.
But they had wasted that gift, allowed pride and conceit to tear them apart, until Neha was a woman without consort or child, and about to kill the sister of her blood. Meanwhile, Nivriti was a woman so consumed with rage that she’d rather chance never again seeing her child, than walk away from her quest for vengeance.
The glow around Neha turned white-hot.
“Angelfire,” she whispered, naming the deadly force that could kill even an archangel.
Jason shook his head. “Neha cannot create angelfire, but what she can create is just as deadly to the others in the Cadre.” Even as he spoke, a whip of green snapped out from Neha’s hand, a vicious thing as fast as the serpents that came so easily to the archangel’s hand.
Nivriti shut her wings and dropped at almost the same instant the snap left Neha’s hand, a move of such speed that Mahiya couldn’t follow it with the eye. “What was that?” She wasn’t sure if she was asking about Neha or Nivriti.
“The Cadre calls it the poison whip,” Jason responded. “A single brush against skin and it releases a deadly toxin into the bloodstream. As with angelfire, an archangel could beat a certain number of glancing blows, but an ordinary angel would die in seconds. A full strike with the whip to the heart or the head equals total death for even the archangels.” Jason’s eyes tracked the two women as Neha hit out with the whip and Nivriti dodged, her speed unnatural. “Did your mother also have power over snakes?”
“No, birds.” Her fingers spasmed on his as the poison whip came within what looked like a hairsbreadth of Nivriti’s face.
Suddenly the sky was full of fire. Their wings crisped, angels screamed and fell, crashing onto city roofs. Jason knew that while their bodies might be broken and burned, the majority would survive. So long as the head remained attached to the body and the flames were extinguished before they reached the internal organs, the charred, blackened remains would continue to breathe, continue to suffer.
“Neha’s new ability,” Mahiya whispered.
The fire winked out as quickly as it had exploded across the sky, but Nivriti’s troops had been decimated, though Nivriti herself had been fast enough to avoid the cauldron of flame. Now, she did something with her hands and a web of acidic green identical to Neha’s poison whip snapped out to wrap around the archangel, wings and all.
Neha fell.
Right when it appeared she’d crash onto the burning city below, she snapped the bonds, halted her descent, but Nivriti did not relent, continuing to entangle her in that clinging green web. It seemed to Mahiya that she heard Neha scream in rage as the archangel broke the bonds again and again before releasing the poison whip once more.
Nivriti dodged, wasn’t fast enough this time, and the poison touched the edge of one wing. However, contrary to the known impact of the poison on ordinary angels, she didn’t sicken and fall. Instead, she shot higher into the sky.
Neha followed, her wings ablaze with power, her hands wreathed in green. Nivriti turned, dropped a net of green filaments that wrapped around Neha, encasing her entire form. The archangel struggled, a fly caught in a web, and again she fell, but this time, the green turned white and cracked off her in pieces brittle as glass.
Ice.
The second aspect of Neha’s new abilities—but like the fire, it appeared limited, for the archangel did not attempt to freeze her opponent out of the sky.
“Jason.” Mahiya leaned into him, his wing sliding protectively over her own. “My mother should be dead, shouldn’t she?”
“Yes.”
Yet Nivriti continued to evade Neha.
A moment later, she did more than that. She threw the sticky web at Neha once more. Clearly confident she could neutralize it, Neha made no effort to dodge the net. But this time, the green strands blazed incandescent, and the archangel’s scream was of such agony that every fighter in the sky froze in place.
Mahiya reached out a hand, to whom she didn’t know. It just seemed terribly wrong that they should kill one another. Because Neha, flames licking around her body, had broken the trap at the last second—and Mahiya’s mother was close enough that she couldn’t avoid the strike of the poison whip.