It wasn’t a direct hit, but it did damage.
Mahiya stifled her cry of loss, but Neha didn’t follow the strike with a deadly second hit, her flight path erratic. “She’s badly injured.” Impossible—Neha was an archangel. And yet . . .
Fire licked the sky again, fell onto the city to set more of it alight. The sticky green threads her mother flung out in return, one of her wings dragging, missed Neha to alight on that same city. Screams rose up from the ground, eerie and anguished, the city beginning to glow orange as the flames took hold.
Mahiya’s blood filled with horror, a ravaging need to do something gripping her throat, images of the toymaker’s innocent son circling in her mind. Right when she would’ve spoken, Jason spread his wings. “I must stop this.”
“Yes.” Between them, Neha and Nivriti would devastate the city and keep going, both too angry and enraged to give up, though it was clear they were injured enough that it might yet be lethal. Ignoring the hows and whys of how her mother could’ve harmed an archangel, she squeezed Jason’s hand. “We need to stop this. For now, these are my people and I will not let them burn.”
She’d readied herself to fight, but Jason touched her jaw in a fleeting, unexpected caress before giving a curt nod. “Neha’s side is in as bad a position as your mother’s. Seeing her hurt demoralized them.”
“I have value as a hostage again.” Mahiya nodded. “I’ll stick close to you.” It bloodied her to think of Jason hurting in order to protect her, but as he understood her need to do this, she understood he was a man who would never allow his woman to go into danger unaccompanied and unshielded.
Mahiya?
That tenderness again, something she never heard in his physical voice.
Yes?
Do not get hurt.
It was an order, followed by a hard kiss that left her breathless. Intending to pull her weight, Mahiya picked up the crossbow she’d dropped, along with a case of ten spare bolts she hung over her arm. She’d purloined an old crossbow from the guard several decades ago, on the rationale that unlike swordplay or hand-to-hand combat, it was something she could teach herself.
In the intervening years, she’d had to steal replacements, but her plan had worked. She’d managed to sneak in target practice in the mountains at least twice a month until her last crossbow broke five weeks ago. I’m no expert, she said to Jason, but I usually hit my target.
Good. I’ll need you to watch my back.
With that unexpected statement, he led her on a low flight path over the blistering heat of the city, until they were positioned between Neha and Nivriti. She’d assumed he’d fly up to where they fought, somehow attempt to stop the battle, but he drew his sword, pointed it downward. A second later, black lightning crackled along his arms and over the hands he had fisted around the hilt of the sword, and she realized he was shoving his midnight power down through the conduit of the blade.
A trickle of sweat poured down his face, his biceps rigid . . . and shadows began to coalesce throughout the city, thick and heavy, snuffing out flame, stopping agony. People screamed at the river of soft black until they saw it sheath burning victims, smother the flames before moving on. Then they tried to direct it to their own homes and shops, but the shadows were driven by the mind of an angel whose body contained a level of power that stunned, and they went where they were most needed.
To people. To animals. To buildings in which living beings were trapped.
When an openly aggressive fighter arrowed toward Jason, she didn’t hesitate or bother to wonder to which army he belonged. Lifting the crossbow, she put a bolt through his wing, sending him into an uncontrolled spiral that ended with him crashing into a burned-out roof. Mahiya winced but notched a second bolt into the bow, and when the next aggressor headed their way, she took aim and fired.
Maybe she was no fighter, but she would not permit anyone to hurt Jason.
She’d just dispatched the second angel before he could fire his own crossbow, when Jason shuddered and raised his sword. “The worst fires are out,” he said, his voice a rasp.
Wonder at his strength, the way he’d used it to save, not harm, had her throat thick with emotion. “You’ve given them a fighting chance.” She could see fire trucks pouring water over the buildings that continued to burn, people racing to the lake to create a chain of buckets.