A sudden chill in her bones, she looked into the first window.
A bloodsoaked and unconscious angel lay within, his wings pinned to the floor by bolts pounded through the feathers, tendons, and muscle. Horror a crushing weight on her chest, she forced herself to walk to the next cell—to find a vampire hanging from his wrists by thick chains, beaten and bloodied, his head slumped forward on his chest. She recognized them both from Archangel Fort. Neither was powerful enough to be immediately missed, but both were old enough to have knowledge of the inner workings of the fort.
“Mahiya.”
Having heard the tread of Nivriti’s boots, she didn’t startle. “You broke these people.”
“Neha would do the same to mine.” Ice, rigid and brutal. “She did far worse to me.”
It was at that instant that Mahiya admitted the thought she’d nurtured in a secret corner of her heart—that the murders of Eris and Audrey, Shabnam and Arav, had been an aberration, that her mother did not harbor the ugliness of cruelty in her bones. “Will you release them now?”
“No.” Nivriti reached through the bars to wrap that sticky green web around the vampire’s throat.
“Mother, stop.” She gripped Nivriti’s hand, pulled, but it was too late, the substance already on the prisoner.
As Mahiya watched horrified, his skin and muscle and bone dissolved into bubbling white until the body fell away from the neck. The only mercy was that the male never gained consciousness. “That’s . . .”
“More merciful than what Neha would’ve done to him had he crawled home.”
“Your power was to do with birds.” It was the plea of a child desperate to save something of her dream of her mother. “With living things.” Not this sadistic death.
The smile that touched Nivriti’s eyes was tinged acidic green. “The ability died,” she said flatly. “But buried in the earth, I found comfort in other creatures.” She shifted to the cell that housed the angel. “They sacrificed their lives when I needed sustenance, and shared their strength with me.”
“No! Please!” Again, Mahiya attempted to halt Nivriti as her mother—almost desultorily—flicked the deadly green web onto the angel.
But her mother was over three thousand years old, her power vast even in the aftermath of battle. It was an unequal contest, one Mahiya could not win. Trembling, she forced herself to watch, to remember this death, as the angel dissolved into nothing. He and the vampire both deserved epitaphs, both deserved not to be simply erased out of existence.
Sighing, Nivriti went to touch Mahiya, shook her head when Mahiya stumbled back. “How did you stay so soft under my sister’s loving hand, hmm?”
Because I didn’t want to end up like her . . . like you. Her heart broke again, as she realized that some childhood dreams had no hope of ever coming true.
“Never mind. I am here to take care of you now.” Nivriti looked over her shoulder. “Escort my daughter to her room. She should rest.”
Mahiya allowed herself to be shown to the clean and, by the standards of the palace, luxurious room. It was clear she was being given honor as Nivriti’s child.
“I am here to take care of you now.”
Sitting down on the four-poster bed, grief a knot in her throat, she wrapped her fingers around one of the carved wooden posts that had been polished until they shone, and then she thought. About who she was, what she wanted to do with the immortal existence that stretched endlessly in front of her.
Regardless of what Nivriti believed, she was no child. She had fought for her freedom from an archangel. Jason had helped her achieve that freedom, and perhaps she wouldn’t ever have gained it on her own, but even faced with seemingly insurmountable odds, even after a lifetime with an archangel who wanted to crush her spirit, she’d refused to surrender. And with her spymaster, too, she was the one who’d driven a bargain when she held but a single fragile card.
“You need to give me something in return. I can’t surrender the most valuable piece of information I have without gaining something equally valuable in return.”
She’d spoken those words, demanded he treat her need for freedom with respect.
But now, once again, she found herself in a prison. There were no locks, no ill will from Nivriti, but her mother had made it patent she saw Mahiya as a babe. Someone who’d be kept safe in this palace, have her wings clipped, and be shut away or ordered into silence when it came time for the adults to talk. Protected from the harsh realities of life.
“Escort my daughter to her room.”