Understanding the archangel had no intention of accompanying them, Jason waited for her to take her leave before he entered the palace through the doors the guards pulled open, their eyes flat with suspicion. The scent of putrefaction hit him the instant he walked in, and he knew at once that Eris still lay within, in spite of the time it had taken Jason to reach the fort.
Neha’s love for Eris had been such that she would never offer up his violated body as a spectacle, so this must’ve been a rational choice to preserve the scene. He hadn’t expected it of her after the madness he’d seen in her eyes when she spoke to Raphael, and he should have—Neha was strong, not simply in power, but in mind, regardless of her recent losses. He would not forget that again.
Holding his wings tightly to his back in order to avoid any inadvertent contact with objects inside the palace, he said, “Where is Eris?” He could have followed the scent of decay to the body easily enough, but he needed to open a line of communication with the woman who stood silent by his side.
Mahiya was a mystery, and Jason did not like mysteries.
So he would solve her.
5
“This way.” Mahiya began to walk, every cell in her body conscious of the black-winged, black-garbed angel keeping pace beside her . . . an angel who fascinated her. The same way a child might be fascinated by the gleaming edge of a blade, wanting to run a fingertip over the metal to see if it really was that sharp.
Such fascination always ended in blood.
Yet she couldn’t stifle her reaction, for he was unlike anyone she had ever before met, a man who wore his sleek midnight hair in a neat queue and was unafraid of an archangel’s anger. If the latter were not intriguing enough, he sported an intricate tribal tattoo on the left side of his face, the ink a rich black against the warm brown of his skin, the swirling curves of it telling a story she wanted to understand but knew instinctively he would not share.
That face itself was a mix of cultures, the Pacific and Europe entangled to create a masculine beauty that was as harsh as it was compelling.
Raphael’s spymaster.
It was what Neha called him. As a description, it was succinct, but it hid as much as it divulged. He was so silent that had she not been able to see him from the corner of her eye, she’d have thought herself alone—a man gifted at becoming a shadow, was Jason, able to navigate the dark secrets of the Cadre unseen and undetected.
However, he was nothing so simple as a spy who saw and reported. He was one of Raphael’s Seven, that tight-knit band of angels and vampires Mahiya little understood. All she knew was that the seven incredibly strong men had chosen to put themselves in service to an archangel—and that their loyalty was reflected in Raphael’s own.
“Such a power is Jason.”
Neha had murmured those words after Jason agreed to come to the fort, agreed to swear a blood vow to Mahiya. It wasn’t the only thing the archangel had said, her lips twisted into a smile that dripped poison.
“Raphael’s Tower will be crippled when the spymaster changes his allegiance. And he will . . . for I can offer Jason something Raphael will never be able to match.”
Mahiya didn’t care about Neha’s vengeful game playing. She cared only about the cold, practical contract that underlay the ceremony of the vow Jason had spoken, her bones filled with a chill determination to complete this task without dropping the mask of inoffensive grace that was her most powerful weapon. No one considered her a threat. Neither would this spymaster.
Reaching the gauzy curtains of amber and gold that fluttered in the archway leading into the high central core of the palace, she took the time to tie them to the sides before waving her hand inward.
Jason remained in place.
“I will not have you at my back.”
Ignoring the prickling at her nape that warned her of lethal danger, she preceded him into the echoing central chamber that rose all the way to the roof. Her stomach threatened to revolt against the stink, but she brought her gag reflex under control through sheer grim determination and practice—Neha had left Mahiya in the palace to “keep Eris company” for hours after his murder.
“He was your father, after all. I give you time to say your farewells.”
For once, Mahiya did not think it had been a conscious cruelty—Neha herself had returned to sit with the body until an hour prior to Jason’s arrival, her fingers stroking Eris’s hair, the deep mahogany streaked with lighter strands as a result of all the time Neha had recently allowed him to spend in the searing sunshine of the courtyard.
“He is a creature of the sun, born on a clifftop overlooking the Mediterranean.”