“I’ve never seen her enter with anyone.”
Very cleverly put, but Jason had been playing this game centuries longer than Mahiya. “Have you heard her speaking to anyone while she’s within?”
“If I tell you everything,” she said in a tone so resolute, it was granite, “it won’t matter if you betray me to Neha. The end result will be the same.”
Jason considered why a princess might need to hoard dangerous knowledge. “You need a bargaining chip,” he guessed. “For what?”
“Why are you doing this?” A hunted look in her eyes, the pupils vivid black against cat-bright irises. “Stripping me bare?”
That look, it hit the part of him he preferred to pretend didn’t exist, but he didn’t back off, didn’t soften. He needed to know who Mahiya had heard in that room with Neha, because if what he suspected was true, the world might yet drown in horror such as no one could imagine.
The princess twisted away to give him her back, her wings sweeping in graceful arches to the dusty earth, in direct contrast to the rigid stiffness of her spine. “I’m going to die soon if I don’t find a way out.” The words were as stark as the land that surrounded them. “Neha will never voluntarily set me free to live my own life, and she no longer has any reason to keep me alive—I was only ever useful as a means to torment Eris.”
“And as a surrogate to punish,” Jason said, all of the pieces he’d glimpsed coming together to form an ugly, twisted whole. “Where do you plan to go?”
She turned on her heel, showed him two empty palms. “Where can I go?” Rippling anger in every word. “I want only a life away from this prison of hate, be it in a hovel, but only another archangel can stand against Neha, so it must be one of the Cadre.”
“Lijuan is the closest.”
Blind terror racking her frame, so vicious and deep that he made the rarest of moves and reached out to touch her, squeezing her upper arm. “Mahiya.”
“Not Lijuan.” Her voice was hoarse, as if she’d been screaming.
“You’ve attempted it before,” he guessed, the warmth of her skin lingering on his palm though the contact had been fleeting. “What happened?” There were a thousand horrors in Lijuan’s court, a thousand nightmares given flesh and blood form.
Mahiya leaned back against the tree, her profile limned by the light that caught hints of sunset in her hair. “It’s difficult to have a conversation with a man who sees everything.”
“You mean it’s difficult to manipulate me into seeing what you want me to see.” The truth was, his strength came not from how well he could read her, but from his acceptance of how much he might miss. Even when he’d known someone for centuries, he was always conscious he’d caught but a glimpse of the complex tapestry that was their inner life.
The woman in front of him had an intricate pattern to her heart and emotions he might never fathom, didn’t have the ability to fathom. All he could do was watch for cues others took for granted, put those cues together to form a picture of her emotions. He knew that wasn’t how the rest of the world did it, knew his inability to connect to those around him on that level was a lack in him.
It troubled him enough that he’d spoken to Jessamy about it a century ago. The gentle teacher of angelic young had taken time to consider his question. “I think,” she’d said at long last, “you have the capacity to feel with the same depth as any other immortal. Perhaps more.
“You have a heart so powerful, it scares me at times. And the way you keep your emotions under lock and key . . .” An intent look. “The storm will break one day, of that I’m certain. You’ve never had reason to take the risk yet.” She’d given him a rueful smile. “I know something about avoiding pain, so trust me when I say that.”
Jason had the utmost respect for Jessamy, knew her words were no lie. Born with a malformed wing that meant solo flight was out of her grasp, she’d suffered anguish such as Jason couldn’t imagine. He would never discount it, never consider it less important than the forces that had shaped him, but he knew the way they had grown and developed was fundamentally different.
As he couldn’t imagine what it was not to be able to touch the sky at will, Jessamy couldn’t imagine what it was to be alone. Utterly, absolutely alone. Not for an hour, not for a day, not for a year. For decades.
Until he had forgotten how to speak, how to be a person.