Mahiya had been ready to fight arrogance, found herself bewildered by the quiet request so potent with emotions unspoken. “I won’t take any unnecessary risks,” she said, closing her fingers over the bones of his wrist, his skin hot under her touch. “I promise.”
“You are the weakest one of us, Mahiya.”
“But,” she whispered, asking him to understand, “I am not weak. I cannot be that and survive.”
Her black-winged lover said nothing for a long, motionless moment before releasing his hold on her. She forced herself to let go of him, feeling bereft. “Come,” she said. “Eat with me before the food goes cold.”
Jason caught her wrist when she would’ve moved to the table. “You don’t treat food as other immortals do.” His thumb moved over her knuckles. “Tell me why.”
Snakes hissing all around her, fangs sinking into her skin, poison in her bloodstream.
Mahiya’s fingers curled into her fist, but she held her ground. “No, Jason. I will not allow you to steal all my secrets while you hoard your own.” He knew so much about her, while she did not even know where he made his home.
His fingers flexed, and he tugged her closer, until they stood toe to toe. “Do you know the story of Yaviel and Aurelani?”
It was the most startling of questions. “Of course.” Theirs was one of the great angelic romances. “They were born of warring families from different sides of the world. Yaviel was a singer turned artisan, Aurelani a scholar gaining renown.” Both families had been painfully proud of their children, but when the two fell in love, centuries-old hate had overwhelmed the tenderness of their devotion, and they’d been torn apart.
“It is said Yaviel survived torture to break into Aurelani’s home to steal her away and that they disappeared to build a life together, far from the vicious power of their families.” The romance of it had made her girlish heart sigh. Even now, as an adult, her soul ached at the idea of being loved with such devotion. “Yaviel’s musical instruments continued to appear in the Refuge, so there were some who knew where the lovers lived, but it was a secret never betrayed.”
Jason’s voice was rough as he said, “He called her Nene, and she called him Yavi.”
A chill over her skin, a vision of suffocating darkness.
“Nene couldn’t abide the cold, and Yavi loved her so that he found them an uninhabited atoll in the warm waters of the Pacific, far, far from any sky roads to civilization.” His fingers tightened on her wrist, but she didn’t move, didn’t dare breathe. “Trusted friends came and took Yavi’s creations to the Refuge, where they sold for amounts that meant he could buy his Nene whatever she wanted. She loved amethysts, and he showered her with them . . . but what Nene loved most was her Yavi.”
A tear trickled down her cheek though he’d said nothing awful, yet the sadness in him, it was a heavy weight she thought might crush a lesser man. “She must have loved you, too,” she whispered, seeing in his face the history of two different clans who had eventually ended one another in a rage of violence.
“Yes.” Haunted eyes meeting hers. “I was well loved by my parents.”
Mahiya wanted to ask him why he used only the past tense, why he carried such black sorrow within, what had happened to Nene if Yavi was dead, but she couldn’t hurt him when he was already so terribly hurt deep inside. “I never ignore food, because I know what it is to starve.”
The profound sadness in Jason changed, became a black blade licked with flame. It took a great deal for an older angel to starve, but an angel of Mahiya’s age remained vulnerable. “When?”
Mahiya swallowed, her fingers curling on his chest. “After Lijuan had me escorted back from her territory. Neha threw me into a windowless cell up at Guardian, and then she locked the door.”
The fear that emanated from her was too violent a thing for the slow pain of starvation. And Jason knew. “You weren’t alone in the room, were you?”
Tears welling in her eyes, teeth sunk into her lower lip, she shook her head. Releasing her wrist, he locked his arms around her. But she didn’t sob, the princess he held. Breath ragged, she said, “There were so many of them. Pit vipers and spitting cobras, rattlesnakes and taipan.”
Venomous snakes.
Their poison couldn’t kill an adult angel her age, but it could cause excruciating pain, convulsions, even temporary blindness and paralysis. “Tell me one thing.” He cupped the back of her head, pressed his cheek to her temple.
“Yes?”
“If you could kill Neha, would you?” A spymaster knew a great deal, such as when an archangel might be most vulnerable to attack by her enemies.
Mahiya shook her head. “No.” Shifting so they were eye to eye, she whispered, “In making that my goal, I’d become just like her, a woman driven by hate until there’s this knot of bitterness inside her that infects everything she touches.”
Anoushka, Jason thought, hadn’t become who she was in isolation.