Naasir bared his teeth. “You’re more civilized—you talk.”
Molten geysers shot out of the lava, as if Alexander was getting impatient. “Archangel,” she said, directing her words to the lava, though she knew Alexander could hear her regardless of where she pitched her voice. “The world is in the midst of a Cascade and the archangels of the current Cadre are spiking violently in power.”
The lava bubbled and erupted with countless geysers as they fell another two feet.
The heat scorched her soles through her ruined boots.
Naasir’s growl was more feral than she’d ever heard it, the sound echoing off the stone to reverberate in her bones. “Lijuan wants to kill you in your Sleep, you stubborn old bastard! She believes she’s a goddess!”
Andromeda winced. Alexander had been wise, but he’d also had a stormy temper.
The stone rumbled but they didn’t drop again.
“He’s laughing,” Andromeda whispered incredulously. It pushed her over the edge. “Listen, damn you! Lijuan isn’t who you remember! She’s insane and she can kill you—while you’ve been Asleep, she’s become the Archangel of Death.”
She felt the heat of Naasir’s skin as his temperature rose, smelled burning flesh. Not hers alone. No. No. “Even if you survive, your loyal sentinels won’t!” As Naasir was Andromeda’s, the Wing Brotherhood was Alexander’s—worth dying for, worth fighting for. “Your men and women have held to their vows for four hundred years and they will die one by one in agony and suffering rather than leave you!”
She screamed as they fell again. The smell of burning feathers filled the air. It felt as if her blood was a heartbeat away from boiling, her eyes so hot she couldn’t keep them open.
Naasir’s voice was no longer in any way human, the words he spoke guttural. “I’ll come back from death you ancient relic, hunt down your immortal ass if you harm my mate!”
“Brotherhood,” Andromeda managed to whisper, sure Alexander’s bond to his sentinels was their only hope of reaching him.
Naasir pressed his cheek to hers, trying to curve his body as much as possible around her own. “As for your sentinels, Lijuan might decide to make them reborn. Shambling, living dead who hunger for the flesh. You are no sire if you permit that!”
No warning before they were pushed up at the same suicidal rate they’d been pulled down. Up and up and up until the air was cool and they could breathe.
The voice, when it came, was everywhere.
I am waking. Prepare for battle.
*
Naasir and Andromeda found themselves shoved out of the wind tunnel and dumped on the sandy floor of the stone chamber again. The chasm that had sucked them in closed up so seamlessly that there was no sign it had ever been there.
Getting up with muscled, feline grace, Naasir crouched in front of her as she sat up. He ran his hand over her hair, then very gently over the arches of her wings—it was a highly sensitive area, the touch intimate, but she burrowed against his chest, needing the tenderness, wanting nothing more than to be close to him.
Death, she’d realized in that tunnel, could come at any instant.
“Kiss me,” she said, lifting her face to the primal masculinity of his. “If death comes, I want to go having known your kiss.”
He nipped sharply at her lower lip instead. “We’ll kiss after I find your stupid Grimoire book.”
Forehead scrunching up, Andromeda shook her head. “Forget the Grimoire.”
Naasir gripped her chin, his eyes—so haunting and beautiful—locking with hers. “Your honor is important to you. It is as important as your heart. Kill one and I will kill the other.”