Since Raphael understood him, too, Naasir waited.
“I want you to discover where it is that Alexander Sleeps.”
Naasir went motionless. The Sleeping place of an angel or archangel was a taboo thing. Even Naasir, who didn’t have much respect for rules, hadn’t broken that one. “Do you want to kill him?” If Raphael needed to kill Alexander, Naasir would help him. Because Raphael didn’t, had never, smelled like bad meat. Once, before Elena, he’d started to smell disturbingly like cold and ice, but that was gone, too.
Now he smelled of himself and of touches of Elena.
Naasir wanted to smell like his mate, he thought with an inward snarl. Why was she hiding from him?
“No, I have no desire to kill Alexander.” Raphael’s tone chilled. “Jason has been in and out of Lijuan’s territory this past month.”
Naasir hissed at the sound of Lijuan’s name. That one was bad meat through and through. As a child, he’d once thought he wanted to kill and eat her, but now he knew he wouldn’t touch her even if he was starving. He still wanted her dead, however. “She’s alive, isn’t she?”
“Jason hasn’t been able to glimpse her, but all signs point to that.” Features grim, Raphael stretched out his wings before tucking them back into his body, the white fire that licked over his feathers appearing an illusion created by sunlight.
Naasir had been fascinated by angelic wings since childhood. When Raphael first found him, he’d gripped at the feathers hard, pulling off a large white one with golden filaments that he’d held possessively in his fist. He hadn’t known he wasn’t supposed to touch angelic wings, that it was an intimacy permitted only to friends and lovers, and even though he didn’t have that excuse now, he did still sometimes touch one without asking.
Only of his friends and family, however. Only people who wouldn’t look at him as if he’d done a terrible thing. Yesterday, he’d lain on the grass with Elena after a sparring session, and she’d put her wing across his chest so he could stroke the sleek beauty of it as much as he wanted. Black and indigo and midnight blue and dawn and white gold—Elena had such fascinating feathers that he’d been tempted to steal one of each shade, except the colors blended seamlessly into each other.
Then she’d fallen asleep on the grass beside him.
He’d thought about reminding her that he was dangerous, but since he wasn’t ever going to hurt her, he’d let her sleep and played with her feathers instead. He was as fascinated by Raphael’s wings, but he resisted the temptation to grab at them when Raphael turned to head to the balcony. He wasn’t sure the unpredictable white fire wouldn’t burn.
Naasir followed the sire, going to crouch at the edge in his favorite position. He could see a stream of tiny yellow cabs from here, flowing along the straight ribbon of the road. The scents this high were faint but he caught a hint of the river and of the green, growing things in the Legion’s home. The green smells made him want to break free, to stretch out in a way he couldn’t, even in Central Park. “Is Lijuan searching for Alexander?”
“Jason isn’t certain, but he’s seen hunting parties being dispatched from Lijuan’s citadel. A member of one had a little too much to drink when they halted for the night, and Jason heard him boasting of how they were planning to find Alexander.”
“He’s not like Lijuan, is he?” Naasir had only been two hundred when Alexander went to Sleep, didn’t remember much about the silver-winged angel with golden hair. He did, however, have one faded memory of a powerful being hunkering down in front of him when he was yet a boy, the silver eyes that met his gaze as near to Naasir’s own eyes as he’d ever seen. “I think he gave me one of his feathers once. I wanted it because it was like my hair.”