Page 14 of Archangel’s Lineage

“How’s your father?” Elena asked. “I haven’t spoken to him much since he and your mom moved away.” The truth was that while Santiago had tried, their relationship had never quite been the same once Elena became entangled with immortals. Neither one of them at fault, their lives just occupying different spaces.

“He’s great. He’s the chief in a tiny seaside town in Virginia now—I was worried he’d get bored, but he’s pretty much a local these days. Has fishing buddies and knows everyone. Says it makes it easier to keep the miscreants in line.”

“I’m glad,” Elena said, even as her heart thudded and her mouth dried up. Because she couldn’t keep delaying.

“I just...” Lola Santiago glanced at the door to Jeffrey’s room. “I saw the name on the chart and I thought it might be your dad.”

“Is there anything you can tell me about his condition?”

“Major myocardial infarction—a big heart attack, in other words. Complication in surgery, but they got him back quickly. Right now, he’s unconscious and that’s not out of the ordinary, but we’ll start to worry if he doesn’t come out of it by morning.”

“I’ll buzz the staff as soon as he wakes.” Elena’s hands threatened to sweat, her pulse in her throat. “Tell your dad I said hi and that he still owes me ten bucks on our bet over the feather. He’ll know what I mean.”

“I will. He talks about you all the time, tells us stories of the cases you worked on together. Keeps saying he should invite you fishing, share a beer with you over old times.”

Elena wanted to smile, couldn’t quite manage it. “A woman with wings fishing. Now that’ll be something to see,” she got out before her throat closed completely.

Lola’s smile was understanding. “I’m around at night all the time, so if you need anything...”

Elena nodded, then forced herself to start walking to her father’s room. As the door loomed ever larger in her vision, she thought about Detective Hector Santiago and about how they’d worked together what felt like a lifetime ago. Death wasn’t the only way to lose people; sometimes, they simply drifted away. But unlike with death, there remained a chance to reach out, come together again.

What’s broken between us can’t be fixed.

Words she’d spoken herself to her best friend, about her relationship with her father. Now she hoped she’d been wrong, that the last words she and Jeffrey ever said to each other wouldn’t be ones scored by the vicious wounds of the past.

Her heart thundered as she put her hand to the cool hospital door... and pushed it open.

9

Raphael pushed his archangelic body to the limit in an effort to get his task over and done with so he could return home to Elena. He’d never before heard such a tone in her voice: the pain, the fear, the grief, all twined around her complicated emotions for Jeffrey Deveraux.

He’d been wrong to assume he understood all of what she felt toward her father. So many layers she had to her, his guild hunter. He’d be discovering her until they were Ancients ready to lie down in an endless Sleep. Today, however, all that mattered was that he was far from her at the moment when she needed him most.

Like most warriors, his Elena was rarely so openly vulnerable. That she trusted and loved him didn’t change the core of her nature, a nature formed on a foundation of fierce independence. Some of the biggest fights early on in their relationship had been a result of her need to be free coming up against his need to protect her.

For her to sound as broken as she had on the call...

His entire body fought his mind to turn, head homeward.

“You’re an archangel,” she’d said to him when he’d struggled against the harsh reality that he couldn’t change direction, go to her. “Millions of lives rest on what you find today and the consequences of that discovery. Your responsibility to uncover the truth about Qin comes first.”

He knew those hadn’t been just words; his consort had walked with him since they came together, understood the silent contract by which he’d been bound since the day of his ascension.

As a result of the urgency of his flight, he was drenched in sweat when he landed outside what had once been Astaad’s elegant home in the tropics. Built on a single level, it flowed with the landscape and was awash in tropical blooms. Palms waved against the sky across the estate while the cerulean blue ocean rolled to shore on gentle waves, separated from the house only by a short stretch of white sand beach.

Inside, Raphael knew it was cool tiled floors and huge windows that could be opened to the sea breezes. But where Astaad’s beloved harem had once filled its rooms with laughter and color, in Qin’s reign, it was a residence quiet and somehow... uninhabited.

It was Jason who’d said the latter, for Qin had never held a gathering of archangels in his territory. Neither had he invited any one of them to whom he was especially close. Because Qin wasn’t close to anyone in the Cadre. Raphael knew his mother had tried, but the Ancient had remained inexorably remote.

“He is always well-mannered, even gracious,” Caliane had said as she braided her hair while Raphael sat across from her in her private garden in Amanat.

They had come a long way since her waking that he could have such a familial moment with her, but that day, they had also been two archangels talking Cadre business.

“But,” she’d added, “I get the feeling it is because, at the heart of it, Qin doesn’t care about anything in this world. It doesn’t anger him or make him happy. All his emotions lie buried with Cassandra. He is akin to a ghost in our world.”

Raphael agreed with his mother, but any sympathy he’d had for the other man had died under the scalding burn of the tears in Elena’s voice. His hunter so strong, who’d fought at his side with the promise of near-certain death on the horizon and never flinched. His consort who’d never broken under any of the pressures that came with the position. His lover, who hated to cry.

Together.

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