Page 31 of Archangel’s Lineage

As a result of the interaction, she was feeling far better than she’d expected to feel this day when she arrived at the Tower. She’d called Illium from the subway stop to check on the status of the satellite image test, and he’d told her he’d hold off on reviewing the results until she got back.

“We had to restart due to a technical glitch, so the team’s just finished going over the scans.”

Making it back with ten minutes to spare until their meeting, she went to her and Raphael’s suite and jumped into the shower for a quick cleanup. Before that, however, she placed Zoe’s blade on her knife shelf, next to the jeweled dagger Raphael had given her.

Her archangel was possessive about who gave her blades, but she had the feeling he wouldn’t mind this one; Raphael had a soft spot when it came to children, and he had a specific soft spot for Zoe. Elena’s godchild had spent a lot of time at their Enclave home—both the original and the one rebuilt after the war. She’d played cards with Raphael, attempted to chase him across the lawn, and gone flying in his arms.

It had begun one fateful weekend when Zoe was a toddler.

Sara and Deacon had both needed to head out of town on urgent business that had sprung up without warning in a perfect storm of circumstances. Aware of the importance of their tasks, and knowing that their trusted nanny was on her annual vacation, Elena had volunteered to babysit.

She’d had no idea how to take care of a toddler, but she’d had Sivya and Montgomery as backup... and she’d had Raphael. It turned out that an archangel who’d once stood guard in the angelic nursery knew exactly how to deal with a curious little girl who could toddle-run at startling speed—and who loved playing hide-and-seek with her hapless guardians.

The rest was sweet, funny, wonderful history.

As Montgomery had stiffly said, “Why should Zoe Elena stay with another when she is loved here?”

Their butler adored her goddaughter.

Zoe absolutely loved him in turn; when she visited, she could often be found trailing around behind him, helping him “butler”—with breaks to go steal fresh-baked treats from an indulgent Sivya.

Elena’s wasn’t the only heart that would break the day Zoe stepped through the veil most immortals would never pierce.

“Not today,” Elena reminded herself. “Today, Zoe is young and wild and dazzling.”

She reminded Elena of Belle.

Gasping, she pressed one palm against the wall and blinked hard and fast. It was the first time she’d allowed herself to think that, make that connection.

Dance with me, Ellie! Look at your feet go! Wow, what a move! Go! Go! Go!

She shoved a fist against her mouth, holding back the dry, hot sobs that wanted to escape.

18

Interlude

War

Raphael and Dmitri stopped mid-spar to look up at the noon sky that had gone a vivid and empty black on a thunderous boom of sound.

“One of them is dead,” Raphael said, shoving a frustrated hand through his hair. “The stupidity of it.”

Dmitri didn’t ask him to explain who he was talking about—his second knew. “By my count, that’s three archangel-to-archangel wars since your ascension, and you’ve only been on the Cadre for a hundred years.”

“I’m learning that my kind can’t seem to embrace peace for longer than a few decades.”

Dmitri rolled back and forth on the balls of his bare feet. “Don’t worry, my friend, I’ll pin you down and talk sense into you if you try to start a war for no reason but that you’re bored.”

Needing to work off his anger at the needless death, Raphael took a sparring position once more. The only reason he could even see Dmitri was because of the glow coming off his own wings—a glow born of his simmering rage at the avoidable.

“I’d be most grateful,” he said to the vampire who was his closest friend. “I would not want to go down in history as the archangel who ruled for a hundred years before he picked a fight and got himself dead by angelfire.”

Laughing, his friend came at him, a blur in the darkness.

***

It was only later, long after the sky cleared, that a courier landed on top of his Tower with the news.

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