Page 93 of Archangel’s Lineage

Don’t even tell me the damage. She’d watched one of their no-holds-barred sessions and decided she didn’t need to watch any more. Seeing Raphael in battle was quite different from watching him go head-to-head with his best friend, both out for blood—with feral smiles on their faces.

It had been obvious that they were having a ridiculous amount of fun, but she’d almost given in to the urge to shoot Dmitri with a crossbow bolt or five anyway. It hadn’t mattered that Raphael was doing equal damage—Raphael was hers.

As Dmitri was Honor’s.

Elena’s friend and fellow hunter would not appreciate Elena skewering her man.

So Elena stayed away—as did Honor—while the two of them went at it.

There’s no real damage.

Elena snorted. Meet me at the Legion building. I’m almost there.

Your wish. My command.

At least the blood sport had put him in a better mood, she thought with a twitch of her lips... just as the Hudson surged with an underwater quake. She knew it was a quake because the fucking bridge was moving, too. Shit.

The bridge settled a moment later, cars that had skidded to a halt as it buckled now speeding up to race off. Aware the city’s emergency corps of engineers and other responders would already be en route to check the integrity of the structure, Elena left the bridge and carried on to land on the grass in front of the Legion building.

She didn’t have to wait for Raphael—he didn’t fly down but walked out of the Tower building, no doubt having left the receptionist, Suhani, wondering if she was having a fever dream. Because Raphael did not use the elevator to the ground floor. Ever.

Except today, apparently.

He was still dressed in the simple black sweatpants he’d been wearing to spar with Dmitri... and nothing else. No shoes, no T-shirt. All wings of a massive span, tumbled hair, and that naked muscle just gleaming with sweat—while a cut yet scarred his cheek and bruises bloomed down one side of his chest.

“No real damage?” she said archly.

A wicked grin. “He looks worse. And it’s already healing.”

The cut was sealing right in front of her eyes, but the fact it hadn’t already done so was a sign of how bad it must’ve been to start with. Gripping his chin, she turned his head this way and that. “Hmm. If he does look worse, then keep a wide berth from Honor.”

The grin widened before he leaned in to kiss her cheek. He looked young and wild and beautiful and she had to stop herself from hauling his sweat-slick body closer and licking him all over.

Later, she promised herself. “We need to search the Legion building.”

It took him the merest second to make the connection. “They didn’t bring anything with them out of their rest in the ocean.” But he was moving toward the building with her as he said that.

“But they did collect interesting items once awake.” Small things, lost things, like the bracelet her father had seen one of them pick up. “Maybe they found the Compass subcomponent and it’s been sitting here all this time—same reason as with Hannah.”

“Because it knew it was accessible to me at any time.” Raphael shoved a hand through his hair. “When I think of the kind of beings that created artifacts that hold power through an endless span of time...”

“Fucking scary, right? Good thing they put themselves in permanent deep freeze.”

“A cold truth indeed, hunter-mine.” Gaze grim, he pushed open the door hidden behind a wave of falling vines, and they entered the lush and humid atmosphere inside the building.

52

The Legion had designed their home well—the external greenery died back in winter and rejuvenated itself in the spring, but inside, plants thrived all the seasons of the year. Certain things might slow in growth in the colder months, lose their leaves, or go dormant, but other trees and plants and bushes came alive in the cold, the Legion’s garden a wonderland throughout the year.

Small birds twittered a bright welcome to them, Elena and Raphael so familiar to the smaller creatures that called the building home that they’d come to their hands if invited.

The bigger birds circled above, below the open roof.

When they closed the roof in the winter, they left open a small hatch protected by a secondary “roof”—because many of these birds were permanent residents, and not all had worked out how to get in and out through the “doors” on the upper levels that were nothing but sheets of thick, insulating plastic.

Elena exhaled, her soul opening up at the caress of green.

Raphael’s mark came alive at the same instant, wildfire racing through each line.

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