Andreas wasn’t only shirtless, he was also barefoot.

Elena looked down at her boots, told herself she didn’t need to show off. She’d rather keep her feet warm and frostbite-free in the nice thermal socks Sara had given her as a gift. They had vampire smiley faces on them.

Finishing up the kata on a suicidal whirl of blades, Andreas came to a halt on one knee, his dark hair falling around the aristocratic lines of his face.

He looked up with a glint in his eye, and for the first time since she’d met Andreas, she saw the man Raphael knew. A warrior who fit seamlessly into an archangel’s forces, a leader who’d have a squadron’s respect, and a fighter who’d throw back a beer while sweaty and dirty.

“Consort,” he said. “Thank you for waiting.”

“You’re a master with the blades.” Elena wanted to scowl as she spoke that grudging compliment.

Rising to his full height, Andreas flipped the blades and held them out hilt-first toward her.

She accepted the offer but took only one blade. As she’d expected, it was heavy. “The workmanship is exquisite.” While the hilt bore the soft patina of hundreds of years of handling, the blade itself gleamed razor sharp in the weak sunlight amplified by the snow into a stinging brightness.

“It was made by a famed angelic weapons-master who now Sleeps.” Andreas handed his other sword to one of his vampires who’d just walked out. Taking a bottle of water in return, he pointed up. “Does your escort require anything?”

“No, they’re happy crouching on your roof.” She handed the weapon back to Andreas using both hands to display it as a work that beautiful should be displayed. “Deacon would love to see this sword.”

He took the sword the same way she’d presented it, warrior to warrior, and passed it back to his vampiric assistant. “Deacon has already held it.” A sharp smile. “I have commissioned him to make me another pair for the dark future when his mortal existence is no more.”

It could’ve been an ugly statement dismissing the value of a human life, but startlingly, she heard a strong thread of regret in his voice. And she knew Andreas foresaw a future centuries ahead where he would one day show someone Deacon’s work and tell them of the gifted human whose life had run far too short.

“I’ll look forward to seeing what he creates,” she said, consciously stepping back from that pathway into a future unseen.

“Would you give me a moment to shower quickly and dress?”

“Of course.” Impatience sank its teeth into her, shook like a dog with a bone, but Andreas was an old-world angel. A gracious response would gain her far more than pushing at him to rush.

She walked to the house with him. Acres of glass and right angles dominated, the building designed by a living contemporary architect. It had always struck her as odd that such an old angel would have so modern a home until Illium pointed out that the Tower wasn’t exactly of a “colonnades and arches vintage.”

Point well made, Bluebell.

The vampire who waited in the doorway wore a simple gown that reached her ankles. “Sire. Consort.” She bowed and moved aside as they neared.

Once inside, Andreas gave a short nod and headed upstairs, while Elena followed the woman—who proved to be his housekeeper—to a contemporary living area decorated in tones of gray and black, with unexpected splashes of aquamarine. She was resigned to having to wait a half hour at the very least, but Andreas was true to his word and took fewer than five minutes to shower and return.

His slightly overlong hair—a deep brown-black—was still damp, and roughly combed, as if he’d run his fingers through it and considered it done. The amber gray of his feathers glimmered with the odd droplet of water. He was also dressed more casually than she’d ever seen him, wearing khaki pants and a simple white shirt with no buttons and an open tunic-style collar.

“I realize you’ve just returned home,” she said. “Thank you for fitting me in.”

His cheeks creased in a smile that reached his eyes, a pale greenish-hazel she’d always before found disturbing in their acute directness. “It is an honor to have the consort in my home.” Waving a hand at the sofas, he said, “Would you sit?”

“Actually, do you mind if we walk?” Despite her continuous low-level hunger and lack of sleep, she felt jumpy with energy, her skin burning from the inside out.

“If you do not mind the snow, there is a path through the back gardens.”

When they went out there, it was to find the path had already been swept clean. The gardens slept under a thick blanket of white, haunting in their simulacrum of death and burial. “This must be lovely when it’s in full bloom.” Ever since she’d discovered Andreas’s punishments included hanging vampires naked from the trees that surrounded his home, she tended to avoid overflying his property.

At least she knew no one was buried alive out there.

A small mercy.

But she still listened for distant screams.

“My father is enamored of growing things.” Andreas’s voice broke into her gloomy thoughts. “He often laments at having a warrior for a son.”

“I didn’t know your father visited New York.” A sudden sinking feeling in her stomach. “Oh God, was I supposed to know that as Raphael’s consort?”

Andreas threw back his head, his laughter deep and resonant and clashing with what she knew of his pitiless methods to break the insubordinate. “You are safe,” he said afterward. “My mother and father both visit but have said they wish to give you time to settle in before expecting an invitation.”

Elena winced. “Were they being sarcastic?”

“No. In their mind, you have but met Raphael.” He used his boot to nudge aside a small branch that had fallen on the path. “My parents are both over a hundred thousand years old. Their sense of time is not ours.”

Andreas, Elena recalled, was older than Raphael, but by a matter of hundreds of years rather than millennia. “Your parents had you late in life.”

“Not in immortal terms.”

“Wow. No wonder everyone’s lost their minds over Aodhan’s sister having a baby.” Imalia was only twelve hundred years old, give or take.

“An infant having an infant,” Andreas agreed, and she didn’t think he was joking.

Shuddering within as she recalled Nisia’s talk of super-parasites and pregnancy, she said, “I promise to invite your folks to dinner the next time they’re in town—but help me out and give me warning of their next visit.”

An incline of his head. “Mother and Father will be most astonished that you are already so well organized.” That glint in his eye returned. “I should warn you, my parents are . . . dedicated, and they remain uncertain Raphael isn’t a bad influence.”

Elena didn’t know which thread to follow first, went for the most fascinating. “I didn’t realize Raphael had a reputation.”

“He went wild in the two centuries after Caliane’s madness. It was to be expected, but my parents worried I would be led astray.”

At nineteen, Elena had once gone after a vampire with only a single throwing blade and no other weapons. Yes, she understood the wildness engendered by grief and anger. “You can reassure your parents I’m being a good influence on him,” she lied.

Andreas’s lips curved. “I admit I am but teasing you. Their worries have long been laid to rest, and they will be honored to be welcomed into your home.”

Elena had the strange feeling she’d successfully navigated the social necessities that came with being an archangel’s consort. “As I said when I contacted your secretary about speaking to you,” she began, returning to the reason for her visit, “I need to ask you about one of your vampires.”

Her left wing threatened to drop. Catching the movement out of the corner of her eye, she pulled it back into the correct position . . . just as her left forearm began to burn.

25

It took every ounce of strength she had not to scream.

Elena. Aeclari. Elena. Aeclari. Seven hundred and seventy-seven echoes in her head, a wall of noise drowning out the pain.

Then. Silence.

Snow that absorbed all sound.

The pain a low and bearable thread, she realized she’d stopped on the path and Andreas was looking at her with a puzzled expression on his face. “All is well?”

“Sorry,” she said through the roar of blood in her ears. “Legion were talking to me.” The spot on her chest itched unbearably.

“Ah.” A glance up at the roof but he asked no more questions before they resumed their walk. “You wish to ask about Harrison, I presume?”

Elena forcibly shoved aside what had just occurred to focus on why she’d come to Andreas’s home. “You’ve heard?”

“Dmitri briefed me as Harrison is one of mine.” He frowned. “I was surprised to hear of such violence visited on him, given his recent conduct. He has learned the wisdom of holding to contracts made.” A hardness to his tone as he spoke the latter words; they held nothing of the charm he’d displayed only minutes earlier. “Harsh methods were necessary, but they have borne fruit.”

Elena told herself to keep her mouth shut, failed. “There’s harsh and then there’s cruel.”

“True.” No insult in his expression. “I often cross that line, but I would rather cross it than go too far in the other direction. Vampires who do not fear and respect their masters create carnage far more vile than the worst of my cruelties.” A whisper of wings as he settled his. “You are a hunter. You’ve seen how the blood-maddened feed, how they defile the bodies of their victims. Better I whip them into line prior to that.”

Now she was beginning to agree with the man. Shit. “I’m looking at Harrison’s past,” she said rather than continuing down that rabbit hole. “Illium said he used to have deadbeat friends.”