“I know you will not believe a word I say,” she added, “not after the last time, so I will simply show you. And trust you not to use it against me.” Michaela rose from her chair . . . and the gauzy sides of her gown split over the tautly rounded curve of her abdomen.

32

Oh. My. God.

Elena’s mental imprecation echoed Raphael’s own shock. There was no way the Archangel of Budapest could be faking that. Not when the rest of her body also evidenced signs of advanced pregnancy now that he knew to look for them. The sharpness in her face, the shimmer in her skin, her slower rate of respiration and the way her hair appeared thicker, even more luxuriant.

All were common in angelic pregnancies.

Cupping the mound with both hands, Michaela looked down, her expression vulnerable in its softness. “Now you see why I can’t do my scheduled shift.”

“You appear close to full term.” Raphael forced himself to stay calm—as if an archangel being pregnant wasn’t an extraordinary moment in time. The last time this had happened, it had been his mother.

“Less than a month remains.” Michaela took her seat again, her movements unwieldy in a way he’d never before witnessed in the stunning, capricious woman who’d brought emperors to their knees and led another archangel into blood-fueled carnage.

“Why are you not at the Refuge?” Angels didn’t give birth outside of the Medica; Amanat was the sole exception to that rule.

“I trust very few with such a precious gift.” Michaela’s face hardened. “Keir has been aware since I first knew, and he will attend me. Even now, he prepares to come to Budapest. The only others currently in my stronghold are those who would allow me to cut their throats should I ask—they will defend me and my babe to the last.”

“Is the babe’s father among them?”

A flick of a hand that was very Michaela. “The father is of no consequence. This is my child, an archangel’s child.” She placed her hand below the screen and he guessed she was cradling her belly again. “I know you will not betray me in this—you are too human now. I never thought I would consider that a gift.” She exhaled with slow care. “Your mother has borne a child. I trust her to honor my truth.”

“Why didn’t you speak to Caliane directly?” A pregnant archangel was the weakest she would ever be—should Raphael want to kill Michaela, he would never have a better opportunity. “Why expose your weakness to me?”

“Lady Caliane intimidates me. You, on the other hand, are my compatriot.” Her smile was lush, deep, reached her eyes—and would’ve dazzled had he not been immune to her methods of getting what she wanted. “Even if you have refused to be my lover.”

I see pregnancy hasn’t altered her winning personality.

Resist the temptation to throw that blade at the screen, warrior mine. It would be awkward to explain to Mother. “The child is safe?” he asked Michaela.

Her practiced mask crumpled, her throat moving. “Keir has sensed nothing amiss. No remnants of Uram. The child in my womb is healthy in every way and he is mine.”

“A boy child?”

“I couldn’t wait. I asked Keir to ascertain it for me.” Her smile was a dawning light, real in a way that couldn’t be counterfeited.

Wow. Elena’s voice held wonder. That kind of beauty . . . She could own the world if she stopped trying to manipulate everyone.

“I am to be a mother again, Raphael.” A whisper. “At long last, my pain will end. He is my redemption.”

“I will talk to Caliane. I can promise nothing—she will make her own decision.”

“So,” Elena murmured after Michaela ended the call.

“She’s manipulating us.”

“Of course she is—that’s status quo for Michaela.” Elena played a knife through her fingers. “But she is also super pregnant.”

“If Keir has confirmed all is well, then we do not have to fear this will be anything but a child.”

His consort shuddered at the reminder of Michaela’s last “birth.” “No argument that she loves her kid already, but all that ‘my redemption’ stuff rubs me up the wrong way.” She made a face. “Maybe it’s because I don’t like her—and jeez, now I feel like shit.”

“No, Elena. I feel the same.” Walking to their balcony with her by his side, he leaned on the railing and looked out over the night-blooming flowers of Amanat. “She is making this about her and not the child.”

“I guess it’s understandable since she once lost a child.”

His hunter’s soft heart was there in every word. And it was hers now. His own had never been that empathic; what compassion he had, what humanity, it came from her.

“Kid’s probably going to be overprotected all to hell,” Elena said, “but I don’t think Michaela would hurt her baby.”

“To my knowledge, Michaela has never caused harm to a child.” Raphael watched a firefly flicker in the lamplit dark. “She is not the threat that concerns me.”

Sliding away her weapon, Elena leaned against the railing next to him, her body brushing his. It was instinct to spread his wing to cover her. She ran her fingers over the sensitive inner surface. “You’re worried about Uram?”

“I’m certain we destroyed his lingering phantom.” The dead archangel had somehow managed to leave behind a “ghost,” an energy echo that had sought to possess Michaela. “I’m more worried about whether she sustained any permanent damage as a result.” He shook his head. “It’s a foolish worry—archangels aren’t so easy to scar.”

“Yeah, but the rotting meat ‘baby’ . . . Nothing about any of that was normal even for the Cadre.” Worry wove through the compassion. “Do you know what happened to her first child?”

“The babe simply stopped breathing one day. Such a thing is extremely rare among angelic infants—in my entire lifetime, I have heard of only two cases, and Michaela’s infant was the second.” Memories flowed through his mind, of a tiny flower-laden bier, of Michaela’s severe, silent beauty.

“It is the only time since I have known her that I remember Michaela as a creature of icy silence. She did not speak for a year after her babe’s death.”

“Man, that’s so sad.”

“Michaela’s lover at the time, the babe’s father, was found dead two days after the infant’s burial. He’d been flayed alive, then beheaded.”

Elena’s hands clenched on the railing. “Michaela?”

“No one knows, but she didn’t demand an investigation into the incident, showed no anger, didn’t appear to feel any grief. And though he’d been her lover for half a century, she didn’t attend the ceremonies we hold for our dead.”

Elena had the feeling she’d never figure out Michaela, not if she lived to be as old as Caliane. “An act of grief because he reminded her of her lost baby? Or a scapegoat for her anger at being unable to protect her child? Could also be that she didn’t do it but was too numb from the first loss to process a second.”

“Only Michaela knows the truth and she’s never spoken of it—I tell you this so you remember that even with child, Michaela remains Michaela.”

“I guess it’s hard for me to see her intense love for her baby and separate that from who she is the rest of the time.” She shrugged her shoulders in a sharp movement.

Folding back his wing, he ran his hand down her spine. “What is the matter?”

“Just this weird sensation.” Her energy wings exploded out. “That’s better. It felt as if the lightning was building up under my skin.”

Raphael played with the lightning in wings that now held all the hues of her. Midnight and dawn. “You’re becoming stronger.” She’d flown all day today and yet she had excess energy.

A smile so brilliant that Michaela’s could never compete. “Hot damn. I might not have to ration my hours in flight anymore.” She jumped into his arms, kissed him all over his face, her joy an irresistible lure.

Their lips met in the stormlight of her wings.

* * *

• • •

After a quick meal, Raphael left his consort in an enclosed external courtyard bathed in the moon’s silver beams. She was planning to speak to friends in the Refuge, including a little boy who adored her; it had been her idea that he go to Caliane alone. “You know how she misses you.”

Such a soft heart.

“Raphael.” Caliane’s face bloomed when he entered her favorite garden.

She sat on a stone bench that faced a pond with water so motionless it was a mirror. Her joy in seeing him was an open incandescence that outshone the moon. Raphael’s heart clenched. The same woman who’d left him broken and bloody on a forgotten field had also sung to him as a child, songs so heartbreaking in their beauty that the entire Refuge had stood still to listen.

She was also the woman who carried thousands of dead souls on her conscience. Did she hear them in this space, quiet and lonely? Was that why she so often sat here? To listen to the recriminations of the dead? To remember their faces?

He held out his arm. She took it with a smile of pure happiness and allowed him to help her to her feet. Her gown was a glittering ice white and it flowed around her like frozen water as they walked the garden paths. It was Raphael who spoke first. “I know it hurt you to speak about the past to the Cadre.”

“I cannot pretend it didn’t happen, that I didn’t do a monstrous thing.” Pain scored each word. “I must bear witness to all the lives lost.” She squeezed his forearm. “I have asked Jessamy to bring the records here, so I can read a full account of what happened during my worst madness.”

So many children had died, the two cities become a tomb. In the end, the horror of it had been too much and the Cadre of the time had razed the cities to the ground. No new buildings sat on that land to this day, the area taken over by wild grasses that thrived in the sandy soil near the ocean.