Stormfire wings rising from one of the rooftops. “We’ll get that land back,” she said when she reached him. “We did it once, we’ll do it again.”

“No, Guild Hunter. You know as well as I do that the explosions gave away one of our only advantages—Lijuan’s people will even now be scouring any buildings within sight for booby traps.” He just hoped Naasir, Janvier, Ashwini, Demarco, Holly, and the others would make it out. “It is not the loss of territory that worries me, it is what that loss is doing to our people.”

Faces looked up at him from rooftops and even in those who had managed to hold on to hope, the hope held a ragged edge. “They just saw their archangel consummately defeated. Had the Legion not stepped in and taken the blows meant for me, I would not be here speaking to you now.”

“You’re in pain.” Elena’s tone was sharp. “She got you.”

“Twice,” he told her. “Once on the shoulder very close to my neck, and the second at the side of my rib cage. It’s eating away at me.”

“The wildfire,” Elena began.

Raphael cut her off with a shake of his head. “There is nothing left. I am out of power and I know you gave me the last droplets in you.” He deliberately brushed his wing across Elena’s even as Lijuan’s starlight obsidian dug scalding channels of agony in his ribs and shoulder.

He’d be in the same shape as Antonicus if not for the fact the two hits had been glancing and his ability to generate wildfire seemed to come with a limited immunity. But that would only slow the process, not stop it. Already, the black poison was attempting to get to his heart, the channels all aimed in that direction.

* * *

• • •

A couple of minutes later, her stomach a nauseous knot, Elena stood on a high Tower balcony and looked up at the sky to see a meeting akin to one that had taken place during her first meeting with Raphael. Two archangels in the sky, one with wings of gold and white, the other with feathers of shimmering bronze.

Michaela was even dressed in a long-sleeved bodysuit as she’d been that long-ago day. When the Archangel of Budapest landed on the balcony with Raphael, the bodysuit proved to be a dark green with a slight shimmer to it. Her hair was the same silken tumble down her back, her face startlingly beautiful. The milk chocolate hue of her skin was rich despite the night darkness, holding a warmth that Elena had always thought at odds with the biting edge of her personality.

Today however, there was no sarcasm, no curl of the lip. Michaela just nodded at Elena—her gaze narrowing slightly at the sight of Elena’s stormfire wings—before turning to Raphael. “I saw reports from this city, knew I had to come.”

“What about your territory?” Raphael asked with no indication of pain in his voice, though Elena knew it had to be torturous. “The reborn infection? The children.”

“If she wins this war, it will not matter that my territory is clean of infection.” A gravity to Michaela’s presence that Elena had never before felt, the sudden sense that this woman was an archangel. “If we beat Lijuan here, then we have a chance to salvage my territory.”

“You have made a difficult choice.” Raphael inclined his head in an acknowledgment between equals. “Your babe?”

A tightening of her features. “The Cascade gave me the ability to create power constructs that survive outside my body. I built Keir a shield that protected him and my babe—he says it held until he was nearly to the Refuge. They are safe.”

Elena found herself exhaling a breath she hadn’t been aware of holding. The idea of Keir and a newborn dodging the death stalking the world had been a horrific one.

“My power did damage to Lijuan,” Michaela said. “Is it possible I can assist you to victory?”

To Elena’s surprise, Raphael nodded. “My wildfire in her likely increased the impact, but you read slightly differently to my healing senses—there remains an imprint inside you of the life you so recently birthed. It is fading but not yet gone.”

And Lijuan was a creature of death.

“Good. I will assist you in ending her, then I will return home.”

“What is the situation on your side?”

Elena knew Raphael had to have that critical information, but panic clawed at her—the poison was eating at him from the inside out. Already, she could see the creeping edge of blackness on one wing.

“Bad,” Michaela said shortly, her face grimmer than Elena had ever seen it. “When I left, Alexander and Zanaya were attempting to drive the reborn into a single valley so that we could scorch them with fire.” The vivid green of her eyes took in the smoldering city around them, smoke yet rising to the sky from the earlier detonations. “I have told Alexander that this is more important. It is where we win or lose the world. But he sees coming here as abandoning his people. He is a fool.”

Elena wouldn’t describe the Archangel of Persia as any kind of a fool, but she had to agree with Michaela that the long-term picture had to take priority.

“The children . . . It is difficult.” Michaela blinked rapidly, her throat moving. “All our troops are severely demoralized from having to cut down those we are programmed to protect. I kept seeing my own babe, kept thinking that each child was another woman’s heart.”

Elena couldn’t imagine the horror of facing infected child after infected child. She’d frozen when faced with a single infected child during the last battle, a sundress-wearing girl who’d come off an infected cruise ship. The idea of having that nightmare moment repeated in a continuous loop . . . Bile coated the back of her throat.

The sky boomed with a massive burst of sound without warning, a huge overwhelming force that was a roundhouse punch to the side of the head. Elena’s ears popped, her head ringing. Archangel, what the hell was that?

Eyes the most violent shade of blue in this world held hers. An archangel has died.

66

As Elena’s skin chilled at Raphael’s words, the sky began to fill with clouds pregnant with snow. That didn’t happen with Uram. He had died in a blast of pure white light that lit up the entire city before it faded out of existence, no trace left of the Archangel of Blood.

The impact is never the same, Raphael said. I am told that, only an hour after Uram’s death, while we were both unconscious, it began to rain across the entire world. It did not stop for three days.

Elena realized they’d never spoken about this. That time had been well past when she woke from her long sleep. The whole “I’m an angel” thing had taken up her attention, Uram a bad memory better left to the annals of history.

“Which one of us was it?” Michaela’s cheekbones were like knives against her skin, her wings held with vicious tightness. “Other than you and Lijuan, Titus and Charisemnon are the only two currently in battle with one another.”

Elena’s chest hardened to granite. Titus was one of her favorite archangels. She couldn’t countenance the idea of him being gone from this world.

“We will not know until the news filters out of the territory.” Raphael shifted so that his wing touched Elena’s. “Until then, we must believe that Titus has taken an enemy from the world.”

Elena caught another glimpse of the spreading black on Raphael’s wing and all at once nothing else was important; she had to get Raphael somewhere private. “You must be tired,” she said to Michaela, deliberately switching to a slight formality to hold with angelic etiquette in this kind of a situation.

She didn’t give a flying monkey’s ass about etiquette, her heart a staccato beat, but it got things done when it came to powerful angels used to certain modes of behavior. “Please,” she said, “make use of one of the suites in the Tower. It appears Lijuan’s troops are content to hold their territory and wait for her to rise. We’ll have a little time at least.”

“Thank you, Consort,” Michaela said with a sincerity that was almost real. “But if you do not mind, Raphael, I would speak to your second and gain a greater understanding of how this battle is being fought, and the enemy we face.”

“Elijah, too, will meet you in the war room,” Raphael said after a moment.

The three of them parted ways after showing Michaela to the war room. Elena caught Dmitri’s eye, then used Laric’s “silent tongue” behind Michaela’s back to quickly sign out a message. The corners of his eyes tightened at the news that Raphael was wounded, but he moved smoothly to intercept Michaela so she and Raphael could get away.

Dmitri had a dark sensuality to him even when he wasn’t trying, and Elena saw Michaela react with a slight softening. Her opening comment held a husky laugh to it. “You do get better with age, Dmitri.”

“And you get more ravishing,” he replied with a slow smile you’d take as real if you hadn’t seen him smile at Honor.

Elena took the chance and dragged Raphael away.

She all but tore his top off his body the instant they were in their quarters. The leather was cracked and smudged and dented, scorched in places, torn in others. When it stuck to his shoulders for a frustrating moment, she used a knife to just cut it off.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” His left shoulder was nearly all black and trickles of that blackness had begun to streak down his side toward his heart. The rib cage one was larger than the span of her hand—and it was sending lethal tendrils to his heart, too.

“I’m afraid I am not in the mood, hbeebti.”

“I’m going to kill you in a second.” But her hand was gentle as she checked the area around his rib cage, then higher.

He gripped her wrist when she would’ve touched the blackened flesh. “No, Elena. We can’t take the risk it will jump to you. You are currently devoid of wildfire and Lijuan is becoming more powerful—we do not know the properties of this poison.”

Jaw set, she nonetheless nodded. “It hasn’t reached your eyes.” The blue was painfully clear, the color intense. “Your body’s holding it at bay.”