Raphael had been surprised - even then, Uram had been dissolute, careless in his pleasures, open in his cruelty. "You sound as if you envy them."
"Sometimes, I do." Those vivid green eyes had stared down at the human village that sheltered below the ancient castle they'd called home at the time. "I wonder what I would've been had I known I only had five or six paltry decades to make my mark on the world."
In the end, Uram had made a huge mark on the world, but it hadn't been what that younger self would've wished for. Now, he'd be forever remembered among most as the archangel who'd lost his life in a battle for territory, for power. Only a rare few, even among the angels, knew the truth - that Uram had turned bloodborn, bloated by a toxin that had turned his blood to poison. Raphael's father had never fallen into that kind of bloodlust. But Nadiel's lust for power had been, in many ways, worse.
Seeing Elena standing on the balcony of their home still clothed in his shirt, her magnificent wings spread as if in hunger for flight, he dived hard and fast.
Raphael!It was a cry filled with equal amounts of wonder and fear.
Feeling something long asleep awaken within him, an echo of the cocky boy who'd amused Uram, he rose up in a hard vertical climb, before twisting into a spiraling plummet that could send the inexperienced smashing onto the rocks below.
It was at the midpoint that he felt it - Elena's mind locking with his, her mental gasp as she experienced the dangerous ecstasy of the fall. Then he was sweeping out and upward.
She stayed with him until he coasted down on a luxurious air current to land on the balcony.
She stared at him for a moment, her own wings closing. "What" - a shake of her head -
"just happened?"
"You linked to me." It should have been impossible - he was an archangel, his shields impenetrable. But, he remembered, she'd done it once before - as a mortal. He'd lost himself in her that day, sunk so deep into the wild perfume of her hunger that he'd ceased to think. Later, he'd suffered her rage at what she'd believed had been an attempt at coercion on his part. His hunter hadn't understood what she'd done.
"There are some humans - one among half a billion perhaps - who make us something other than what we are. The barriers fall, the fires ignite, and the minds merge."
Lijuan had killed the mortal who'd touched her that deeply.
Raphael had chosen to love, instead.
"I could feel what you felt." Exhilaration still sparked in Elena's eyes. "Is that what it's like when you're inside my mind?"
"Yes."
A pause, her expression intent. "You don't like it, do you? That I can slip beneath your shields."
"I've had over a thousand years to get used to being alone inside my head." He ran the back of his hand down her cheek. "It is . . . disconcerting to have another presence there."
"Now you know how I feel." A raised eyebrow. "It's not nice to know that nothing inside me is private."
"I've never taken your deepest thoughts."
"How do I know that?" she asked. "When you're so cavalier about your ability to enter whenever you want? How can I ever be certain that what I choose to share with you is truly a choice?"
For the first time, he felt a glimmer of understanding. "It'll be a much slower way of learning each other."
"Speed isn't everything." Her hands clenched on the railing.
He thought of her trust when she'd spoken of her mother, her compassion as she accepted the burden of his own memories. "I will try, Elena."
"I guess that's the best I'm going to get from an archangel." The words were softened by the amusement in her eyes. "The mind-talking doesn't bother me. That goes both ways.
This other thing - I have a feeling it's not something I'm going to be able to control for a long time yet."
"Did you catch any of my thoughts while we were linked?"
"Not really. I was too caught up by the flight - God but you can fly, Raphael." She whistled. "I know that's not easy, what you did."
Pride unfurled inside him, born from the heart of the youth he'd been before Caliane.
Before Isis. Before Dmitri.
"I did catch one name." Hesitant words. "Were you thinking about your father?"
"Yes." He watched the wind blow a few rebellious white blonde strands across her face, her body silhouetted against the diamond-studded night sky, and made a choice of his own. "I was thinking that in many ways, my father's madness was worse than Uram's."
Elena didn't interrupt, simply shifted forward so that she could tangle one hand with his.
He curled his fingers around hers, wondering at the tectonic shift in his life since the day he first met Elena Deveraux, Guild Hunter. So quickly she'd twined around his heart, becoming the most vital part of his existence.
"With Uram, though there was a little hesitation, in the end, the Cadre all agreed he needed to die." It was Lijuan who'd worried him the most - still worried him. "Lijuan wondered if perhaps the power that came with becoming bloodborn was worth it."
Elena shivered. "You should've showed her that room where Uram kept the remains of his victims." Her stomach lurched at the memory even now. "It was a slaughterhouse.
The smell alone would send most people screaming."
"You forget, Elena," Raphael said, his gaze almost black, "Lijuan plays with the dead."
"Hold the pendant still, Ellie."
"I'm trying."
"Shh, Mama will hear."
Breathing in the fresh bite of Raphael's scent, she swallowed the poignant whisper of memory and focused on the present. "Why was your father worse?"