Elena set aside the plate on which she’d cut the peach, and leaned forward after a quick glance to ensure Raphael remained absorbed in his conversation with Illium. “Lijuan warned Raphael I’d make him a little bit mortal.”
“You have.” Quiet equanimity. “And you worry you’ve weakened him. You have.”
Elena flinched.
“Elena.” Shaking his head, Keir waited until she met his gaze again. “Even an archangel needs a weakness—absolute power is a corruption. Of that, Lijuan is the perfect example.”
A rustle of wings, Illium and Raphael walking across to join them before she could point out that while the latter might be true, Raphael needed to be at full strength to beat Lijuan and her ilk.
Raphael wasted no time or words. “What did you discover, Keir?”
“The disease that killed the vampire, it is akin to the pox.”
Elena sucked in a breath as Illium came to lean against her armchair, his eyes liquid gold in the firelight and his wing warm against her own. “The disease that has so often killed tens of thousands of mortals?”
“Yes.” Keir held up a hand when they would’ve spoken again. “It isn’t identical—it has a more virulent effect on the internal organs, turning them to liquid, yet doesn’t appear to be as infectious. It requires more than a speck or two of blood to transfer. A few droplets, perhaps even a small feed, though I cannot be certain on that last point.”
Raphael shook his head. “You wouldn’t fly to us when you are so clearly exhausted if you had good news.”
“You’ve known me too long.” The healer took a deep breath. “My tests show the disease has an incubation period of six hours. After that, it appears to progress at vicious speed—the victim would’ve been too debilitated to go for help by the time he understood he was ill. Terrible as that was for him, it’s good in the wider scheme of things.”
“So there’s a very high chance he wouldn’t have had an opportunity to infect others.”
Keir nodded at Illium’s words. “The bad news is the pox shows every indication of being designed to attack vampires.” Turning to Raphael, he said, “Your instincts led you true—I detect an intelligence behind the disease. It is no natural thing.”
“First my angels fall from the sky, and now this.” Raphael’s expression was brutal. “There is no longer any question the city is under attack.”
Illium said something in a language Elena didn’t understand, but his last word was cuttingly identifiable and the same one on the tip of Elena’s tongue. “Cowards.”
“Agreed,” Raphael said, his voice ice. “We’ve focused on Lijuan because she’s a known enemy, but we must not wear blinders.”
They all nodded.
“Such cowardice eliminates Titus,” Raphael continued. “He’s a warrior in the oldest sense and unless there are indications he’s been touched by madness”—a glance at Keir, the healer shaking his head—“then he wouldn’t stoop to stratagems that skate so close to the line of what is permitted in a war.”
“Astaad,” Keir said softly, “despite his occasionally secretive ways, believes absolutely in honor, and I think such actions would stain it. He continues to feel a deep shame over his violent actions toward his concubine during your mother’s waking, though we all know he wasn’t in his right mind at the time.”
“Neha’s too busy holding off her twin to bother about us.” Worried what the Archangel of India would do in her continued grief about the execution of her daughter, Elena had read every one of Jason’s reports as they came in. “Is Elijah two-faced enough to offer friendship with one hand and stab us in the back with the other?”
“Eli has a noble heart and the inclination not to cause you or yours harm,” Keir said to Raphael, then glanced at Elena. Obviously noting her surprise, the healer smiled. “He is the rarest of archangels, one who didn’t show signs of such violent power as a youth or as a young male.”
From the way Raphael was staring at the healer, he didn’t know this particular story, either. “You will not stop now, Keir.”
Laughing, the healer said, “Eli was a seasoned and loyal general in another archangel’s army on the day of a great battle against—” Cutting himself off, Keir shook his head. “I will tell you that tale another time. It is far too long and interesting to shorten so precipitously.”
Fascinated, Elena waited for him to continue.
“Eli,” Keir said into the silence, “had just cut down the last of the enemy and raised his sword to declare victory when it hit: a sudden and total ascension that sent him screaming into the skies. It was extraordinary, as all ascensions are extraordinary, but what is most important is that when he returned from the sky to the earth, he was no longer a general but one of the Cadre.”
Raphael said what Elena was thinking. “He was Caliane’s general.”
“Yes, so unless you betray him, he will not first betray you. He would’ve hunted your mother in her madness had she not disappeared into Sleep, but he would’ve taken no pleasure in it, for he has never forsaken the vows he took to cause no harm to her and those of her blood.”
“Caliane’s never mentioned him.”
“Did you ask her?” An arch question. “You know her age. It’s very possible she hasn’t quite assimilated that you are now Eli’s peer, for he was an archangel before you were born, and in her eyes . . .”