The words hung unspoken between them.
“They weren’t the only ones,” Jason said, wondering how much she knew. “Those who had known of the affair and helped Eris and Nivriti were executed; others who were simply loyal to Nivriti were exiled.”
Mahiya pushed away from his chest to sit upright, her wing brushing across his body, the warmth of her suddenly gone. “A man on the edge of their circle,” she murmured, “would’ve been considered a hanger-on. Exile, then.”
“It’s a workable conclusion.” To focus only on one possibility when it wasn’t yet a certainty was to create blind corners where the enemy could hide. “The question is, why would he expose himself to you?”
“A sense of residual loyalty perhaps.” Tawny eyes vivid as a cat’s in the darkness met his, the potential locked within her body a luminous brilliance. “But there is another question.”
“Which is?” Jason got the same sense of power from Mahiya that he had from a young Illium. It might take her longer than the blue-winged angel to grow into that power—her mother’s daughter in that perhaps, but given room to breathe, to develop, Mahiya would become an angel to be reckoned with . . . and he had the sudden, blinding thought that he wanted to witness the change, watch her spread her wings.
“How,” she said now, “did he get the box to the temple?”
It was an astute question. “Some vampires can climb like spiders,” he said, having seen a grinning Venom scale the Tower one moonless night after he and Illium made a bet, “but the chances of being caught would’ve been very high.” Not only did angelic guards sweep the area, the sentinels who watched over Guardian Fort had a wide field of view.
“He could’ve used the tunnels—Venom said he didn’t see any other footprints along the route he used, but I’ve heard it’s a labyrinth.”
“I’ll have him check them again.” He reached for the cell phone he’d placed on the bedside table after pulling it from his discarded jeans.
“Now?”
“It’s the best time.” No one would worry overmuch over a vampire walking about in the night, much less one known to be favored by women.
As it was, he heard a soft female sigh in the background when Venom answered. “No problem,” the other man said. “I’ve just fed, have plenty of energy.”
Jason heard the satiation in the vampire’s tone, knew he’d fed from the vein—and assuredly from a very willing female. “Watch your back.” Sex could cloud even the sharpest mind, and while Neha liked Venom, he remained one of the Seven.
The sound of rustling, as if Venom was getting out of bed. “Don’t worry. She’s a delicious playmate, but all she wanted to pump was my cock, not my brain.”
“Will you be able to check every possible route up to Guardian?”
“I can get it done before dawn.”
Hanging up soon afterward, Jason said, “You think the box was flown there,” to the woman beside him, her expression pensive.
“Yes.” Mahiya took the sheet with her as she got off the bed, the filaments of her feathers a thousand soft kisses across his skin. Disappearing into her dressing room, she returned clothed in a vivid blue robe tied at the waist.
He’d already pulled on his pants, though he’d left off his shirt and sword—the latter within reach, as it always was. Putting his back to the solid wall beside a small window of stained glass, he watched her walk to open that window and look beyond, bathed in the moonlight.
“A teddy bear, it’s either a silly romantic gift,” she whispered at long last, “or the kind of thing you give to a child.”
He thought of the feather of blue green he’d found the night of Arav’s murder, of the fact that Nivriti had inherited the ability to mesmerize, and he could not discount the impossibility behind the troubled look on Mahiya’s face. “What has Neha told you about your mother’s execution?”
“That she began her death screaming and begging for her life.” Her fingers tightened so hard on the window ledge that her bones pushed up against skin. “‘I watched my dear sister’s organs spill out of the gaping hole that had been her womb and the blood pour off the stubs of her wings, then left her to starve to death.’ That’s what Neha said to me when I asked about my mother.” She swallowed. “Vanhi says she lied about the manner of my birth, but Vanhi had to leave after I was born. Neha could have done exactly as she said.”
Warmth, a hand on her cheek, a thumb on her jaw, the pressure gentle but inexorable. Turning, she found herself the focus of eyes of near obsidian that burned with a dark flame that had her heart skipping a beat.
Jason’s thumb moved gently across the dip of her chin. “As we see from Eris, from you, Neha knows how to hold a grudge.”
Mahiya sucked in a breath, for she’d expected Jason to argue against the painful hope inside her chest. “But to have kept my mother alive all this time out of spite?” She shook her head. “Why would she do that?”
“The same reason she did it to Eris—love and hate intertwined. You tell me Nivriti was her twin. That is a bond of the soul.”
Mahiya thought back to a day she’d come upon Neha and Eris in the courtyard when they’d believed themselves alone. She should’ve turned, walked away, but she’d been caught by the tableau they made: Neha, her expression young and vulnerable in a way Mahiya had never seen, allowing Eris to tip up her chin with his finger, tease a smile from her lips.