She made a sound, but it wasn’t a complaint, so he continued to explore.
Last night ... She’d been magnificent. Stronger, faster, more willing than he’d ever expected. He hadn’t meant for her introduction to that most intimate of dances to be so sensually rough, but when she’d ridden every wave with him without flinching, he’d given in to temptation and taken her in a way he’d never have chanced with another woman.
Because immortal or not, they would’ve been terrified.
“Hey.” A sleepy grumble as she shifted closer to him, until his knee brushed against her body, her wings spreading till one lay across his hip and thighs.
He ran a hand over the sleek indigo of her primary covert feathers with proprietary pleasure. “Good morning.”
Her hand came to rest on his thigh below the sheets, perilously close to the part of him that had the most unquenchable hunger for her. “Careful, Guild Hunter.”
A drowsy curve of her lips, but her eyes were very much alert. “So, you going to tell me what happened last night?”
He’d known she’d push. That was who she was. As he’d said, it would have been easier were she malleable—but he’d never have taken her for his consort then. “I told you my mother and I always shared a strong mental bond.” He fought the pull of memory, of a time when Caliane had been exactly that—his mother. “It seems that bond did survive. She can reach me even through the vestiges of Sleep.”
Elena stroked her hand over his thigh, anchoring him to the earth, to the present. “What did you see?”
“The past and the future.”
“Raphael.” A whisper so quiet it was almost not sound. “Raphael.”
A prick of consciousness, of awareness. “Mother?” Eyes opening, he found himself standing on a verdant green field, the sky above him the brilliant shade of a blue jay’s wings, the air perfumed with a thousand unnamed flowers.
He frowned. This place, it was hauntingly familiar . . . right down to the droplets of dew that sparkled like gemstones against the jade green stalks of grass. But his mind, it was playing games with him, refusing to divulge the name of the field where he stood.
Crouching down, he broke off one of the stalks, touched his finger to the dew.
A sigh on the wind ... and her fine, delicate feet walking across the grass, the edge of a long white gown flirting with her ankles.
His heart stopped beating as he watched her come toward him, an archangel of such piercing beauty that she’d spawned legends and caused empires to fall. Her hair was a waterfall of ebony down her back, thick and wild with silken curls his father had loved to fist in his hands as he kissed her, her eyes a piercing hue that he saw in the mirror every single day of his life.
Caliane had given him her eyes, her power . . . perhaps her madness.
But his height he’d gained from his father.
Rising to his feet, he saw her smile as she came to a halt before him, a woman who barely reached his breastbone. “My Raphael,” she whispered. “My darling boy. How you’ve grown.”
He towered above her, but even now, he felt the child. When she put her fingers on his chest, he couldn’t move away, his heart aching with a sense of loss that had followed him through time. “You broke me on this field.” He’d remembered at last, remembered the blood and the agony. Remembered the sight of her walking away.
Sorrow in her gaze, the blue turning to midnight. “I was mad, Raphael.” Said with a clarity that reminded him of the stunning power of a song that had once held the world in thrall. “But I fought for you.”
He thought of his shattered bones, his body crushed and broken into so many pieces that it had taken a long, long time for him to become whole again. “Did you?”
Raising her hand, she touched her fingers to his jaw in a maternal caress that threatened to send him back to his youth. “The madness whispered that I should kill you, that you carried within you the potential to transcend my power.”
Raphael knew his own strength, but he also knew that the archangel in front of him was millennia older, her abilities unparalleled. “You are an Ancient, mother. I am yet young.”
“The youngest angel to ever become an archangel.” There was a pride in her tone that cut him to the quick. “I watched over you even as I Slept, my darling boy. And I see a future in which you will fly far higher than either I or Nadiel ever dared to dream.”
He was her son. He’d mourned who she’d once been even as he’d tried to execute her. It was impossible for him not to step forward and take her slender body into his arms, to bury his face in her hair and inhale the sweet woodsmoke of home. “You are Sleeping.”
“No, I am Waking.” Damp against his cheek, a mother’s tears as she stroked her hand over his hair. “I sense a vein of mortality in you, Raphael.”
He blinked, pulled away, shook his head. Elena. He’d forgotten Elena. How was that possible when she was the most important element of his life? “What are you doing to me, Mother?”
Her eyes blazed the color at the heart of the sun, so pure it burned. “Reminding you of who you are. The son of two archangels. The most powerful child ever born.”
Shaking his head, he met that brilliant, blinding gaze. “I have made myself. I will never be your creature.”
The fire flickered with searing blue. “I will not permit you to be hers, either. You are far too magnificent to belong to an immortal with a weak mortal heart.”
He knew then that Caliane would kill Elena if she could.