Naasir smiled, flashing fangs; the child immediately dimpled and waved. Children liked him. They knew without being told that he wouldn’t hurt them. It didn’t matter if the child wore skin or fur or scales.
Osiris had taken and killed the young of many species without compunction. That was one of the many reasons he had to die. One of the many reasons why Alexander had to execute him.
The latter was a fact Naasir hadn’t known until he was older. He’d always thought Raphael had done it, but Raphael hadn’t been an archangel at the time, and Osiris had been an Ancient’s brother.
“Whatever our later disagreements,” Raphael had said to Naasir a hundred years earlier, “Alexander and I always agreed that Osiris had to die.” A grim tone that echoed the hard line of his jaw. “Alexander’s older brother wasn’t insane. He was just wired wrong and he committed infanticide on a horrific level. Simply because he killed the children of mortals and animals didn’t make his crimes any less terrible—he wiped out entire species in his obsession.”
Naasir knew Osiris would’ve loved to have had an immortal child on whom to experiment—stronger, less apt to die on him—but he’d never been able to father one on the concubines he kept far from his stronghold and only rarely visited. And even he hadn’t been arrogant enough to kidnap an angelic child.
Not then. Had he been allowed to live . . .
* * *
Calling out in a subdialect Andromeda didn’t fully understand, Tarek led them to a clearing surrounded by houses on one side and the blue-green waters of the lake on the other. There was a table set up there by the time they arrived, benches on either side. Food and drink was being placed on it by fast-moving men and women.
Suspicion underlay the quick, curious glimpses to which Andromeda was subject, though she noticed the non-warrior women were sending Naasir some very come-hither smiles. Then she saw one of the male sentinels scan Naasir’s body in an unobtrusive but admiring way and knew the interest wasn’t confined to the noncombatants or to the female sex.
She couldn’t blame them; there was simply something about the way Naasir moved that said he’d offer a lover great pleasure. The fact she’d chosen a life of celibacy hadn’t made her blind to sexual attraction, or put her body into stasis, and Naasir . . . Just watching him walk or feeling his breath against her ear when he nuzzled at her aroused her to near-unbearable levels. As for seeing his nakedness when he’d come out of the pond in Lijuan’s territory . . .
Her stomach fluttered, her skin hot.
Another woman gave him a flirtatious smile right in front of Andromeda. Her hand clenched on the hilt of her sword.
None of these doe-eyed beauties, she reminded herself, would last an hour with him in his real skin. He was too wild, too strong, too demanding, and too aggravating.
He was perfect.
While Andromeda was a fool, judging these other women when she, herself, was the most unsuitable of them all.
“We will break bread,” Tarek said as he took a seat on one side of the table after handing off the girl in his arms to a mortal woman of about forty.
Andromeda and Naasir slid in on the opposite bench.
His troops, meanwhile, scattered around the village, but they didn’t go far, clearly ready to go on the offensive the instant either Naasir or Andromeda made a threatening move.
A tiny, steaming cup of hot, strong coffee was placed in front of Andromeda, a fresh bowl of flatbread put in the center of the table. At the same time, a villager brought over two small glasses of blood for Tarek and Naasir, the condensation on the glasses showing the blood had been stored somewhere cold. Leaning in toward Naasir after placing his glass in front of him, the curvy and quite frankly beautiful woman whispered something in his ear, her face falling when he shook his head.
Andromeda knew it must’ve been an offer to feed him, found herself both pleased that he’d turned down the offer and angry because she’d soon be out of his life while countless other women wouldn’t.
In front of her, Tarek lifted his glass after giving the lingering server a sharp look that had her hustling away. “To honor.”
“To honor,” Andromeda and Naasir said together and drank.
Placing her cup back on the table, Andromeda took a piece of the bread and tore off a small bite for Naasir. His consuming the ceremonial piece seemed to please the sentinel leader. Finishing off the blood in his glass then eating a small piece of bread himself, Tarek folded up the sleeves of his sand-colored shirt, the fabric shadowed with slightly darker blotches that allowed him and his men to blend into the landscape.
The tattoo on his left forearm, the lines inked in an impossible silver, caught Andromeda’s eye.
A raven.
That wasn’t a surprise. Alexander’s symbol had been a raven. Legend said that on his ascension, a raven had flown high with him, only to die in the blaze of his power. To Alexander’s people, the raven symbolized courage against all odds. But this particular stylized rendering of a raven . . .
Andromeda narrowed her eyes, sure she’d seen it before.
“You say you are friends,” Tarek said into the quiet, “but you bring Lijuan’s people with you.”
Having caught Naasir’s eye, Andromeda was the one who spoke. “Our task is to find and warn Alexander before the enemy locates him.”
The sentinel’s face grew austere. “In seeking Alexander you break a taboo so old, its origins are lost from memory.”
Andromeda knew her next words could lose this man’s trust and possibly endanger her and Naasir’s lives. “Yes,” she said. “We break a law, but if we don’t, then Alexander will be helpless against Lijuan. You can’t protect him against her.” Even weak as she was, Lijuan could easily annihilate this village—if Xi didn’t take care of that first.