* * *
Andromeda tried to focus on the illuminated manuscript she’d placed on a stand at the back of the Library, but all she could see were the words of the letter that had come for her an hour earlier.
In twenty-two days, you turn four hundred. You have had many years of indulgence. We have allowed you all of it—even when you chose to forsake your bloodline.
It is now time to return home and undertake your obligation to your family and to your archangel. We shall expect you for the start of the ceremonial celebrations six days prior to your day of birth, following which, you will go to your grandfather’s court to take up your position by his side.
He has little use for scholars, but you are his sole grandchild, and as such, he is willing to overlook your failings as long as you conduct yourself as a princess of the court during your time of service. Do not disappoint him, Andromeda. Your grandfather’s mercy is not endless.
She gripped the sides of the stand, the wooden edges digging into her palms. “Indulgence” her mother called Andromeda’s centuries of learning, learning that had seen her offer help to countless immortals who came to the Library for assistance. She was a keeper of angelic histories and a teacher of their young. Yet after a bare three hundred and twenty-five years, give or take, she was a mere apprentice. There was so much more she had to learn.
And the journeys she’d taken . . . the world was ever changing and she wanted to continue to drink in every single part of it. But time had run out. She’d always known it would, always known that one day, no matter any other choice she’d made, she’d be four hundred years old and expected to return to the court of the Archangel Charisemnon—to fulfill the terms of a familial blood vow her parents had made on her behalf when she was a babe newborn.
Jessamy had asked her if she was bound by any such vows when Andromeda first came to the Refuge. Scared she wouldn’t be accepted into an apprenticeship should she tell the truth, admit she’d have to stop her studies at four hundred, Andromeda had lied and said Charisemnon had forgiven her vow since she was so clearly unsuited to court life. As the years passed, the lie had become more and more difficult to put right.
None of it mattered now. Allowing one day for the journey, she had fifteen more of freedom before she had to return to the stunning, heartbreaking land she’d left as a girl not yet an adult. Any other action would be considered high treason, death the penalty.
No one, enemy or friend, would offer her safe harbor. “Stealing” children from another archangel’s blood family was considered an act of quiet violence that could ripple out into war. She’d considered asking Raphael or Titus for sanctuary, since they were already at war with her grandfather, but she knew that even if they paid attention to the petition of a lowly apprentice, the two archangels could not give her what she wanted.
To do so would be to shock and disturb the more traditional archangels who were Raphael’s and Titus’s allies against the death and disease her grandfather and his own nightmare ally had spread across the world. And regardless, she’d be hunted to the end of her existence should she run. Far better to serve the five hundred years required of her and hope her soul was intact at the end of it.
As a princess of the court, she’d be expected to be a ruthless and vicious arm of Charisemnon. Her grandfather might not kill her the first time she refused an order to torture or to humiliate, but he’d do everything in his power to break her, make her his puppet. Charisemnon did not suffer defiance.
Fifteen more days.
Taking a deep, shuddering breath, she was attempting to focus on the manuscript again in an effort to find stable ground, when the hairs rose on the back of her neck. All at once, she wished she didn’t have her hair in a braid, that her nape wasn’t so open, so vulnerable.
Throat dry, she turned in wary quiet, reaching at the same time for the razor-sharp blade strapped to her thigh and accessible through a hole in the pocket of her gauzy raspberry-colored gown. When she saw it was only Jessamy heading toward her, she began to smile . . . then realized her mentor wasn’t alone.
There was a shadow next to her.
A shadow with silver eyes that watched Andromeda without blinking.
Every hair on her body stood up this time, or that’s what it felt like. She knew who he was—everyone knew Naasir, though like her, most had no idea of his origins or nature. He was one of a kind. Skin of a warm, deep brown that held golden undertones and that invited a caressing touch, eyes of silver and hair the same shade. Silver, not gray. It was as if his hair and his eyes had been formed out of the metal and polished to a high shine.
He stood out, made you remember him.
Of course, she’d never before been so close to him. Naasir had passed through the Refuge many times in the three and a quarter centuries she’d lived here, but Andromeda had ensured they never met. At first, she’d been too young and too determined to succeed at her studies to worry about anyone of the male sex. But later . . . Naasir incited things inside her that weren’t right for a woman who had taken a vow of celibacy, made the out-of-control animal within want to come out.
That didn’t mean she hadn’t watched him from afar.
He moved like a jungle cat, fed on blood and yet ate meat, had eyes that saw through the darkness, and seduced mortals and immortals alike with ease. Andromeda might not have ever surrendered to the same primal urges, but she understood that he was unique in his ability to entrance so many. Add in his feral beauty, so compelling and hypnotic, as well as the potent depth of his power, and he was a threat on many levels.