Fen sighed. “Yes, too beautiful. And too sweet a soul. I wouldn’t have permitted her to be Made if Nimra hadn’t vowed to care for her.”

Amariyah broke off her conversation at that instant to walk over. “Papa,” she said and, unlike the echoes of another continent that flavored her father’s speech, the bayou ran dark and languid in her voice, “you did not eat your breakfast today. Do you think you can fool your Amariyah?”

“Ach, girl. You’re embarrassing me in front of my new friend.”

Amariyah held out her hand. “Good morning, Noel. You are quite the topic of conversation in this court.”

Shaking that hand, with its skin several shades lighter than her father’s, Noel gave what he hoped was an easy smile. “All good, I’m sure.”

Fen’s daughter shook her head, the dimples that dented her cheeks making her appear even more innocent. “I’m afraid not. Christian is, as my grandmother would’ve said, ‘very put out.’ Excuse me a moment.” Bustling over to the sideboard, she filled a plate before returning. “You will eat, Papa, or I will tell Lady Nimra.”

Fen grumbled but Noel could see he was pleased at the attention. Rising, Noel waved a hand at his seat. “I think your father would prefer your company to mine.”

Amariyah dimpled again. “Thank you, Noel. If you need anything in the court, let me know.” Walking with him a few steps, she smiled again, and this time there was nothing guileless about it. “My father likes to see me as an innocent,” she murmured in a low voice, “and so I am one for him. But I am a woman grown.” With that unsubtle message, she was gone.

Frowning, Noel went to leave the audience chamber, skirting a young maid walking in with a fresh carafe of coffee. Then again… Turning, he walked back to snag a cup off a small side table. “May I beg a cup?” he asked, making sure to keep his voice gentle.

Her cheeks colored a pretty red, but she poured for him with steady hands.

“Thank you.”

Nodding, she dropped her head and headed to the main table, placing the carafe on the surface. No one paid her any mind, and— their potential complicity in the attempted assassination aside— it made Noel wonder just how much the servants heard, how much they remembered.

Nimra stared at Augustus across the length of the small formal library where she handled her day–to–day affairs. “You know I won’t change my mind,” she said, “and still you insist.”

The big man, his skin a gleaming dark mahogany, snapped out wings of a deep russet streaked with white, his arms folded across his massive chest. “You are a woman, Nimra,” he boomed. “It’s unnatural that you should be this alone.”

Other female angels would’ve done something nasty to Augustus by now. Theirs was not a society where men alone held power. The most powerful of the archangels was Lijuan, and she was very much a woman. Or had been. No one knew what she’d become since her “evolution.”

It was Nimra’s cross to bear that Augustus was a childhood friend, less than two decades older than her. Nothing in the scheme of things, given the length of angelic lives. “Friendship,” she said to Augustus, “will only get you so far.”

The idiot male smiled that huge smile that always made her feel as if the sun had come out. “I would treat you as a queen.” Dropping his arms and folding back his wings, he moved across the room. “You know I am no Eitriel.”

Her heart pulsed into a hard knot of pain at the sound of that name. So many years now, and yet the bruise remained. She no longer missed Eitriel, but she missed what he’d stolen from her, hated the scars he’d left behind. “Be that as it may,” she said, stepping nimbly to the side when Augustus would have taken her into his arms, “my mind is made up. I have no wish to tie my life to a man’s again.”

“Then what am I?” came a rough male voice from the doorway. “A meaningless diversion?”

CHAPTER 4

Startled, Nimra looked up to meet the frigid blue gaze of a vampire who shouldn’t have been there.

“Who,” Augustus roared at the same time, “is he?!”

“The man Nimra has chosen,” Noel said with what she knew was deliberate disrespect in his tone.

Augustus’s massive hands fisted. “I’m going to break your scrawny neck, bloodsucker.”

“Make sure you rip it off or I’ll regenerate,” Noel drawled back, settling his body into a combative stance.

“Enough.” Nimra had no idea what Noel thought he was doing, but they’d deal with that after she sorted out the problem of Augustus. “Noel is my guest,” she said to the other angel, “and so are you. If you can’t behave like a civilized being, the door is right there.”

Augustus actually growled at her, betraying the years he’d spent as a warrior in Titus’s court, conquering and pillaging. “I waited for you, and you throw me over for a pretty- boy vampire?”

Nimra knew she should have been angered but all she felt was an exasperated affection. “Do you really think I don’t know about the harem of dancing girls you keep in that castle of yours?”

He had the grace to bow his head a fraction. “None of them are you.”

“The past is past,” she whispered, placing a hand on his chest and rising up on tiptoe to press a kiss to his jaw. “Eitriel was a friend to us both, and he betrayed us both. You do not have to pay the penance.”

His arms came around her, solid and strong. “You are not penance, Nimra.”

“But I am not your lodestar, either.” She brushed a hand down the primaries of his right wing. It was a familiar caress, but not an intimate one. “Go home, Augustus. Your women will be pining for you.”

Grumbling, he glared at Noel. “Put a bruise on her heart and I’ll turn your entire body into a bruise.” With that, he was gone.

Noel stared after the angel until he disappeared from sight. “Who is Eitriel?”

Nimra’s gaze glittered with anger when it slammed into his. “That is none of your concern.” The door to the library banged shut in a display of cold temper. “You are here for one purpose only.”

Very carefully worded, Noel thought, watching as she walked to the sliding doors that led out into the gardens and pushed them open. Anyone listening would come to the obvious conclusion.

“As I said, Noel,” Nimra continued, “take care you do not go too far. I am not a maiden for you to protect.”

Stepping out into the gardens with her, he said nothing until they came to the edge of the stream that ran through her land, the water cool and clear. “No,” he agreed, knowing he’d crossed a line. Yet he couldn’t form an apology— because he wasn’t sorry he’d intervened. “You have an interesting court,” he said instead when he was certain they were alone, the scent of honeysuckle heavy in the air, though he couldn’t see any evidence of the vine.

“Do I?” Tone still touched with the frost of power, Nimra sat down on the same wrought- iron bench he’d used earlier, her wings spread out behind her, strands of topaz shimmering in the sunlight.

“Fen is your eyes and ears and has been for a long time,” he said, “while Amariyah was only Made because it soothes his heart to know that she’ll live even after he is gone.”

Nimra’s response had nothing to do with his conclusions. “Noel. Understand this. I can never appear weak.”

“Understood.” Weakness could get her killed. “However, there’s no weakness in having a wolf by your side.”

“So long as that wolf does not aspire to seize the reins.”

“This wolf has no such desire.” Going down on his haunches, he played a river- smoothed pebble over and through his fingers as he returned to the topic of Fen and Amariyah. “Are you always so kind to your court?”

“Fen has earned far more than he has ever asked,” Nimra said, wondering if Noel was truly capable of being her wolf without grasping for power. “I will miss him terribly when he is gone.” She could see she’d surprised Noel with her confession. Angels, especially those old and powerful enough to hold territories, were not meant to be creatures of emotion, of heart.

“Who will you miss when they are gone?” she asked, deeply curious about what lay behind the hard shield of his personality. “Do you have human acquaintances and friends?” She didn’t expect him to answer, so when he did, she had to hide her own surprise. Only decades of experience made that possible— Eitriel had left her with that, if nothing else.

“I was born on an English moor,” he said, his voice shifting to betray the faintest trace of an accent from times long gone.

She found it fascinating. “When were you Made?” she asked. “You were older.” Vampires did age, but so slowly that the changes were imperceptible. The lines of maturity on Noel’s face came from his human lifetime.

“Thirty- two,” he said, his eyes on a plump bumblebee as it buzzed over to the dewberry shrub heavy with fruit on Nimra’s right. “I thought I had another life in front of me, but when I found that road cut off, I decided what the hell, I might as well attempt to become a Candidate. I never expected to be chosen on the first attempt.”

Nimra angled her head, conscious that angels would’ve fought to claim him for their courts, this male with both strength and intelligence. “This other life, did it involve a woman?”

“Doesn’t it always?” There was no bitterness in his words. “She chose another, and I wanted no one else. After I was Made, I watched over her and her children, and somewhere along the way, I became a friend rather than a former lover. Her descendants call me Uncle. I mourn them when they pass.”

Nimra thought of the wild windswept beauty of the land where he’d been born, found it fit him to perfection. “Do they still live on the moors?”

A nod, his hair shining in the sunlight. “They are a proud lot, prouder yet of the land they call their own.”