Because mortals could never win.

Gritting her teeth, Elena narrowed her eyes. “There must be a way,” she muttered. “There’s always a way. We just have to figure it out.”

Laric appeared to be staring at her. What he eventually wrote on the notepad made her grin. “Yeah,” she said, “I’m not like other angels. I’m a hunter angel.” What the hell—people were already using that term. She’d just co-opt it. Then she’d make Demarco and Ransom and all her other hunter friends who insisted on wearing the ridiculous hunter angel T-shirts, bow down to her in homage.

The idea made her want to laugh, regardless of the brutal storm outside and the subtler malice within Lumia. “Hunters are a different breed.”

The healer didn’t respond, but she could feel him staring at her again. “Did you ever try to get your scars excised?” she asked. “Adult angels have an incredible healing ability from what I’ve seen.”

Laric’s hand moved slowly across the page. The scars are impossible to cut through.

Elena tried to process what he was telling her, considered the amount of energy that would’ve been released at the violent death of an archangel. There’d been no similar blowback when Raphael executed Uram, but those two had extracted a hell of a lot of power from their environment, then expended it during their fight, Manhattan a war zone. Badly damaged high-rises and a burned-out electrical network had only been the start.

And in comparison to Caliane’s and Nadiel’s battle, Raphael’s and Uram’s fight had been between young “pups,” as Alexander was wont to say.

Nadiel had been younger than Caliane, but not young. The amounts of energy involved . . . It must’ve seared the scars so deep into Laric’s body that they went to the bone itself. Raphael, do you think you could try your ability to heal on Laric once you’re back from China? Not before. Not when they had no idea of what he might face there.

I’ve been considering how best to utilize it.

Elena met those eyes of endless blue, of an archangel whose heart was no longer in any danger of turning cruel.

He spoke again, the cool winds of him a caress across her senses. We will not abandon him, Elena. Aodhan says as you did—that Laric is dying slowly here. A dangerous pause. The boy is afraid of being shoved out for interrupting the “serenity” of this place with his scars, so he rarely ventures out now.

That idea didn’t just magically appear in his head. It had been planted there by men who searched for luminescence in unkindness. “You’ve done an amazing job with Ibrahim,” she said aloud to Laric and it wasn’t just talk—Ibrahim was breathing easier, his color better. “Especially since you’ve only had a little training.”

Laric wrote again on the notepad. The damage is not so bad. He will heal. He seemed to accurately read her shock at that description of Ibrahim’s injuries, because he added, No signs of weapons being used. Nothing to cause damage deep on the inside.

The hairs stood up on Elena’s arms.

38

Taking the notepad, she walked over to show it to Aodhan and Raphael. “Fists and kicks, that skews personal to me.”

“Someone in a rage.” Aodhan’s voice was quiet but his shattered eyes were shards of ice. “As the sire said, he had to have been kicked after he was down; fists alone wouldn’t have collapsed one side of his body or pulverized his arm.”

A rustle, Laric coming to hover awkwardly nearby.

When Elena waved him closer, he came. It was only once he was part of the circle that his hands began to move. Aodhan watched, his face increasingly grim. “He says he’s certain it wasn’t undirected rage—the injuries are too closely grouped for that. One side of Ibrahim’s body was targeted. Particularly his arm.”

Elena stared at the ground with a scowl, trying to focus her thoughts. “Why that arm?” She raised her head. “I mean, I could understand targeting both arms if it was about him giving us the map, or if it was punishment because he touched something out of bounds, but one arm?”

“Not something.” Firelight flickered on the top arch of Raphael’s wings, and then those wings were white flame.

She heard Laric suck in a breath, stagger back a step, but when the fire stayed confined to Raphael’s wings, he came back in a show of unexpected courage.

“You touched Ibrahim on that arm.”

She stared at Raphael, his words vibrating inside her skull. “That doesn’t make sense. I belong to you. Everyone knows that.”

His smile was coolly satisfied, his wings flickering back to normal as quickly as they’d switched to flame.

Making a face at him, she said, “And you belong to me, Archangel.” She gave him a smug look of her own.

Laughing, he put a hand over his heart. “I would wear your brand on my skin, Elena-mine. Even if it meant searing it anew each day when I woke.”

“Ahem.” Elena pointed to the wing that bore the bullet scar. “You already wear my mark, Archangel.”

He unfolded his wing, smiled in open satisfaction. “So I do.”

Laric had been turning his head back and forth as they spoke.

Elena could all but feel his flabbergasted surprise at the conversation. Apparently, everyone expected archangels and their consorts to walk around being otherworldly and powerful, not act like the lovers they were. Though, at least with Elena, there was an expectation that she was apt to be a little odd, since she’d once been a mortal.