Most often, the butler displayed his purloined items in Raphael’s home, and the archangel made sure each piece was quietly reunited with its owner. Many men—angel, vampire, or human—would’ve dismissed a servant with such a peccadillo, but Montgomery was as loyal to Raphael as any of the Seven, and the sire understood the value of such loyalty.

“A flaw does not make a man worthless,” Raphael had once said to Dmitri. “Else I would’ve been discarded long ago.”

Now, Illium snacked on the sugared dates Montgomery had supplied, the sweetmeats part of an array of food that would tempt any appetite. Reaching out, Dmitri took a single grape, enjoying the fresh, sweet flavor and imagining feeding Honor the taste from his lips.

“Date?” Illium said with a glint in his eye.

Dmitri ignored the painted wooden bowl the angel held out. “I’m going to help Aodhan kill you—after I torture you by making you drink champagne while listening to Mozart.” The blue-winged angel hated both.

Illium grinned, unafraid of Dmitri and Aodhan’s combined wrath. “Don’t tell me you’re still heartbroken over Favashi,” he said, naming the archangel who had vast date plantations in her lands. “I won’t believe you—I admit I wasn’t even a twinkle in my mother’s eye during your liaison with the lovely Archangel of Persia, but I’ve since seen you together, and you never looked at her the way you look at Honor.”

“Illium has the right of it in this, Dmitri. Honor is your heart.” Aodhan’s crystalline eyes refracted Dmitri’s face into countless fragments, the fine grooves around the angel’s mouth the only sign of the pain he continued to bear as his injuries healed.

The neck wound had closed first, his immortal body concentrating its efforts on the most dangerous threat. His damaged wing had come next, but while Aodhan could fly short distances, and had been encouraged to do so by the healers in order to strengthen the weak new muscle, it’d be several more weeks before he could return to full flight status.

His broken bones had healed, but his left arm, as the most minor injury in immortal terms, had only regenerated partway to his elbow at this stage. It was currently covered by a neatly pinned white shirtsleeve in deference to the fact that cold could sometimes retard healing by diverting the body’s resources into generating warmth.

It spoke to the power in Aodhan’s veins that he’d healed at such speed. Most angels his age would’ve still been bed-bound, their recovery counted in months, not weeks. The best news, however, had nothing to do with Aodhan’s physical health. No, it had to do with a slow but deep healing of the soul.

Illium’s voice broke into Dmitri’s assessment of the injured angel. “I think our honored second is stalling. Why does the memory of the steel hand in a velvet glove that is Favashi make you gnash your teeth?”

“It’s not the memory of Favashi that aggravates me.” Dmitri scowled. “It’s the memory of my own stupidity.” The female archangel had nearly manipulated him into becoming her personal weapon.

Dmitri had no argument with being the blade of the person he loved—he was lethal and there was honor in protecting that which was precious to the heart and the soul. He did have a problem with being used for a fool. “It took me far too long to see through her machinations.” He ate another grape. “At least Michaela wears her self-interest and narcissism openly, while Favashi pretends to be kindness and grace while having the soul of a cobra.”

Aodhan shook his head. “She did nothing a male archangel wouldn’t do in seeking to secure a strong immortal to his court. It is wrong of you to compare her to Michaela.”

Dmitri knew Aodhan was right; immortal politics didn’t permit any but the ruthless to survive. In truth, Favashi and Michaela had little in common beyond their gender. Yet the whole idea of manipulating strong immortals into service continued to irritate him. “We all serve Raphael of our own free will. You’d think the lesson would be clear.”

Hair glittering diamond bright even in the muted light, Aodhan said, “You forget, Dmitri. Raphael is yet considered young. We are an experiment—most of the old ones expect you in particular to rise up and rebel any day now.”

Aodhan had always been closest to Illium, Dmitri over five hundred years old when Aodhan was born. So he hadn’t realized until now how much he’d missed the angel. Aodhan had always seen the world through an incisive lens, something that was visible in his artwork.

“Sometimes,” Dmitri said, “I think I’ll never understand angelkind.” A thousand years he’d been by Raphael’s side—with minor deviations along the way—and still people refused to believe that theirs wasn’t only the relationship of an archangel and his second, but a friendship.

“You aren’t alone,” Aodhan said. “I think some of the old ones have become so insular, so ensconced within their coterie of like-minded friends, that they no longer grow. They are like the butterflies Lijuan kept pinned to her walls.”

In contrast, Raphael lived in the center of one of the world’s most vibrant cities, his Seven traveled continents on a regular basis, and, critically, both Dmitri and his sire had fallen for extraordinary women whom angelkind did not truly understand.

One old angel had said, “Your wife is beautiful,” to Dmitri, a puzzled look on his face. “But why did you marry her? Would she not have served better as a concubine?”