The impression was furthered by the folds of the white silk sari set neatly over her shoulder, the stark shade bearing only the thinnest border of small faceted beads. Around her throat lay a necklace shaped to mimic a slender black serpent, its hissing mouth open. But of course, Raphael knew that was no necklace.
“Neha,” he said, watching as she allowed a cobra to twine its way around her arm. “You know why we’re having this conversation.” Vampires, Elena had told him as she sank into the bath, had strange, unexpected scents, so the potency of poison could mean nothing. However, as evidenced by Venom, Neha had a way of marking those she Made.
Now the Queen of Snakes, of Poisons, curved her lips into a smile that held an amusement as cold as that of the blood that flowed through her favored creatures. “It is but a game, Raphael.”
A mortal may have attempted to appeal to her conscience, tried to make her feel guilt for the senseless death—most likely deaths—she’d engineered, but he spoke to her pride. “It is beneath you, Neha, to act through such pathetic fools.”
Titus would’ve exploded at the insult, Michaela would’ve hissed in anger, but Neha ... Neha sighed and reached up to pinch closed the mouth of the snake at her neck, holding it shut until the creature started to struggle before releasing it. And still it stayed curled around her throat. “You are right,” she murmured. “But you helped take something I love from me, Raphael.”
“So you would take what I love from me?” So smart, so vicious, he thought, so like the snakes she kept as pets.
“I’m sure your hunter is none too pleased to discover that by becoming yours, she has placed everyone she loves in mortal danger.” Stroking her fingers along the cobra’s gleaming skin as she confirmed her part in the murders at the school, she met his gaze with eyes of darkest brown, eyes that were very much sane. “As for the other ... betrayal is always a hard pill to swallow. He was weak, ridiculously easy to break and control.”
Raphael had already set Dmitri and Venom the task of ensuring Neha had planted no more snakes in their midst. “Why kill him?”
Neha lifted a shoulder in an elegant shrug. “He may have known something, though the point is moot now. As a tool, he wasn’t the most useful one—and I’m sure he considered it a mercy. He would’ve never survived his punishment with his mind intact.”
Perhaps. But Raphael was quite certain the man would not have chosen to die by having his internal organs ripped from his living flesh. “You know what Anoushka did was anathema.” Neha’s daughter had been party to the brutalization of a child. It was one of the greatest taboos of their race.
“I am a mother, Raphael.” A pause, an instant of piercing sorrow. “I was a mother.”
“Now you would make other mothers feel the same pain?” Neha was one of the few in the Cadre who had always treated mortal children as precious.
A slow blink, cold and dark, as she stared at him with a gaze that had been known to ensnare lesser angels. “I think you will soon have far bigger problems to worry about than my modest games.”
Raphael said nothing.
Smiling, Neha reached out of the shot, and when her hand returned, those elegant fingers held a black orchid. “I thought this was a nice touch on my part.” She ran the ebony petals over the cobra’s skin. “It’ll amuse me to watch you when she rises. She left you to die broken on a field far from civilization, did she not?”
Having expected the taunt, he didn’t react. “Neha,” he said softly. “I will, if not forgive, not retaliate against these trespasses because you lost a child—but do not play games in my territory again.”
Neha laughed, a bitter hiss of sound. “What would you do to me, Raphael? I have lost that which matters most.”
“A lie,” he murmured, waiting until her laughter died to deliver his coup de grace. “You would not like to lose your power.”
Neha’s expression went flat, hard. “You are arrogant enough to think you have the strength to affect my rule?”
“Never forget that I was the one who executed Uram when it needed to be done.” It had taken something from him to end the life of another archangel, but Uram had turned monster and could not be allowed to savage the world. “Never forget what and who I am, Neha.”
The Archangel of India held his gaze for a long, long moment. “Perhaps your mortal has not changed you after all.”
Raphael said nothing to that, ending the call, but as he turned to walk up to join his hunter, he knew Neha was wrong. Elena had changed something fundamental in him. Do you wait for me, hbeebti? he asked, touching her mind, finding her awake.
The bed’s cold without you.
As he opened the bedroom door, he knew he would never again be able to return to the life he’d led before her—where hardness of the heart was nurtured and love termed a weakness. “Are you tired, Elena?”
Rising up into a sitting position, his hunter allowed the sheet to slide down to pool at her waist.
12
Elena’s throat went dry under the unwavering focus of Raphael’s gaze, the skin over her br**sts suddenly too tight. Her need for him was a deep, aching hunger fueled by a day that had stirred hidden fears, painful secrets. She wanted his mouth on her, his hands on her—but there was a dangerous look to him tonight. Nothing akin to the rage that had made him burn so cold after the events at the girls’ school, nothing that scared her ... except in the most sensual of ways.
“Planning to come over here, Archangel?” she asked when he continued to caress her only with those eyes of inhuman blue, the ache inside her transforming into something darker, hotter.