Archangel's Lineage

1

Oh, you must not.

Your tears wound me, but there is no choice. I cannot go on. I have tried until I have no more breath in the shell of my body and no heart in the core of my self.

The river-

-is eternal. What falls will always rise. One civilization or another, what does it matter to me?

My love, you were never this heartless. You ever cared for your people. I saw you cradle newborn mortals in your arms and kiss their soft cheeks.

You see why I must do this, beloved. Do I not, I turn slowly into a monster cold and without sympathy for those who are smaller, weaker, my shell all that remains.

Ah, my heart. Come to me. We will lie inside my fire this day and the next and the next until eternity ends.

And in the heartbeats between lifetimes, I will look into your eyes and I will be whole.

2

Elena kicked out a booted foot to check the give in her opulent ball gown and grinned when the falls of fabric around her legs parted like they weren't there. "Montgomery strikes again," she said, then busied herself slipping her throwing knives into the decorative sheaths at her forearms.

At some point during her roughly two decades as Raphael's consort, she'd said to hell with it and decided to give herself a new trademark: arm sheaths. These days, no one blinked an eye at her preference for weapons as jewelry; it definitely took the edge off, not having to find places to secrete weapons.

Not that she didn't also always have hidden weapons.

Elena was never not going to have a concealed garrote or a dart that blew drug-laced needles somewhere on her person. The latter had been a joke birthday gift from her hunter friends, but she'd realized the real thing could pass as a decorative pendant in situations where other weapons might be seen as a sign of aggression.

Setting her personal style as including arm sheaths had ameliorated the latter threat. Who cared if the snooty old angels called it a "mortal affectation" with their condescending

Nalini Singh is the New York Times bestselling author of the Guild Hunter series, which includes most recently Archangel's Resurrection. She is also the author of the Psy-Changeling novels, including Resonance Surge, Storm Echo, Last Guard, Alpha Night, and Wolf Rain.