“Shift forward,” Keir said. “Just enough so we can see the entire mark.”
Having walked around to the back of the bed, Raphael stood watch as Elena did as instructed. Her tattoo was even more detailed than he’d realized. Each filament was defined with care, down to the small feather on her left wingtip that always liked to grow its filaments in the opposite direction to all other feathers.
“It is as if your wings have been made small and burned to your back.” Nisia ran an experimental finger over one feather.
A lightning flicker of power had the healer jerking her hand back with a jolt. “My apologies.” She shook out her hand. “That was unexpected.”
“Did it hurt?” Elena’s forehead scrunched up. “I felt the energy zap you.”
“Not so much pain as . . . I believe your body is telling me the area is private and to stop poking around.”
Keir was more careful when he chanced a touch, but got a jolt, too.
Despite the hazard, the two healers did a thorough examination. When they were satisfied they’d seen the entirety of it, Elena shifted back to lean against the headboard. “Bad news?”
“No news is the better descriptor.” Lines marked the corners of Keir’s eyes, unfamiliar etchings on a face that had always been flawless in its delicate beauty. “It is tempting to compare your wings to an angelic infant’s, but that feels wrong. Nisia?”
“I agree. She has far more sensory capacity than a babe.” Nisia frowned at a reading on the device in her hand. “Infants do not sense their wings until they gain an understanding of what they are.”
“Guess it’d be confusing for them if they can’t see what’s there.” Elena tapped a finger on the sheet. “Makes sense it’d be different for an adult.”
“It’s as if certain elements of your body have been scrambled.” Nisia touched a strand of Elena’s hair. “You have tiny feathers in your hair, while we have found no indication of wing understructure on your back.”
“We have discovered evidence that this marking you call a tattoo extends deep, through all the layers of your flesh.”
“Give it to me straight—is this it?” Firm voice, unflinching gaze, Elena’s question demanded utter honesty. “Am I stuck with a tattoo or is there a chance my wings might grow back?”
Keir’s timeless eyes held Elena’s. “I can give you no definite answers. This is a thing that has never happened.” A smile as gentle as his voice. “You keep being new, Elena.”
Nisia, still staring down at her device, murmured, “Are you hungry?”
“Yes, it’s weird.” Elena made a face. “Those immortal ringworms are hard at it.”
Nisia’s lips twitched. “Tapeworms, my dear, tapeworms.” She showed the screen of the device to Keir. “If I’m reading this correctly, her skin depth has increased by point two millimeters in the minutes since I took the first reading.”
Elena stilled. Archangel, did Nisia just say what I think she said?
Yes, I believe so. Your body is rapidly burning fuel to make you stronger. His hands clenched to bone whiteness on the headboard. It is why an archangel eats with vigor after the deep, healing rest of anshara. The food replaces the energy used during the healing process. It also helps complete final repairs.
She lifted a hand to touch his. And I’ve got a chunk of your heart booming away in my chest.
“IV nutrition,” Nisia said after she and Keir finished consulting with each other. “It’s a much faster way to get calories into you.”
The healers sprang into action on those words, and Elena was soon hooked up to a drip in either arm. As Keir was explaining that the IVs were set up to release their contents over the course of an hour, golden lightning zapped up the lines and sucked the bags dry.
“Whoa.”
11
Eight bags later and Elena could see the change: she was now extremely thin rather than skeletal. People might comment on her being all skin and bone, but they wouldn’t call the undertaker on her.
Her wing tattoo, however, remained unchanged. Keir and Nisia couldn’t find any sign that she’d begun to develop the understructure needed for flight. It was a blow, but she wasn’t giving up; angelic bodies healed by priority. Critical organs first, then skin and limbs. Wings fell in the latter category.
“Stop,” Elena said when Nisia went to grab bags nine and ten. “I think I’ve reached maximum capacity for processing calories in one go.” Her yawn cracked her face. “My body’s going to conk out soon”—sudden lethargy weighed down her shoulders, made her eyelids droop—“but first I need to make some calls.”
Archangel, she said mind-to-mind, her heart aching, when you have time, will you bring me the quilt my mom made for me? She’d left it in the storage locker all this time, the sweet loving memory of it too entwined with pain, but today, she wanted her mother’s embrace in whatever way she could have it.
I will do it as soon as I finish talking to Dmitri—he is waiting outside. Pressing a kiss to her lips, Raphael passed over a phone he’d asked Montgomery to bring up, then he and the healers walked out.
Keir and Nisia had their heads together. The two needed to process the readings and samples they’d taken, while Raphael had to meet with his second. She knew what it had taken for him to leave her, blew him a mental kiss. He turned at the doorway, his gaze shot with lightning. “Rest, hbeebti. You can play with your crossbow tomorrow.”
“Hah.” Sliding down the bed as he shut the door behind him, she brought up the phone. It took her two tries to input Sara’s number.
“Hello.” A noncommittal answer from the director of the Guild; she was no doubt wondering how the hell a stranger had gotten through to her private line.
“No, you didn’t accidentally eat LSD-laced fish,” Elena said to her best friend, referring back to their conversation when she’d first woken as an angel.
Silence from the other end, before Sara said, “Ellie, I’m going to strangle you this time.”
Elena grinned despite her heavy lids. Because this was her and Sara. Real. Normal. Friends. “I look so pathetic and spindly right now that I bet you’d feel guilty doing it.” Though that wouldn’t last long if she kept processing fuel at this rate. Already, she could feel her muscles strengthening, her bones gaining heft.
“Ellie.” Sara’s voice was thick. “I’m coming over.”
“No, give me a few days. I’m probably going to be asleep for most of them.” She yawned so hugely she was sure her face would crack. “How’s Eve?”
“Acting out. She stole Ransom’s motorcycle from the Academy lot and took it for a joyride.”
Eve had always been scarily well-behaved. “Hey, we turned out fine and we once stole a Cadillac.”
“Borrowed,” Sara said pointedly. “The director of the Guild can’t be a felon.”
Another giant yawn broke Elena’s laughter in two.
“Ellie, you sure I can’t run over there and give you a hug?”
“No, not yet. I need recovery time.” Seeing her this way would undo any good her call had achieved. “I’ve got to touch base with a few other people before I fall asleep. But I’m back and I’m not going anywhere.”
Ending the call with Sara soon afterward, her limbs so heavy by now that they felt like lead, she tapped in the number for her younger sister. It was a miracle she remembered any numbers at all with the sleep-fogginess in her brain.
Beth turned out to be with Majda and Jean-Baptiste Etienne—two people who’d already suffered unimaginable torture and loss. Her grandmother broke down in tears at the sound of her voice, while her grandfather was stolid but shaken.
Beth was mute.
Elena would deal with this, find some way to make emotional recompense for the pain she’d inflicted, but she’d do it face-to-face not over a telephone line. Promising to call again soon, she hung up and, eyes too heavy to keep open, dialed Eve.
Her youngest half sister didn’t pick up.
So Elena called five times in a row—until Eve finally answered with a snarled, “What?!”
“I hope you didn’t scratch Ransom’s bike. He’s in love with that—”
“Ellie!” It was a scream.
The rest of the conversation was rapid and excited and Elena had to talk her sister down from stealing another ride and zooming over to the Tower then and there.
After reluctantly agreeing to wait to visit, Eve said, “Shall I tell Father?”
Elena’s body stiffened, nervous tension acting as adrenaline in her veins. “Are you home?”
“Yeah. Grounded.” The teenage eye-roll was almost audible. “I stayed out past curfew, then came home and decided to drink Father’s expensive brandy. Stuff is gross. I poured most of it in the garden, but he’s convinced I’m an alcoholic.”
Beth, Majda, and Jean-Baptiste weren’t the only ones to whom she owed an apology. This girl wasn’t the tough but stable little sweetheart who’d held Elena’s hand the last time they’d seen one another. Anger lived in her now. But it would have to wait until she could put her arms around Eve and hold on tight.
“Take him the phone.” Jeffrey and Elena might never heal the fractures between them, but she wouldn’t add to his torment.
Jeffrey Deveraux had already lost a beloved wife and two cherished daughters. The man who had married Eve and Amy’s mother, Gwendolyn, wasn’t the same Jeffrey who’d blown bubbles with Elena in a sunny backyard or the one who’d fought for her right to see her dead sisters’ bodies. She’d needed to know the monster hadn’t made Ari and Belle like him, so Jeffrey had taken her to them. He’d held her hand. And he’d cried.
He hadn’t been the best father, but he didn’t deserve the horrific pain of thinking he’d lost a third daughter.