“Don’t be taken in,” Christian said, his eyes as hard as diamonds though his facade of arctic politeness never slipped. “There is a reason the others fear her teeth.”
Noel rocked back lazily on his heels. “Been bitten?”
The angel’s wings spread a fraction, then snapped tight. “Insolence will only be tolerated so long as you warm her bed.”
“Then I better warm it for a long time.” Noel shot him a cocky grin, figuring he might as well play the part to the hilt.
“Is Christian giving you a hard time?” The question came from a long- legged female dressed in a tight black knee- length skirt and white shirt that flattered a slender figure with graceful curves. Paired with those legs and uptilted eyes of a deep, impossible turquoise against sun- golden skin, it made her a stunner. Not an angel, but a vampire old enough that immortality had worked its magic on what had surely been a spectacular canvas to begin with.
Noel deepened his smile in response to her flirtatious wink. “I think I can handle Christian,” he said, holding out his hand once again. “I’m Noel.”
“Asirani.” Her fingers closed over his own. He allowed it but he felt nothing. He’d felt nothing ever since he’d been taken… except for that odd, unexpected ember of sensation stirred awake by Nimra’s laugh.
Releasing Asirani’s hand, he looked from the vampire to the angel. “So, tell me about this court.”
Christian ignored him, while Asirani twined an arm through his own and led him across the huge central room that appeared to function as the audience chamber when necessary, but was otherwise the center of the court. “Have you eaten?” Thick black lashes lifted, turquoise eyes looking meaningfully into his.
“I’m afraid Lady Nimra doesn’t like to share,” he murmured, thinking of the sealed bags of blood that had been left in the small fridge in his room. “I thank you for the offer.” Whatever her motive, it had been a considerate question.
Fact was, taking blood from a human or vampiric donor wasn’t something he’d had any inclination to do since waking from the assault. The head healer at the Medica, Keir, had been very good about providing him with stored blood without question. Maybe Nimra’s courtesy, too, was as a result of Keir’s influence. The healer seemed to command a great deal of respect from angelkind— even the archangels themselves.
“Hmm.” Asirani squeezed his arm, her fingers brushing his biceps. “You are a surprising choice.”
“Am I?”
A throaty laugh. “Ah, cleverer than you look, aren’t you?” Eyes dancing, she stopped beside a window, her face to the room. “Nimra,” she said in a low tone, “has not taken a lover for many years. Christian always believed that when she chose to break her fast, it would be with him.”
Noel glanced over at the angel, who was now talking to an older human male, and found himself wondering why Nimra hadn’t invited Christian to her bed. In spite of the appearance he gave of being a stuffy aristocrat, the man was clearly sharply intelligent, and he moved in a way that said he’d had training in how to fight. No useless fop, but an asset.
As Asirani was no vacant hanger–on.
“Do you all live here?” he asked her, intrigued that this court appeared to be made up of the strong.
“Some of us have rooms here, but Nimra maintains a wing that is hers alone.” Leading him to the long table set with food to the side of the room, she released his arm to pluck a plump grape from an assortment of fruit and pop it into her mouth. Though vampires couldn’t gain the nourishment they needed from food, they could digest and appreciate the taste— Asirani’s hum of pleasure made it plain she enjoyed utilizing every one of her senses.
Noel had no interest in such sensuality, but he was moving to pick up a couple of blueberries so as not to stand out, when the hairs rose on the back of his neck. Not fear, but an instinctive, primal awareness. He wasn’t the least surprised to turn around to discover that Nimra had entered the room. The others receded from his consciousness, his eyes locking with the power and intensity of her own.
“Excuse me,” he murmured to Asirani, crossing the gleaming wood of the floor to come to a halt in front of the angel who was proving to be an irresistible enigma. “My lady.”
Her gaze was impenetrable. “I see you have met Asirani.”
“And Christian.”
A slight tightening of her mouth. “I do not think you have met Fen. Come.”
She led him toward the elderly human man Noel had seen with Christian. He sat surrounded by papers at a desk in a sun- drenched corner of the room. As they neared him, it became clear the man was even older than Noel had first guessed, his nut- brown skin lined with countless wrinkles. Yet his eyes were dark little pebbles, shiny with life, his lips mobile. They lifted in a smile as Nimra got closer, and Noel realized the man’s eyesight was deteriorating in spite of the flashing brightness of his gaze.
Nimra stopped him with a hand on his shoulder when he began to struggle to his feet. “How many times must I tell you, Fen? You’ve earned the right to sit in my presence.” A smile so vibrant, it cut at Noel’s heart. “In fact, you’ve earned the right to dance na**d in my presence should you so wish.”
The old man laughed, his voice cracked with age. “That would be a sight, eh, my lady?” Squeezing her hand, he looked up at Noel. “Have you let a man make an honest woman of you at last?”
Leaning forward, Nimra kissed Fen on both cheeks, her wings brushing inadvertently against Noel. “You are my only love, you know that.”
Fen’s laughter segued into a deep smile, his fingers lighting on Nimra’s cheek before dropping to the desk once more. “I am a blessed man indeed.”
Noel could almost feel the history that ran between the two of them, but no matter their words, there was nothing loverlike in that richness of memory. There was instead an almost father- daughter element to it, in spite of the fact that Nimra remained immortally young, while the march of time had caught up with Fen.
Rising to her full height, Nimra said, “This is Noel,” before returning her attention to Fen. “He is my guest.”
“Is that what they’re calling it these days?” Twinkling eyes shifted to give Noel a closer inspection. “He isn’t as pretty as Christian.”
“Somehow,” Noel muttered, “I think I’ll survive.”
The riposte caused Fen to laugh in that hacking old- man way. “I like this one, Nimra. You should keep him.”
“We shall see,” Nimra said, a tart bite to her words. “As we both know, people are not always who they appear to be.”
Something unseen passed between the angel and the aged human at that instant, with Fen raising Nimra’s hand to his lips and pressing a kiss to the back. “Sometimes, they are more.” Fen’s eyes lifted for a bare instant to snap across Noel’s and he had the feeling the words were meant for him rather than the angel whose hand Fen still held.
Then Asirani click- clacked into his vision on sky- high heels and the moment broke. “My lady,” the vampire said to Nimra, “Augustus is here and insisting he speak with you.”
Nimra’s expression turned dark. “He’s beginning to try my patience.” Folding back her wings tight to her spine, she nodded good- bye to Fen and strode off without a word to Noel, Asirani by her side.
Fen nudged at Noel with a cane he hadn’t seen until that moment. “Perhaps not quite what you expected, eh?”
Noel raised an eyebrow. “If you mean the arrogance, I’m well versed in it. I worked with Raphael’s Seven.” The vampires and angels in service to the archangel were powerful immortals in their own right. Dmitri, the leader of the Seven, was stronger than a large number of angels; he could take and hold a territory if he so chose.
“But,” Fen insisted, lips curved in a shrewd smile, “have you experienced it in a woman? In a lover?”
“Blindness has never been one of my faults.” The bitter irony of his words made him laugh within. After the assault, he hadn’t even had eyes for the days it had taken his flesh to regenerate. “It’s not yours, either, though it looks to me as if you prefer to give the appearance of it.” He’d seen the way the old man’s gaze had turned dull when Asirani neared.
“Smart, too.” Fen waved him to a chair across from his own. Taking it, Noel braced his forearm on the gleaming cherrywood of the desk and looked out at the vast main area. Christian was deep in conversation with another woman, a curvaceous beauty with long, straight hair to the base of her spine and the most guileless face Noel had ever seen. “Who’s that?” he asked, having guessed what role Fen played in Nimra’s court.
The old man’s expression softened to utter tenderness. “My daughter, Amariyah.” Smiling at her when she turned to wave at him, he sighed. “She was Made at twenty- seven. It does my heart good to know that she’ll live on long after I’m gone.”
Vampirism did turn humans into almost- immortals, but the life was hardly an easy one, especially the first hundred years after the Making, when the vampire was in service to an angel. The century- long Contract was the price the angels demanded for the gift of being able to live long past the span of a mortal life. “How much of her Contract remains?”
“None,” Fen said, to Noel’s surprise.
“Unless you had her before you were born,” Noel said, continuing to watch Amariyah and Christian, “that’s impossible.”
“Even I’m not that efficient.” A phlegmy laugh. “I’ve been in service to Nimra since I was a lad of but twenty. Mariyah was born a year later. Been some sixty- five years that I’ve served my lady— the Contract was written to take that into account.”
Noel had never heard of such a concession. That the angel who ruled New Orleans and its surrounds had done this said a great deal about both Fen’s worth to her, and her own capacity for loyalty. It wasn’t a trait he’d expected to find in an angel known far and wide for the harshness of her punishments. “Your daughter is beautiful,” he said, but his mind was on another woman, one with wings that had lain so warm and heavy against him for a fleeting moment earlier.