“And what is this code?” Leo asked.

She tipped her head again, just as she did every time his questions made her recall a memory. It was as if the movement helped her to access her thoughts. It made the fine white strands of her hair brush softly against her skin.

“We’re Angels. We’re called Angels for a reason. We are meant to take care of this world we live in and all of its inhabitants. The world has a natural course to take, and we see that it’s not destroyed by unnatural, evil things. Things like Apep. Although, as I understand it, it’s been a very long time since something as dangerous as Apep has threatened the world.”

“So you’re telling me that you are just…do-gooders. Just for the sake of doing good?” He tried not to sound disbelieving, but it was very hard not to. In his experience no one did anything without hoping for some kind of quid pro quo.

“We have an altruistic bent, yes,” she said. “But we’re far from perfect and far from being purely good. We are a people like any other people. We have our good, our bad, and our indifferent. We have our heroes and our criminals. But law-abiding Angels approach their nights, each and every one of them, with the will to make the world a better or safer place in whatever way they can. If it means capturing a criminal, then we set out to capture that criminal. If it means giving aid in a place torn by disaster, then we give that aid.”

“To humans? Looking like this?” He indicated her white hair and black skin, both of which would make her stand out like a sore thumb…never mind the electric-blue wings.

“There are those of us who can alter people’s perceptions…make humans see us as just a group of normal humans trying to help. Just like there are those of us who can sometimes see into the future and know when dangers are lying in wait for us…and if we are lucky they will even know what we can do to alter that chain of events from happening.”

“Like you did when you kept Apep from killing Jackson. So someone saw that was going to happen and your father willingly sent his daughter to get in between a wrathful god and his victim? And why only you? Why not a phalanx of Angels?”

“My sister is a hierophant and saw that something terrible was going to happen there, but she didn’t know precisely what. She told my father it was very dangerous, but all that was needed was a single Angel. My father sent what was needed, and only what was needed. I don’t always know what motivates my father, I don’t know why he chose to send me in particular, but he is rarely wrong with his actions and those actions have always helped the greater good. I trust him with all my heart and all my soul. There is no one wiser, stronger, or better skilled at navigating the world.”

“How old is he? For that matter,” he said, thinking on the fly, “how old are you? I couldn’t even begin to guess how to tell a Night Angel’s age.”

She smiled then, her deep violet lips curving with genuine amusement.

“You can tell by our wings,” she said. “We aren’t born with them. They develop at puberty, rather like a young girl develops breasts. Our puberty, however, doesn’t occur until we are nearly fifty years old.”

“Fifty! You’re fifty?”

“Angels with brown wings are fifty. Angels with green wings are just over a hundred years old. Angels with red wings are about the two-century mark. My sister’s wings are red.”

“Blue. Get to the blue,” he encouraged her. She chuckled at his impatience.

“Blue is about three centuries old. I’m three hundred and eleven years old. But there are angels much older than I am. Angels with white wings are our ancients and are our most revered members of our society.”

“Your father?”

She nodded. “He’s not the oldest of us, but he is among them. And when he leaves us, his daughters will stand in his stead.”

“Really? Even though there are older and potentially wiser Angels out there?”

“Older, perhaps…but we are our father’s daughters and we like to think that has made us very wise as well. Anyway, it is the law. The rule of our people is first offered to the blood kin of the previous ruler.”

“So a bona fide three-hundred-year-old princess. I suppose to you I must seem like…I don’t know. A child?”

“Hardly that. My age gives me no more or less value than yours does. It only matters what we are at our souls. I am a woman who put herself between a god and his victim, you are a man who is putting his life on the line for a friend. We are not so very different.”

Leo reached out to her, catching several strands of her sugary white hair between his fingers, letting it filter softly through them.

“You know something, the more I talk to you, the more you make me feel like I’m a judgmental ass.”

“You are a judgmental ass,” she said with a light laugh. “But it’s one of your more endearing qualities.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re so enamored by it. I have very little else to impress you with.”

“You don’t need to try to impress me, you’ve done that quite a bit already,” she said.

“I’m afraid to ask in what way.”

“In many ways, both good and bad. But if you think I’m going to sit here and judge you like I am holier than thou, you’ll be sorely disappointed. You are who you are. You are what the world has made you. Do you really think I consider myself flawless in comparison to you?”

“No,” he said. “No, not at all. But unlike myself, you don’t cast blanket judgments on others and, somehow, you seem to see the good in others. At least, in my experience so far. You’re cautious, but willing to believe the best. Look at Grey. Had I been here alone I probably would have gone for his throat. I wouldn’t have succeeded, but I definitely would have tried to kill the fucker.”

She quieted and looked away from him and he knew immediately he had stuck his foot in it.

“That’s not to say it was a wholly unpleasant experience. Except for the end…” He was feeling awkward and when she looked at him, her eyes conveyed her sadness completely. As did the way she absently rubbed her chest above her heart, as though it were physically painful for her to remember. And he knew it was. Just as real as that passion had felt, the tragedy of the death of their child had been blindingly devastating.

Leo reached out for the hand at her heart, taking it between his own and pulling their joined hands against his chest. It drew her forward, closing the distance between them just as effectively as the emotions of the moment were drawing them closer.

“Are you okay?” he asked her gently. He had no idea of knowing what she had experienced from her point of view. Had she witnessed the violence of the act itself? He knew she had experienced what it had felt like to hold her lifeless child against her heart.

“It’s better when I tell myself it wasn’t real…but you know it…it felt so real and in some ways it still does.” She looked away from him, and he could see the painful tears of loss filling her buttery eyes. They seemed paler in luster and just looking at her sent stabs of remembered devastation through him.

“We can’t do this to ourselves,” he said quietly.

“Well, excuse me if I do!” she bit out at him. “I can’t just turn off my feelings and responses to things like you can!”

“I never said I was…that was just as devastating to me as it was for you!”

“Really?” she said snidely, pulling at her hand. He refused to let go. “Because it seems to me that’s it’s so easy for you to ignore all of the things we felt!”

That quieted him, forcing him to acknowledge what she meant. He still held her hand to his heart, could feel the warmth of her spreading across his chest like a thick, sweet molasses.

She meant the passion of the kisses they had shared. She meant the overwhelming physical attraction he now felt for her when there had been nothing before Grey had—

That’s a lie.

The inner whisper was fierce and acidic, full of self-contempt. He sat there staring at her dead-on as he realized he had been feeling an attraction toward her from the very start. Everything about her had seemed so electric, and that was way before he had even kissed her.

The moment he recalled the crisp, hot passion of their kisses he had to close his eyes. If he accessed those memories while looking at her he’d…well, there was no telling what he’d do.

That’s a lie.

Oh yes, it was a whopper of a lie. He knew exactly what he would do.

So he opened his eyes and looked at her.

“I’m not ignoring it. In fact,” he said, “I’m so far from ignoring it that I really want to throw you on the floor and make like the birds and the bees with you. Exactly like the birds and the bees. One bird with wings and one bee with a vicious stinger of an attitude. Interspecies mingling. Or”—he cleared his throat—“well, I don’t even really know if it’s possible, but I’d be giving it a damn good try.”

Faith’s lashes drifted down, hiding her eyes from him, but there was no hiding the way her breath quickened. It was the worst thing that could have happened because the moment he saw that first sign of response, he knew he wanted another. Wanted more. More of her than he’d had, even including what had been conjured in a dream.

If Grey had gotten the details of kissing her wrong, what else had he been cheated of? She was so extraordinary. So deeply layered. She was destined to one day rule an entire species, and that species couldn’t have been more lucky. She was sensitive and fair, passionate and sharp. So many things that made her way out of his league before even considering the sexual. When he had stopped earlier it hadn’t been because of what she was, it had been because of who she was. Because the one thing he was sure of was that she was far more human than he was.

Leo leaned closer to her, his attention fixing on her deep blackberry-colored lips. “You don’t get it, Faith,” he said softly, his breath rushing over her lips just as hers was rushing over his. “I’m not pushing you away because of what you are. I was pushing you away because of who I am. You deserve someone who can share himself with you completely. How can I give away pieces of myself when they’re lying broken on the floor all around us? When I’m not even sure if I know who I am anymore?”

“And I would have thought,” she said breathily, “that you of all people would simply ignore that and seize the opportunity.”

He bristled at that and pulled back an inch to give her an angry look. “I’m not that much of a prick and I’m sorry that you think I am. You deserve better than me, but hey, if it doesn’t matter to you then let’s get to it.”

With every hour that crept slowly by, Marissa felt her hope draining away in swift rivulets of fear. She had wept all she could, her body now drained of tears, her heart too heavy to even take a breath. Docia kept coming in, kept intruding on her time with him. Didn’t she get it? Every minute could be the very last minute she would feel his warmth in her hands. With every minute the specter of death and loneliness threatened to take over.

She didn’t expect Docia to understand. The rare and special connection that Marissa felt with Jackson, the love that had endured lifetime after lifetime after lifetime, made them two halves of a whole heart…it was so powerful that the removal of one half meant the other half could no longer continue working. Yes, Tameri and Ram had found that same connection, but they had not experienced their first deaths yet. Not since they had found each other. This was the first time they had connected like this. All they knew now was the pleasure and the joy of it. Unlike Hatshepsut who had suffered through Menes’s deaths too many times to count. They had yet to know the excruciating pain of it. The rending of the heart and soul that came with it. The borderline insanity of grief that overwhelmed and drowned the survivor.

Marissa was done begging the universe to spare her lover’s life. She had poured out every prayer in her heart more than once, and she knew that if it had not heard the wailing of her spirit by now, it never would. And the hope that those prayers would be answered was bleeding away, minute by minute. Like a heart that had been stabbed through with an ice pick, leaving blood and life to ooze away one heartbeat after another.

“I can’t breathe,” she gasped out softly to her comatose lover. “I can’t breathe without you. If they fail me I will suffocate on my pain and grief. Please,” she found herself begging the universe once more in spite of her resolve not to. “If you take him, I’m afraid of what I might do. Afraid of what I might become.” She swallowed noisily, once more shoving away the blinding rage that threatened to swamp her. But it was as if she were scooping water from a sinking ship using only her hands. It was useless, and eventually…