“I won’t.” Silver hair blowing back from his face, he tried to turn his head to scan the area, but the wind pressure was too strong to permit the movement.
Andromeda suddenly felt the air growing warmer around them. Understanding drying her throat, she managed to bend her head enough that she could look down. The movement was possible only because Naasir had kind of bent over her in an effort to protect.
At first, she didn’t see anything and it was only then that she realized the goggles had been ripped off her face by the wind. But she’d been able to see Naasir . . . and it wasn’t because of the luminescence from the walls.
A molten red glow came slowly into view, growing hotter with every split second of their descent. “The lava pit,” she said, Naasir’s ear close enough that she knew he’d hear.
“I see it.” His breath on her skin, the sensation intense even with the wind. “Try your wings again, Andi.”
She tried, so hard it felt as if she’d ruptured blood vessels in her eyes, but it was useless. When she shook her head, Naasir growled. “My mate is trying to save your fucking life, Archangel!”
The heat began to burn, though the cauldron was boiling far below. That was when Andromeda understood death would come long before they ever got close to the surface of the lava—or tempest of molten metal, whatever it was. The heat would liquefy their internal organs and melt the flesh from their bones before those bones cracked and turned to dust.
The disintegration would end them both, for total and absolute immortality was the province of myth. Given her resurrection, it was possible that Lijuan had reached that level of evolution. Andromeda was too young to survive even half of what was about to happen, while Naasir . . . She didn’t know his limits, but she knew she couldn’t watch him die.
“Alexander!” she cried in desperation. “You’re meant to be a wise man!”
The bottoms of her boots melted, the feathers at the ends of her wings beginning to singe and burn, the air so hot and dry it threatened to sear the lungs.
“No, he’s a stupid one!” Naasir snarled . . . and they jerked to a halt in midair.
38
Eyes wide, Andromeda stretched out her wings. They moved, but she knew without attempting it that should she try to fly out, she’d be sucked back down. Not that she would, not when she didn’t have the strength to lift Naasir with her. Keeping her arms around the taut muscle of him, she looked around as he did the same.
There was nothing else in this tunnel of stone except Andromeda and Naasir and the bubbling, ravenous lava below. Heart a staccato beat and every breath an effort, she said, “I think you got his attention.”
Naasir bared his teeth. “You’re more civilized—you talk.”
Molten geysers shot out of the lava, as if Alexander was getting impatient. “Archangel,” she said, directing her words to the lava, though she knew Alexander could hear her regardless of where she pitched her voice. “The world is in the midst of a Cascade and the archangels of the current Cadre are spiking violently in power.”
The lava bubbled and erupted with countless geysers as they fell another two feet.
The heat scorched her soles through her ruined boots.
Naasir’s growl was more feral than she’d ever heard it, the sound echoing off the stone to reverberate in her bones. “Lijuan wants to kill you in your Sleep, you stubborn old bastard! She believes she’s a goddess!”
Andromeda winced. Alexander had been wise, but he’d also had a stormy temper.
The stone rumbled but they didn’t drop again.
“He’s laughing,” Andromeda whispered incredulously. It pushed her over the edge. “Listen, damn you! Lijuan isn’t who you remember! She’s insane and she can kill you—while you’ve been Asleep, she’s become the Archangel of Death.”
She felt the heat of Naasir’s skin as his temperature rose, smelled burning flesh. Not hers alone. No. No. “Even if you survive, your loyal sentinels won’t!” As Naasir was Andromeda’s, the Wing Brotherhood was Alexander’s—worth dying for, worth fighting for. “Your men and women have held to their vows for four hundred years and they will die one by one in agony and suffering rather than leave you!”
She screamed as they fell again. The smell of burning feathers filled the air. It felt as if her blood was a heartbeat away from boiling, her eyes so hot she couldn’t keep them open.
Naasir’s voice was no longer in any way human, the words he spoke guttural. “I’ll come back from death you ancient relic, hunt down your immortal ass if you harm my mate!”
“Brotherhood,” Andromeda managed to whisper, sure Alexander’s bond to his sentinels was their only hope of reaching him.
Naasir pressed his cheek to hers, trying to curve his body as much as possible around her own. “As for your sentinels, Lijuan might decide to make them reborn. Shambling, living dead who hunger for the flesh. You are no sire if you permit that!”
No warning before they were pushed up at the same suicidal rate they’d been pulled down. Up and up and up until the air was cool and they could breathe.
The voice, when it came, was everywhere.
I am waking. Prepare for battle.
* * *
Naasir and Andromeda found themselves shoved out of the wind tunnel and dumped on the sandy floor of the stone chamber again. The chasm that had sucked them in closed up so seamlessly that there was no sign it had ever been there.
Getting up with muscled, feline grace, Naasir crouched in front of her as she sat up. He ran his hand over her hair, then very gently over the arches of her wings—it was a highly sensitive area, the touch intimate, but she burrowed against his chest, needing the tenderness, wanting nothing more than to be close to him.