"Sara?" She clenched her fingers on his upper arms. "Did you do something to her mind?"
"No." Eyes of endless, merciless blue stared down at her, eclipsing everything else. "But if she speaks of it, I must silence her and all those she tells."
A cold knot formed in her stomach. "Even if that would break my heart?"
"Make sure she doesn't speak." He cupped her cheek, his fingers cool from the night air.
"And that will not come to pass."
She pushed away from him. This time, he let her go, let her walk to the end of the balcony and stare down into that ragged tear in the flesh of the earth. There were fewer lights now, as if the angels were bedding down for the night. "I'm not part of your world, Raphael. I'm still human inside - I won't sit back and let my friends be slaughtered."
"I would expect no less." He opened the doors. "Come, sleep."
"How can you expect me to sleep after saying something like that?" Swiveling on her heel, she stared at him.
He glanced back, a being of such power that she still couldn't accept he loved her. But was an archangel's love like a human's? Or did it cut deeper? Draw heart's-blood?
"I forget," he said, "that you are so very young." Moving to her, he stroked his fingers down her temple, over her jaw. "Mortals fade, Elena. It is a simple truth."
"So I should forget my friends, my family?"
"Remember them," Raphael said, "but also remember that one day, they won't be there."
Grief was a wild-eyed beast inside of her. She couldn't imagine a world without Sara, without Beth. The ties she had with her younger sister might've been eroded by the choices they'd both made, but that didn't mean Elena loved her any less. "I don't know if I have the courage to survive that kind of loss."
"You'll find it when the time comes."
The pain in his voice slid a dagger hilt deep into her own heart. "Who?"
She didn't really expect an answer. Raphael might be her lover, but he was also an archangel. And archangels had made an art form out of keeping secrets. So when he ran his knuckles down her face and said, "Dmitri," it took her several seconds to respond.
"He was Made against his will," she guessed, remembering the conversation she'd once had with Dmitri about children. Had the vampire watched his children grow old? Had he lost a wife he loved?
Raphael didn't respond this time, nudging her into the bedroom. "You must rest or you won't be fit for flight by the time of the ball."
She followed, shaken by the truth he'd forced her to face.
Raphael placed his hands on her shoulders. "Undo the straps." The heat of his body was a lush stroke against her, invisible, inescapable.
And that quickly, her wings were afire with sensation, with a need that obliterated all else. It took effort to breathe, to speak. "Raphael, are you inside my mind?" She was pulling out and undoing the straps that held the piece of fabric crisscrossed over her br**sts even as she spoke.
"No." Long, strong fingers playing over her collarbones, the dip of her breastbone.
"Such soft skin, Guild Hunter."
Every inch of her seemed to burn with a thirst that couldn't be quenched. "Then what's happening to me?"
"You are still becoming."
He slipped off her top, and she felt the rasp of every fine thread, shuddered against the fleeting brush of his fingertips.
"Do you know what I taste at the curve of your neck?" He pressed his lips over that very spot. "Fire and earth, spring windstorms cut by a hint of steel."
She shivered, reaching back to tangle her hand in the heavy silk of his hair. "Is that how you see me?"
"It's who you are." He moved his hand up the slope of her hip, a slow seduction that made her suck in her stomach in anticipation.
But nothing could've prepared her for the shock of lightning that was his hand on her breast, his intent explicit. She couldn't help but watch, her entire being attuned to the merest shift of his.
Then he kissed her neck again and her senses splintered. Clenching the hand she'd thrust into his hair, she spun around, cupping his face between her hands, taking that beautiful, cruel mouth with her own. The kiss was wild, full of the fury of her need, the savage possession of his. One male hand fell to her hip as the other gripped her neck, refusing to let her draw back.
Her br**sts were crushed against the linen of his shirt, the texture deliciously - almost painfully - abrasive against her sensitized ni**les. She bit his lip in revenge for what he'd done to her. He bit her back, but he held the bite, releasing her flesh with a slow concentration that had her thighs pressing together in a burst of damp heat.
She went to slip her hand underneath his shirt. He caught her wrist. "No, Elena."
"I'm not that fragile," she said, frustrated. "Don't worry."
His hand tightened on her wrist for a second before he dropped it and took a step back, breaking their connection. Ready to fight him for what she needed, she looked up . . . and froze. "Raphael." Azure flames surged in those eyes, deadly as the angelfire he'd thrown at Uram in that final, cataclysmic fight.
"Go to bed," he said in a tone of voice so calm it was a sheet of ice.
But the fire continued to burn. Feeling her heart spasm at the lethal edge of it, she wrapped her arms around her body, covering her br**sts. She didn't know if she was protecting herself or him. "Will you come back?"
"Are you sure you want me to?" He'd turned and was through the balcony doors before she could answer.