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“I have two pieces ofinteresting news”

Elena’s sto to Raphael’s spyain, if only in s dead servants were night was,for help even as their bodies shuffled to follow the commands of their mistress

Then there were the strange desiccated bodies found near her stronghold that no one could figure out The general consensus was that they were failed atteood news or bad neas anyone’s guess “She’s not—”

Raphael shook his head before she could complete her question, the black silk of his hair rich and dark “My mother,” he said, “has invited us to a ball”

Elena pulled a blade froift from Raphael “Excuse me while I stab myself in the eyes—and disembowel myself while I’m at it” The last ti in the blood of the reborn while Beijing burned around her And oh yeah, let’s not forget s ripped out of the sky

“I’m afraid I cannot perht of as his “Archangel” voice, formal and ruthless “Who would then keep me amused at the ball? I may otherwise be driven to pluck out my own eyes and I believe you are quite fond of them”

“Funny” Sighing, she leaned her head against the hting leathers that told her he’d co session, likely with Illiu a ball?”

He spread his wing across her own in a susurration of sound that was a familiar intimacy “Her city and people have fully awakened, and she wishes to forreet the other powers in the world” A pause “Myshe has never been is inizant of her responsibility to take a part in the ruling of the world, even if it is from a distance”

Coent, once-insane, Raphael’s mother wasn’t a woory The Ancient had left her son broken and bloodied on a forsaken field an eon ago, but she’d also risen perilously early fro Sleep to save the life of that same son “When’s the ball?”

“In less than teeks”

“I’lland my nails done”

Raphael’s lips curved again as she slid away the knife and held out her hands to display unpolished nails clipped hunter-short The back of her left hand was bruised from a tussle with a recalcitrant vampire she’d retrieved for the Guild a few hours before, and her palms, when she flipped over her hands, proved to have a plethora of calluses

Even her newly immortal body couldn’t erase those calluses, not when she worked constantly eapons “I don’t think ato cut it”

“Should you ever touch me with court-softened hands, I will know an imposter walks in your skin”