She didn’t yet have the skill to execute the maneuver, and she kept dropping, then having to pull herself back up with fast wingbeats. So it was no surprise when she found herself trying to hover outside the plate-glass window of her apartment. One whose heart remained painfully mortal. Letting the air currents sweep her where they would above the diamond-studded lights of the city, she tested her wings, tested her strength.

This was the time of rebirth, of blooming things and baby birds, bright and young and fragile even in the frenetic rush of a city that never slept.

The bright green season had thawed the snows that had kept the city in thrall this winter, and now held court, summer not even a peach-colored blush on the horizon. It was time to explore this familiar place become foreign, this home that was suddenly new again.ĭiving down from the balcony, she swept across Manhattan on air currents kissed by the cool bite of spring. Her chest, tight for so long, relaxed, and she stretched her wings out to their greatest width. A fusion of scents–spice and smoke, human and vampire, earthy and sophisticated–hit her with the wild fever of a welcoming rainstorm. She was stronger.įlaring out those wings, she took a deep breath of the air of home. Now, she was one of those angels, perched high atop a balcony that had no railing, nothing to prevent a deadly fall.Įxcept of course, she would no longer fall. Once Elena had watched angels take flight from the light-filled column of the Tower as she sat in front of the distant window of her cherished apartment. Swathed in the silken shadows of deepest night, New York was the same . . .

Archangel's Consort by Nalini Singh