So it was no surprise when she found herself trying to hover outside the plate-glass window of her apartment. 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. Still, she saw enough in those fleeting glimpses to know that while the once-shattered glass had been flawlessly repaired, the rooms were empty.

There wasn’t even a bloodstain on the carpet to mark the spot where she’d spilled Raphael’s blood, where she’d tried to staunch the crimson river until her fingers were the same murderous shade.

Elena.

The scent of the wind and the rain, fresh and wild, around her, inside her, and then strong hands on her hips as Raphael held her effortlessly in position so she could look her fill through the window, her hands flat on the glass.

Emptiness.

No sign remained of the home she’d created piece by precious piece.

“You must teach me how to hover,” she said, forcing herself to speak past the knot of loss. It was just a place. Just things. “It’ll be a very good way to spy on potential targets.”

“I intend to teach you many things.” Tugging her back against his body, her wings trapped in between, the Archangel of New York pressed his lips to the tip of her ear. “You are full of sorrow.”

It was instinct to lie, to protect herself, but they’d gone beyond that, she and her archangel. “I guess I somehow expected my apartment to still be here. Sara didn’t say anything when she sent me my things.” And her best friend had never lied to her.

“It was as you left it when Sara visited,” Raphael said, drawing back enough that she could flare out her wings and angle her body into the air currents once again. Come, I have something to show you.

The words were in her mind, along with the wind and the rain. She didn’t order him to get out—because she knew he wasn’t in it. This, the way she could sense him so deeply, speak to him with such ease, was part of whatever it was that tied them to one another ... that taut, twisting emotion that ripped away old scars and created new vulnerabilities in a whip of fire across the soul.