But as she watched him fly through the lush black of the sky high over the glittering city, her archangel with his wings of white-gold and eyes of endless, relentless blue, she wasn’t sorry. She didn’t want to turn back the clock, didn’t want to return to a life in which she’d never been held in the arms of an archangel, never felt her heart tear open and reform into something stronger, capable of such furies of emotion that it scared her at times. Where are you taking me, Archangel?

Patience, Guild Hunter.

She smiled, her grief at the loss of her apartment buried under a wave of amusement. No matter how many times he decreed that her loyalty was now to the angels and not to the Hunters’ Guild, he kept betraying how he saw her—as a hunter, as a warrior. Shooting down below him, she dove then rose through the biting freshness of the air with hard, strong wingbeats. Her back and shoulder muscles protested the acrobatics, but she was having too much fun to worry—she’d pay for it in a few hours, no doubt about it, but for now, she felt free and protected in the dark.

“Do you think anyone is watching?” she asked, breathless from the exertion, once they were side by side once more.

“Perhaps. But the darkness will conceal your identity for the moment.”

Tomorrow, she knew, when light broke, the circus would begin. An angel-Made ... Even the oldest of vampires and the angels themselves found her a curiosity. She had no doubts about how the human population would react. “Can’t you do your scary thing and make them keep their distance?” However, even as she spoke, she knew it wasn’t the reaction of the general population that worried her.