Free The Armies of Heaven by Jane Kindred Page A

as the tip began to glow, snapped the lighter shut, and dropped it into his pocket. “Turning a perfectly good deck of cards into a parlor game. If I only had a wingcasting die, I’d show you how to read a real fortune.” He grinned and took a long, satisfied drag on the cigarette.
    Margarita frowned at him. “You shouldn’t be smoking around Lively.”
    Belphagor held the cigarette at his side, looking guilty. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
    As he glanced at the ground, about to drop it and stomp it out, Love sprang to her feet. “Oh, don’t, Bel! I’ll share it with you. We can go smoke where Lively won’t have to breathe it.”
    Belphagor shrugged, and the two of them set off for the other end of the camp while Lively and Margarita went back to bed.
    “I’ve been dying for a smoke.” Love took the cigarette gratefully when Belphagor passed it to her.
    “You should have told me.” He gave her a sly grin as she handed it back. “I have sources for all of Heaven’s vices.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette case. “In fact, I have plenty, so you can smoke one of your own.”
    Love wondered if he’d had the cigarette case a moment ago. Sleight-of-hand was his specialty; back in the dacha days, it had never occurred to her it could be actual magic. Even now, she didn’t know for sure if he could pull things from the air or just made it look as if he could, but it was, after all, his element. She took one from the case and lit it on his, and they stood enjoying their smokes in the pre-dawn stillness.
    “We’re going to miss you, Vasily and I,” he said after a moment.
    Love hesitated. For some reason, she had no trouble lying to Kirill or Anazakia, feeling it was in their best interests, but with Belphagor it felt like lying to a teacher or an authority figure of some kind, and she’d never been very good at that.
    He narrowed his eyes, already onto her. “What?”
    “I overheard you talking to Sarael this morning…or yesterday… Whatever day it is now.” She sucked on her cigarette nervously while he waited. “And I think I might be able to reestablish the lines of communication. I had Lively send a message with her cards to my Romani contact in the network. I think there are a lot of my people who are still believers, who still want to honor the alliance with your kind, but they’re afraid of the Malakim. I think if I could get a bunch of them together, tell them what I’ve been through, what I’ve seen, they’d be behind Anazakia again in a heartbeat. And then maybe we could get through to the rest of the Fallen to let them know what Helga’s done in the name of their liberation.”
    Belphagor regarded her when she finally paused to take another drag. “So that’s why you’re going home.”
    Love nodded, picking a fleck of tobacco from her tongue. “And I want to come back, if it works out.”
    “What about your monk?”
    “I haven’t told him. But he’ll be better off in Russia without me.” She exhaled smoke with a sigh, trying not to think about how much that was going to hurt. “Do you think I’ll be able to come back? I can’t stand the thought of not being here when Ola comes home.”
    “I don’t see why not. Though there’s only one other human I ever heard of who got in, and that was Knud.”
    Love hadn’t thought of Knud in months. The realization made her feel sad, as though she’d left her friend waiting for her somewhere and forgotten him. It was Knud who’d first brought her to the dacha in Arkhangel’sk. He’d been a key member of the gypsy underground, though she hadn’t even known it. But he was gone, killed rescuing Anazakia and Ola from Aeval. He’d died in Heaven, in fact—something she once would have thought impossible, even if she’d believed in Heaven.
    Belphagor exhaled slowly as if hiding his own sadness. “But he got in through a breach.”
    “What’s a breach?”
    “Essentially, Dmitri and the Exiles used the