Free Archangel's Blade by Nalini Singh

begun.”
    He was about to ask for more details when his cell phone rang. Glancing at the screen, he saw it was Jason, Raphael’s spymaster and a member of the Seven. “You’ve found something,” he said to the angel, his attention on the curls in Honor’s hair.
    â€œIn a sense—I’ll be there in five minutes to discuss it.”
    Hanging up, Dmitri glanced at the skies beyond the glass, searching for Jason’s distinctive black-winged form. He didn’t find it—not a surprise, given that Jason had a habit of flying high above the cloud layer and then descending in a burst of speed. Looking back to Honor, he caught her staring at him. “Usually when a woman looks at me like that,” he murmured in deliberate provocation, “I consider it an invitation to take whatever I want.”
    Hand clenching around the pen in her grasp, she stood to her full height. “I was thinking that you looked like a man who could break my neck with the same inhuman calm as you might a cell phone.”
    Dmitri slid his hands into his pockets. “I’d be more worried at losing my cell.” He said it to shock her, but part of him wasn’t certain it wasn’t in fact the truth.
    Honor’s gaze lingered on his face, those midnight green eyes full of secrets too old to belong to a mortal . . . except this one had lived an eon in the months she’d spent trapped at the mercy of those who had none. “Everyone,” she now said, “knows vampires were once human. I’m not sure you were.”
    â€œNeither am I.” A lie, made so by his awakening memories, memories that incited the same rage, horror, and anguish he’d felt so long ago that the time was nothing but an ancient legend to mortals. However, Honor had no right to that knowledge. Only to Ingrede would he have laid his soul bare, and his wife was long dead, ashes on the unforgiving wind.
    Dmitri.
    I’ll meet you on the balcony, Jason. Though their ranges and specific abilities varied dramatically, every member of the Seven could communicate on the mental plane, an incalculable strategic advantage in certain situations. “Don’t leave just yet, Honor. I wouldn’t want to have to chase you down.”
    Honor watched Dmitri prowl out through the small door that led onto the balcony. An angel with wings as black as the endless heart of night swept down to land with quiet grace on the very edge of the open space an instant later. Honor sucked in a breath as she saw the tattoo covering the left-hand side of his face—swirling lines, dots arcing along the curves to create a striking piece of art. Beautiful and haunting, it suited a face that carried the compelling strength of the Pacific intermingled with other cultures she couldn’t quite identify. His hair, tied back in a neat queue, reached to midway between his shoulder blades.
    Dmitri, with his flawlessly cut black suit paired with a vivid blue shirt, his hair just long enough to invite the thrust of a woman’s fingers, was as urbane and sophisticated as the angel was rough around the edges. But one thing was clear—both were honed blades, blooded and ruthless.
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    Jason glanced through the plate-glass window. “Honor St. Nicholas,” he said. “Found abandoned as a newborn on the doorstep of a small church in rural North Dakota. Named after the nun who discovered her and the patron saint of children. No known family.”
    Dmitri wasn’t surprised at Jason’s knowledge—there was a reason the angel was called the best spymaster in the Cadre. “I assume you didn’t come here to talk about Honor.”
    The angel tucked his wings in tighter as a swift wind swept across the balcony suspended high above the frenetic beat of the city. “There’s something in your voice, Dmitri.”
    It was odd how good Jason was at picking up cues about people, though he was an angel who