by Nalini Singh
Deciding he could handle the invasion of tiny creatures—because two more had managed to land around him—he put the girl on her feet beside her friends. “Why are you here? The school is closed.”
It was one of the boys who replied. “We’re allowed to play in the park.” He slid his hand into Galen’s in a trust that made something go hot and tight in his throat. Children were an unknown species to him—he’d spent his life with warriors, even when he was a babe himself.
“Will you play with us?” the girl asked, tipping her head back in an effort to meet his gaze… so far back that the weight of her wings toppled her over.
Reaching down, he tugged her up with one hand. “No, I think you all need a lesson in flight.”
So it was that he spent time he didn’t have drilling three excited babes who held his hands when it wasn’t their turn to fly, and who called him Jessamy’s angel. “I’m leaving the Refuge,” he told them afterward, for to disappear without warning would be to betray their trust. “And I’m taking Jessamy with me.”
Sadness blunted the shine in their bright eyes. The little girl’s lower lip wobbled. “Will you bring her back?”
Hunkered down before them, he gave a solemn nod, because he understood what he was asking. “Yes, but now it’s time for Jessamy to fly.”
Stalking into the library after the children assented that he could “borrow” Jessamy for a while, he felt the hush of the hall of learning attempt to cloak him. It snagged, tore. He was as out of place here as he would be in Jessamy’s bed, big brute that he was… but that mattered little. Not when she looked up from the book in which she was writing, the ink flowing gracefully across the page, and smiled. “There you are, devious man.”
Fisting his hand in her hair, he claimed a kiss, the contact a raw melding of mouths. “I have something to ask you,” he said, taking another sipping taste of her mouth as she spread her fingers against the sensitive inner surface of his wings.
“Hmm?”
He told her of the trip they’d be making, saw her passion-dazed expression skitter between dazzling joy, disbelief, and finally despair.
10
“It’s impossible,” she whispered at last. “The distance… even you can’t carry me that far.”
“I can carry you anywhere you want to go.” That was why he was so strong, so big—he’d been born for her. “But if there is need, Raphael requests you allow him to fly you, too.” Galen trusted the archangel—never would he put Jessamy’s life into the hands of a man he didn’t believe would fight to the death to protect that life.
Jessamy’s throat moved as she swallowed, her fingers motionless on his wing. “No one wants a malformed angel out in the world.” The statement was bleak, the rich brown of her eyes dull. “The mortals cannot see us as weak.”
He hated how she described herself, but he’d foreseen her concern, discussed the details of Raphael’s territory with the archangel. “There is a mortal settlement near Raphael’s tower,” he said. “But it’s at such a distance that they would need the sight of an eagle to glimpse you. No mortals work in the Tower itself, and there is significant open land around it, so you will not be trapped within.”
Jessamy’s response was a halting whisper. “I-I’ve become used to the Refuge, to the limits on my existence.” The elegant bones of her face cut against her skin as she angled her head in thought, her hair falling soft and luxuriant over her shoulder. Reaching out, he played with the strands, twining them around his finger as he would twine them around his fist when he had her beneath him.
No, he wasn’t the least civilized when it came to Jessamy. The wonder of it was, he was starting to believe she didn’t care.
Jessamy wanted to bask in the wild heat of the warrior who had invaded her sanctum. His thickly muscled thigh was close enough to touch, the warmth of his wing seductive under her palm, his feathers incongruously silken. Even the terrified joy she felt at the gift he’d laid before her didn’t squelch her piercing awareness of him, this weapon of a man who was somehow becoming hers.
“I can carry you anywhere you want to go.”
No one had ever offered her such freedom. No one had ever fought to show her the world. And she knew he must have fought. Because until Galen, no one had seen beyond the twisted wing and to the hunger within. The one thing she’d never ever factored into her decision to dance with him was that he’d take her with him when he left. Heart tearing wide-open, she looked up to catch him watching her, felt her stomach clench. But she didn’t shy. Instead, she moved the hand she had on his wing to the taut muscle of his thigh.
His body went rigid.
Skating her gaze over the primal hardness of him, she stroked once before rising… and moving between his legs. Cupping his face when he bent toward her, his hands on her hips, so large and warm, she initiated a kiss for the first time. It wasn’t as difficult as she’d imagined it might be, not with a partner so very enthusiastic that she found herself trapped between two muscular thighs while her breath was stolen from her.
It was exhilarating and petrifying and rather wonderful.
When Galen’s hand fisted in her gown, she knew she should stop him—the library was by no means deserted during the day—but she didn’t. Instead, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her breasts to the heated iron of his chest, rubbing to assuage a sudden wild need. Galen’s groan was deep, his hand unclenching and fisting again in her skirts. “Is that a yes?”
Using her mouth to taste the thick line of his neck with the fascination of a woman who wanted to explore every tiny part of him, she drew the dark, unalterably male scent of him into her lungs. “Yes… and thank you.”
Galen went motionless, his hands closing over her arms to pull her away from his beautiful sculpture of a body.
“Galen?”
His jaw a brutal line, he said, “You understand you could be flying into war?”
For such freedom, she’d pay any price. “Yes.”
“We leave tomorrow morning.”
“The children—”
“You must know people who can step in to continue their education while you’re gone.”
“Of course. It’s their spirits I’m worried about.” It would be unbearable to reach for her dream knowing she’d left heartbroken children behind.
“Speak to the little creatures—something tells me they’ll understand.”
With that, he walked out of the library. No good-bye, no kiss. Arrogant, confusing barbarian of a man. One she was beginning to, quite simply, adore. “Bad temper, arrogance, and all.” Her laugh came from deep within, from the girl she’d once been.
That laughter reappeared again when she spoke to the children. The “little creatures” did indeed understand. Not only that, they admonished her to be careful of strangers and to make sure to send them a letter with every messenger. A hundred sweet, fierce hugs later, she walked down the pathway to her parents’ home… and though she tried so hard to hold on to it, the laughter faded.
“This Galen is strong?” Rhoswen asked, naked concern in the eyes she’d bequeathed her daughter.
“Yes. My trust in him is absolute.”
“Forgive me, Jessamy.” Rhoswen cupped her cheek. “A mother never stops watching out for her child. I wish we could’ve given you this—”
“You gave me everything in your power. Thank you.”
“My beautiful girl.” A hesitation, as if Rhoswen wanted to speak other words, but as always, she kept her silence.
Heart full of love and pain both, Jessamy walked into her mother’s embrace. Later, her father kissed her temple and squeezed her hard enough to leave bruises.
“I love you,” she whispered to them both, and then she turned and walked away, a knot in her throat. To look back might be to see tears, bright as diamonds, marking Rhoswen’s face.
The sun was but a mirage on the horizon the next morning when Galen lifted into the air with Jessamy in his arms. Her legs, long and slender, lay
over his arm, clad in thick woolen stockings of purest black, her tunic—the color of autumn leaves—ending just above the knee. It was strange to see Jessamy in clothing other than the long, graceful gowns that flowed around her as she walked, and he could tell she wasn’t quite comfortable in her attire, but it was practical for the long flight.
He and Raphael carried nothing beyond the weapons they’d strapped on. Like every archangel, Raphael had “journey’s rest” stations spread across the world, stocked with everything from food, to clothing, to replacement weaponry. It was an unspoken rule that no such location was ever to be compromised or utilized as a place of ambush, as every angel was welcome to use the stations. However, Raphael had made certain of the safety of his by posting guards at the remote outposts. Each pair served a season before rotating in to the Refuge, ensuring no team was ever too long isolated.
Jessamy shifted a fraction, her wing muscles moving against his arm. He hadn’t kissed her this morning, seen frustration dig grooves in her forehead. She couldn’t know what the restraint cost him, but the one thing he would never accept from Jessamy was her gratitude. It would be a slow death.
“Stubborn,” Jessamy said, her breath an airy kiss against his neck, “has a terrible temper, arrogant, with a tendency to sulk. Your flaws are growing.”
Squeezing her, he dipped his wings, making her cry out, tighten her hold around his neck. “Stop that.” It was a laughing censure, the softness of her mouth pressed to his skin sweet agony.
In front of them, Raphael swept down and out of sight along a young, green valley, scouting ahead. The archangel’s wings glittered in the rising sun, his flight so smooth as to create not a single ripple in the air. Then he was gone, leaving Galen and Jessamy with the sky to themselves, the clouds soft white puffs he deliberately flew into.
Jessamy ran her fingers through the insubstantial filaments. “Oh Galen. I’m touching clouds.” The wonder in her made everything worth it, even the pain that might yet come… as Jessamy found her heart’s wings, and flew away from him.
He should have thought ahead, should have comprehended the consequences of her first taste of true freedom. Of course she’d be thankful to the man who’d taken her into the skies, but even had he known that from the beginning, he would’ve still done everything in his power, fought an archangel, to allow Jessamy to touch the clouds. His selfishness was only a small one—he wanted her to need him, want him, for himself. No one in his life had ever cared for him just because he was Galen.
“Are you planning to ignore me the entire way, you stubborn beast?” Jessamy murmured as they came out into the unbroken blue of the sky once more, the landscape below a verdant green interspersed with the snaking sparkle of water.
Realizing he had no will to resist her when she teased him with such unexpected affection, he said, “It is a long flight,” attempting a small tease of his own, when he’d never done such a thing. “If we use up our conversation now, the final leg will be deathly silent.”
Her laugh tangled around him, wrapping him in silken chains that might yet make him bleed. “I will never run out of words, Galen.”
“Then tell me things,” he murmured, stealing this time with her. No matter what happened once they reached Raphael’s territory, she was his for this journey and he wasn’t too proud to pretend that she did care for him the way he needed her to. “Tell me about Alexander. I have studied him, but never seen him.”
“Alexander,” she said thoughtfully, “is the oldest of the archangels. Caliane alone was older than him, and she disappeared when Raphael was a youth.”
Jessamy would never forget the haunting sound of Caliane’s song as she rocked her cherished baby boy. The archangel had had the purest of voices… so beautiful that she’d sung the adult populations of two thriving cities into the sea in a successful attempt to avert war. Except that it had meant the death of every one of those people, and later, of most of their children.
It was as if the shock and grief had hollowed the little ones out, turning them into mute shells who breathed—until one day, they began to curl up and die. Jessamy would never forget the dark history she’d been forced to write that year, the sketches she’d been sent to place within the pages as a silent testament to the terrible price paid by the innocent… sketches of a hundred, a thousand, babes wrapped with tender care for burial.
Dead of hearts broken, Keir had said when he returned to the Refuge, his eyes haunted. Dead of such sorrow as immortals will never know.
“Alexander,” she continued, her throat thick with the echo of memories as painful as when they had been formed, “is also a handsome man.” Golden haired, silver-eyed, and with a chiseled profile, his body honed in war, there was a sense of physical perfection to Alexander even before you got to the stark beauty of his wings—of a pure, metallic silver. “He is, in fact, so striking I believe Michaela hopes to bear his child.”
Galen chuckled. “She aspires to birth a son or daughter in the image of the two most beautiful angels in the world?”
“Yes, but I don’t think she will succeed—quite apart from the fact he already has a son, Alexander is not like her other conquests.” He was too intelligent, saw beyond the exquisite lines of Michaela’s face to the coldly ambitious heart within. “He once told me it would be akin to coupling with the black spider that eats its mate.”
Jessamy had always respected Alexander for his perspicacity, though she didn’t agree with his stance toward Raphael. “Why,” she said, “didn’t you attempt a position in Alexander’s court?” Titus and Alexander had dissimilar styles of rule, but they were both men of war.
“His age and power threaten to blind him to the reality of the changing world,” Galen answered. “If Alexander were to succeed in his goals, we would remain forever locked in time, fireflies in amber.”
Jessamy couldn’t disagree. Alexander had said something analogous to her on his last visit.
“I am too old for this world.”
His words had been a startling contrast to the ageless perfection of his looks. But that wasn’t all he’d said. Frowning in thought, she followed the fragment of conversation to its roots in a dialogue that had taken place near to two years ago.
“I’m tired, Jessamy.” Silver eyes so bright, they would never belong to a mortal. “Tired of war, tired of bloodshed, tired of politics.”
“You can choose peace.” She didn’t touch him as she might have Raphael—Alexander was far, far older than her, for all that he sometimes sought her counsel. “There is no need to raise an army against Raphael as I know you’re considering.”
A faint smile that held no humor. “Peace is a mirage… but yes, perhaps you are right in your counsel. Perhaps it is Raphael’s time.”
Sucking in a breath as she realized the import of the memory, she shared it with Galen. “No one suspects or expects Alexander to lay down his weapons.” Even she had taken his words for an idle musing, forgotten as soon as the lust for battle blazed once more.
The opulent red of his hair whipping off his face, Galen angled himself so she was in no danger of being buffeted by the wind. “Yet his armies amass even now.”
Jessamy examined each facet of the memory, each subtle shift of Alexander’s expression, but the fact was, it was one memory among thousands, hundreds of thousands, could mean nothing. “He’s an archangel,” she said. “They can be unpredictable.”
Galen began to drop from the sky in a slow glide. “We’ve reached the first station—Raphael will want to hear of your remembrance.”
The landing was flawless, Galen’s wings powerful. He didn’t resist when she reached out to massage her fingers across his shoulders. “Are you tired?” It was not good of her, but she wanted to be in no one’s arms but Galen’s.
A shake of his head, his face angled toward where Raphael stood talking to the guards. “Come.”
She waited until they were alone with Raphael inside the large domed cabin to speak. The blue of the archangel’s e
yes seared her through and she wondered if the staggering strength of it was a harbinger of things to come. Caliane had had the power to tear apart the minds of other angels, and Raphael was, in many ways, his mother’s son.
“Jason,” the archangel said in an apparent non sequitur, “has been frustrated for seasons. He was able to get one of his people into Alexander’s stables; and has picked up pieces of knowledge from the gossip of the servants and the soldiers when they frequent the taverns, but he cannot get anyone into Alexander’s court itself. More, he hasn’t been able to find a way to see Alexander in public, attempt to judge his frame of mind.”
Galen’s wings rustled as he settled them. “That isn’t unusual. Titus’s court would be impossible to infiltrate, and Alexander is a warrior, too.”
Shaking her head, Jessamy put her hand on his wing. “No. Alexander has long made it a policy to walk and fly among his troops once every five days. He does it rain or shine, hail or snow. He has always led from the front.”