by Nalini Singh
“The Cadre is converging on Alexander’s territory.”
“So quickly?” Jessamy’s eyes widened as she stretched out her legs, but not her wings. It was why Galen had made a pretext to land before sunrise—he’d wanted her to have the privacy to exercise those muscles. That she hadn’t hidden from him as she did so, it was another root digging into his heart.
“It appears,” Dmitri said, “that no one in the Cadre has seen Alexander for two seasons at the very least—proof enough for them to take Raphael’s concerns seriously.”
Dmitri opened the door for Jessamy, waited until they were inside the tower before continuing. “A demand has been made for the archangel to show himself.”
“His son has troops ready.” Galen had an excellent idea of their numbers and strength, given the information Raphael had shared with him after the archangel first arrived in the Refuge. “He may engage rather than comply.”
“Neha and Uram are close and have moved their armies in.”
It was, Galen knew, a significant act. Archangels did not interfere in the affairs of others in the Cadre, or even in wars fought between particular archangels. However, if Alexander was dead or in Sleep, his territory could not be permitted to collapse into bloodrage and violence, and regardless of its flaws, the Cadre could, and did, work effectively as a unit when necessary. “How long before we can expect an answer?”
Dmitri glanced at Jessamy.
“If,” she said, lines forming between her eyebrows, “Alexander is alive and awake, he won’t hesitate to use violent force to repel the others from his territory. The more time that passes, the more certain it becomes that he’s no longer in charge.”
Dmitri waved to a door, the dark elegance of his movements striking. Jessamy could appreciate it, appreciate him, but she felt no draw toward this sensual male creature. Her body was attuned to another’s, the warm, earthy scent of Galen imprinted in her skin, the deep timbre of his voice one she wanted to hear as they spread their wings in bed. Somehow, with Galen, she forgot she was crippled, forgot the ugliness of her wing and simply existed.
“Jessamy, you have time to change, rest a little. Your room should have everything you need.” Dmitri’s voice broke into her thoughts. “I’d like you to join us after—but we will talk war.” The question was unspoken.
Jessamy was a historian, one who stood on the sidelines and watched. She did not interfere. But there were times in any life when a stand had to be taken, a side chosen. “I’ll come,” she said, meeting eyes of heliodor-green.
If they were to be together, then her loyalty had to be Galen’s.
The day passed in a fury of planning and concordant action, and it wasn’t until after sunset that Jessamy found Galen standing on the roof, his wings held with warrior discipline as he stared out at the flights of angels leaving the tower in perfect formation. They were the first wave of defense, sentries and messengers experienced enough to patrol the borders. Dmitri had already had a skeleton crew doing the task, but had held back the majority so Galen could personally gauge the readiness of Raphael’s men and women.
Below the night-shadow of wings beating in a smooth, fast rhythm marched an army of vampires, a ground guard that moved at a crisp pace to take up defensive positions at a distance Dmitri and Galen had determined would provide optimum protection without compromising the Tower’s defenses.
In spite of the hundreds of pairs of wings that sliced through the air, the mass of vampires on the ground, the night was eerily quiet. It was a whispering darkness, she thought, a portent hanging over their heads. Soon, either Alexander would retaliate against the invasion of his lands by the Cadre, or he would not… and they would know.
Jessamy hoped he Slept, for the world was not ready to forever lose the deep wisdom of an Ancient.
“You are the only one who calls me wise.” Alexander’s silver eyes, so inhuman that he was beyond even their long-lived race. “Everyone else believes I am a being of violence and war.”
“You are both, Alexander. You always have been.” She had read the histories, knew what so many had forgotten. In times past, Alexander had brokered peace, saved the world from unimaginable horror. “I think, if the test came again”—not petty arguments or battles engendered in pride and power, but a true question of good and evil—“you would stand on the side of right.”
A faint smile. “You are so young, Jessamy. Foolish, many would say.”
“Did they not call you the same when you stepped between two warring Ancients?”
His laughter rang deep and real, the silver molten. “Come, young one. Walk with me and tell me tales of when I was a hot-tempered youth.”
Smiling at the now-bittersweet memory, she leaned against Galen, this man who would break her heart into innumerable shards should he ever choose to Sleep. “This is not,” she said when the angels disappeared from view, the vampires long devoured by the dark green forests that bordered the Tower, “how you imagined your life in Raphael’s service would begin.”
He wrapped an arm around her waist, trapping her wings to her back. “I am what I am, Jessamy.” Quiet words. “War and weapons will always be a part of my life.”
“I know—I’m not compelled toward some fantasy man, Galen.” Perhaps this, she thought, hoping against hope, was the cause of the subtle distance he’d put between them, distance that hurt. If so, she could end it. “It’s you I’ve seen from the first, you I want.”
Spreading his wings at her back in a protective move that had become intimately familiar, Galen fisted his hand in her hair. The possession in it was unmistakable, but he didn’t kiss her, hadn’t kissed her the entire journey. And yet the slumberous heat in his eyes, the blatant hardness of his body when she pressed close, said he wanted her as he always had. “Talk to me, stubborn man.”
Lashes coming down over eyes so beautiful, she wondered how it was she hadn’t immediately fallen into them when they met. “I want you with my every breath.” Unadorned. Rawly honest. Galen. “But gratitude is not what I need from you.” Cupping her cheek with unexpected tenderness, he said, “If that’s all you feel, it’ll cut me in two, but it won’t stop me from being the best friend you will ever have. Anywhere, Jessamy. I will always fly you anywhere you want to go.”
The words, his vow, reverberated inside of her, but she kept her silence, unsure what to say. How could she not be grateful for everything he’d done? Not just for the gift of flight, but for forcing her to wake up, to truly live again.
“There is no debt between us, no commitment you must feel compelled to honor.” Galen’s words were harsh, his touch holding a rough gentleness. “You’re free.”
12
The night passed with painful slowness. Unable to sleep—and trailing her right wing on the floor like one of her charges—Jessamy walked into the Tower library in the gray time before the paintbrush of dawn streaked the sky. A lamp burned within, and the man who stood by the mantel, a glass in hand, was taller than her, slender in the same way, and had no wings on his back. “Lady Jessamy,” he said in a languid tone that was a purr over her skin.
Dangerous, she thought, keeping her distance. “You have the advantage.”
“Ainsley at your service.”
“Ainsley?” It in no way fit this vampire whose very voice was an invitation to sin.
His lips quirked up, the lamplight igniting the ruby red of the liquid in his glass to glittering brilliance. Blood. “That’s why I usually kill people who use my given name,” he murmured. “Most call me Trace.”
A strange name. Her eyes took in his lithe form again, made the connection. “Is that what you do?”
An easy nod. “It’s wild country out here. Many things get lost. I find them.” Sipping at the blood, he continued to hold her gaze with eyes that might’ve been darkest green or unbroken ebony. “You’re a tall woman.”
Yes, she was. Even among angelkind. Though standing next to Galen, she felt positively petite. And when he took her into his
arms…“What are you doing in the library at this time of the morning?” she asked, resisting the need to rub a fisted hand over her heart to ease the ache within.
Trace brought up the hand at his side to reveal a book. “Poems.” An almost sheepish glance out of those eyes that had no doubt coaxed more than one woman into addictive decadence.
Jessamy rethought her initial conclusion—that he was dangerous was indisputable, but he was also not a man who would harm a woman. He enjoyed them too much. “Poems?”
A slow smile creased his cheeks. “Would you like to hear?”
No man had ever asked to read her poetry. But then, her whole life was changing. So she said, “Very well,” and crossed the carpet toward him.
They took seats opposite each other, and, putting down his glass, Trace read her haunting poems of love and loss and passion in a rich, evocative voice meant for seduction. It was only after the third poem that she realized she was the target. Startled, she looked at that face of sharp, angular beauty, that shock of silky black hair, that slender form she was certain could move whiplash fast when necessary, and wondered at his motivation. “There are other women in the Tower,” she said when he paused for breath.
A look through his lashes, his eyes revealed to be the deepest green she’d ever seen. “I know that full well, but I’ve wanted to run my fingers over your skin since the first time I saw you at the Refuge.” Another pause, his perusal more open and frankly sensual. “The only reason I didn’t court you then was because I was told by more than one person that you preferred solitude, and it would distress you to be approached.”
“I see.” His words caused a tremor inside of her, dramatically reshaping her world. It was one thing to consider that perhaps she had been the cause of her own isolation, another to know it. “You realize my wing is not what it should be,” she said, and it was a question within a statement.
A shrug, fluid and graceful. “You’ll notice I can’t fly either.” Finishing off the liquid in his glass, liquid that sang with life and death both, he said, “Tell me, do you belong to him?”
There was no need to ask who he meant. “If I do?” she said rather than answering, because what she had with Galen was precious, private.
“I might be many things,” he murmured, “but I don’t steal women… at least not those who don’t want to be stolen.”
“It’s time for me to go.” The night and this morn had thrown everything she knew into confusion—it was no time for her to be crossing words with a vampire who was clearly an expert in the art of flirtation.
“Until next we meet, my lady.” The dark promise followed her as she left the library and walked up to the roof, and out into the crisp morning air. If Trace spoke the truth—and he had no reason to lie—then it might well be that other men would approach her now that they knew she was open to the idea of a courtship and relationship.
“If that’s all you feel, it’ll cut me in two, but it won’t stop me from being the best friend you will ever have… You’re free.”
Her heart clenched at the thought of never again tasting Galen’s kiss, but no matter if it made her bleed inside to accept his decree, he was right in this. If she gave in to the unquenchable need deep within her, need that bore Galen’s name, and went to him now, the specter of gratitude would always lie between them. It would hurt and it would corrode, and it would destroy. No, she thought, nails digging into her skin, she wouldn’t do that, not to Galen, and not to herself.
The first rays of the sun hit the horizon at that very instant, its golden fingers bringing the world to life.
Word came two days later.
“Alexander Sleeps,” Dmitri said, joining her and Galen where they stood on a high Tower balcony, “in a location known only to him.”
“The vampire who attacked Jessamy?” Galen asked, expression grim.
“An acolyte of Emira, the vampire you”—a nod toward Jessamy—“described as being with Alexander the day you spoke. Emira was one of his elite guard.”
“It surprises me,” she said, absently tucking a tendril of hair behind her ear. “Alexander’s people are loyal.”
“Emira was, too, but her loyalty was to Alexander and she considered her duty complete the day she knew he was safe in his place of Sleep.” Dmitri’s eyes met Jessamy’s own, the darkness in them impenetrable. “Still, I think she would’ve held her peace if she’d believed Rohan would fulfill his promise to Alexander—to inform the Cadre of his father’s decision. When she realized he had no intention of doing so, it hardened her resolve not to serve him.”
Galen’s hair flamed in the sunlight pouring down on them. “It’s certain, then—Rohan did attempt to seize the territory?”
Dmitri nodded. “Never realizing the vampires under his command were planning insurrection. The only thing that worried Emira was that someone would become suspicious about Alexander’s continued absence.”
“A needless worry.” Jessamy shook her head. “Without the assassination attempt, who knows if I would have ever recalled the memory of my talk with him.”
“However it came about,” Dmitri said, “the end result is the same. Without Alexander, the region is no longer stable. The Cadre is currently working on a caretaker regime until another angel comes into full power.”
“Michaela,” Jessamy said quietly. “She is on the cusp.” No one knew what the line in the sand was, but they all knew when an angel was approaching it. An archangel would be born in that moment of change, and they were as different from angels as mortals were from vampires.
Neither male said anything, their attention on the cloudless sky beyond, where angels dived and flew in training for a war that would not happen—at least not this time. Her own eyes, however, lingered on the muscular body of the barbarian who had kissed her, courted her, promised to fly her wherever she wanted to go… and she wondered who he was to her.
Galen saw Jessamy laughing with the one they called Trace the next day, and had to turn away before he gave in to the primitive need to pound the skinny vampire to the ground. One or two well-aimed punches to that pretty jaw, those bony ribs, and the man would shatter like pottery.
“I’m surprised Trace is still breathing,” Dmitri said as they walked across the trampled grass leading away from the Tower. “You don’t strike me as the kind of man who shares.”
Galen didn’t answer until they’d almost reached the angelic squadron that waited for him. “He makes Jessamy smile.” It was the only answer he could give, the only answer that mattered.
Dmitri’s response was quiet, his words whispering of age and pain both. “Love has a way of crushing a man until nothing remains. Be careful.”
Dmitri’s words reverberating in his mind, foretelling a future he didn’t want to imagine, Galen spread his wings in a silent call for attention, and took the squadron up into the sky for an air-combat drill, while Dmitri worked with the vampires. Later, they’d merge the two groups, make certain they could function as a sleek unit in battle.
Raphael’s people were good enough that it wouldn’t have been a slaughter if they had gone to war—but neither would they have emerged without massive loss of life. Now that they had the time, Galen wanted to lay a stable foundation, ensuring the next battle would not obliterate Raphael’s forces, leaving him vulnerable to a secondary strike.
“The work will take us into winter,” he said to Jessamy at the end of the day, the sky the dark orange of sunset. “It’ll be too dangerous to fly then.” Angels didn’t feel the cold as mortals did, but flying through the relentless heavy snow that fell in certain parts of the route to the Refuge could crumple an angel’s wings, crashing him to the earth. Depending on the age of the angel and the nature of the injuries, such a fall could be fatal—immortality was not an equal gift, took time to set in stone.
Regardless, it would be an uncomfortable flight, interrupted as it would be by snow and sleet. “If you wish to leave for the Refuge, I can fly you back and return here before the
snows.” He knew it was a big thing to ask of her—to remain in Raphael’s territory for a full turn of the seasons, but he wanted her with him, even if she was no longer his. The thought was a huge granite fist in his chest, a heavy, brutal thing.
“I won’t say it’s not a little overwhelming being in the world,” Jessamy said slowly, “but I’m finding I have more strength than I knew. I’d like to stay.”
“You’re certain?” he asked, because he would not have her unhappy, not Jessamy.
“Yes.” Tilting back her head, she watched the bright palette of the sky, striped as vibrantly as a tiger’s coat. “Even the sky is wild here.” A secret smile that tugged at the primal core of him.
But he didn’t follow her when she walked away, didn’t rip the vampire who came to meet her limb from limb. Instead, he flew far and distant, until the sky was an endless blue and he could almost forget he’d left Jessamy with another man.
Jessamy felt herself growing ever stronger as spring passed into summer, a flower opening to the sun. As she stood on the roof, watching the drills in the air below, her eye followed the solid form and striated gray wings of the man who never left her thoughts, whether she lay awake, or danced in the heated dark of her dreams.
Galen flew in the center of the unit, undoubtedly giving orders in that quiet voice that worked more effectively than any shout. She saw one angel’s face brighten visibly at something Galen said, and knew he’d given one of his rare words of praise. Such words were never flowery. Sometimes all his warriors received was a curt nod, but those small actions and infrequent words meant the world to them, because each and every one knew it was praise earned. Galen didn’t do false flattery.
Yet he told her she was beautiful.
Two days ago, she’d curled into his embrace and he’d taken her on a sweeping exploration of Raphael’s territory, this untamed land of mountain and forest, water and sky. She’d seen a wolf pack stalking a herd of grazing deer; laughed in wonder as a mated pair of eagles joined her and Galen for a long, lazy distance; walked among a field of daises, bold and cheerful.