Her mouth fell open. No one had ever been so unkind about her disability. Most people preferred to pretend it didn’t exist, and she didn’t push them to acknowledge it. What was the point in causing those around her discomfort? As for her charges—and those like Illium who had once been her charges—they had only ever known her as Jessamy, who had a twisted wing and whom they had to behave with, because she couldn’t chase them into the sky. All she had to do was step outside the schoolroom and raise her arm, and even the naughtiest child came back down to earth at once.
This one, however, she thought, glancing askance at the large male she couldn’t imagine as a lonely boy making his way in a court filled with the clang of blades and the cries of combat, would have done exactly as he pleased.
“Were you born this way?” he asked, blunt as the edge of a dull axe.
Jessamy decided he wasn’t being rude, at least not in a purposeful way. “Subtle,” as Illium had said, didn’t seem to be in Galen’s vocabulary. “Yes.”
“They say Keir is a talented healer.”
“He is… He did his best.” And he had blamed himself when he failed. She didn’t blame Keir. Neither did she blame her mother—who found it difficult to look at the child she’d borne, though not because of a lack of love.
“Her guilt is too huge.” Keir’s young-old eyes, his voice layered with potent emotion. “She will not listen when I tell her there is no need for it. Nothing she did or did not do caused your wing to form as it did.”
Jessamy’s mother wouldn’t listen to her daughter either, not for the longest time. Even now, there was a haunted kind of pain on Rhoswen’s fine-boned face on the rare occasions Jessamy caught her looking at her child’s malformed wing. Rare… and getting ever rarer, as the wrenching silence between them, created of all the things they did not say, grew into an impenetrable black wall.
The heavy wooden doors to the library appeared out of the mist at that instant, as impenetrable in their bulk, the gold that inlaid the exquisite carvings waiting for the sun’s kiss to shine. Reaching out, Galen pulled open one of the doors, the ropes of muscle on his arm flexing and bunching in a way that had her mouth going dry, her heart slamming hard against her ribs.
Shaken by the depth and swiftness of her response—unmistakably physical and carnal—she averted her gaze and held out her hand for the book.
“Do you not eat?” he asked, sliding it into her hold, a jaundiced look in his eyes as he ran his gaze over her body.
The dark pulse of attraction morphed into sharp irritation. As a young woman, she’d attempted to do everything in her power to put more flesh on her bones, to no avail. This was simply how she was meant to be. “No,” she said, ice in her tone, “I prefer to starve,” and stalked into the library, certain the infuriating male had been raised by wolves.
It was not long afterward, the sun’s blaze having burned away the mist to reveal the bright flecks of precious metals embedded in the marble buildings of the Refuge, that Galen saw Illium’s distinctive wings sweep out and over the gorge. The younger angel headed into the clouds and across mountains where no one and nothing lived.
“A woman,” Dmitri said from beside him, the wind lifting his black hair off his face to reveal “a dangerous male beauty”—or so Galen had heard it said by more than one woman, angel and vampire both. What Galen saw was a ruthless kind of strength, strength that demanded respect.
“Mortal,” the vampire added.
Galen might not know how to talk to women outside of other warriors, but no one had ever accused him of being stupid. “You worry for him.”
Dmitri’s gaze lingered on the clouds where the angel had disappeared. “Mortals die, Galen.”
Galen shrugged. “So do we.” The mortals called them immortal, but angels and vampires could die—it just took a great deal of effort. “Does she make him happy?”
“Yes. Too much.”
Galen didn’t ask him to elaborate. He’d known immortals who had fallen for mortals, seen how they mourned when those bright firefly lives were extinguished. He’d never felt such depth of love, but he could comprehend grief. “Jessamy,” he said, his mind on a woman who wasn’t mortal, but whose slender form seemed far too vulnerable for his peace of mind, “does she have a lover?”
Dmitri’s sophisticated elegance broke to reveal utter astonishment. “What?”
“Jessamy,” he repeated patiently. “Does she have a lover?”
“She’s the Teacher.”
“She’s also a woman.” And if the men around her had been too stupid to notice, Galen wasn’t going to lose sleep over it.
A startled pause, a shake of Dmitri’s head that had blue- black highlights glinting in the sun. “No,” the vampire finally responded, “she doesn’t have a lover as far as I know.”
“Good.”
Dmitri continued to stare at him. “You do realize she’s over two thousand five hundred years old, speaks at least a hundred languages, and has such a depth of knowledge the Cadre comes to her for advice and information?”
Galen had no doubt all of that was true. “I don’t intend to get into an intelligence contest with her.” No, he wanted her in a far more primal way.
Dmitri blew out a breath. “This should be interesting.”
They watched several angels wing their way out of the aeries that lined the gorge, the light making their wings shimmer and glitter. “Trust,” Dmitri said when the last of them rose up into the cerulean blue sky, “is earned.”
“Understood.”
“For now, you’ll remain in the Refuge, charged with training the young ones who have joined Raphael.”
“They say Lijuan likes him,” he said, mentioning one of the oldest members of the Cadre.
“She might not wear cobras like Neha,” Dmitri muttered in a voice stripped of all traces of civilization, until it was a na**d blade, “but Lijuan is no less poisonous.”
Galen thought over what he knew of Lijuan, realized it wasn’t much. “Such information was not shared with me in Titus’s court. If I am to be a true weapons-master, I must know of the politics that might inform tactics.”
Dmitri’s smile was slow. “In that case, you should talk to Jessamy.”
Folding his arms, Galen met the vampire’s innocent gaze. “Should I?”
“What many don’t know is that aside from being the Teacher, Jessamy keeps our histories. I’d say there’s no one better if you want to learn the subtleties of the politics that underpin and maintain the balance in the Cadre.”
Galen knew Dmitri was amusing himself by pointing him in Jessamy’s direction, but he now had a reason to be in her company. Nonetheless, he said, “Have you forgotten that I am quite capable of killing you?”
“That was a lucky strike, Barbarian.” The vampire thrust a hand through his hair, said, “Your skills as weapons-master may be necessary sooner than you realize,” in a far more serious tone. “Alexander has begun amassing his army—he has never believed Raphael should have become Cadre at so young an age, and now it seems he is willing to use force to impose his will.”
Alexander was the Archangel of Persia, had ruled for thousands upon thousands of years. “He’s stronger than Raphael.” Age had edged his power to a piercing gleam.
Dmitri’s expression was inscrutable. “We shall see.”
Galen wondered if Dmitri had told him of the looming war only because it was already being whispered of among the populace. It was no secret. But then, as the vampire had made clear—trust was earned. Galen had expected nothing less. “He will have spies in Raphael’s territory, in the Refuge and out.”
“Of course. So keep your eyes open.”
Galen’s eyes were wide-open that afternoon as he flew over the gleaming white buildings that hugged the craggy landscape of the mountain stronghold, having tracked Jessamy to a small clifftop house on the far edge of Raphael’s Refuge territory. For a woman who was so beloved of children and adults both from what he’d learned today, she chose to live in relative isolation. Her home was separated from others by a jagged wall of rock, and accessible only from the air, or along a single narrow trail.
Sweeping down to land in her front yard—paved with tiles of sparkling blue and delicate gray, the earthenware pots along the sides overflowing with hardy mountain flowers in white, yellow, red, and indigo—he had the sensation of being a great lumbering beast as he folded his wings neatly to his back. But feeling out of place wasn’t enough to stop him in his pursuit of this angel with her fine beauty, and eyes dense with secrets.
As for the physical aspect—he couldn’t lie. He was a man with raw appetites, and Jessamy spoke to every single one. It had been a selfish need that had led him to ask the question that had annoyed her so. He’d wanted to be certain she wouldn’t fracture under the strength of his touch. Some might say he was being presumptuous in assuming she would even permit him to court her, much less caress that creamy skin with hands rough and hardened from constant weapons-work, but Galen didn’t believe in going into battle without intending to win.
Striding toward the open door, he was about to call out her name when he heard something crash, followed by a terrified feminine cry. Ice chilling the embers in his blood, he ran inside, drawing his sword as he did so. The noise had originated from the back of the house and when he felt the slap of the wind on his body, he knew the door on the other side was open to the steep drop below, a drop lined with brutal spikes of rock.
It would’ve meant nothing had it been another angel… but Jessamy couldn’t fly.
He entered to see her fighting with grim-jawed determination against a vampire who had her backed up almost to the gaping emptiness of the open door, trickles of dark red running down the side of her face.
A sudden, cold rage.