Elena rose to her feet, her eyes going to Jessamy's wings as the angel turned to retrieve something from behind her. The left one was twisted in a way that made Elena's stomach clench.
"I can't fly," the angel said without rancor though Elena hadn't spoken. "I was born this way."
"I - " Elena shook her head. "That's why you are who you are."
"I don't understand."
"You're kind," Elena said. "I think you're the kindest angel I've ever met." There was no sense of malice in this thin angel with her eyes of burnt sienna and hair that shone a rich chestnut. "You understand pain."
"So do you, Guild Hunter." A perceptive glance as they exited into the sunshine, one that was replaced almost immediately by a quiet but intense happiness. "Galen."
Following Jessamy's gaze led Elena to an angel who'd just landed on the raised platform in front of the school. There was something familiar about the muscular, red-haired male, though she could've sworn she'd never seen him before. Then those eyes of palest green met hers and the cold warning in them opened the floodgates of memory.
Raphael bleeding on the floor. Two angels flying in with a stretcher. This one looking at her as if he'd like to pitch her into the blackness beyond the shattered remains of her plate-glass window . . . and watch as her body fell to hit the ground at terminal velocity, her spine breaking through her skin, her skull nothing but a crushed eggshell leaking gray matter.
Clearly, he hadn't changed his mind.
"Galen." It held censure this time.
The male angel finally looked away from Elena, but didn't speak. Taking the hint, she said good-bye to Jessamy and walked down the steps, her nape prickling in primitive awareness.
"Here I am!"
Startled, she looked up to find Sam flying over to her on wings that looked far too big for his small body. "You can fly already?"
"Can't you?" He hovered beside her.
"No."
"Oh." A wobbly left turn and he was landing at her side.
"Then I'll walk, too."
She had to fight a smile as she saw his wings drag along the scrupulously clean pathway.
"Is it easier for you to stay airborne?"
"Sometimes, if there's a good wind." He tugged at her hand, pointing to someone on the other side of the courtyard. Looking up, she saw a wide-shouldered angel with wings patterned like an eagle's coming to land. "That's Dahariel. He's one of the old ones."
Dahariel's eyes locked with hers.
Age. Violence. The whiplash of strength.
It was all in that single glance before he gave a curt nod and walked away in the direction of what she'd learned was the archangel Astaad's territory. She shivered in spite of the sunlight. That one, she thought as Dahariel disappeared from sight, might just be capable of beating a man with such heartless precision that nothing whole remained.
Sam pulled at her hand again. "Come on."
As her tiny tour guide took her through the small campus, the sky agonizingly clear overhead, Elena allowed her mind to go quiet. These children were immortal-born, many of them likely older than she was, in spite of their appearance. But age was a relative thing. In their faces, she saw the same innocence she'd seen in the face of Sara's baby, Zoe. They hadn't yet tasted the bitter tears the world had to offer them.
It seemed the older, more powerful angels, for all their cruelty, made an effort to keep this part of the Refuge free of the stain of violence. It was an oasis of peace in a city that whispered with a thousand dark secrets.
Air over her head, the wash of an adult angel's wings.
Glancing up, she saw a flash of wild blue and then Illium was landing. Shrieks and giggles abounded as the children, Sam included, swarmed him like so many little butterflies. "Save me, Elena," Illium said as he took off into the air . . . but not so high, not so far that the little ones couldn't follow.
Smiling, she sat down on a piece of playground equipment and watched them swoop and dive. Belle would've loved this, she found herself thinking. Her brash older sister had had a secret - she'd loved butterflies. Elena had given her a coin purse in the shape of a monarch once, a pretty thing she'd found at a yard sale for a dime. She'd used her own pocket money to buy it. And Belle had had it in her jeans the day Slater Patalis broke her legs into so many pieces, she'd looked like a child's forgotten doll.
Elena could still see the bright orange sequins glittering in the sea of blood, Belle's lifeless fingers dipped in red.
Chapter 10
Raphael landed on the outer balcony of Elijah's base in the Refuge, knowing Elena would have liked to meet Hannah. But she was still an immortal barely born - Raphael would never trust her life to the mercurial moods of his fellow archangels and angels.
And it wasn't coincidence that both Elijah and Michaela had chosen to come to the Refuge at this time.
The scent of magnolias preceded Hannah's entrance onto the balcony. "Raphael." She held out both hands. "It has been too long."
He took those hands and bent his lips to her cheek. "Over five decades." Hannah didn't often leave her South American home. "You are well?"
Hannah's ebony skin shimmered under the afternoon sunlight as she nodded, her hair a mass of black curls shot with embers that caught the sunlight. "I've come to meet your hunter."
"You surprise me, Hannah." He dropped her hands as she turned to lead him inside.
She laughed, and it was a warm, gentle sound. "I have my flaws. Curiosity is one of them."
"Elena will be flattered to know she has drawn you from your home."
Hannah went to a small, beautifully carved table and picked up a bottle shaped from the most delicate glass. "Wine?"
"Thank you." He looked around the room, saw the touch of Hannah's artistic hand in every painting, every piece of furniture. "You travel more than people know."
A small, secret smile. "Elijah will be through soon. We arrived not long ago."
"Thank you." He took the golden liquid she held out, and the glow of it reminded him of another time, another place. A dying hunter in his arms, her hair a sheet of white. And a heart he'd thought long dead breaking open in anguish.
"What does it taste like?" Hannah asked.
Raphael shook his head. Ambrosia . . . that moment - it was indescribable . . . and utterly private.
After a second, Hannah bent her own head in silent acquiescence. "I'm happy for you, Raphael."
He met her gaze, waited.
"I've always thought of you as a friend," she said quietly. "I know that if the others decided to come after Elijah behind his back, you wouldn't join in."
"Where does your faith come from?"
"From the heart, of course."
Elijah walked out at that moment, his hair damp. "Raphael. You didn't bring your Elena?"
My Elena.
He wondered what his hunter would think of the way immortals spoke of her. "Not this time." Perhaps one day, Elijah was the one archangel he might trust. But that day wasn't today.
"Come," Hannah said, "let us sit." As he watched, she turned to Elijah, and Raphael knew some silent communication passed between them, for Hannah's lips curved before she took her seat.
"So," Elijah said as his mate poured him wine with a poise that held an elegant maturity,
"I hear Michaela graces us with her presence."
"It seems she finds the Refuge to her taste these days."
A small smile from the other archangel. "Has Hannah told you about her newest painting? It's extraordinary."
"I've scarcely begun," Hannah demurred. "But, it's almost painting itself."
The next half hour passed in such easy conversation, and though Raphael had guessed the shape the meeting would take, he found himself impatient. It wasn't a feeling he was familiar with - after having lived so long, he'd learned the art of patience. But then he'd met a hunter, and everything had changed.
Finally, he stood with Elijah on the balcony, Hannah having discreetly excused herself.
"Do you tell her everything?" Raphael asked.
"Such a personal question. Not what I'm used to from you."
"Elena asked me about angelic relationships. I find I know very little."
Elijah looked down at the river that rushed so far below, twisting in and out of crevices that had grown ever deeper with the passing centuries. "Hannah knows what I know," he said at last.
"Then why does she not stand with us?"
"She knows because she is my mate. She has no desire to be caught up in the workings of the Cadre." A pause. "You don't understand because your hunter has always been entangled with the Cadre."
"How can someone of Hannah's power" - and she'd strengthened a great deal since he'd last seen her - "be content to remain in the wings?"
"Hannah has no taste for politics." Elijah turned to glance at Raphael, his jaw granite.
"Such as that which has another angel daring to use my name."
"It displays an arrogance that'll lead to a mistake," Raphael answered, echoing something Elena had said to him after those taut moments when she'd held him so tight - as if she'd physically keep him from falling into the abyss. "He seeks glory. For that, he must be known."
"I understand your anger, Raphael" - Elijah's own fury was a violent heat - "but we can't allow this to distract us from the true problem."
"You've heard something." It was there in the other archangel's eyes, his voice.
Elijah nodded. "There are rumors Lijuan plans to openly show off her reborn at the ball."
Raphael had guessed as much. Jason's last report, delivered after Lijuan's reborn managed to corner him long enough to claw off part of his face, had spoken of an ever-strengthening army of the reawakened dead. "We must prepare for the consequences should the extent of Lijuan's evolution become known."