Angels' Flight

comfortable here,” in a low purr of a tone.

It was a dare, no doubt about it.

Shoulders set and eyes narrowed, she crossed the distance between them to take a seat against the wall. It put her in the corner, but there was more than enough room that she didn’t feel constrained. As the sweet, spicy smell of the cake filled the aerie, she kept her eyes focused straight ahead rather than on the man beside her.

“There is also Michaela,” she said. The angel’s beauty was legend, so much so that it blinded people to both her capriciousness and the sheer power she carried in her bones. “If she has a vulnerability, she might not want it known so close to her entry into the Cadre.” Jessamy could think of nothing that would cause Michaela such concern, but she would research her files when day broke. “There is a flaw in your theory.”

A sense of movement, the caress of a hot, masculine scent that made her breath catch.

“No archangel,” she said, “or powerful immortal, would have sent a lone vampire if he or she had wanted to ensure my death. It would’ve been far more effective to have had a team of angels pick me up as I walked to my home and drop me into the gorge.”

Galen’s entire body went motionless—as if his very breath was suspended. It was then that she realized she was looking at him again. Not only looking, but admiring. Beautiful, infuriating creature. One who could kiss and forget in the blink of an eye, when her skin continued to burn with the sensory echo of his touch, when his taste—so wild, so male—lingered yet on her lips.

“Jessamy?”

Caught by the quiet, intense timbre, she said, “Yes?”

“I say this because I believe in giving fair warning.” His voice infiltrated parts of her he shouldn’t have been able to reach, they were so well hidden, so fiercely protected. “I’m very good at tactics. I know when to retreat, when to lull my opponent into a false sense of security… and when to launch a final, victorious strike.”

6

Drawing in a shuddering breath, she rose to her feet, ostensibly to check on the cake. “I’m not a campaign to be won, Galen.”

Her anger at her limited existence—and her visceral response to Galen—aside, flirting with what he was offering was pure lunacy. When Galen spread his own wings and flew from the Refuge in service to Raphael, perhaps for a decade, perhaps a century, it would hurt her. She’d known that when she walked out of the bedroom, been willing to risk it. But his kiss… oh, that sinful, addicting kiss had dangerously shifted the balance.

If she allowed this to go further, it wouldn’t just hurt her when he left. It would break her. “Don’t waste your efforts on me.” I have to live an eternity as I am, an earthbound angel. Don’t show me a glimpse of what could be, only to snatch it away.

Galen said nothing in response, but he ate the cake with open appreciation when she declared it done, and sat in silence while she read aloud from the book he’d packed in her bag—how had he known she couldn’t live without books, without words, this warrior barbarian? Later, she began to teach him the intricate power structure of the Cadre and, thus, of the world.

It was a strange, lovely night, a hazy dream.

Jessamy didn’t want day to break, but it did—in a spectacular splash of color across the skies. Flying her home, Galen walked with her through to the kitchen. It had been meticulously cleaned in her absence, until she could almost believe she’d imagined the arcing spray of darkest red.

“Do you wish to stay here, Jessamy?”

“Yes.” The night was gone, and with it, a mirage that could destroy her. This home was her haven, years of care in its making, and she would not allow it to be tainted or stolen.

Galen nodded, turning to head back to the courtyard. “It is defensible if you cooperate with your guard.”

“Of course.” The paving stones were warm beneath her feet as they stepped out into the morning once more, the kiss of wind from the black-winged angel landing a small distance away, cool. “Jason.”

Galen spoke several quiet words to Jason before returning his attention to Jessamy. “He will watch over you this day. I’ll return to tell you once it’s safe for you to teach at the school.” With that, he spread his wings and rose into the sky, a creature of pure, raw power… one who hunted those who would’ve silenced her in the cruelest fashion.

A rustle of wings.

Wrenching her attention from the now empty sky, she said, “I’ve kept a new book for you,” to Jason, this angel who was another one of those she hadn’t taught—he had simply appeared in the Refuge one day as a boy full-grown.

Jessamy had never asked Jason what his life had been before he arrived in the Refuge, but she knew it had scarred him, damaging his emotional growth to the extent that he had trouble forming bonds of attachment. There was a piercing loneliness in him that resonated with her own, but the enigmatic angel kept his distance even from the women who would’ve lain with him given the slightest encouragement, preferring to court the shadows.

“Thank you.” The light glanced off the shine of the hair he wore to just above his shoulders, the ebony strands cut in layers that shadowed the clean lines of his face and the swirling mystery of the dramatic tattoo that covered the left-hand side. “The vampire who attacked you has been tracked to Alexander’s court. His people deny all knowledge of the male’s actions.”

“What is your opinion?” she asked, because Jason—in spite of his scars, or perhaps because of them—had a way of seeing through to the heart of things, not blinded by prejudice or emotion. In many ways, he was Galen’s opposite, as subtle and cunning as Galen was blunt and direct.

“I know when to retreat, when to lull my opponent into a false sense of security… and when to launch a final, victorious strike.”

She’d told him not to waste his efforts on her, but deep in the most secret part of her lay a small, reckless voice that wanted him to push, to pursue, to force his way through the defensive barriers she’d put in his path. Dangerous, it would be heartbreakingly dangerous to give in to him in any way, but to be so wanted, it might be worth the agony to come.

“I think,” Jason said, his voice sliding into her consciousness like dark smoke, “that Alexander’s court tells the truth in this. He has his stable of assassins. Even the worst of them is ten times better than the vampire Galen executed.”

“Raphael knows to be careful?” As the keeper of their histories, Jessamy should have been a neutral party in the looming war, but she had a soft spot in her heart for the youngest of the archangels. He’d had such a delighted laugh as a boy… at least until his father’s inexorable madness, and his mother’s terrible decision—to end the life of the mate she loved with every breath in her body.

Even when it became clear at a very young age that his power far outstripped her own, Raphael had always, always, treated her with respect. Though he, too, was changing. Perhaps it was inevitable, the cold arrogance that came with that much power. Each time he returned to the Refuge, she saw less of the boy he’d been, and more of the lethal creature who was one of the Cadre.

“Dmitri,” Jason said in response to her question, “has made certain no spies are able to get in close enough to cause concern.”

“And you have ensured Raphael has his own spies in Alexander’s court.”

Jason kept his silence on the point, his face—marked by the haunting curves and lines of a tattoo he’d never explained, and that could be either a tribute or a reminder created in exquisite pain—remaining unchanged in expression, but she’d known him too long to be fooled.

Holding her gaze, he said, “Galen has no wife, no lover, has made no promises to another.”

She’d long ago stopped being startled at how Jason knew what he knew, but his words made her breath catch, her heartbeat accelerate. “Am I so transparent?” she asked, feeling vulnerable, exposed.

“No.” A pause. “But Galen has made his claim patent.”