Angels' Flight

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