by Nalini Singh
It was the first of the wonders they shared with each other, the journey home far different from the one to Raphael’s territory. Playful as children, they danced over isolated islands and primeval forests with sprawling canopies. Galen laughed with her as he never laughed with anyone else, teased her with sinful words, and listened in shock as she whispered of scandalous truths she’d learned over the ages.
“And to think I believed you sheltered and innocent.”
“My poor darling. Can your fragile sensibilities take the rest of the tale?”
A huge sigh, laughing eyes. “I’ll persevere if I must.”
It was only when they were almost to the Refuge that their joy whispered away to a quiet, solemn knowledge. “When do you leave for the return journey to Raphael’s territory?” Even though she’d known the truth since winter, when he’d murmured it to her in the pleasure-drenched dark, her heart clenched in pain.
Galen brought them to a cliff overlooking the river that scythed through the Refuge, a final private moment. “Tomorrow morn.” His hair flamed in the mountain sunlight as he held her face in the rough warmth of his hands, drinking her in with his eyes. “Raphael’s troops are strong, but not yet at a stage where they could repel the forces of another archangel with a single decisive action.”
Though Alexander Slept, might do so for millennia, Jessamy understood the world of the Cadre was never a peaceful place. “I know you’ll make them ready.”
Galen squeezed her hip. “I shouldn’t ask you to,” he said, devotion in every word, “but I’m going to. Wait for me, Jess. I’ll come back to you.” Naked emotion turned the sea green into hidden emeralds.
Pressing her fingers to his lips, she shook her head. “You never have to ask, Galen. Forever, that’s how long I’d wait for you.”
She loved him with passionate fury that night, speaking words of love over and over so he’d know she would wait for him. Morning broke too soon, and it was with a final kiss so tender it broke her heart that her barbarian flew back toward the lands of the man who was now his liege.
Galen was merciless in his training of Raphael’s troops. He’d left his heart in the Refuge, bled with the missing of it. It had been selfish of him to ask Jessamy to wait for him when she’d found her wings at last, was a woman many would want to court.
“I love you, Galen. So much it hurts.”
He held her words to his heart, polished them until they were faceted jewels, told himself no woman would say such sweet, passionate words to a man if she did not adore him. He hadn’t chained her with his request—she had chosen him. And still he worried that she would not look at him the same when he returned, her love eroded by the limits on her freedom his promise demanded.
The first letter was carried by a returning messenger, Jessamy’s flawless hand writing to him of her life, of the children she taught and the people she met, the histories she kept, connecting them though he stood half a world away.
My dearest Galen…
He ran his finger over the words so many times the ink smudged, his eyes burning until he had to put the letter away to read late in the night, when no one would disturb him and he could read it as slowly as he liked.
He sent his response—far shorter, for he had no way with words like Jessamy—with Raphael, when the archangel returned to the Refuge with a small wing of angels who would now be based there. Jason was currently taking care of his interests at the angelic stronghold, with Illium and Aodhan’s help, but the two angels were yet young.
Raphael carried Jessamy’s letter back to him.
Jessamy touched the letter for the thousandth time, tracing the hard, angular lines of Galen’s pen. She could almost feel his energy, his raw power in the terse words another woman might have taken as disinterest. Smiling because she understood that a warrior had no time or inclination to learn poetry and gentle wooing skills, she kissed the letter and put it on top of the book she was carrying as she headed home for the day.
“Daughter.”
Jessamy turned at the sound of that familiar voice, sliding Galen’s letter between the pages of the book as she did so—but her mother had already seen. “From your barbarian.” It was said with a smile, affectionate rather than judgmental.
Jessamy laughed. “Yes.” She didn’t tell her mother that Galen wasn’t as much the barbarian as he appeared—not only because the fact people constantly underestimated his intelligence gave him an advantage, but because he needed no such defense. She adored every part of him, the rough and the secret sweetness. Such as that which had led him to send her a daisy pressed in the leaves of his letter.
I flew past the field today, and I remembered how you talked to the flowers, he’d written, almost driving her to tears, the big beast.
“You love him.” Her mother’s words were followed by a deeper, yet somehow more tentative smile. “I can see it in your eyes.”
Unable to bear that hesitancy, Jessamy walked into the arms her mother held out. The scent of her was intimately familiar, warm and loving, a sensory reminder of the childhood nights Jessamy had spent silent and stiff in Rhoswen’s lap—after truly understanding that her wings weren’t ever going to form like those of her friends, that she’d never be able to join them in their sky games.
“I do,” she whispered, squeezing her mother tight, because Rhoswen had rocked her night after night, a fierce protective love in her voice as she attempted to give solace to a child who hurt too much to accept it. “And he loves me, too,” she said, aware her mother needed to hear it. “I’m happy.”
Rhoswen drew back from the embrace, a sheen of wet over the lush brown of her eyes. “No, you’re not.”
“Mother—”
“Hush.” Laughing through the tears, her mother squeezed her hands. “You ache with missing that warrior of yours.”
Jessamy laughed and it was a little teary, too, because she hadn’t realized until this instant how very much she’d missed talking about Galen with her mother. It hadn’t been a conscious choice not to, simply an extension of the painful silence that had grown between them over the years. “Will you come home with me?” she asked, reaching for Rhoswen’s hand. “I’d like to talk.”
“I’d like that, too.” Fingers, slender and long, stroking her cheek. “I’m so happy to see the sadness gone from your heart.”
That was when Jessamy realized the distance between them had had as much to do with her as her mother. She’d thought she’d masked her sorrow as she grew older and became a respected figure in the Refuge, but what mother who loved her child would not be able to taste the salt of that child’s hidden tears?
Linking her arm with Rhoswen’s, their wings overlapping in a warm intimacy between mother and child, she made a decision—no matter what happened going forward, Rhoswen would never again taste such pain in her daughter. Galen had helped Jessamy find her wings, but the joy of spirit that bubbled within her was hers to nurture and she would fight to hold on to it.
“What does he write, the big brute who kissed you in front of the entire Refuge?” Rhoswen asked with a teasing smile. “Do let me see.”
“Only if you let me see the love notes I know Father still writes to you.”
Her mother’s cheeks turned as pink as the color that marked the tips of her primaries, the very shade on the inner edges of Jessamy’s own wings. “Terrible girl!”
Jessamy giggled and held the book and Galen’s letter close to her heart. Those letters kept winging their way across the world as the seasons changed. She wrote pages and pages full of stories about life in the Refuge—including about the three small angels who were waiting for Galen right along with Jessamy.
They assure me their flight technique has improved considerably—they’ve been very diligent about the training exercises you set them, have even become instructors themselves to their schoolmates.
Illium, Jason, Aodhan, they all took her missives and flew back with Galen’s.
“Do you know I came to see you
before my mother?” a tired Illium said one late summer’s day, handing her a letter. “Galen threatened to pull off my feathers one at a time if I didn’t.”
Loving him, this blue-winged angel who ever made her heart lift, she kissed him affectionately on the cheek. “Fly to the Hummingbird,” she said, speaking of the gifted artist who was his mother. “I know she has been watching the skies for you.”
He was a sight against the orange and gold of dusk, but she was already turning away, her fingers trembling as she broke the seal. As always, it was short, without embellishment. No words of love. Just Galen.
Tell my trainees I intend to test them rigorously on my return. Never too early to start training a squadron.
“Oh, wonderful man,” she whispered, because such words would mean everything to the little ones who hero-worshipped him.
There was no daisy this time. Only an unspoken request.
The feather I stole when I left is losing your scent.
She sent him a feather from the inner edge of her wings, where the blush was so deep it was magenta, and wrote to him of the summer blooms in the mountains, and of the political game playing she saw taking place as Michaela rode the razor’s edge between angel and archangel, wrote, too, of her worry about Illium.
The young angel had fallen in love with a mortal before he left the Refuge, and with each day since his return, that love grew ever deeper. Most shrugged it off as infatuation on his part, mistaking the wild beauty of his spirit for fecklessness, but she knew the power of Illium’s loyal heart.
I cannot imagine Illium without his smile, she wrote, as the blue-winged angel played with her students outside, while she sat at her desk in the schoolroom. Her death will haunt him through eternity.
Galen’s response was simple. He’s strong. He’ll survive. Then he added something that broke her heart. I’m not that strong.
Tears rolling down her face at the words he gave her, this warrior who was her own, she wrote to him of her adoration, because never again would she raise any self-protective barriers when it came to Galen. He would always, always know of her love. “Galen, mine.”
Autumn had fallen by the time a response arrived with Dmitri, who’d come via a swift seagoing vessel before hitching a ride with a wing of angels, so Illium could spend time at the Tower. Jessamy met the vampire’s gaze. “It’s no coincidence he’s been recalled so soon, is it?”
The sensual curve of Dmitri’s mouth was a thin line as he shook his head. “Raphael is worried about his relationship with the mortal girl. He may cross lines that cannot be crossed, speak secrets no mortal must know.”
Knowing the punishment that would fall upon the angel if he did divulge angelic secrets, Jessamy watched him go with a pained heart. “There’s no choosing safety in love, is there, Dmitri?”
“No.” A single word that held a thousand unsaid things.
Again, she wondered what lay in the vampire’s past, but those were not her questions to ask. “Raphael’s troops?”
“They profess to hate Galen on a daily basis, but would follow him to their deaths if he ordered it.” Curiosity overtook his expression. “I was wrong about the result of his courtship, and I still can’t determine why.”
Laughing, she touched Galen’s missive, hidden in a secret pocket of her gown.
It was in her next letter that she wrote of the one thing she hadn’t raised thus far—not out of fear, but because he made her forget that she was imperfect. I will never have a child, Galen. Keir cannot promise me I will not pass on my disability. And while she had found her happiness, it had been a road paved with broken dreams and haunting loneliness. It would destroy her to see such sorrow in the eyes of her child.
Galen’s response came in the hands of a beautiful warrior with the wings of a butterfly.
I would fly our child wherever she needed to go.
The words blurred. Wiping off the moisture on her cheeks, she continued to read.
The flitterbies might have air in their heads, but Titus has done a great thing in raising them. Bonds can be formed not only by blood. And Jess? I have no need to build empires and dynasties. I want only to build a home with you.
Her barbarian did know poetry after all, she thought, watching the ink smudge under a rain of tears that held no pain, only the ache of a love so true, it had forever changed her.
16
Illium told Galen of the things Jessamy didn’t write in her letters—that several other men, angels and vampires both, had made repeated attempts to court her. The only reason Galen didn’t beat the blue-winged angel bloody for being the messenger was that Illium conveyed the news with a scowl, adding, “Jessamy’s too polite to tell them to cease plaguing her, but each male knows if he pushes too hard and makes her uncomfortable, he’ll be dealing with Dmitri.”
Galen had the sudden understanding that until Illium left the Refuge, he was the one who’d been Jessamy’s champion. “Thank you.”
A glare, bared teeth. “Do you know how many people are calling me Bluebell now?”
Galen laughed, realized this pretty angel who looked like an ornament and fought like a gleaming, elegant blade had grown into a friend when he hadn’t been looking. “Come, then. I’ll let you attempt to knock me to the ground in recompense.”
As he continued to work with Raphael’s people through the crisp bite of autumn, the earth covered in a hundred shades of red, brown, and ochre, he thought of his precious store of letters, and of delicate feathers of blush and cream. Such beautiful words Jessamy wrote to him. Still, he was too honest to lie to himself—one fact nothing could change: that he’d been the first man to take the woman she’d become into the skies. By the time he returned, others would have… and so his historian would have a choice.
It might crush him to imagine her flying in the arms of another man, but he wanted her to have that choice, wanted her to never regret being with him. Because rough edges and all, every part of him bore Jessamy’s name. He needed her to be his in the same way.
Watching autumn glide into a brittle, harsh winter, Jessamy opened her histories and wrote of all that had passed in the previous season. The peace had held, with the archangels too busy with keeping an eye on the spectacle of Michaela’s ascension to the Cadre to play politics. Jessamy had to admit, the new archangel had come to power with awe-inspiring splendor.
In the far north, she wrote, the skies dance with color in winter, but when Michaela rose to her full strength, the skies danced across the world, whether in the tropics or in the Refuge, whether it was night or noon. Rich indigo, vivid ruby, iridescent green, colors that turned the world into a dream.
There had been other developments, of course, smaller in comparison but not unimportant. She noted them with a historian’s distance, even as her soul cried silent tears at some of what she had to write. But theirs was a long-lived race, loss and sadness as much a part of their history as joy.
Her own aching need continued to grow. She watched the skies for Galen’s distinctive striated wings each and every day, even knowing that he’d taken Raphael’s men and women on a winter march, so that they would be prepared for the harshest of conditions.
“Jessamy.”
She halted with her quill held above the page, finding herself looking into the lean face of an angel who was older than her by five hundred years. Not a pretty man, but one who had the kind of compelling presence that came with being honed by time and experience. “Yes?”
He held out a hand. “I would take you into the sky.”
Galen wanted to force spring out of the earth, not that it would do any good. He had to remain in the territory for another season, to ensure everything he’d taught had sunk in. “I’ll return when needed,” he said to Raphael, pacing across the cliffs that afforded a clear view of the Tower rising from the island on the other side of the powerful crash of the river. “But I’d like to be based at the Refuge.”
“I have no argument with that,” Raphael said. “I need at l
east one of my trusted senior people in the Refuge at all times.”
Trust had not only deepened, but become rooted between them. Still, Galen wondered if he’d have a subtle watch on him in the Refuge now that he’d have so much power. It was what he’d have done, and he told Raphael that. The archangel raised an eyebrow. “You make me stronger, Galen. That makes you a target. Be careful.”
“No one will ever take me unawares.” It wasn’t arrogance— he knew his strengths as he knew his weaknesses. Thanks to Jessamy, Dmitri, Jason, and Raphael, he was no longer a novice when it came to sensing and swiftly strangling subtle political intrigues that could steal even an immortal’s life.
Raphael’s hair blew back in the breeze. “Illium returns with you. He fades with the sorrow of being far from his mortal.”
“Would it not be better to keep him here?”
“Is that the choice you’d make?”
Galen thought of his tearing need to see Jessamy, considered what it would be like to know she would disappear from existence in but a mere whisper of time. “No. It would be cruel.” If Illium had only a whisper, that whisper should be his.
Raphael said nothing, but Galen knew the archangel was in agreement. There was cruelty in Raphael, that of immense power, but there was also a capacity for loyalty that spoke to the warrior in Galen. There would be no knife in the back from this archangel.
“Tanae,” the archangel said some time later, “has asked permission to enter my territory.”
“I see.” Meeting eyes of a blue Galen had seen on no other, mortal or immortal, he knew the request had been granted.
His mother, when she arrived at the Tower, was the same woman, the same warrior, she had always been, but he saw her through different eyes now.
She found herself facing a man who has no need of her support in any sense, he wrote to the woman who had taught him that he was worth loving exactly as he was, and she floundered, returned to Titus’s territory. But perhaps it is a start. We may yet find a new path.
