Angels' Flight(113)

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.”