Angels' Flight(85)

“It would be better if the fruit had soaked overnight,” she continued, heart settling, “but I don’t want to wait.” Picking up the kettle on top of the oven, she poured some of the already hot water on the dried apricots, berries, and slices of orange. “And I know many things, Galen,” she said, forcing herself to face the nightmare because it wasn’t going to disappear. “I’m the keeper of our histories.” A million fragments of time, more, they existed inside her mind.

Rising to place his sword on a bracket on the wall, Galen began to stretch slowly in the center of the room while they talked. She realized she’d interrupted him earlier, was glad, for it meant she could watch him now. No matter what she’d argued, what she knew to be the safe choice, she was a woman who ached for something that might well break her forever… and he was a beautiful man.

“But,” he said, twisting in a move that had his abdomen clenching tight, the filaments of white-gold in his wings glittering in the lamplight, “we only need to pay attention to that which could influence something important at the present time.”

Concentrate, Jessamy. “There are always a thousand small politics happening among the powerful.” No one who wasn’t immersed in that world could comprehend the labyrinthine depths of some of what went on. Which made her think— “If you are to be Raphael’s weapons-master, you must know all this.” Success would take him from her, from the Refuge, but she would never stand in the way of this magnificent creature.

“Dmitri suggested I come to you.”

“He was right,” she said, wondering if Galen had the personality to absorb what she had to say. She didn’t make the mistake of thinking him stupid. No, she’d spoken to several knowledgeable people from Titus’s territory in the hours after she’d first felt the impact of those eyes that reminded her of an unusual gem called heliodor, curious in a way she hadn’t then been ready to accept.

A little subtle direction and she’d learned that Galen wasn’t considered only a master tactician, but a man capable of building loyalty and leading armies onto enemy soil—and coming out the winner. Titus was furious to have lost him, though Orios was not—a true compliment from a weapons-master considered the best in the Cadre.

However, Galen’s mind, from what she’d learned of him, was a place of clean-cut lines, of good and bad, shades of gray few and far in between. He would bleed for those he gave his loyalty, and once given, that loyalty would be enduring.

The woman he took as his own would never, ever have to fear betrayal.

Consciously relaxing her grip on the wooden spoon she was using to stir the mixture, she took a deep breath, but he spoke before she could. “We don’t need to focus on the small intrigues.” He spread his wings, folded them back in neatly. “Putting aside any personal connections you have with other angels, your position itself is considered sacrosanct, given the impact your loss would have on the children—enemies would band together to avenge any harm done to you. To chance such reprisal, the stakes must be high.”

She halted in the process of pouring the mixture inside a small pot that was the only thing she’d found to bake in. “You’re right.” She had so much knowledge inside of her, she sometimes got lost within it. “Alexander’s planned aggression against Raphael is unquestionably the most important thing happening at present.”

“Yet it is no secret,” Galen said, his movements displaying a wild grace she wouldn’t have believed possible of such a big man. “So if your knowledge is connected to Alexander, it must relate to a hidden aspect.”

“If so, Alexander himself can’t have known of the planned assault,” she said, certain beyond any doubt. “He’d consider it an insult to his pride to corner me in my home in such a brutal fashion.” Had Alexander wanted her dead or incapacitated, one of his assassins would have quietly, efficiently taken care of it—she’d never have felt an instant’s fear.

Galen’s nod was firm. “Agreed. Who else?”

“I’ll think on it.” The blast of heat from the oven seared her skin when she opened it to place the pot inside, but it was the quiet warmth inside her that was the more dangerous—because this, being with Galen, talking with him as if they had spent many a night doing the same, it was the kind of emotional intimacy she craved. “Alexander surprises me with his intransigence about Raphael.” To be an archangel was to be Cadre. It was as simple and as immutable as that. “He has never before been unreasonable to this degree.”

“Raphael’s far stronger than he should be for his age,” Galen said, picking up the sword harness he’d left by the stool and hanging it up. “Titus has openly said he has the potential to lead the Cadre.”

“And Alexander considers that his position.” While the archangel was a great leader, he also had the arrogance of an ancient being of power, would’ve considered any such whisper a challenge.

“But,” she said, pouring hot water for some tea after she’d finished cleaning up, “we cannot discount Lijuan.” The oldest of the archangels after Alexander, Zhou Lijuan had committed atrocities it had chilled Jessamy to record in the secret histories she kept on each member of the Cadre. “She appears to have a partiality for Raphael, but her intrigues run deep.”