Angels' Flight(97)

Cold in his veins. He’d always known he would be needed at Raphael’s side should war beckon. Except— “We can’t leave Jessamy unprotected.” His fury reignited as he remembered how she’d cried against his chest, his strong, intensely private Jessamy.

“Aodhan, Illium, and Jason, when he returns tonight, will make certain she’s never in any danger.” Raphael glanced at the other two angels, received immediate nods. “Jessamy is a woman of intelligence—she will not foolishly put herself in harm’s way.”

Galen knew that. He also knew she was his to protect. “May I speak to you alone?”

“Illium, Aodhan.”

The two angels swept off the balcony at the quiet command, their wings making a brilliant show of shattered light and wild blue against the jagged stone of the gorge as they attempted to outfly each other.

“You court Jessamy,” Raphael said, his attention on Galen, the staggering power that ran through his veins a near-visible presence. “She understands the world as not many do, will recognize why you cannot remain in the Refuge at this time.”

Galen shook his head, determined to fight for this. “The flight to your territory is long and will require us to move at a steady pace.” Unlike Illium and Aodhan’s game, it would be about endurance. “A light passenger won’t slow us down.”

Raphael’s eyes darkened in surprise. “Jessamy does not leave the Refuge.”

“No.” Hands at his back, he gripped the wrist of one with the other. “Jessamy cannot leave the Refuge.”

The archangel’s motionlessness was nothing mortal, nothing even an ordinary angel could emulate. It was utterly and completely of himself. “You shame me, Galen,” he said at long last, the golden filaments in his wings catching the sunlight. “So many centuries have I known her, and not once have I ever asked if she would like to visit other lands.”

“Jessamy,” Galen said, “is not a woman who shares her innermost thoughts with the world.” It was a gift to be allowed to see beyond the gauzy, impenetrable veil of her composed grace.

Raphael gave him an oblique look. “And yet she shares them with you?”

“No, but she will.” Galen wasn’t budging, wasn’t ever changing his mind, and he wasn’t leaving her behind. “Illium says I have all the subtlety of a bear with a blunt club, but bears with clubs get results.”

Raphael laughed; however, his words were practical. “You’re the only one Jessamy has ever allowed to fly her as an adult, but if you can gain her cooperation, we can alternate. We leave with the next dawn.”

As Galen flew off the balcony not long afterward, the wind rippling through his hair, he thought of what he’d said to Raphael, considered every facet of it. Jessamy was a woman of secret passions and dreams, of hidden layers and intimate mysteries. He wondered if he would ever truly know her. The idea of always being on the outside made pain shoot down his clenched jaw, but regardless of his comment to Raphael, she was no enemy he could conquer with brute power. The campaign to win Jessamy must be a subtle thing.

Landing in front of the school, he saw the closed door and realized lessons must be over. He was readying himself to fly to the library when a tiny creature with sun-bright hair dropped down from the sky in a crooked dive. Catching her to stop her from crashing to the earth, he held her away from him with both hands around her waist, and scowled. “Your flight technique is faulty.”

Big brown eyes with lashes the same light shade as her curls stared at him. “You’re big, Jessamy’s angel.”

Jessamy’s angel.

Deciding he could handle the invasion of tiny creatures—because two more had managed to land around him—he put the girl on her feet beside her friends. “Why are you here? The school is closed.”

It was one of the boys who replied. “We’re allowed to play in the park.” He slid his hand into Galen’s in a trust that made something go hot and tight in his throat. Children were an unknown species to him—he’d spent his life with warriors, even when he was a babe himself.

“Will you play with us?” the girl asked, tipping her head back in an effort to meet his gaze… so far back that the weight of her wings toppled her over.

Reaching down, he tugged her up with one hand. “No, I think you all need a lesson in flight.”

So it was that he spent time he didn’t have drilling three excited babes who held his hands when it wasn’t their turn to fly, and who called him Jessamy’s angel. “I’m leaving the Refuge,” he told them afterward, for to disappear without warning would be to betray their trust. “And I’m taking Jessamy with me.”

Sadness blunted the shine in their bright eyes. The little girl’s lower lip wobbled. “Will you bring her back?”

Hunkered down before them, he gave a solemn nod, because he understood what he was asking. “Yes, but now it’s time for Jessamy to fly.”

Stalking into the library after the children assented that he could “borrow” Jessamy for a while, he felt the hush of the hall of learning attempt to cloak him. It snagged, tore. He was as out of place here as he would be in Jessamy’s bed, big brute that he was… but that mattered little. Not when she looked up from the book in which she was writing, the ink flowing gracefully across the page, and smiled. “There you are, devious man.”