Galen watched Illium land with a precision he’d witnessed in no other, the beauty of the youth’s wings doing nothing to hide the muscle strength required to pull off the maneuver, and realized the other angel gave the impression of being an ornament, handsome and amusing, on purpose. No one would ever suspect him of dangerous intent.
Illium’s response to his candid appraisal was a bow so graceful and ornate, it would have done one of Lijuan’s stuffy courtiers proud, his wings spread in stunning display. “Would you like a dagger in your throat for breakfast today, my lord?” The tone was pure aristocrat, with a side dish of golden-eyed flirtation.
“Do you let him out alone?” he asked Dmitri, already calculating the potential advantages of Illium’s skills.
“Rarely.”
2
It wasn’t until the hushed time after dawn the next morning that he saw the tall, thin angel again. She walked alone along the marbled path that led to the doors of the great library in the Refuge, disappearing and appearing out of the mist as she passed on the other side of the columns that guarded the structure.
She carried what appeared to be a heavy book in her arms, her shining chestnut brown hair braided into a long tail down her back, her gown—of some fine sky blue material that echoed the mist—swirling and whispering around her ankles like a familiar lover. Not quite understanding why he did so, he changed direction to intercept her, the wind crisp and cool against his skin as he cut through the air.
A wordless cry, a startled gasp, as he landed in front of her.
Folding back his wings, he said, “I’ll carry that,” and took the gilt-edged tome from her hands before she could catch her breath and demur.
She blinked, thick, curling lashes coming down over eyes of lush brown, the color holding a warmth that reminded him of the finely mixed pigment used by an artist who’d once visited Titus’s court. “Thank you.” Her voice was even, though her pulse thudded in her throat, a delicate beat against creamy skin stroked with a hint of the sun. “Aren’t you cold?”
He wore only a simple pair of pants made of a durable material, in which he could fight with ease, paired with sturdy boots. His sword was strapped along his spine, the leather straps crisscrossing his chest. “No,” he said, conscious he looked the barbarian Dmitri had called him—all the more so next to her ethereal beauty. “You wake early, my lady.”
“Jessamy.” The single word brought her lips to his attention. Soft and just full enough to tempt, they would’ve dominated her face if not for those compelling eyes dark with unspoken mystery. “When did I teach you, Galen? I can’t seem to remember.”
Curling his fingers into his hand, he fought the urge to reach out, rub away the lines that had formed between her eyebrows. She was too fine a creature for him, his touch far too rough. And yet he didn’t walk away. “Why should you have taught me anything?”
Another blink, more lines. “I teach all our babes, have done so for millennia. You must have been one of my students—you are so very young.”
In his two hundred and seventy-five years on this earth, he had walked in battle and bathed in blood, felt the hot kiss of a whip on his back, the cold thrust of a knife into his gut, but never had he been called an infant until this moment. “I spent my childhood in Titus’s court.” It was an unusual thing for a child to grow up outside the Refuge, but no one would have dared harm the son of two warriors, a boy Titus himself had placed under his protection. “I had a tutor,” he added, because he did not like the idea of her thinking him an unlearned savage.
“I remember now.” Jessamy’s liquid silk voice pouring over him in an unintentional caress. “Your tutor was a former student I recommended for the post—he told me you were taught alone.”
“Yes.” Titus had not wanted the feminine softness of his daughters to affect Galen’s development.
“A lonely life.”
He shrugged, because he’d survived and he’d grown up strong—he’d been a capable fighter at an age when most angels were yet considered children. Perhaps he had not had the usual playmates, but it was all he knew, and a life that had formed him into the man he was today. That man wanted to bend, sniff the scent at the curve of Jessamy’s elegant neck. “I’ll escort you the rest of the way,” he said, rather than giving in to the primitive urge.
* * *
Jessamy fell into step beside the big—and rather physically overwhelming—angel, his wings raised up off the floor with such effortless ease, she knew it was no conscious choice, but the honed training of a warrior. No one would ever trip him up by using his wings, this male who had looked at the book he held as if at some foreign object. “Do you read?” she asked without thought.
The incredible, exquisite red of his hair shimmered with droplets of mist that had collected on the strands as he shook his head, and she wondered if the color would stain her skin a glorious sunset should she weave her fingers through the thickness of it.
“I can,” he added almost curtly, “but there’s not much use for it in my world.” An unexpected brush of heat across his cheekbones. “My reading skills are . . . rusty at best.”
Jessamy didn’t understand how anyone could live without words, without story . . . but then, she had been entombed in the Refuge for millennia. If she, too, had wings as magnificent as Galen’s, perhaps—though it seemed an altogether impossible thing—she would not have cared so much for words either. “I can’t fly,” she found herself saying, because she’d embarrassed him, and she hadn’t meant to. “It gives me much time to read.”
Galen didn’t turn, didn’t stare at the twisted wing that meant she’d never take flight. Keir, their greatest healer, had tried to heal her a thousand times over the years as his strength grew with age, but her left wing always formed into the same twisted shape, regardless of how many times it was broken and reset, or excised and allowed to grow back. Until she had said enough. No more. No more.
“Your inability to fly,” Galen said even as she fought the painful echo of a decision that had broken her heart, “is obvious.”
Her mouth fell open. No one had ever been so unkind about her disability. Most people preferred to pretend it didn’t exist, and she didn’t push them to acknowledge it. What was the point in causing those around her discomfort? As for her charges—and those like Illium who had once been her charges—they had only ever known her as Jessamy, who had a twisted wing and whom they had to behave with, because she couldn’t chase them into the sky. All she had to do was step outside the schoolroom and raise her arm, and even the naughtiest child came back down to earth at once.