Angels' Flight (29 page)

“Galen,” he said, “is one of Titus’s people.”

“That’s no surprise.” Titus was a warrior archangel, never more at home than in the midst of the blood and fury of battle—this Galen, too, was made for combat, all rippling muscle and brute strength.

Strength that was in hard evidence as he blocked a blow and kicked out at the same time to connect with Dmitri’s knee. The vampire grunted, swore, and just barely avoided a strike with the flat of Galen’s blade that would’ve no doubt caused a severe black bruise. So, they weren’t actually attempting to kill each other.

Sliding one arm around Saraia to steady her when the little girl clapped, Illium continued. “He wants a transfer to Raphael’s territory.”

Now she understood. Raphael had become an archangel only a hundred years ago. His court, such as it was, was a nascent, still-forming unit. Which meant it had room to accept and integrate the strong who might find themselves bored or underutilized in the older courts. “Raphael isn’t concerned about him being a spy?” The archangels who ruled the world, forming the Cadre of Ten, were ruthless in the pursuit of their interests.

“Even if Raphael didn’t have his own spies to vouch for Galen,” Illium said with a grin that was so infectious, she’d had the most impossible time maintaining a stern face when she’d disciplined him as a child, “he’s not the kind to lie. I don’t think he knows the meaning of the word ‘subtle.’”

A ringing blow with the flat of the blade against Dmitri’s cheek, a kick to the gut, and suddenly, Galen had the advantage, the tip of his broadsword touching Dmitri’s jugular as the vampire’s chest heaved where he lay on his back on the ground. “Yield.”

Dmitri’s unblinking gaze locked with Galen’s, the merciless predator within the sophisticated vampire very much at the forefront. But his voice, when it came, was a lazy purr languid as a summer afternoon. “You’re lucky the babies are watching.”

Galen didn’t so much as flinch, his focus absolute.

Dmitri’s lips curved. “Bloody barbarian. I yield.”

Stepping back, Galen waited until Dmitri was on his feet to raise his sword and give a curt bow of his head in a symbol of respect between two warriors. Dmitri’s response was unexpectedly solemn. Jessamy had the feeling this new angel, with his battering ram of a body and large, powerful wings, had passed some kind of test.

“I think you broke my ribs.” Dmitri rubbed at the mottled bruise forming on the dark honey of his skin.

“They’ll heal.” Galen’s eyes lifted, scanned the audience… locked on Jessamy.

Pale green, almost translucent, those eyes sucked the air right out of her; they watched her with such unwavering intent. The force of his leashed power was staggering, but it was his lips that had her hands turning white-knuckled. The only point of softness in a harsh face that was all angles, those lips caused thoughts, shocking and raw, to punch into her mind. She didn’t breathe until Dmitri said something and Galen turned away, the silken red of his shaggy hair lifting in the wind.

G
alen watched the tall, almost painfully thin woman walk
away with her hands held by two of the smallest of their erstwhile audience, other children running around her, their wings brushing the earth when they forgot to pull them up. He’d never seen any angel who appeared as fragile. A single mistake with one of his big fists and he’d break her into a hundred pieces.

Scowling at the thought, he turned away from the sight of her retreating back, one of her wings appearing oddly distorted at this distance, and walked with Dmitri into the echoing emptiness of the salle, where they cleaned and stored their blades. Illium entered not long afterward, his wings a faultless blue Galen had seen on no other. The angel was young, only a hundred and fifteen to Galen’s two hundred and seventy-five, and appeared a beautiful piece of frivolity, the kind of male who existed in the courts for his decorative value alone.

“You owe me the gold dagger you brought back from Neha’s territory.” Illium’s words were directed at Dmitri, a gleam in his eye.

Eyebrows lowering, Dmitri muttered, “You’ll get it.” A glance up at Galen. “He wagered you’d take me down.”

Galen wondered if the younger angel had bet on an unknown commodity for no reason but that he enjoyed baiting Dmitri, or if he had knowledge Galen didn’t realize. No, he thought almost at once, Illium couldn’t be Raphael’s spymaster—quite aside from the fact that he was unlikely to have built up the necessary network of contacts given his age, he seemed too flamboyant for such a task.

“You were a good opponent,” he said to Dmitri, making a silent note to watch Illium with more care—men like Dmitri didn’t associate with pretty, useless butterflies. “I can usually intimidate most with brute strength alone.” Not only had Dmitri failed to be intimidated; he’d fought with practiced grace.

The vampire inclined his head, dark eyes appearing lazy—if you didn’t look beneath the surface. “A compliment indeed from the weapons-master Titus is furious to be losing.”

Galen shook his head. “He has a weapons-master—and Orios has earned his position.” There’d been no room for Galen, except as Orios’s subordinate. Galen had felt no discontent in occupying that position when he first reached maturity, aware Orios was the better fighter and leader. But things had changed as Galen grew older and more experienced, his power increasing at a rate that far outstripped his peers. “Orios was happy when I told him of my desire to leave Titus’s court.”

“The men are becoming confused about who to look to for leadership,”
the weapons-master had said, his near-black skin gleaming in the African sunlight
.
“It would have cost me should we have been forced to meet in combat to decide matters.” A big hand squeezing Galen’s shoulder. “I hope we never go against each other in battle. Of all my students, you are the one who has flown the highest.”

Galen had made certain Orios knew of his own respect toward the man who had never withheld knowledge from his student, no matter that Galen threatened his position, and they had parted on good terms. “Titus is simply posturing in an attempt to gain concessions from Raphael.”

“A fool’s game,” Illium said, running his hand along the edge of the blade Dmitri had been using. “Raphael is no less an archangel for being the newest member of the Cadre.” Hissing out a breath after slicing a line on his palm, he closed his fingers into a fist. “Why didn’t you set your sights on Charisemnon’s or Uram’s courts? They’re both older and stronger, with far more men at their command.”

Galen shoved back his sweat-damp hair, thinking he must remember to cut it off—he couldn’t afford to have his sight compromised. “I’d rather be a second-tier guard in Titus’s court than work under either Uram or Charisemnon.” Titus might be a brute on occasion, might be quick to anger and even quicker to declare war, but he had honor.

Women were not to be brutalized when his troops marched in battle, and children were not to be harmed. If a man fought only to protect his home, he was to be shown mercy, for Titus appreciated courage. Any fighter found to have broken the archangel’s rules was summarily drawn and quartered, the lumps of meat that had once been his body hung up from the trees in display.

While Raphael’s style of rule was very different, his anger a cold blade that cut with precision in comparison to Titus’s sometimes indiscriminate rage, in the century since he’d become one of the Cadre, Raphael, too, had shown the kind of honor that didn’t allow him to subjugate the weak and the defenseless.

“Is there room in this court for me?” he asked, blunt because that was the way he was. He’d been born of two warriors, had come to age in a warrior court. The civilized graces had never been a part of his education, and while he had seen the effectiveness of a silver tongue, it was a skill that would fit him as well as a dainty rapier would his hand.

“Raphael doesn’t keep a court,” Dmitri said, sliding out a small, gleaming blade from a wall bracket, and throwing it toward the high ceiling of the salle without warning.

Illium flew up as if he’d been thrown from a slingshot, snapping the blade out of the air one-handed and spinning it back at Dmitri in the same motion. The vampire gripped it by the hilt just before it would’ve slammed into his face. Baring his teeth in a feral grin at a smiling Illium, he said, “Doesn’t see the point of pretty people floating around doing nothing.”

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

I
t wasn’t until the hushed time after dawn the next morn
ing 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.

J
essamy 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.