Angels Dance

distant from the court his mother called home, he could finally give Tanae the one thing she’d always wanted—the liberty to forget she’d ever been forced into despised weakness by the child she’d carried in her womb.
    * * *
    “K eir comes,” Jason said, an instant before the healer’s face appeared in the doorway of the library room where Jessamy sat. Old eyes in a youthful face, the slender, graceful body of a dancer, Keir was angelkind’s most gifted healer, his features so fine they were almost feminine . . . but no one would ever mistake him for a woman.
    Entering on feet as silent as those of the feline weaving around his ankles, he took a seat across from her, the golden brown of his wings stroking down to kiss the thick copper-hued carpet. “Hello, Jason.” The cat jumped up to settle on the table beside him as he spoke, a small smoky gray Sphinx with eyes of luminous gold.
    “Keir.” The black-winged angel whispered away and out of the room, pulling the door shut behind himself.
    “I worry about our beautiful Jason,” Keir said, his gaze on the heavy slab of wood beyond which Jason stood guard. “When you’ve survived what I suspect he has, there really is nothing left to fear.”
    Jessamy’s hand fisted in the pale yellow of her gown, her mind circling around the quiet panic that had colored her interactions with Galen. “Isn’t that a gift?”
    Keir shook his head, his silky black hair brushing his shoulders. “We should all have something to fear, Jessamy.” The feline purred as he stroked slender fingers through its fur. “As we all should have something to hope for. Jason has neither.”
    “And such a man,” Jessamy whispered, “has no reason to go on living.” Worry pierced her soul for the angel who had a voice so haunting it rivaled Caliane’s, but whose song made tears form in her heart. “Raphael,” she said, her voice trembling with relief. “Jason has given his loyalty to him, and Raphael will not let him go.”
    “Yes. There is something to be said for that young one’s arrogance.” A slight smile, because Keir had a favorite, too. “So, I hear the big brute Raphael has accepted as his weapons-master is courting you.”
    Jessamy jerked up her head. “Jason’s knowledge, I understand, even if I can’t explain it. But you’ve been working in the Medica for days.” A fragile newborn, the first child born in the Refuge for five long years, was commanding Keir’s interest. “The babe?” Keir had forbidden visitors—for the hall of healing would’ve been buried in wings otherwise.
    “Her angry screams summoned me deep in the night; tiny she might be, but she does not like being ignored. I rather think our little sprite will be a warrior.” Eyes sparkling with a light that was unique to Keir, he leaned forward on the gleaming wood of the table. “As for your brute—you allowed him to fly you. Did you think no one would notice?”
    Jessamy swallowed. “It can’t be, Keir.”
    “Why?”
    Forcing her fist to unclench, she held that warm gaze of uptilted brown, tore the scab off her most vicious wound. “I think he does truly want me”—a memory of the hard length of him pushing into her abdomen, his mouth so hungry on her own, his hand gripping her jaw with masculine possessiveness—“and I will not deny the depth of my own attraction.” Such a pale word that was, to express the wildness of what Galen aroused in her.
    “Yet something’s holding you back.”
    “Even knowing I’m thinking too far ahead,” she said, rubbing a hand over her heart in a futile attempt to still the ache within, “I can’t help but imagine his bitterness when he realizes that being with me means having his wings clipped, his lineage ended.” For Jessamy would never chance subjecting a child to the same painful existence she’d endured. “I will not be the weight that drags him out of the skies.”
    Keir’s tone was soft when he replied, his words without mercy. “Galen does not seem to be a man who lacks in courage. That you say this about him makes me think less of you, old friend.”
    Ice trickled down her spine, Keir’s words a painful echo of what Galen had said on the ledge outside his aerie. “You’re calling me a coward,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “You’re saying I’m hiding behind my wing.”

7
    “I didn’t say that, but you heard it.” Reaching across the table, he closed his hand over her own, his skin smooth, so unlike another