Angels Dance

Jessamy, but he’d simply shaken his head and said, “She’s afraid, Jess,” a depth of understanding in his eyes that would surprise those who saw only the hard, blunt surface.
    Squelching her own anger, Jessamy had cupped his cheek. “Do you want to see her?” Tanae was his mother—as a child who loved her parents regardless of the oft painful quiet between them, she could understand the emotional need.
    “Yes.” He’d put the letter aside, a calm strength to him. “But I will not chase her approval any longer. She can battle her pride and come to me.”
    As they flew, Jessamy hoped Tanae did swallow her pride, because while Galen no longer needed her approval, he loved her still.
    “Jess.” Warm breath, familiar voice. “Look.”
    She glanced down, saw a snowy mountain range come alive with the sun’s rays, the snow seeming to ripple with waves of molten gold. “Oh . . .”
    It was the first of the wonders they shared with each other, the journey home far different from the one to Raphael’s territory. Playful as children, they danced over isolated islands and primeval forests with sprawling canopies. Galen laughed with her as he never laughed with anyone else, teased her with sinful words, and listened in shock as she whispered of scandalous truths she’d learned over the ages.
    “And to think I believed you sheltered and innocent.”
    “My poor darling. Can your fragile sensibilities take the rest of the tale?”
    A huge sigh, laughing eyes. “I’ll persevere if I must.”
    It was only when they were almost to the Refuge that their joy whispered away to a quiet, solemn knowledge. “When do you leave for the return journey to Raphael’s territory?” Even though she’d known the truth since winter, when he’d murmured it to her in the pleasure-drenched dark, her heart clenched in pain.
    Galen brought them to a cliff overlooking the river that scythed through the Refuge, a final private moment. “Tomorrow morn.” His hair flamed in the mountain sunlight as he held her face in the rough warmth of his hands, drinking her in with his eyes. “Raphael’s troops are strong, but not yet at a stage where they could repel the forces of another archangel with a single decisive action.”
    Though Alexander Slept, might do so for millennia, Jessamy understood the world of the Cadre was never a peaceful place. “I know you’ll make them ready.”
    Galen squeezed her hip. “I shouldn’t ask you to,” he said, devotion in every word, “but I’m going to. Wait for me, Jess. I’ll come back to you.” Naked emotion turned the sea green into hidden emeralds.
    Pressing her fingers to his lips, she shook her head. “You never have to ask, Galen. Forever, that’s how long I’d wait for you.”
    She loved him with passionate fury that night, speaking words of love over and over so he’d know she would wait for him. Morning broke too soon, and it was with a final kiss so tender it broke her heart that her barbarian flew back toward the lands of the man who was now his liege.
    * * *
    G alen was merciless in his training of Raphael’s troops. He’d left his heart in the Refuge, bled with the missing of it. It had been selfish of him to ask Jessamy to wait for him when she’d found her wings at last, was a woman many would want to court.
    “I love you, Galen. So much it hurts.”
    He held her words to his heart, polished them until they were faceted jewels, told himself no woman would say such sweet, passionate words to a man if she did not adore him. He hadn’t chained her with his request—she had chosen him. And still he worried that she would not look at him the same when he returned, her love eroded by the limits on her freedom his promise demanded.
    The first letter was carried by a returning messenger, Jessamy’s flawless hand writing to him of her life, of the children she taught and the people she met, the histories she kept, connecting them though he stood half a world away.
    My dearest Galen . . .
    He ran his finger over the words so many times the ink smudged, his eyes burning until he had to put the letter away to read late in the night, when no one would disturb him and he could read it as slowly as he liked.
    He sent his response—far shorter, for he had no way with words like Jessamy—with Raphael, when the archangel returned to the Refuge with a small wing of angels who would now be based there. Jason was currently taking care of his interests at the angelic