Angels Dance

home with you.
    Her barbarian did know poetry after all, she thought, watching the ink smudge under a rain of tears that held no pain, only the ache of a love so true, it had forever changed her.

16
    I llium told Galen of the things Jessamy didn’t write in her letters—that several other men, angels and vampires both, had made repeated attempts to court her. The only reason Galen didn’t beat the blue-winged angel bloody for being the messenger was that Illium conveyed the news with a scowl, adding, “Jessamy’s too polite to tell them to cease plaguing her, but each male knows if he pushes too hard and makes her uncomfortable, he’ll be dealing with Dmitri.”
    Galen had the sudden understanding that until Illium left the Refuge, he was the one who’d been Jessamy’s champion. “Thank you.”
    A glare, bared teeth. “Do you know how many people are calling me Bluebell now?”
    Galen laughed, realized this pretty angel who looked like an ornament and fought like a gleaming, elegant blade had grown into a friend when he hadn’t been looking. “Come, then. I’ll let you attempt to knock me to the ground in recompense.”
    As he continued to work with Raphael’s people through the crisp bite of autumn, the earth covered in a hundred shades of red, brown, and ochre, he thought of his precious store of letters, and of delicate feathers of blush and cream. Such beautiful words Jessamy wrote to him. Still, he was too honest to lie to himself—one fact nothing could change: that he’d been the first man to take the woman she’d become into the skies. By the time he returned, others would have . . . and so his historian would have a choice.
    It might crush him to imagine her flying in the arms of another man, but he wanted her to have that choice, wanted her to never regret being with him. Because rough edges and all, every part of him bore Jessamy’s name. He needed her to be his in the same way.
    * * *
    W atching autumn glide into a brittle, harsh winter, Jessamy opened her histories and wrote of all that had passed in the previous season. The peace had held, with the archangels too busy with keeping an eye on the spectacle of Michaela’s ascension to the Cadre to play politics. Jessamy had to admit, the new archangel had come to power with awe-inspiring splendor.
    In the far north, she wrote, the skies dance with color in winter, but when Michaela rose to her full strength, the skies danced across the world, whether in the tropics or in the Refuge, whether it was night or noon. Rich indigo, vivid ruby, iridescent green, colors that turned the world into a dream.
    There had been other developments, of course, smaller in comparison but not unimportant. She noted them with a historian’s distance, even as her soul cried silent tears at some of what she had to write. But theirs was a long-lived race, loss and sadness as much a part of their history as joy.
    Her own aching need continued to grow. She watched the skies for Galen’s distinctive striated wings each and every day, even knowing that he’d taken Raphael’s men and women on a winter march, so that they would be prepared for the harshest of conditions.
    “Jessamy.”
    She halted with her quill held above the page, finding herself looking into the lean face of an angel who was older than her by five hundred years. Not a pretty man, but one who had the kind of compelling presence that came with being honed by time and experience. “Yes?”
    He held out a hand. “I would take you into the sky.”
    * * *
    G alen wanted to force spring out of the earth, not that it would do any good. He had to remain in the territory for another season, to ensure everything he’d taught had sunk in. “I’ll return when needed,” he said to Raphael, pacing across the cliffs that afforded a clear view of the Tower rising from the island on the other side of the powerful crash of the river. “But I’d like to be based at the Refuge.”
    “I have no argument with that,” Raphael said. “I need at least one of my trusted senior people in the Refuge at all times.”
    Trust had not only deepened, but become rooted between them. Still, Galen wondered if he’d have a subtle watch on him in the Refuge now that he’d have so much power. It was what he’d have done, and he told Raphael that. The archangel raised an eyebrow. “You make me stronger, Galen. That makes you a target. Be careful.”
    “No one will ever take me unawares.” It wasn’t