Archangel's Storm

leaned back against the tree, her profile limned by the light that caught hints of sunset in her hair. “It’s difficult to have a conversation with a man who sees everything.”
    “You mean it’s difficult to manipulate me into seeing what you want me to see.” The truth was, his strength came not from how well he could read her, but from his acceptance of how much he might
miss
. Even when he’d known someone for centuries, he was always conscious he’d caught but a glimpse of the complex tapestry that was their inner life.
    The woman in front of him had an intricate pattern to her heart and emotions he might never fathom, didn’t have the ability to fathom. All he could do was watch for cues others took for granted, put those cues together to form a picture of her emotions. He knew that wasn’t how the rest of the world did it, knew his inability to connect to those around him on that level was a lack in him.
    It troubled him enough that he’d spoken to Jessamy about it a century ago. The gentle teacher of angelic young had taken time to consider his question. “I think,” she’d said at long last, “you have the capacity to feel with the same depth as any other immortal. Perhaps more.
    “You have a heart so powerful, it scares me at times. And the way you keep your emotions under lock and key . . .” An intent look. “The storm
will
break one day, of that I’m certain. You’ve never had reason to take the risk yet.” She’d given him a rueful smile. “I know something about avoiding pain, so trust me when I say that.”
    Jason had the utmost respect for Jessamy, knew her words were no lie. Born with a malformed wing that meant solo flight was out of her grasp, she’d suffered anguish such as Jason couldn’t imagine. He would never discount it, never consider it less important than the forces that had shaped him, but he knew the way they had grown and developed was fundamentally different.
    As he couldn’t imagine what it was not to be able to touch the sky at will, Jessamy couldn’t imagine what it was to be alone. Utterly, absolutely alone. Not for an hour, not for a day, not for a year. For decades.
    Until he had forgotten how to speak, how to be a person.
    That endless aloneness had withered something within him when he’d still been a boy with wings too heavy for his body, and unlike Jessamy, he believed it to be a permanent loss. As irrevocable as the fact that the atoll where he’d been born, where his mother had been buried, was gone, crushed by a massive quake caused by an underwater volcanic eruption. It was as if his parents had never existed, as if he’d
always
carried this aloneness inside him.
    “Obviously,” Mahiya said into the silence, “I’m outclassed,” having utilized the pause to paint on the mask of a woman who had grown up in a court—where venom was most often delivered with a honey-sweet smile.
    “Enough games.” Though the survivor in him admired her fierce will, he couldn’t allow that to give her the upper hand. “Make your decision and make it quickly.”
    A fine tremor silvered over her skin, and he knew that beneath her stubborn refusal to give in, she was afraid. Jason didn’t like inciting fear in a woman. It brought back too many memories that would not fade no matter how many years passed, his hands tingling as if he’d been pounding on a locked bedroom door in a futile attempt to get out, to stop what was happening beyond.
    “No, you are mist—”
    “Don’t lie! I saw the way you looked at him!”
    The roar echoed through time, but haunted as he was, Jason had long learned to dance with his demons. He held his silence even when the quiet grew jagged with the sharp bite of Mahiya’s fear, even when his every instinct snarled at him to destroy the thing that made her afraid.
    “You need to give me something in return.” Lines forming around soft lips, shoulders squared. “I can’t surrender the most valuable piece of information I have without gaining something equally valuable in return.”
    It was then that Jason understood this princess with her quiet grace had learned to use fear to strengthen herself rather than allowing it to crush her. Some unknown, hidden part of him felt a searing joy, the emotion raw and unexpected and so extreme, he had to use conscious effort to wrench it under control. Even then, it burned, the midnight flames licking at his veins.
    “If your information is good,” he said, thinking through his