Below the night-shadow of wings beating in a smooth, fast rhythm marched an army of vampires, a ground guard that moved at a crisp pace to take up defensive positions at a distance Dmitri and Galen had determined would provide optimum protection without compromising the Tower’s defenses.
In spite of the hundreds of pairs of wings that sliced through the air, the mass of vampires on the ground, the night was eerily quiet. It was a whispering darkness, she thought, a portent hanging over their heads. Soon, either Alexander would retaliate against the invasion of his lands by the Cadre, or he would not… and they would know.
Jessamy hoped he Slept, for the world was not ready to forever lose the deep wisdom of an Ancient.
“You are the only one who calls me wise.” Alexander’s silver eyes, so inhuman that he was beyond even their long-lived race. “Everyone else believes I am a being of violence and war.”
“You are both, Alexander. You always have been.” She had read the histories, knew what so many had forgotten. In times past, Alexander had brokered peace, saved the world from unimaginable horror. “I think, if the test came again”—not petty arguments or battles engendered in pride and power, but a true question of good and evil—“you would stand on the side of right.”
A faint smile. “You are so young, Jessamy. Foolish, many would say.”
“Did they not call you the same when you stepped between two warring Ancients?”
His laughter rang deep and real, the silver molten. “Come, young one. Walk with me and tell me tales of when I was a hot-tempered youth.”
Smiling at the now-bittersweet memory, she leaned against Galen, this man who would break her heart into innumerable shards should he ever choose to Sleep. “This is not,” she said when the angels disappeared from view, the vampires long devoured by the dark green forests that bordered the Tower, “how you imagined your life in Raphael’s service would begin.”
He wrapped an arm around her waist, trapping her wings to her back. “I am what I am, Jessamy.” Quiet words. “War and weapons will always be a part of my life.”
“I know—I’m not compelled toward some fantasy man, Galen.” Perhaps this, she thought, hoping against hope, was the cause of the subtle distance he’d put between them, distance that hurt. If so, she could end it. “It’s you I’ve seen from the first, you I want.”
Spreading his wings at her back in a protective move that had become intimately familiar, Galen fisted his hand in her hair. The possession in it was unmistakable, but he didn’t kiss her, hadn’t kissed her the entire journey. And yet the slumberous heat in his eyes, the blatant hardness of his body when she pressed close, said he wanted her as he always had. “Talk to me, stubborn man.”
Lashes coming down over eyes so beautiful, she wondered how it was she hadn’t immediately fallen into them when they met. “I want you with my every breath.” Unadorned. Rawly honest. Galen. “But gratitude is not what I need from you.” Cupping her cheek with unexpected tenderness, he said, “If that’s all you feel, it’ll cut me in two, but it won’t stop me from being the best friend you will ever have. Anywhere, Jessamy. I will always fly you anywhere you want to go.”
The words, his vow, reverberated inside of her, but she kept her silence, unsure what to say. How could she not be grateful for everything he’d done? Not just for the gift of flight, but for forcing her to wake up, to truly live again.
“There is no debt between us, no commitment you must feel compelled to honor.” Galen’s words were harsh, his touch holding a rough gentleness. “You’re free.”
12
The night passed with painful slowness. Unable to sleep—and trailing her right wing on the floor like one of her charges—Jessamy walked into the Tower library in the gray time before the paintbrush of dawn streaked the sky. A lamp burned within, and the man who stood by the mantel, a glass in hand, was taller than her, slender in the same way, and had no wings on his back. “Lady Jessamy,” he said in a languid tone that was a purr over her skin.
Dangerous, she thought, keeping her distance. “You have the advantage.”
“Ainsley at your service.”
“Ainsley?” It in no way fit this vampire whose very voice was an invitation to sin.
His lips quirked up, the lamplight igniting the ruby red of the liquid in his glass to glittering brilliance. Blood. “That’s why I usually kill people who use my given name,” he murmured. “Most call me Trace.”
A strange name. Her eyes took in his lithe form again, made the connection. “Is that what you do?”
An easy nod. “It’s wild country out here. Many things get lost. I find them.” Sipping at the blood, he continued to hold her gaze with eyes that might’ve been darkest green or unbroken ebony. “You’re a tall woman.”
Yes, she was. Even among angelkind. Though standing next to Galen, she felt positively petite. And when he took her into his arms…“What are you doing in the library at this time of the morning?” she asked, resisting the need to rub a fisted hand over her heart to ease the ache within.
Trace brought up the hand at his side to reveal a book. “Poems.” An almost sheepish glance out of those eyes that had no doubt coaxed more than one woman into addictive decadence.
Jessamy rethought her initial conclusion—that he was dangerous was indisputable, but he was also not a man who would harm a woman. He enjoyed them too much. “Poems?”
A slow smile creased his cheeks. “Would you like to hear?”
No man had ever asked to read her poetry. But then, her whole life was changing. So she said, “Very well,” and crossed the carpet toward him.
They took seats opposite each other, and, putting down his glass, Trace read her haunting poems of love and loss and passion in a rich, evocative voice meant for seduction. It was only after the third poem that she realized she was the target. Startled, she looked at that face of sharp, angular beauty, that shock of silky black hair, that slender form she was certain could move whiplash fast when necessary, and wondered at his motivation. “There are other women in the Tower,” she said when he paused for breath.
A look through his lashes, his eyes revealed to be the deepest green she’d ever seen. “I know that full well, but I’ve wanted to run my fingers over your skin since the first time I saw you at the Refuge.” Another pause, his perusal more open and frankly sensual. “The only reason I didn’t court you then was because I was told by more than one person that you preferred solitude, and it would distress you to be approached.”
“I see.” His words caused a tremor inside of her, dramatically reshaping her world. It was one thing to consider that perhaps she had been the cause of her own isolation, another to know it. “You realize my wing is not what it should be,” she said, and it was a question within a statement.
A shrug, fluid and graceful. “You’ll notice I can’t fly either.” Finishing off the liquid in his glass, liquid that sang with life and death both, he said, “Tell me, do you belong to him?”
There was no need to ask who he meant. “If I do?” she said rather than answering, because what she had with Galen was precious, private.
“I might be many things,” he murmured, “but I don’t steal women… at least not those who don’t want to be stolen.”
“It’s time for me to go.” The night and this morn had thrown everything she knew into confusion—it was no time for her to be crossing words with a vampire who was clearly an expert in the art of flirtation.
“Until next we meet, my lady.” The dark promise followed her as she left the library and walked up to the roof, and out into the crisp morning air. If Trace spoke the truth—and he had no reason to lie—then it might well be that other men would approach her now that they knew she was open to the idea of a courtship and relationship.