English
Four Hundred Years Ago
…Unfazed, the little girl threw her arms around Jessamy’s neck
with loving exuberance. “You have to come!” Flushed cheeks, sparkling
eyes, the scent of sticky sweets and shimmering excitement. “You have to
see!”Jessamy had been a teacher of angelic young for more than two thousand years, yet a child’s smile had the power to cascade light, joyful and luminous, over her senses still. Shaking off the melancholy that had cast a heavy weight over her as she watched a flight of angels dive and soar across the jagged, echoing gorge that ran through the center of the Refuge, she pressed a kiss to the plump softness of Saraia’s cheek and rose, taking the child with her.
Saraia’s wings hung over her arm, silken and warm, but the weight was one Jessamy could bear with ease. It was only her left wing that was twisted and useless, an alien ugliness in a place of power and dangerous beauty. The rest of her was as strong as any angel. “What must I see, sweetling?”
Saraia directed her toward the archangel Raphael’s section of the Refuge, and to the area that held the weapons salle and training ground. Jessamy frowned. “Saraia, you know you’re not permitted there.” The risks could be lethal for a baby angel uncertain of her wings and balance.
“Illium said we could stay this one time.” The explanation came out in a rush. “I asked, promise.”
Knowing Illium would never endanger the children, she continued on.