"I know about the reborn," Jessamy said in a voice thick with horror. "I'm the depository of angelic knowledge. It's my duty to keep the histories - but this history, I wish I didn't have to write."
Nodding in silent agreement, Elena put her hand on the books piled on the desk. "Are these for me to read?"
"Yes. They contain a concise glimpse into our recent past." She stood. "Read as much as you can, come to me with any questions, no matter how small or impolitic. Knowledge is very much power when it comes to dancing with the oldest among us."
Elena rose to her feet, her eyes going to Jessamy's wings as the angel turned to retrieve something from behind her. The left one was twisted in a way that made Elena's stomach clench.
"I can't fly," the angel said without rancor though Elena hadn't spoken. "I was born this way."
"I - " Elena shook her head. "That's why you are who you are."
"I don't understand."
"You're kind," Elena said. "I think you're the kindest angel I've ever met." There was no sense of malice in this thin angel with her eyes of burnt sienna and hair that shone a rich chestnut. "You understand pain."
"So do you, Guild Hunter." A perceptive glance as they exited into the sunshine, one that was replaced almost immediately by a quiet but intense happiness. "Galen."
Following Jessamy's gaze led Elena to an angel who'd just landed on the raised platform in front of the school. There was something familiar about the muscular, red-haired male, though she could've sworn she'd never seen him before. Then those eyes of palest green met hers and the cold warning in them opened the floodgates of memory.
Raphael bleeding on the floor. Two angels flying in with a stretcher. This one looking at her as if he'd like to pitch her into the blackness beyond the shattered remains of her plate-glass window . . . and watch as her body fell to hit the ground at terminal velocity, her spine breaking through her skin, her skull nothing but a crushed eggshell leaking gray matter.
Clearly, he hadn't changed his mind.
"Galen." It held censure this time.
The male angel finally looked away from Elena, but didn't speak. Taking the hint, she said good-bye to Jessamy and walked down the steps, her nape prickling in primitive awareness.
"Here I am!"
Startled, she looked up to find Sam flying over to her on wings that looked far too big for his small body. "You can fly already?"
"Can't you?" He hovered beside her.
"No."
"Oh." A wobbly left turn and he was landing at her side.
"Then I'll walk, too."
She had to fight a smile as she saw his wings drag along the scrupulously clean pathway.
"Is it easier for you to stay airborne?"
"Sometimes, if there's a good wind." He tugged at her hand, pointing to someone on the other side of the courtyard. Looking up, she saw a wide-shouldered angel with wings patterned like an eagle's coming to land. "That's Dahariel. He's one of the old ones."
Dahariel's eyes locked with hers.
Age. Violence. The whiplash of strength.
It was all in that single glance before he gave a curt nod and walked away in the direction of what she'd learned was the archangel Astaad's territory. She shivered in spite of the sunlight. That one, she thought as Dahariel disappeared from sight, might just be capable of beating a man with such heartless precision that nothing whole remained.
Sam pulled at her hand again. "Come on."
As her tiny tour guide took her through the small campus, the sky agonizingly clear overhead, Elena allowed her mind to go quiet. These children were immortal-born, many of them likely older than she was, in spite of their appearance. But age was a relative thing. In their faces, she saw the same innocence she'd seen in the face of Sara's baby, Zoe. They hadn't yet tasted the bitter tears the world had to offer them.
It seemed the older, more powerful angels, for all their cruelty, made an effort to keep this part of the Refuge free of the stain of violence. It was an oasis of peace in a city that whispered with a thousand dark secrets.
Air over her head, the wash of an adult angel's wings.