“Maybe just once,” he murmured against her skin. “Call me my real name.”
“Juneau.”
The foreign, yet somehow familiar, name sent his heart off at a hammering pace. He clutched Lex close, burying his face in her neck.
“I’m distracting you.” She withdrew slowly and sat on the windowsill, folding her legs under herself.
Jett went back to reading, selecting a journal from the shelf a couple years more recent, and devoured page after page. The demon had written mostly short, terse entries, but the words flowed differently when the topic switched from work to family.
I carved a sanctuary out of this valley, but I have never cared for anything as much as I do for the—a line of ink smeared across the page—little monster trying to steal my pen.
He laughed and kept reading. Curious, he skipped ahead to the last volume on the shelf to browse entries closer to the last time they would have seen each other. Holding the heavy, red-dyed leather book, his hands shook. Not only had Juneau been kidnapped that day, Dante had been killed. The journal ended less than halfway through.
My son planted an orange seed last spring and now has a tiny sapling in a flowerpot.
He lifted his gaze to the tree in the atrium. “No shit?”
Lexine grinned from her position on the windowsill. “The tree is infamous. No one thought it would grow, except you and Dante. Everyone in the colony knows the story.”
Jett paused, a new thought occurring to him. “Did we know each other when we were kids? This is a small place.”
“I’m a year or so younger than you. I remember your family, but like most memories from that age, nothing but vague snippets. I think we saw each other from time to time, but I don’t think we knew each other.”
He rubbed his brow, his head aching from trying to remember anything at all. He lifted a white drape from a small table beside the desk, revealing a dozen framed photos of his family. He was perched on his father’s shoulders more often than not, he and his smiling, blond mother an odd contrast to the heavily armed Guardian. Although, upon closer inspection, his mother had carried weapons of her own. What appeared to be an unusual walking stick at first was in fact a long bow. The feathered ends of arrows stuck out from behind her shoulder.
“My mother was an archer.”
“A good one, too,” Lex said. “She looks innocent enough, but rumor has it she took out her fair share of humans when the colony was attacked. Want to hear the rumor of how she and Dante met?”
“Please.”
“This is just what I heard. When Amelia moved to Sanctuary, she wanted to train to be a Guardian, but Dante was resistant to the idea—this was the midnineteenth century and he didn’t want a female getting hurt. They fought about it for months, your mother refusing to back down. Finally, when he walked away from her one day, she waited until he’d reached the tavern and with a few quick, perfect shots, pinned him to the door by his clothes.”
“You must be joking.”
“Nope. You’ll have to check those journals to see if it’s true or not, but it was a Guardian who told me the story. Apparently Dante and Amelia hunted each other for days after that moment and were mated soon after.”
Jett turned back to the photos. His mother, beautiful and deceptively delicate. She and his father made sense together. In a fight with humans, she could protect herself, and then some.
“Now, this,” Lexine said, coming over with a book in her hands, “you should remember. He’s a couple years older, so I bet he does.”
“What? Who?”
She handed over the book, which turned out to be a photo album, the date on the cover corresponding with the year before the kidnapping. The first pages held photos of Jett and Wren, mostly outside the archangel house. In one, they were covered in mud, even Wren’s wings. They grinned like lunatics.
“I don’t remember this at all.” He stared. He and Wren had been friends?
“It makes sense,” Lex said. “Dante invited Raphael to Sanctuary in the first place, if I recall my colony history correctly. Your families were close. This I do remember well, because it was a big deal. Wren couldn’t spend much time with the other kids. He’s half human, so there was concern he’d be susceptible to demon venom. And demon kids can be very nippy.”
“Really? What happens if two demon children bite each other? You said mutual biting led to a mating bond.”
“The venom doesn’t gain that characteristic until well after puberty.”
“Ah.”
“Anyway, I remember being constantly reminded by my mom to stay away from Wren. The kids played in groups, and I recall Wren getting frustrated when he couldn’t join us.”
“Why me, then? Being Dante’s son couldn’t have made me less dangerous.”
She stared at him, ghosts of memories in her eyes. “I think you were naturally calmer than most, and mature for your age. Because of your strong empathic trait, perhaps.”
“Still, he was older than me.” Jett grinned, looking at the photo of them covered in mud. “He was a very bad influence, it seems.”
Lex laughed.
Jett checked the date below the photo and turned to the corresponding entry in the journals.
My son is turning into a remarkable empath, for an earthborn. I can’t express my pride in words. Last night, Juneau protected Wren, with a stick and a rock as weapons, from an imaginary monster in the woods. They’d ventured quite a ways out. Lark was with them, of course, but he kept out of sight. Juneau, who loves playing in the woods at night, dropped the game and brought Wren home. This despite Wren being the older of the two and not the least bit afraid. I’ve never seen Juneau look so serious and focused as when they returned to the house. I have no doubt my son will become a Guardian one day. Perhaps, even, a dedicated Guardian to the archangels.
“Working on that, Dad,” he whispered. The written words branded into his mind’s eye, he replaced the album and journals, the burden of his lost past heavy enough for one day. He turned to the far left of the shelf, where he’d been told he’d find the official documents Dante had meant for Guardians in training, along with books of demon and archangel history. He took the first leather-bound book to the desk and settled down. He began to read, a smile stretching his lips as Lexine curled up in the chair next to him with a book of her own.
How did she warm his whole body simply with her presence?
Chapter Nineteen
Jett reached the archangel house just as the last of the colorful sunset faded. It’d been over two weeks since he’d last seen Lexine and her absence distracted him. He’d been spending too much time thinking about her instead of focusing on his tasks. Forcing her from his mind by remembering Raphael in the underground prison, he prepared himself for whatever trial Lark would launch at him tonight. The Guardian emerged from the woods and stepped in Jett’s path.
“Wren is missing.”
The words struck like a bullet. “What?”
Lark held up a hand. “This is an exercise.”
“Damn you!” Jett took a deep breath, a hand over his thudding heart. Tempted to beat Lark’s face into a bloody pulp, he ground out, “Start with that fact next time.”
“And miss the chance to keep you on your toes? Never. Tonight your goal is to find Wren and bring him back to the house using only your empathic skill. You never know when technology will fail you, so you can’t rely on it in emergencies.”