Weapons Training
A Guild Hunter Short Story
By Nalini Singh
For those of you unfamiliar with the Guild Hunter series, this story features Galen, Weaponsmaster to the Archangel Raphael, and Jessamy, Historian of the angelic race and teacher of their young.
For Guild Hunter fans, this story takes place during Archangel's Kiss, after Galen has just completed a training session with Elena.
*
Jessamy followed Galen into the weapons salle after he dismissed Elena for the day. The hunter had walked away from the training ring with more than a few bruises, her wingtips dragging along the earth like one of Jessamy's young charges--but not before she'd drawn some of Galen's blood.
"Let me look at the wound," Jessamy said, closing the door of the weapons salle behind her, her simple gown a whisper of delicate blue around her ankles. When she turned back to the huge space used for indoor training, it was to see Galen putting the training swords on a scarred wooden table, a cleaning cloth already in his hand and a scowl on his face.
"It's nothing, a scratch."
"I'll be the judge of that."
The scowl didn't disappear but her big, heavily muscled lover stood in place, wings folded neatly to his back, as she used a clean handkerchief to wipe away the blood and saw that he was right. The wound was already close to healed, a silent symbol of Galen's strength. "You were very hard on Elena." As an angel new-Made, Raphael's consort would be wearing her bruises for far longer.
Galen returned to the swords, and to the cleaning process he always completed, no matter how tired he was after a session. She knew today hadn't strained him at all, Elena a novice with long blades--not to mention her lack of experience fighting with the winged body that was now her own.
"She could get Raphael killed," Galen said, running the cloth along the first blade.
It was an irrefutable truth. Elena was now Raphael's greatest weakness, a living, breathing piece of his heart, but with none of the brutal strength at the archangel's own command.
However, that was wasn't the only truth. "She is good for him." Jessamy welcomed the subtle changes in Raphael. Before Elena, she had watched him become harder, colder, more remote as the centuries passed--until she could barely see the young archangel who had once told her there would always be room at his Tower for her. "She makes him happy."
Galen snorted, saying nothing, but she'd been with her barbarian lover for over four hundred years, wasn't so easily put off. Ducking under his arm to force him to stop the cleaning process, she said, "Just like I make you happy," his naked upper body warm against her. "And I'm not exactly the strongest person in the Refuge."
"There is no comparison," was Galen's growling response, eyebrows drawn together over eyes of a stunning pale green she found ever more beautiful as the years passed. "You are Teacher and Historian, an integral and irreplaceable part of our people. She is a mortal with wings--what does she contribute?"
Jessamy poked him in the hard ridges of his abdomen. To hear him speak, you'd think he had no heart, when she knew her Galen had the biggest heart in the world--and the most loyal. "You," she said when he winced, "were once a babe who wobbled when he flew--"
"No," he interrupted with a thoughtful frown, "I do not think so. According to the weaponsmaster with whom I trained, I came out of the womb with a knife in one hand and a crossbow in the other."
Lips twitching, Jessamy ran her fingers over the silken inner surface of his right wing, the caress one she knew he'd allow no other. "You must give her a chance to grow, to become who she is meant to be. You know Raphael would not take a weak woman as his consort."
"Simply because she was a skilled hunter does not make her ready for life at an archangel's side."
Galen did not lightly use the word "skilled". Realization dawning in her veins, Jessamy leaned back against his arm so she could look into his face. "You think she has real potential. That's why you're being so tough on her." When he didn't answer, she said, "In fact, I think you might even like her a little."
Another scowl, strong hands on her waist as he set her bodily aside to pick up the sword he hadn't finished cleaning. "She shot Raphael."
"I once threw an inkwell at your head."
Sword cleaned, he slid it away in its bracket on the wall, then did the same with the other weapons on the table. "You missed."
"So if I had hit you, you would still be carrying a grudge?" she asked, watching his body flex and move as he put the weapons in place.
"Do you believe I am not?"
Laughing, she cupped his face to draw him down into a sweet kiss that rapidly turned wild and hot as Galen took control, his big hands pressing her against his aroused body, his mouth demanding she open her own.
"If that is how you carry a grudge against me," she said, chest heaving when he finally set her free, "I will have to remind you of the inkwell incident more often."
His smile was quiet, the glint in his eye very Galen. "Let's go dancing."
She knew exactly what he was talking about, and it had nothing to do with the kind of dancing one did on the earth. "I have less than an hour," she murmured, rising on tiptoe to kiss the hard line of his jaw.
"I can be quick." He dragged her out of the weapons salle by the hand. "I'll take care of you tonight. Really, really slowly."
She wrapped her arms around his neck as, one muscular arm tight around her waist, he rose into the air with a single beat of his powerful wings. "You are a terrible man," she said, kissing the temptation of his throat as soon as they were high enough up to be private. "You know what it does to me when you say things like that." Earthy and raw, he had the ability to curl her toes and make her feel a sensual temptress both.
Galen's responding laugh was wicked, the dive he plunged them into breathtaking. Screaming with the wild pleasure of it, Jessamy tumbled with him into the gorge that cut through the Refuge, rose back up. They passed a flash of distinctive blue on the updraft that had to be Illium...and then they were falling in another steep dive, Galen peeling off into a small fissure that was a fracture emanating from the main gorge, before winging his way to the sky once more, the Refuge lost in the distance.
Her hair whipping across her face and her skirts tangled around her legs as he flew with a power and a confidence that had her holding on with only one arm, certain of her safety, Jessamy ran the knuckles of her free hand down his abdomen. "Where will we dance?" Privacy wasn't hard to find in these mountains, the behemoths that surrounded the Refuge often shrouded in curtains of thick mist. Below, there was nothing, no sign of civilization, no villages, the mountainous land having belonged to angelkind for an eon.
"Right here," he said, and they dropped without warning into a massive gorge so dark and deep that no light penetrated in the place where they danced.
Each touch was magnified in the darkness, each whisper a rough caress. Galen was as fast as he'd promised--but he took very good care of her. He always did, her lover who knew her body as well as any weapon in his arsenal. As she knew his.
"Admit it," she said afterward as they lay in the dark at the very bottom of the gorge, the softest sand beneath their bodies and the nearby sound of water over rocks a quiet music.
One arm wrapped around her as she lay half-on, half-off his body, her left wing brushing his chest , Galen said, "What?"
When he began to caress her wing, she just snuggled in deeper into him. Once, at the dawn of their courtship, she'd been shy of such a touch when it came to her twisted wing, but it was impossible to be shy about anything with Galen; he made no bones about loving her exactly as she was. After four centuries, centuries that had passed in a heartbeat, she knew she could come to him broken in every way, and be certain of his love. Though
he would no doubt also yell at her for getting herself hurt.
"That you see potential in Elena," she said with a smile. It was his protectiveness that had sent that inkwell sailing at his head. Not that the lesson had had any effect.
"She didn't crumble today. She's not pathetic," was the harsh response. "I may be able to beat her into shape as a passable fighter."
Coming from Galen, that was high praise indeed. "I should warn you, I think Elena and I are going to become friends."
"Don't ask me to go easy on her."
"I won't." She understood what so many didn't, what Elena herself might not yet understand--that Raphael's consort needed to realize her potential as quickly as she could to survive in the immortal world into which she'd been thrust. "I know you can give her tools that'll help her live long enough to become who she's meant to be."
Sitting up after another caress, and taking her with him, Galen said, "Let me get you back to the aerie so you can change before your class."
As they landed on the stone pavings in front of their clifftop home, the edges overflowing with flower pots rife with color and scent, he said, "Don't think I've forgotten you missed your defensive training class yesterday. We'll be doing it tonight."
Kissing him until his hands slid down to squeeze her lower curves, she murmured, "Let's skip the lesson tonight." He was as tough on her as he was on any one of his students; the only difference being that their lessons were always held in private--and she could sometimes distract the weaponsmaster in ways unavailable to others.
"Jess," he murmured, eyes gleaming, "we've been training together for many years. When was the last time you talked me out of a lesson?"
"A decade ago," she said immediately, "after I met you at the door wearing nothing but one of your feathers on a tie around my neck."
His body responded to the reminder, but his eyes narrowed. "Don't even think about it. I want you to keep your skills fresh--the world has always been a dangerous place, but it's becoming even more so."
Jessamy, too, had felt the gathering shift. It had been heralded by an angel with a mortal heart and where it would go, no one knew. The only thing of which Jessamy was certain was that whatever the future held, she'd walk into it with her weaponsmaster by her side--and, since he'd made sure she was an expert in it--a crossbow in her hand.
Copyright (c) 2013 by Nalini Singh
Nalini Singh, Weapons Training
(Series: Guild Hunter # 2.50)
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