Page 31 of Seraph's Tears
“Oh, yes, them.” Anything to get me away from thinking of Gabriel as a horny young man. “So they were mates?”
“No.” He shook his head.
“But I thought you said?—”
“Onyxa was Gar. The Gar do not have mates. They choose their partners more like you humans do. Although they loved one another, they could not be mates.”
“How did Engiel expect this would work?” I set the empty tray on the floor, hardly realizing I’d eaten the whole thing while enrapt by Gabriel’s story.
“He hoped that by mixing his ayim with her blood it would invoke something similar to a mating bond, something his people would recognize.” Gabriel’s resonant voice took on the singsong quality again, soothing my body. “He put together a trading party and went to Onyxa’s tribe. In these days, the Gar and the Seraphim were not enemies, but nor were they allies. But when they arrived, he found Onyxa had been betrothed to the prince of another clan.”
I gasped.
“He stole her away. Or perhaps she stole him. No one is sure. It caused a huge rift. Threats were made, fights broke out. After a few months they returned, hand in hand, and explained they loved one another, and Engiel had chosen her not only as his wife but also his mate.
“It calmed the leaders enough that war didn’t break out immediately. However, enmity still grew between the Seraphim and the Gar. A few years later Onyxa fell pregnant.”
A cooing sound escaped my lips before I could stop it.
“Children between the two races are possible, but uncommon. Unfortunately, something went wrong during Onyxa’s labor and she died.”
I gasped again. “What about the baby?”
“He lived. Engiel took him far away, somewhere safe, though no one ever found out where. But with the death of the Gar princess, hostilities inflamed again. Onyxa’s former betrothed claimed Engiel had caused her death through neglect. Enraged, Engiel challenged him to—I suppose humans would call it a duel of honor, yes?”
“I think so.”
“They both perished in the fight.” He paused, then returned to his normal speaking voice. “And that is how the first war between the Seraphim and Gar began.”
“That is tragic,” I told him in severe tones. “You didn’t warn me.”
He looked at me as if I was from a different world. Which I suppose I was. “I told you it’s one story of how the wars started.”
Shaking off the melancholy, I glanced around at the room he was creating. “Let’s set some dates for when your friends come to visit. I want to be prepared with the proper amount of food and wine.”
He nodded, walking past me to pick up a staff. As he passed by his wing brushed my shoulder.
I shivered at the soft, sensual touch. Had that been on purpose?
When he turned, staff in hand, his knuckles were white and his eyes had turned the color of an ancient forest. He stared at me, his gaze flickering down to my lips, then he turned away again.
I let out a long, silent breath. His friends needed to show up, otherwise I’d break down and beg him to kiss me again.
Gabriel
I spun in the air, completing a barrel roll and a tight maneuver that put me upside down for a split second. It was dangerous, this close to the treeline and the steep roof of the manor, but I didn’t care.
I needed something—anything—to get my housekeeper out of my mind. Yesterday, I smelled her scent in my chambers after she cleaned it. I walked to my bed and sniffed the sheets, imagining a world where she sprawled in them, naked and flushed with pleasure I’d given her. Later, I’d walked through the Great Hall and my gaze had immediately gone to the oriel, my heart fluttering like a nervous child on the precipice of his first flight. And she’d stood there, humming. Red and orange and gold splashed across her face and her hair, now she’d stopped wearing that ugly bonnet.
My heart took wing.
I immediately spun away and hurried away. A human? How? Why?
But when I went to my gymnasium, I found a familiar bundle of canvas tied by leather cording propped near the door. My sword. Waiting for me. Eve’s presence was everywhere.
I gritted my teeth, strode outside, and snapped my wings open, catching the air with such force I gave myself whiplash as I came to a halt midair.
Eve’s voice, her intelligence, her curiosity—it all made me crave her. The way her eyelashes laid across her cheek, the way I knew her breasts would fit perfectly in my hands…I was going mad. I laughed into the wind. Perhaps I was already mad.
