“Yes.” A flash of fangs. “Some parents said I was a bad influence, but the children liked me.”
“Of course they did.” Andromeda laughed. “Are you still friends with those children now?”
“Yes. Especially with two of them,” Naasir said. “One works with Galen, the other is a scientist on a tropical island in Astaad’s territory. When I visit, he gives me fish to eat.” Naasir looked dubious. “I eat it to be polite, but I don’t understand fish.”
Her lips twitched. “You’re a good friend.” She could just imagine him eating the fish while trying to figure out why anyone would eat fish. “Tell me the rest of the story.”
Fingers brushing over her hip, he grinned. “Because I didn’t understand I wasn’t supposed to touch wings, I’d do things like wait on top of bookshelves or cling to the ceiling and drop down on unsuspecting angels. Before they’d finished shrieking, I’d have torn off a feather and run away.”
Andromeda’s shoulders shook. “You were a little terror.”
“Yes,” he said proudly. “Then one day, I jumped on Michaela.”
Andromeda’s laughter dried up. “Did she hurt you?” The archangel renowned for her vivid green eyes and flawless skin the shade of milk chocolate, her beauty the muse of poets and artists through the ages, was not known for her patience.
“Michaela wasn’t an archangel then, but she was dangerous all the same. Only her scent was . . . not what it has become.” Naasir frowned, as if trying to figure out the change. “She was fast though. She caught me by the foot before I could run away and, holding me upside down with a grip on one ankle, her arm stretched out so I couldn’t get her with my claws, she said, ‘You are in trouble.’”
Andromeda swallowed. “What did you do?”
“I had one of her covert feathers in my hand and I offered it back to her. When she didn’t take it, I growled and clawed and tried to get away.”
Andromeda’s heart was in her mouth, though Michaela clearly hadn’t done Naasir any lasting harm if he was telling her this tale. “Did she take you to Raphael?”
“No. She carried me to Jessamy and told her I needed lessons in civilized manners.”
“Did Jessamy make her let you go?”
Naasir shook his head. “I’d torn up all my schoolbooks the day before and eaten the schoolroom’s pet bunny.”
Andromeda knew she shouldn’t, but she burst out laughing. “You didn’t.”
“It was there and I was hungry and no one told me I couldn’t eat it,” he said with an aggrieved look on his face. “Why would you put a bunny there if it wasn’t for eating?”
“Poor Jessamy.” Wiping away her tears, Andromeda shook her head. “What did she do?”
“She locked all the windows and doors in her study space in the Archives, then held on to me while Michaela slipped out and pulled the door shut behind her, making sure it locked. When Jessamy released me, I raged all around the room, tearing up things, clawing the furniture and even biting her.”
Andromeda’s smile faded. “You felt trapped.”
“Jessamy didn’t know all of my life before, didn’t understand what it would do to me to be caged. As soon as she realized I wasn’t just angry, but scared, she opened the door.”
“And you ran?” she guessed, her heart hurting for that small, scared boy who didn’t know how to be in an unfamiliar world.
Naasir’s answer was a surprise. “Jessamy was crying. Even though I was scared, I knew that was bad, so I went over and patted her hand and said sorry for biting it.”
Andromeda’s own eyes turned hot.
“She went to her knees and told me that wasn’t why she was crying. She was crying because she’d made me afraid when she’d just wanted a chance to talk to me without me running away when I got bored.”
Andromeda could well imagine Jessamy’s distress. The teacher of angelic young had a heart so huge, she loved each one of her charges as if that child was her own. “You decided to stay, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t like Jessamy crying—she was always nice to me, even when I tore up her books. I put my hand in hers and we went for a walk to a place with gardens, where she took a seat on a stone bench, put me on her lap, and started to teach me what I needed to know so I could live in the world without people being angry with me all the time.”
The ache inside Andromeda, it was so deep now, for the boy he’d been. “How long did Jessamy teach you such things?”
“For years.” Naasir’s tone held a deep vein of affection. “It took me time to learn but Jessamy is patient. Every afternoon, we’d sit in the garden and she’d teach me things the other children already knew. Like how I shouldn’t growl at people even if I didn’t like them, and how bunnies and other animals in the Refuge weren’t for eating.”
He rubbed his fingers over her hip. “Dmitri taught me, too, but Dmitri didn’t care if I ate pet bunnies or if I jumped out at him so he wasn’t the best teacher on the topic.”
Andromeda could well imagine that Raphael’s deadly second had a far more laissez-faire attitude toward etiquette and behavior. When you were that dangerous, you made your own rules. “And now you can be so civilized it’s scary.”
A shrug. “I put on a different skin when it’s necessary. Dmitri taught me that—he said I didn’t have to change, but that my life would be easier if I could fool people into thinking I had at times.”
“I’m so happy you never wear any skin but your own around me,” Andromeda whispered, her heart wide open.
Silver eyes locked with hers. “I’ll always be Naasir with you,” he promised solemnly, then grinned. “Even if you ask me to act civilized for a minute.”
She groaned and pretended to beat at him with her free hand. “You’re never going to let me forget I said that, are you?”
“Maybe if you tell me a story of your childhood.”
* * *
Naasir glimpsed many expressions move across Andromeda’s face in a matter of split seconds. He didn’t catch all of them, but he saw pain, anger, shame, and finally joy.
None of it surprised him; immortality meant many experiences. Though the shame wasn’t a usual thing—but then, Andromeda wasn’t a hardened immortal. Her heart was tender. She probably felt shame for a transgression others would’ve long forgotten.
“I never went to the Refuge school,” she began. “I didn’t see the Refuge at all until I flew there myself just after my seventy-fifth birthday.”