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Its collection of buildings appeared to encompass schools and shops and expensive homes spread over a dozen acres of unexceptional lowland. It was pretty enough, with patches of green scattered throughout the central area, and a few quite detailed fountains creating a sense of light and motion, but it did not look extraordinary. It did not look like a place angels would view from their great soaring heights and choose to settle in.
    â€œAre you sure this is it?” Elizabeth asked.
    Bennie laughed. “What were you expecting?”
    She waved her hands. “Something more—magnificent. Something high and remote, on a great mountain.”
    â€œYou’ve got to go to the Eyrie for that,” Bennie replied, unimpressed. “It’s high on a mountain, and you can’t get to it unless an angel carries you up from Velora. Used to be, Windy Point was even worse, but it’s gone now. Sheered away from the mountain when Gabriel called down a thunderbolt.”
    â€œYes, I know. . . .” she said absently, still looking around her. Well, of course Windy Point was gone. That was why Cedar Hills had been built in the first place, because Gabriel had destroyed the hold of the evil Archangel Raphael. Elizabeth remembered how shocked Angeletta had been when they heard the news about the annihilation of Windy Point. It had been Angeletta’s dream to be invited to that remote, inhospitable mountain stronghold, and now it had disappeared from the earth.
    And in its place we have this? Elizabeth thought with some disappointment. Each of the three provinces had to have its own angel compound, so Gabriel and his brother, Nathan, had chosen this location to build a new hold in Jordana. Gone the majesty and the mystery of a mountain retreat! Anyone could get to Cedar Hills, any carter with a load of produce, any farmer with a complaint about his taxes.
    Any angel-seeker with no dowry but hope and audacity.
    â€œBut where do the angels live?” she demanded. “I don’t see any place grand enough for them.”
    â€œI don’t know where they live, precisely,” Bennie murmured, pointing upward, “but I see one flying even now.”
    Elizabeth quickly lifted her head to see, and her breath caught in her throat. Above them, but lazily descending, an angel shape made a fantastical pattern against the sky. The heretofore disobliging sun chose this moment to shine a little more brightly, outlining the graceful, impossible wings, the straight, muscular body, the halo of yellow hair. The angel lifted his wings with a slow, effortless motion, then lowered them as nonchalantly as a girl would lower her comb after unsnarling her tangled hair. He spiraled down like the embodimentof grace. The instant his feet touched the ground, he paused a moment, as if remembering what it felt like to be earthbound again, then strode forward a few paces. Within moments, he had disappeared inside a dark brick building and was lost to their sight.
    Elizabeth turned to Bennie, her eyes so wide she thought she might be able to see the whole world at once. “An angel,” she breathed.
    â€œThat’s the major product here in Cedar Hills,” he agreed.
    â€œI’m so glad I came here.”

C hapter T hree
    O badiah flew from the Eyrie to Cedar Hills in two days, cursing himself the whole way.
    He had been glad enough to accept this commission from Gabriel, glad enough to leave the Eyrie, but he had been stupid enough to want to say good-bye to Rachel. And he was not sure he could fly fast enough or far enough to outdistance his regrets.
    He had managed to be gone from the Eyrie much of the time over the past eighteen months, a time of slow rebuilding throughout Samaria. Everything had changed since that terrible and wonderful Gloria, when power had shifted from Raphael to Gabriel and the god had brought down Mount Galo in a ferocious display of power. Nearly a third of the angels in all