“What’s a horror movie?”
Elena grinned at Aodhan’s question. “I’ll show you once we get home.” Only after the words were out did she realize she didn’t know which horror might be Aodhan’s own. Raphael, you’re going to have to vet the movies.
First you throw bread at my head and now you expect me to be a movie critic, was the outwardly haughty response, but he brushed his fingers against her own. It is to your honor that you care for his heart. I will tell you what he can and cannot bear.
The eerie sameness underwent a dramatic change once they hit a set of external corridors, the breathtaking scenery beyond Lumia framed by delicate stone archways. From this vantage point, it was possible to see all the way to the mountains over which they’d flown, nothing in between but wildflowers, and, closer to the peaks, the dark shapes of trees designed to survive in this arid landscape.
“The patterns are astonishing.”
Elena and Raphael both turned to face Aodhan.
Clearly reading their total lack of comprehension, he smiled that quiet smile that had been known to cause both men and women near enough to glimpse it, to faint. “Look.” He went close to a wall, traced lines on it.
It still took Elena well over a minute to see what he was pointing out, the impressions on the stone were so fine. And then she saw them everywhere. Intricate, delicate patterns covered the walls, the arched ceiling, the floor. “Wow.” She literally pressed her nose to a wall in an effort to see exactly how the patterns had been created. “Are they all different?”
“No, not on the walls at least,” Aodhan said. “They repeat within each hallway, changing only after a turn or once we pass the entrance to another hallway.”
Raphael ran his own finger over the stone. “A meditation aid possibly?”
“I’m obviously not mentally enlightened enough for this place.” Elena followed one intricate line with her eye, wondering at the patience it had taken to carve it out with such fine delicacy. “I would’ve never seen the designs on my own.”
“Then I, too, am not enlightened enough, Guild Hunter.”
“Of course not. Why else would you have had the bad form to fall in love with a mortal? Philistine.”
Raphael’s laugh had Aodhan’s lips curving into a deep smile that was so rare, it made Elena’s heart miss a beat. “It is less enlightenment and more a matter of artistic training,” he said. “Once you see it, you can’t miss it.”
Hunkering down, his wings a graceful sweep on his back and the hilts of his dual blades drawing her eye, he traced near-invisible designs on the floor. “I think it’s a map, a way to navigate Lumia.” He touched his fingers to the nearest wall. “I haven’t decoded the map as yet, but what I do understand leads me to believe the walls may open in places.”
Elena whistled, crouching down opposite him to examine the lines. “No wonder the Luminata can swan about like ghosts.” As if they could walk through walls. “Good way to put people on the back foot.”
“I’m beginning to believe the Luminata enjoy holding knowledge above others,” Raphael said as they rose to explore further, the three of them walking side by side with Elena in the middle. “They have always been secretive to the extreme.”
“Things rot in darkness,” Elena muttered, but even as she spoke, she knew she was probably being unfair—her life colored her view. Just because the Luminata were a little weird didn’t mean they were in any way dangerous. “Aodhan, you think you can fully decipher the map?”
He nodded, the crushed diamonds that appeared to coat the strands of his hair catching the sunlight coming in from the outside to throw flickering light on the walls. “It appears to have been designed for ordinary angelic senses, rather than for those with extensive artistic training and an inborn spatial sense.”
“I see.”
Aodhan looked so discomfited at Raphael’s toneless response that Elena elbowed her consort. “He’s messing with you, Aodhan,” she said, having glimpsed the laughter very well hidden in the blue.
The angel created of light glanced from one to the other before his expression warmed, his own smile open and unexpected and—Wow. Sparkle is freaking gorgeous. She’d always seen his beauty, but today, she truly understood why people coveted him.
When he is not broken, Raphael said, he is a shooting star caught midfall.
The sadness in Raphael’s tone had her weaving her fingers through his. He’s coming back, she reminded her archangel. And he’s powerful enough to kick serious ass. No one will break him again.
Raphael’s fingers locked around hers. After he was released from the Medica, Aodhan made it clear he wanted to be alone. We honored his wishes at first, but when we realized he was turning recluse, we tried everything in our power to pull him out of the abyss. All of us. Including Galen.
He’d turn up at Aodhan’s isolated home and refuse to leave until Aodhan sparred with him. In the end, Aodhan gave in and turned up to sessions at the weapons salle just so Galen would leave him alone otherwise—in the worst period, it was often the only time he stepped outside his home. They sparred nearly every day during Aodhan’s residence at the Refuge. It was always without any physical contact, but the social contact forced Aodhan to stay in the world at least partially.
Yes, there was a hell of a lot more to Galen than Elena had ever realized during her time under his instruction. If Aodhan was forced to hold his own against Galen for two hundred years, then he’s probably far more well trained than pretty much everyone else in the Tower. Raphael and the others, they had to set him free.
“Aodhan,” she said aloud. “Raphael just told me that Galen stalked you for two hundred years.”
“Galen is like a storm that you either battle, or surrender to,” Aodhan said. “And if you surrender because you do not care, the storm just gets stronger and stronger until the howling threatens to drive you insane and you must pick up the sword just to get a little peace.”
Elena’s shoulders shook at the bone-dry recitation. “Get flattened a few times?”
“Until I resembled the food your little hunter sister likes. Pancakes.”
A snort threatening to escape as she gave in to her laughter, Elena wiped her tears away. “But here you stand.”
“Galen would accept nothing less.” With that simple statement that held deepest respect, Aodhan paused, stared at the floor for three long seconds before nodding and carrying on.
Right when she thought he was done talking, he touched a hand to the dual blades he wore. “Galen gave me these when he deemed me fit for battle. My originals were . . . lost.”
Elena had no need to ask when or how, not with the shadows in Aodhan’s eyes and the sudden tension in Raphael. “Damn it,” she muttered sulkily, kicking at the floor. “Galen never gave me any weapons.”