“You should paint the aeries,” he said without thinking. “At night, when the lights are sparkling inside and angels are diving in and out.”
He spotted something else in the painting before Aodhan could respond.
“What’s that blotch of blue over—” Breaking off, he glared at his friend. “Is that supposed to be me?”
Aodhan’s grin was a familiar thing that appeared too rarely. “Only the very beginning of you. I’m trying to capture that moment when you climbed onto the roof to try to fly off it, with me as the designated holder of the ladder.”
Memory bloomed. Of how hard it had been to get himself up to the top with his wings heavy weights on his back, of how long it had taken them to move the big wooden ladder—he still wasn’t sure quite how they’d managed that—and of how angry his mother had been when she’d caught them before he made it to the top.
“I had it planned,” he said. “I was going to land in the soft jasmine bushes below if I didn’t succeed in taking flight over the short distance.”
Aodhan laughed, the sound rippling over Illium like a song too long unheard. “I don’t recall you bringing up that piece of genius while Eh-ma was giving us both the dressing-down of our lives.”
Illium snorted. “I knew I’d be in even worse trouble for the possible accidental destruction of her plants.” Another burst of memory. “She didn’t believe you when you confessed to coming up with the plan.”
“That’s because she knew I’d never come up with anything that put you in danger.”
Their eyes met, the connection so profound, so full of shared memories that it stole Illium’s breath . . . and then Aodhan’s words penetrated, stab wounds to his heart. He knew his friend hadn’t meant them that way, but while Aodhan had spent his childhood and young adulthood trying to keep Illium safe, Illium hadn’t been able to do the same the one time it mattered.
He hadn’t been beside his friend.
And they’d lost Aodhan, first to a monster and her monstrous lover, then to his nightmares.
Aodhan’s smile faded, his eyes scanning Illium’s face. “What’s wrong?”
Shaking his head, Illium stepped back. “You should use the light before it fades,” he said, his voice husky. “We’ll have to head down to dinner soon.” Suyin had asked all her senior people to gather after their break for a short meeting over a quick dinner.
“Vetra should arrive toward the end, be able to brief you regarding the hamlet,” the archangel had said. “Prior to that, we need to go over the entire plan for the move one last time, ensure there are no holes in our strategy.”
Illium had already learned that the travel plan had been worked out well in advance of Suyin’s decision to move. It had been Xan who’d filled him in, while the two of them were strapping down a pallet full of tents.
“We always knew this wasn’t our final stop,” the vampire had said, his muscled upper body bare and several strands of black hair sticking to his cheeks after having escaped the tie he’d used to pull it back. “Even before finding that underground hellhole, we knew it was only a place to catch our breath.”
“The underground complex? How bad was it?”
A flinty look in the rich brown of his eyes, Xan had said, “I found fangs on at least one set of bones. Locked inside a cell.”
Vampires could starve to death, but it took a long, long time, most of it spent in agony as their body mummified around them. Such starvation could and had been used as a punishment for the most heinous of crimes, for many immortals believed death too easy a route. Illium agreed with them.
Yet to have been left behind to starve to the point of death?
Either the crime had been of the worst degree . . . or, given that the complex was under one of Lijuan’s strongholds, it had been an act of cruelty. It was clear Xan believed it to be the latter, the people who’d died within guilty of no crimes.
The image of bones scattered in the dark was at the forefront of his mind as he stepped away from the balcony where Aodhan stood. The other man looked like he wanted to argue, but Illium didn’t give him the opportunity—he turned and walked quickly out.
He knew he was avoiding the inevitable, knew they had to talk, put everything out in the open. But he wasn’t ready, because there was only one way that discussion could end: with a final break.
The slow erosion of their friendship was over.
It was brittle now. Ready to shatter.
* * *
* * *
Aodhan felt the reverberation of the door Illium pulled closed behind him even though Illium hadn’t banged it. It was as if the vibration had rocked directly into his body, fragmenting his thoughts and blurring his vision. He couldn’t even remember the name of the movie at the top of the stack Illium had held out, a stack which he’d deposited on a decorative table on his way out.
Despite his state, he picked up his paintbrush. Art was how he’d always made sense of the world. His hand moved almost automatically, working to the blueprint in his mind.
As was his tendency, he left the depiction of himself to last. Because he’d never seen himself in these real-life scenes, he was the most difficult person to paint. Most of the time, his workaround was to ask someone else if they had a memory of that moment, and if they could describe him, his facial expression, his energy.
He should’ve asked Illium. For a few moments after Illium scowled at the blob-like depiction of himself, it was as it’d once been, with the two of them so comfortable with each other that they never had to verbally ask permission for anything. Not because of a lack of respect, but because they could read each other with a glance, give and ask with a grin or a touch.
Things had changed.
Aodhan accepted that he’d begun the change and, despite the pain of it, he would do so again; he had good reasons for his actions. This fractured friendship, this distance with Illium, however, had never been the intended outcome. “Be honest, Aodhan,” he muttered to himself as he outlined half-formed wings of wild blue. “You never thought this far ahead. You were too angry.”
I’m no longer a broken doll who needs to be protected from those who might play roughly with me.
It seemed so long ago, that fight inside Elena and Raphael’s now-destroyed home in the Enclave, but that had been the beginning of everything. All the anger, all the frustration, it had been building and building inside Aodhan for years . . . only to explode outward in a merciless fury.
Of course it had landed on Illium. Because Illium had always been there, the strongest foundation of Aodhan’s life.
That was the problem.