Aodhan pointed with a soft child’s finger at her canvas.
Sharine smiled. “Yes, I’m painting.” Then, because she’d seen his interest other times, she picked up one of the sheets of rough handmade paper that she’d brought with her for this very reason and attached it to a thin wooden board using the device Naasir had made for her. A clip of sorts that worked with a string tie.
Her Illium would be surprised to learn that Naasir had climbed onto her roof long before Illium attempted it. He’d been so nimble as a babe that she’d known she’d never catch him, so she’d coaxed him down with his favorite treat of dried meat strips.
He still came to visit her at times. And he brought her gifts like this clip. Naasir had a very clever mind.
“Sit here,” she told Aodhan, and the gentle-natured boy sat down in the flowers next to her. “This is your canvas.” She put the flat “easel” in front of him. “And this is your brush.”
The smallest brush she’d brought along proved too large for his tiny hand, but that wouldn’t matter. Illium got tired of the “painting game” after a few minutes and ran off to do wild little boy things. No doubt Aodhan would as well once he’d satisfied his curiosity about this new thing.
Next, she put a small dab of different paints on a spare old palette.
“Yours,” she said, putting the palette on the ground next to Aodhan, since he didn’t yet have the manual dexterity to hold it in one hand, the paintbrush in the other.
Then, those extraordinary eyes focused on her, she showed him how to dip his brush in the paint, how to put that paint onto canvas—or in his case, paper. He watched with care, then copied her with equal care.
He was far gentler with the brush and paints than Illium. As she watched, he put a dab of blue on his paper, then looked out at Illium and frowned before speaking. “Not blue.”
“Yes, that’s blue.” Sharine frowned inwardly, surprised he was uncertain of his colors at this age. “Beside it is red, and—”
“Not blue,” Aodhan insisted, and when she looked at him in confusion, he pointed his paintbrush.
Right at Illium.
Oh.
“I see,” she murmured softly. “You want to make the blue of Illium’s wings?”
At Aodhan’s strong nod, Sharine showed him how to mix the colors to get different tones and shades. After she was done, she dabbed a new blue on the paper. “How’s this?” It was the exact shade she used when she painted the base color of her son’s wings; Aodhan was too young yet to learn about layering.
A huge smile. “Blue,” he said happily, and began to paint.
His creation ended up a huge blobby mess, but she could see what he’d been trying to do. He’d gotten the proportions of Illium’s body correct as compared to his wings, and he’d even managed to make a passing facsimile of flowers. Not only that, he’d made a different color on his own, melding blue and yellow to create green.
She hadn’t shown him that . . . but she had mixed up a shade of green while he sat next to her. “Well now,” Sharine murmured after Aodhan finally got up, put down his brush, and ran off to join Illium—who’d fallen asleep in the bluebells. “I think you, little Aodhan, have a gift.”
Putting down his first painting on a thoughtful nod, she turned to add to her own painting. She’d painted Illium asleep in the flowers, now added in a sparkle-eyed child seated next to him, tapping at his cheek with a bluebell.
Two wild little children as bright as stars.
17
Today
Illium was about to land when a flickering light to the far left of the stronghold caught his attention. Since the packing was done but for the final things that’d be put in right before the beginning of the journey, he decided to investigate the light in case one of the mortals had gotten caught out and was heading home in the dark.
Maximus had told him they’d seen no signs of surviving reborn, but no one was breathing easy, not after Neha’s discovery of hidden nests along her border with China. The creatures were intelligent to some level—and the general consensus was that Lijuan must’ve left nests in reserve, to act as her seed group should she lose all her reborn in the war.
That no one had found any such seed groups in China didn’t mean the theory was worthless. Especially not after the discovery of the nexus.
“Who knows how many underground lairs that monstress had built?” Maximus had growled as he threw large pieces of furniture into the back of a truck. “And what interest does any sane archangel have in an underground lair, you tell me that, Bluebell of the bluebells!”
The big angel had picked up on Illium’s nickname from Yindi, found it hilarious to make that ridiculous play on it. When Illium retaliated by threatening to call him Bighead, he’d laughed even louder before pounding his massive fists on his chest and saying, “Me giant! Me crush you!”
So of course now Illium liked the big idiot.
But jokes aside, Maximus’s statement had been apt. Illium could stand being underground, but he didn’t like it. And that was before he got to what had been done to Aodhan, how he’d been caged away from the sun.
The light flickered out just before he reached it. Concerned, he threw a little of his power into the air. It wasn’t something he did often—a showy thing, it served no purpose but to use up energy for a short burst of light. But it was worth it this time, because it illuminated the huddled body of a young girl crouched against a tree, her lantern dark at her feet and her face twisted into a rictus of terror.
Illium’s light faded even as he landed, but he could tell the girl hadn’t moved. The world was too still. And when his eyes acclimated again to the night, he easily picked out her frightened form. She’d ducked her head onto her arms, her lank hair a curtain around a body that shook.
Shifting closer, he crouched down, his wings spread behind him. “Hello,” he said gently in the dominant tongue of this region. Immortals often knew many languages but a younger Illium had made it a specific point to learn at least one language in each of the territories of the Cadre—he’d seen it as another element of being a successful warrior.
Over time, his knowledge had grown, with each new language or dialect coming easier, as if his mind had built pathways along which the new words could travel. He wasn’t anywhere near as good as Dmitri and nothing close to Jason’s fluency in too many languages to count, but he was good enough for this.
“My name is Illium. I’m from New York’s Tower, sent here to help the new archangel.” It was a deliberate thing to make sure she knew he wasn’t of this land, and that he’d played no part in what Lijuan had done.