Li Wei nodded, her cream-hued skin holding the smooth beauty of an old vampire and her eyes sharp. “Our work is inside regardless. I’ll make sure my staff understands.”
Aodhan spotted Kai in the background as he left, found himself irritated by the way she smiled at him. What was wrong with him? His and Illium’s problems had nothing to do with the mortal woman who wore Kaia’s face . . . but he still wished she weren’t here, in this time and place.
Her mere existence threatened to derail any healing Illium had done, to throw him right back into an agonizing moment that had almost broken Aodhan’s bright, blue-winged best friend.
Love has a way of crushing a man until nothing remains.
—Dmitri, Second to Archangel Raphael
32
Yesterday
Aodhan went looking for Illium as soon as he found out what had happened. Even though he knew all the places his best friend went to when he wanted to be alone, it still took him hours to track him down.
Eschewing all his favored locations, Illium had gone to a cold and craggy outcropping on the far edge of the Refuge, a place overhung by spears of ice above a carpet of shattered boulders. Nothing thrived here, not even the tiny frost-resistant succulents that grew in other icy places. It was often called The Cold because no matter the season it was a place of no warmth, all hardness and jagged shards.
Illium hated it.
Now he sat hunched over on one of the rocks, the stunning blue of his wings violent slashes of color against all that grim gray and ice. He wore only his faded boots and an old pair of pants that he used for training, his upper body bare.
Landing, Aodhan sat down next to him and immediately wrapped a wing around his exposed upper half. Angels didn’t feel the cold as mortals did, but Illium was barely beyond his majority. The cold might not kill him, but it could cause vicious hurt.
“Your skin is like ice.” Aodhan curled his wing tighter even as he curved his other wing around in front of them, to better conserve the heat in the space in between—where Illium sat cold and silent. “We have to get you off this mountain.”
Illium said nothing—and he didn’t move. And while Aodhan was strong, he wasn’t strong enough to carry an unwilling Illium down into the warmer zones. Instead he tried to use his nascent power to warm up his friend. That power was less than nothing in immortal terms, but as young as he was, Aodhan wasn’t complaining.
The only angel similar to his age he knew of who had even a hint of power sat mute beside him. And mere droplet or not, it was enough to add a whisper of heat to the air, enough to bring a little color to Illium’s skin. But still he didn’t move or show any other sign of life.
“I know you’re proud of your coloring,” Aodhan said, as his heart squeezed, “but trying to turn yourself blue is taking it too far.”
Illium didn’t react to Aodhan’s attempt to lighten the moment—of the two of them, it was Illium who was the one forever trying to make people smile. Aodhan didn’t do jokes except for rare low-voiced pieces of aggravated sarcasm that sent Illium into choked laughter.
“Warn me next time, why don’t you?” he’d said the last time around, after he’d nearly lost it in public.
“Sorry,” Aodhan had muttered. “I can’t predict when someone will be idiotic enough to set off that part of me.” Because it took a lot.
Illium had grinned and thrown an arm around his shoulders. “If only your legions of admirers knew the things you think in that pretty, sparkling head.”
Today, there was no laughter, no gentle ribbing, no sound at all from the friend who usually spoke a hundred words to every one of Aodhan’s.
Aodhan had never seen Illium so broken—and it broke him. His heart hurt. He’d do anything to fix this, make Illium smile again, but he couldn’t bring back Illium and Kaia’s love.
“She’s fine,” he said, hoping it wasn’t the worst possible thing to say. “I flew over the village to check on her.” Aodhan had spotted her in the act of taking the washing out to the cold, clear waters of a nearby stream, laughter in her pretty and lively face as she spoke to another young woman.
Illium stirred at last, eyes dark with anguish looking at Aodhan. “She is?”
Aodhan’s lungs expanded on a rush of air. “You know she feels no pain.” That was the sting in the tail of Illium’s punishment—his lover would feel no torment, suffer no loss. Because her mind had been erased of all memories of Illium, as had the minds of everyone else in the village.
To them, he wasn’t even a ghost; he’d simply never existed.
Illium’s voice shook as he said, “I’m glad.” Brokenhearted love in his words. “It was my fault. I told her something I shouldn’t have.”
The secrets of angels were not for mortal ears. A truth—a law—drummed into them from childhood. To tell a mortal such secrets was a crime that could lead to execution for all involved—but Kaia’s life had never been in danger. “You know Raphael—”
“I know.” Shuddering, Illium leaned forward with his elbows on his thighs. “He never threatened her life. Not once. ‘All I’ll take are her memories of you,’ that’s what he said.” Illium’s body hunched in on itself. “The look on his face, Aodhan. I hurt him by making him do that, making him punish me.”
Aodhan stroked his hand down Illium’s back and wings. It was a good sign that his friend was already thinking about Raphael’s reaction to his transgression rather than the fact he’d lost the lover with whom he’d been obsessed. Illium had courted Kaia with gifts and acts of romance, run to her every day that he could, dreamed of her when he slept.
Aodhan had never said anything against her, but he hadn’t liked how she made Illium act, how she’d pushed him and pushed him and pushed him for more and still more. Never had she been satisfied with the gift of him. Illium, who was so beloved of so many, hadn’t been good enough for her without all the gifts and the romantic gestures, and the public devotion.
She’d treated Aodhan’s friend like a trophy—the angel who was in thrall to her.
Aodhan’s reticence had been for more than one reason. The first was that while he’d had small romances, he hadn’t yet fallen in love himself. As such, he was aware he had no real experience to inform his opinions. He’d also received advice from an unexpected source: Dmitri.
Raphael’s second was so much older than Illium and Aodhan that, most of the time, he treated them like awkward, fumbling pups. But, on that one occasion, Dmitri had seen something in Aodhan and pulled him aside. “He won’t listen to you right now,” the vampire had murmured.