The two of them had kept an eye on him nonetheless—because while he’d become Raphael’s weapons-master and they’d given all respect to his position, and they’d liked him, he’d still been an unknown. Now, some four centuries later, they’d long known his promise for truth, were bonded to him in friendship.
“I think it’s for an angelic teenager or teenagers,” Aodhan said. “The level of the calculations, that’s what I remember learning around sixty, seventy years of age.”
That was what mortals and vampires often didn’t realize about angelkind. They grew very slowly as children, including in their mental development. Even at a hundred, they were considered callow youths at best.
The last mortal to whom Illium had explained that—a baker named Catalina—had gasped and pressed a hand to her heart. “Dios mío, your poor mamá. I had sprouted endless gray hairs by the time my first child reached sixteen, and to think she had to keep you out of trouble for many times those years.”
Illium had laughed. They were friends, he and Catalina, even though he knew she’d one day leave him, as all his mortal friends left him. As Catalina’s Lorenzo had already left them both. “No,” he’d said that day, “my mother would have been horrified at the idea of losing me after a mere eighteen years. Time moves differently for us.”
It was hard to explain the passage of years to a mortal from an immortal perspective. But today, as he looked down at the study items, his gut churned. “If a child or children were kept in this darkness . . .” Time would’ve moved at the speed of sludge, a slow creep of nothingness, the only view of the outside world a pinprick that looked out into stone and green.
Aodhan said nothing, and when Illium glanced at him, he saw that his friend had gone motionless, the pale hue of his skin making him appear a sculpture carved by an artist who had fallen in love with his subject.
Beautiful but cold. Distant. Unreal.
As Aodhan had become after healing from the physical wounds of his captivity. As if once he was no longer distracted by the injuries to his body, he needed to turn inward to escape the horrors that haunted him.
Horrors far too near to what had taken place in this cavern.
Illium didn’t even think about his next action. He slipped his hand into Aodhan’s and squeezed hard. “Whoever it was, they escaped,” he said, because that was the critical factor, the one that would smash through the remote ice of Aodhan.
It took a long time for Aodhan’s fingers to curl slowly around his, his skin chilled from how far he’d gone, and his breathing so slow it was nearly imperceptible. “If it was a child, they will be insane, that much is certain.” His voice held the eerie echo of distance.
“Then who better than us to find them?” Illium squeezed his friend’s hand again.
At last, Aodhan turned his head to meet Illium’s eyes. His own were icy mirrors that reflected Illium’s face back at him. “Do you think this maddened, abused child is responsible for what we discovered in the hamlet?”
“I don’t know.” Illium’s gut churned at the idea of it. “Either way, we have to find them.” If they had become monstrous after being kept enclosed in the dark the entirety of their life . . . that was a problem to consider later.
Aodhan’s entire body shuddered as he exhaled, his hand clenching on Illium’s before he broke the contact. “Did you notice the neatness, the cleanliness?”
Illium hadn’t, but now that Aodhan had pointed it out, you couldn’t miss it. No dust on any surface—which should’ve been impossible in a cavern—all the spines in the bookshelf aligned to a precise degree, the texts and scrolls on the desk positioned at exact right angles. The bed, too, had been made so that it bore no wrinkles, the sides the same length.
It sent a chill up his spine—because the massacre had been as neat and tidy. “A form of control.”
“Yes, I think so.” Aodhan picked up a scroll.
Leaving him to examine that by the light of the lamp, Illium returned to check the door to a second closet. It proved to lead to a large area set up with bathing and sanitation facilities. Plumbed the modern way. So the residence had been upgraded at some point—while continuing to leave the occupant without light.
Mouth tight, he exited, then returned to the clothes closet for a second look, his aim to find something that would give this child solid form in his mind.
At first, he saw nothing. Just bland tunics and pants that gave no clue as to gender or personality, the colors brown and black. He was about to move on when the beam of his phone flashlight picked up glints of silvery white on the shoulders of a black tunic.
Heart thudding, he reached out and picked up the fine, fine threads. Only, they weren’t threads at all. “Shit. Shit.”
35
Aodhan was by Illium’s side in a split second. “What?”
Illium just held up the long hairs, the icy white hue a recognizable symbol to anyone in the angelic world. For white hair in immortals was a genetic marker. A thing of family, not of age.
“Lijuan’s kin.” Aodhan took the hairs from Illium. “But Suyin knows of no other members of the extended family who have vanished or died in mysterious circumstances.”
“How sure is she of that?”
“Very. Tracing the members of her family was a task she took on while she healed after her rescue. Andromeda used her research skills to assist, while Lady Caliane put her in touch with genealogical scholars among our kind; the end result is that she managed to trace each and every individual.
“Even the ones said to have gone into Sleep did so in a way that makes it impossible for Lijuan to have disappeared them. Not that she used such subterfuges. When she took Suyin captive, Suyin just vanished without a trace. And,” he added, “theirs is an old line. No new births for over a millennium. There is no one young enough for those texts.”
It was a good reminder. Living as Illium did in the Tower of a young archangel, and surrounded as he was by relatively young immortals, he occasionally forgot that immortality was an endless thread.
“Then maybe it’s not a relative.” He held his sword ready by his side even as he thought. “Hairs could belong to Lijuan herself.”
“That would mean she came here.” Aodhan turned, examined the semidark space. “If you strip away the absence of sunlight and the lack of freedom, it’s a comfortable setup.” His voice was tight, and Illium knew he’d had to force himself to say the words.
Because no prison was ever comfortable.
But Illium saw his point.
The bed was large and plush, the blanket and comforter folded at the end of fine fabrics. The rest of the furniture was equally well made, if in an antique style. There wasn’t any food, but when Illium walked over to examine the round table in one corner that held an empty metal pitcher, he found a couple of tins of high-quality tea.