“If we did, what business of yours would it be?”
Illium threw something else into his angry stew. Chili peppers? Cinnamon? Who the hell knew? Who the hell cared? “None,” he said, even as his breathing accelerated. “It’s none of my business at all. I’ve only been your friend for five hundred fucking years.”
“Enough!” A tone in Aodhan’s voice that Illium had heard very, very rarely over their many years of friendship.
Then he turned off the stove with a decisive hand, and shifted so that they stood face-to-face, toe-to-toe. With Aodhan’s slight height advantage, they weren’t exactly eye to eye, and the fact he had to tip his head back a fraction to meet the blue-green translucence of Aodhan’s gaze infuriated Illium even more.
“What is wrong with you?” Aodhan bit out, all bright light ablaze with emotion. “Why are you so angry? You’ve been angry since the moment you landed, and we both know it, so don’t you try to deny it.”
Illium wasn’t about to beg for attention, not from anyone—and especially not from Aodhan, at whose side he’d stood through thick and thin, pain and hope. But neither was he about to allow his friend to pin the current fucked-up state of their relationship on him.
“You’re interested in how I’m doing all of a sudden? Funny, when you were fine ignoring me for an entire year. Guess you forgot how to write letters or make phone calls.” He slapped his forehead. “Oh, my bad, you didn’t forget. I just didn’t make your list.” Then, despite his urge to touch Aodhan, even if it was to shove him away, he stepped back. “I’m giving it to you—the distance you made it clear you wanted. Now get the hell out of my face so I can finish making my food.”
* * *
* * *
Excuses flittered through Aodhan’s mind, some of them even believable, but he brushed them all aside, his skin hot. He had frozen Illium out over the past months. It had been a self-protective act driven by angry desperation—and it had been a cowardly thing that shamed him.
“You don’t let go, Blue,” he found himself admitting, anguish in his voice. “You hold on so tight that I couldn’t breathe.”
Illium’s face went pale, the spark fading from his eyes as he dropped the red pepper he’d been holding onto the chopping board. “You really do see me as a cage.”
The whispered words hit Aodhan like a blow to the solar plexus. “No! No!” He went to grab Illium’s shoulders, but the other man stumbled back, his legendary grace nowhere in evidence and his hand clutching at the counter to his left to maintain balance.
“Shit.” Aodhan spun to slam his hands down on the counter. “You kept looking after me.” He glanced at Illium to see incomprehension on his face. “I needed looking after for a long time, I’ll accept that.”
He hated what he’d allowed himself to become in those years after his capture, hated it, and he’d finally taken responsibility for his actions. Only, Blue refused to see that. “But I don’t need that kind of care anymore,” he bit out. “I’m a warrior angel you trust to watch your back in any battle, but in anything else? You second-guess me, try to double-check my instincts, attempt to wrap me up in cotton wool.”
“Looking after you is a crime now?” Illium snapped, his hand fisted on the counter, and his wings bunched in.
It devastated Aodhan to hurt Illium, but they had to lance this boil, clear the slow-acting poison of it. “Remember that fight we had—I had information about the Luminata through my contacts, and you came down on me like a ton of bricks.”
Aodhan could still remember the rage that had scalded him in the aftermath. “As if I was still that broken angel in the infirmary, unable to defend myself, my mind so wounded that I was nothing but prey.”
Illium swallowed, his gaze bruised—but the spark, it had reignited. “Do you know how hard it was for me to watch you fight your way back to yourself?” Raw emotion in every word. “Now you’re pissed at me for being protective?”
“Yes.” Aodhan wasn’t going to back off, not on this point. “If you want us to stay friends, you can’t pull the protective shit, Blue. I don’t have the capacity to deal with it anymore.” It was as if he’d woken out of a long sleep and any hint of being coddled or protected enraged him. “It reminds me of who I was for a long time—and I fucking hate that pathetic creature!”
Eyes afire, Illium stepped closer. “Don’t you dare talk about yourself that way!” He scowled, no longer in any way distant now that he was defending Aodhan. “You survived an evil that would’ve killed other angels!”
Aodhan had been told that over and over, and it made no difference. “I let those bastards scar me to the point that I put myself in a cage.” He slammed a fist against his chest, his anger a hot, hard thing that cut. “But I’ve broken free at last—and I won’t let anyone else put me back in a box. Any fucking kind of a box.”
Illium folded his arms, his biceps flexing. “Caring for you enough to look out for you isn’t trying to control you,” he argued, red slashes of color on his cheekbones. “It’s what normal people do for those they love.”
“Oh?” Aodhan rose to his full height, faced his friend. “When was the last time you allowed me to do anything protective for you?”
“When my asshole father decided to reappear like a bad smell,” Illium shot back. “Or was that another sparkling angel who dropped out of the sky onto my mother’s rooftop?”
“Listen to yourself. You had that on the tip of your tongue because it’s one of the very few times in two hundred years where I haven’t been taking but giving.”
Illium’s eyebrows lowered. “You’re not a taker, Aodhan. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that. You give away your art. You give away your time. You moved to the cauldron of death because Suyin needed a second!”
“Cauldron of death?”
A one-shoulder shrug. “It was all that came to me. But my point stands. You don’t take, Aodhan. You give.”
“Except when it comes to you,” Aodhan whispered, suddenly exhausted. Bracing both hands on the counter, he shook his head. “We’ve fallen into a pattern where you protect and shield me from the world, Blue, and I won’t have it.”
This time when he raised his hand and touched the side of Illium’s face, his friend didn’t push him away. “We were never unbalanced before I broke. That’s why we worked. Each as strong as the other.”
Illium’s throat moved. “Adi, I can’t help looking after my people.” A frustrated plea. “That’s who I am.”