“Is it? Or is it someone you’ve had to become?” Lady Sharine was now awake, but she’d been asleep for a long, long time, Illium her caretaker as much as her son. Then had come Aodhan.
Two of the most important pillars of Illium’s life had shattered, and he’d used his wide shoulders to prop them up. “It’s time for me and Eh-ma to stand on our own two feet.” He gripped Illium tighter. “It’s time for us to be your support rather than the other way around.”
“I never minded,” Illium said, raising his hand to grip Aodhan’s wrist with a strong hand callused from relentless sword work. “Not for a single instant. Not when it came to you, and not when it came to Ma.”
“I know.” That just made their crime all the worse. They’d corrupted Illium’s generous nature, exacerbating his tendency to give until he had nothing left for himself.
That it had been without intent didn’t alter the damage done.
“I know,” he repeated. “But my need for that kind of protection is in the past now. The man I am today? What I need is for you to treat me as an equal, as you did before Sachieri and Bathar.”
Illium sucked in a breath. “You really are ready to talk about that.” He made a face. “I guess I should stop sniping at Suyin and thank her.”
Illium’s protectiveness toward his people had always been laced with a big dose of possessiveness. If he had a flaw, it was that. And in the grand scheme of things, with his giving heart to balance it out, it was nothing.
“I haven’t said a word to Suyin about this.” Aodhan squeezed the side of the other man’s face. “If I was ever going to talk to anyone, it was always going to be you. Always.”
The simple, honest words lay between them, a peace offering.
Releasing his wrist, Illium turned back to his aborted meal. “Want a bowl of angry stew? We can sit by the fire and eat and you can talk if you want.”
Aodhan fought his urge to bristle, because there Illium went, taking care of him again . . . but they did have to talk about this. It was time.
Our memories make us. Even the darkest of them all.
—Archangel Raphael
42
The fire was still going, the large room warm, but Aodhan stoked it up further after glancing at their sleeping guest—and prisoner. The boy was huddled into himself. Possibly because of cold, but more likely as a result of a life lived in the dark.
“He’s sleeping peacefully despite that tight fetal position,” Illium said in a quiet tone after he put their food on a low table Aodhan had carried over to place in front of a large sofa that faced the hearth.
It had been a popular seat while Suyin’s people were in residence—but only among the mortals and vampires. The winged members of the household tended to default to the armchairs. No official stance, just a thing of comfort—it was difficult to create sofas with backs and cushions that allowed egress for wings as well as personal space.
To share a sofa often meant an inevitable brush of wings against another.
That might’ve been a point of difficulty for him and Illium when Illium first arrived, but they were past that now . . . though nothing was back to normal. A tension hovered between them, a knowledge of drastic change.
So be it.
He’d been stuck in amber far too long. He needed to grow, to break out of that rigid shell. That it’d leave behind shattered debris was manifest—and a fact he hadn’t considered enough.
Not once, however, had he thought of Illium as a piece of that debris. No matter how angry he’d been, how angry he still became at times, Illium was as much a part of his life as the sky and the air. A necessity.
He couldn’t imagine—didn’t want to imagine a life without his Blue.
“Here.” Illium thrust a bowl of stew into his hand. “I tasted a spoonful. It’s weirdly delicious.”
Taking it, Aodhan sat. Illium followed, half his wing lying atop Aodhan’s. With every other person in this world, Aodhan was always aware of any such contact. Even with those whose touch he welcomed, some small part of his brain was always conscious of the physical contact.
The sole exception was Illium.
Any contact between them felt natural, just the way it should be. Today, however, he found himself conscious of the warmth and weight and strength of Illium’s wings. Another time, he’d have thought nothing of reaching out and examining a feather, checking a tendon. But . . . things had changed.
Aodhan had changed them.
Sitting back, he forced himself to eat a bite of the salami concoction. “This is the strangest stew I’ve ever eaten, but it’s good.”
“Told you.” Illium propped his feet up on an ottoman he’d dragged over, then leaned forward and grabbed a hunk of the bread that Aodhan had chopped. Chopped, not sliced. The weird shapes went well with the angry stew.
They ate in silence for a while, until Aodhan found himself speaking. Jinhai was too far away to hear them, even had he been feigning sleep. Which he wasn’t. That kind of almost-not-breathing only occurred when an angel was in a deep resting state so profound it was close to the healing rest of anshara.
“I think,” he said, “what scarred me most of all was the mundanity of Sachieri and Bathar.”
Putting down his empty bowl, Illium picked up half of the enormous olive-free sandwich that Aodhan had prepared. And he listened.
“They were so ordinary,” Aodhan continued, his food forgotten. “It wasn’t like with Lijuan—and seeing her megalomania in full bloom really brought that into focus for me. She was evil on a grand scale. A being of power and age who either chose to use that power in a terrible way—or who lost herself over the course of her long lifetime.”
Illium snorted. “You’re being too kind.” A glance at the window nook. “She was evil. She chose evil. Over and over again, she chose evil.”
Aodhan couldn’t do anything but agree. “She was also what we think monsters should be—a storm of malevolence. Not an angel you’d walk past and not notice except as a fleeting passerby. Not dangerous. Not a threat.”
When Illium nudged at his bowl to remind him to eat, Aodhan snapped, “Leave me be.” He knew he was being irrational, but at this point in time, even the smallest hint from Illium that he needed care of any kind was sandpaper on his skin.
Illium’s chest expanded as he took a deep breath, but rather than arguing, he returned to demolishing his half of the sandwich.
Aodhan put down his bowl. He had too much inside him, needed to release it. “But Sachieri and Bathar, I never really noticed them. I knew of them in a vague way because they were a limited part of Elijah’s wider court, but otherwise, they were just ordinary angels going about their business.” He looked at Illium. “Does that make me sound arrogant?”