“Cubs grow,” he’d said with a shrug when Illium asked him once. “Life moves. Only the old and the stupid don’t move with it. The old have earned their rest, and the stupid will be eaten by predators.”
Sometimes, Illium thought Naasir was the wisest person he knew.
You’re sure? Open disbelief in Aodhan’s voice. Even Lijuan couldn’t have trained her child to be such a stealthy hunter. His brain, for one, isn’t fully developed. True enough. As with mortal teenagers, angelic youths had a way to go before total physical maturity.
I’ll take another look now the light’s a bit better, Illium said, because he wouldn’t risk abandoning a child out in the cold and wet. And I’ll fly back, check near the cavern, too.
When he did, however, all he found was another whole lot of nothing.
A thought pricked the back of his mind, a memory of sadness and love forming out of air and ice.
* * *
* * *
Landing in the courtyard of the stronghold with that haunting memory a ghost that walked beside him, Illium made a note to stop in Africa on his way home, whenever that might be. He wanted to see his mother, wanted to let her spoil him and cherish him and look after him.
Yes, he’d missed the mother he’d had in early childhood, and it felt good to be with her without worrying over her, but mostly, he wanted to do it for her. Now that she’d woken from her long sleep, she carried within her a terrible guilt for the mother she’d been to him while inside the kaleidoscope.
She tried to hide it, was good enough at it that he’d only caught a glimpse when she’d thought he wasn’t watching. It broke his heart to know that she blamed herself for a thing that had never been her fault. She could no more have stopped her mind from shattering than he could stop a quake from ravaging the earth. Not after the life she’d lived, the cracks in her psyche.
She’d told him of all of those cracks during his most recent visit. “At last,” she’d said, “the cracks have callused over, become scars. And I’m always conscious of not allowing further cracks to take root without my knowledge.
“Some would say this is the business of adults, not a child,” she’d added, “but you’ve earned the right. You should know why your mother left you for all those years.”
“You didn’t leave me,” he’d protested.
“Don’t protect me from owning up to my mistakes,” she’d chastised him—then kissed him on the cheek. “Let me own up to the hurt I caused my sweet boy.”
A squeeze of his hand to stop him from speaking. “I tell you my past not as an excuse, but so that you are aware of the rich tapestry of history, and how it can alter a person—and so that you can be on guard in your own life against the wounds that fester deep below the surface.
“I didn’t know I had such wounds, you see, and so I wasn’t prepared for how I might be affected—how I might be damaged—by other blows of a similar nature.”
“You couldn’t have predicted that Aegaeon would turn out to be a giant flaming asshole,” he’d muttered.
She hadn’t told him not to talk about his father that way; they both knew the description was only the truth. Rather, she’d taken his hand and said, “But don’t you see, Illium? I should have seen the cracks in his facade, shouldn’t have permitted him to treat me—and you—the way he did.”
“Until he left, he was a fine father.” A grudging admission he’d made only so she didn’t take on more unnecessary blame. “He was with me as much as an archangel could be. So wipe that idea from your mind.”
She’d tapped him gently—so, so gently—on the back of his head. “Let your mother speak.”
He’d grinned and hugged her instead. The champagne of her laughter had covered them in sparkling joy. “Scamp.”
Afterward, she’d said, “Let us not argue. We’ll leave you out of it. But the way Aegaeon treated me . . . I will not talk to you of my relationship with him. No child should hear such things.”
“Ma, I know he had a harem—”
“Illium.”
He’d shut up. As a child, he’d known he was in big, fat trouble when she brought out that particular tone. Turned out it worked just as well now that he was an adult. “Sorry.”
“So you should be. Let your mother have a few illusions.”
“I’ve erased the memory from my mind.” He’d mimed washing his brain.
Her renewed laughter had been a familiar thing and yet not. It had been such a long time since she’d laughed so much and with such brilliant clarity to her that his breath caught on every single occasion.
“My inner fragility—those cracks I couldn’t see,” she’d said after the laughter, “they made me vulnerable to Aegaeon’s brand of charm. I felt . . . important, felt seen. Me, Sharine, not the revered Hummingbird. And because he was an archangel, I had no fear that my past losses would repeat themselves.”
Slender fingers brushing back his hair with maternal tenderness. “Do you see, Illium? I made a choice out of a deep-rooted fear that I’d never faced. I hid from my pain, and so a woman willing to accept crumbs from an archangel’s table is what I became. Don’t do what I did. Don’t hide. Don’t pretend. Confront what hurts you, know the shape and form of it so you can conquer it.”
Her words rang in his head as he entered the stronghold. Once under shelter, he took a few seconds to shake off the clinging snow, then strode into the warmth of the living area with the awareness of a dread truth heavy on his shoulders.
44
Jinhai wasn’t holding on to Aodhan, his eyes no longer trained on the snowy landscape. He sat on the sofa in front of the fire, intent on a string game that Aodhan must have taught him.
The two of them had played the same game as children, weaving shapes in the string with their movements. Aodhan had always made the most creative patterns, but Illium had been faster. Balance, he thought. Yin and yang. No strong one and weak one. No protector and protected.
Aodhan’s eyes went straight to Illium when he walked in the door. “Anything?”
Shaking his head, Illium grabbed a chair and carried it to in front of the fire. He sat so he faced Jinhai, but not so close that he was intruding into the boy’s space—more as if he was simply drying his wings. Angel feathers had a natural oil that couldn’t be felt to the touch, but that helped them repel water. It wasn’t foolproof, however.
That time Illium had crashed into the Hudson, Raphael had told him his wings had become waterlogged. Mostly due to injuries that had disrupted the normal rhythms of his body. Today, it wasn’t about that. The heat just felt good against his chilled body. His position also made him less threatening.