He was still chewing over his reaction to Kai’s new love when he got stuck into the work—while Smoke, healthy and sleek, prowled away to do things feline and secret. She was a smart kitten, didn’t bother with the building site. Quite unlike a couple of the other pets, who’d had to be corralled in a safe zone after they kept on getting underfoot.
As one of the most powerful people in the area and one who’d helped rebuild Raphael’s Tower, Illium was in constant demand. Not only for physical labor, but to consult on structural issues—he was no architect or engineer, but he did have information on new building materials and methods that Suyin appreciated as she slowly rebuilt her own knowledge.
He was also good at sweet-talking outside suppliers over the phone, and using salvaged computer systems to track down useful items that might be stored in warehouses within a doable flight distance. The most useful computer was a laptop Aodhan had picked up from the main office in Lijuan’s central stronghold. It contained within it access passwords to Lijuan’s entire administrative network.
“Good to see he listened when I told him to recover computers from major strongholds,” he’d said to Yindi when he unearthed that laptop inside a truck that held only salvaged items of tech—all labeled in Aodhan’s distinctive flowing hand with the date of recovery, plus the location.
“He insisted,” Yindi had answered, her dark blue feathers all but black in the shadowy light of the day. “Even when I argued against it because of the weight of the items.” Rolling her eyes, she said, “I feel the biggest idiot now.”
Illium had laughed at Yindi’s self-effacing tone, but inside, he’d felt a quiet delight that had nothing to do with her. It was good to know that even when infuriated with Illium, Aodhan had kept his advice in mind . . . kept Illium in mind.
As a result of all the calls on his attention, he ended up too occupied to worry at the unfinished business with Kai . . . but at night, when they stopped work for reasons of safety, he sat by a fire with a dozing Smoke snuggled at his side, and brought out the small disk he’d carried with him for an eon.
It was a pendant that Kaia had given him—a charm for protection—but it had now lost all detail. He’d run his fingers over it too many times, rubbed it too much. It gleamed a dull brown in the firelight as he stared at it and waited for the bite of pain. All he heard was the echo of Kaia’s laughter . . . and it made him want to smile.
She’d been so beautiful and bright, his Kaia. Also, selfish and thoughtless. He could admit that now, with the clarity wrought by time and maturity. He could see how young she’d been. How young he’d been. He could look beyond the rose-colored lenses they’d both worn.
It made him think of words his mortal friend, Catalina, had once spoken to him, while reminiscing of her love for her beloved Lorenzo, who’d beaten her beyond the veil.
“My granddaughter, Adriana?” she’d said as she pulled out a sheet of cookies in the small kitchen of her little Harlem bakery redolent with the smells of vanilla and butter and melted sugar. “The girl sighs over a boy. He brings her roses, and writes her poems, and all is perfect.”
Laughter, as warm and full-bodied as when Illium had first met her and Lorenzo. “So sweet, sí? How it should be for young ones.” A light slap of his hand when he tried to steal a cookie. “But you know what real love is, Illium?”
She’d plated four of the cookies, then slid the saucer across to him. “Real love isn’t so shiny and pretty as they show in the cinema. It has . . . dents in it, real love. Bandages here and there—maybe even a patched-up crack or two.”
“You’re not selling it to me, Catalina,” Illium had joked.
She’d flapped a tea towel at him. “To know a person’s bad habits along with their good ones? To see them at their worst and at their best? To fight and play with them through all the seasons of this life? And to still wake up every morning happy to see their face? This is love.”
Sorrow in her face then, her gaze going inward. “Oh, how Lorenzo drove me mad at times. My hair, it would be on fire from it. But I would give up all the years of my life that remain if I could see him just one more time, hear his voice say mi corazón as he holds me close.”
Illium and Kaia, their love had been like Adriana’s with her boyfriend. Sweet, joyful, puppy love. A thing of flowers and rainbows, no clouds on the horizon until the end. When he’d lost his feathers for her.
“It wasn’t about being grounded,” he said to a dozing Smoke, the admission an eon in the making. “If I’d been so stupid out of love, if I’d had a good reason for my mistake—then I could almost forgive myself for the pain I caused Raphael for forcing him to do that to me.”
He’d never forget the look on Raphael’s face the day he’d had to take Illium’s feathers. The archangel had held Illium after, every muscle in his body rigid. Illium had cried, not from the pain, but from the shame of having so badly wounded the man he most respected in the entire world.
I’m sorry, Rafa. A broken statement, the long-forgotten name permitted a child, coming to the fore. I’m so sorry.
Raphael had pressed a kiss to his temple and just kept on holding him tight, telling him without words that even though he’d fucked up monumentally, Raphael wouldn’t forsake him. “I was so ashamed, Smoke.” Until it was in his every breath.
When Smoke pricked up her ears, he scratched her between those ears. “But I was just a kid, wasn’t I? Hell, I was barely older than Izzy.” His eyes widened. Dear Ancestors, Izzy was green. If he made the same mistake tomorrow, would Illium forgive him?
“In a heartbeat.” His throat tightened. Because it had never been about Raphael, for the archangel had never held Illium’s mistake against him. He was also open in his pride of the man Illium had become.
No, the forgiveness had to be Illium’s own.
Smoke meowed and butted her furry head against a hand that had gone still. Laughing, he scratched her a little more. “Yeah, I think that lovestruck kid can let go of the shame. He’s more than made up for it in the life he’s lived since then.” He stroked Smoke over her back, and thought again of his lack of a passionate response to Kai.
As part of that, he probed at the bruise of Kaia’s loss, a thing he hadn’t done for some time . . . and found that it was no longer tender.
When had that happened?
Staring into the flames, he realized he couldn’t pinpoint the instant. He just knew that the pendant had become less about Kaia and more about habit at some unknown point in time. In recent years, his main focus had been on his work as one of the Seven . . . and on watching Aodhan return to himself.
The memory of Aodhan’s startled smile after Illium altered the tenor of their relationship, it made his gut tighten and his heart squeeze. He touched mental fingers to the image of his Adi’s smile, and thought of the kiss that had melted him to the bone. Part of him was furious that he hadn’t taken it further, cemented their new relationship.