“I don’t think we’ll ever be friends,” she said, the words solemn.
Turning to face her, he smiled again at last. “I don’t think so, either.”
Holly’s lips curved. Because that was okay. Dmitri was something else to her.
• • •
Venom felt a conflagration come to life deep inside him as he watched Dmitri and Holly through the floor-to-ceiling window at the back of Dmitri’s office. The conflagration was paradoxically a cold thing—emanating from the part of him that hadn’t existed before a viper’s bite—and a violent, heated flow of magma that altered him on a fundamental level.
Jealousy.
He blinked back to his senses the instant he identified the emotion. Because that was fucked up. Dmitri loved Honor with a passionate devotion that was a thing of chaos and beauty and legend. The leader of the Seven would destroy empires for his wife, if that was what she asked. Honor owned Dmitri heart and soul.
And she was looking out at the two on the balcony with a soft smile on her face. “I hate it when they fight,” she murmured. “Everything seems out of sync.”
Venom looked again at the tableau outside and called himself a fool. The way Dmitri was holding Holly protectively against his side, the way she looked up to him with such a willingness to accept his word, that wasn’t a stance between lovers. There was too much inequality there.
His mind flashed to an image of her riding him, her body arched in a sensual bow.
Holly would never look at him the way she was looking at Dmitri. Not even if he put a gun to her head. Not even if he pumped her full of poison. Not even if he promised her a billion dollars and her own personal empire of fashion.
Holly Chang would never ever, ever consider Venom her superior in any shape or form.
Venom smiled, the conflagration ebbing to a flickering anticipation, as Honor went to join Dmitri and Holly. Which left Venom alone with Illium for the first time since he’d tracked the angel down on the day of Venom’s return to New York. “In a better mood now, lovely Bluebell?”
A scowl from the other man. “None of your business, fledgling.”
Venom hadn’t been called that since about three decades after he’d come into Raphael’s orbit. “I’m not the one who had fluffy baby feathers not once but twice.”
“Once, only once. I’ll have you know there was no fluffiness the first time around.” Illium shoved his hands through his hair on that muttered comment, the blue-tipped black strands falling this way and that when he dropped his hands back to his sides. “I let Aodhan leave without saying good-bye.”
Venom had never had a friendship like Illium had with Aodhan. The two had known each other from the cradle. Illium was a little older, but only by a matter of maybe ten years, which meant nothing in angelic time. Angelic children grew so slowly that both would’ve been babies still.
All of Venom’s childhood friends were long dead.
He’d had a vampire friend who’d been Made around the same time, but they’d gone in different directions when their power diverged . . . because Venom couldn’t bear having a friend who was weaker.
Weaker people died. They got broken.
He hadn’t seen Sahil in a hundred and fifty years and still he thought about his friend, still he listened for news of him. So he understood what it meant for Illium to have sent Aodhan into dangerous territory without a good-bye. “What happened?”
Eyes of aged gold bearing a mix of pain, sadness, and anger, Illium spread out his wings, then snapped them back in with vicious force. “You weren’t there after we found him. If you’d seen . . . And now he tells me he doesn’t need my care?” His hands fisted.
Venom had already been accepted into the Seven when Aodhan was captured by a twisted angel who wanted to own Aodhan’s beauty, but as the most junior member, he’d been stationed in the then-rugged wild of New York. The hunt for Aodhan had taken place far from there.
By the time Venom was fully trained and cleared for Refuge access, where Aodhan made his home, the angel was back but not whole. Fundamentally fractured. “I’ve never really known Aodhan as he was before,” he said to Illium. “I’ve only known the angel who buried himself in the Refuge and who shut out nearly the entire world.”
Illium looked up, frowning. “He came to New York when you first joined the Seven. We all did.”
“Yes,” Venom said. “But he could only stay a week. And that week was full of training sessions with all of you, with only scattered downtime.” Most of which the Seven had spent together, bonding quickly into a cohesive unit.
Aodhan had been acting as Raphael’s personal courier then, and, seven days after his arrival, the sire had needed him to deliver an important package; he and Venom had shaken good-bye with a smile, knowing they had centuries to forge a deeper personal friendship. “Then, he was gone.” For a length of time that was difficult to think about even now. “And so the man I truly know is the one from after. I have no substantial memories of him from before.”
Illium stared uncomprehendingly at him. “Venom, he was dazzling. Strong, a lightning bolt in the sky, an angel who didn’t speak as often as the rest of us, but who’d back down from no challenge—and who’d be our shield in any battle. He was the best of us.”
“Then why are you afraid now that he’s becoming himself again?” Venom had seen the changes from a distance, witnessed it in the art Aodhan had begun to produce. The angel had always been gifted, even in his darkness, but this new art, it carried a subtle inner light missing from the work he’d produced after his rescue.
Illium stared at him for so long that Venom almost expected an archangelic glow to limn the angel’s wings. “I’m not afraid,” he said at long last, a hitch in his voice. “I’ve waited so long for him to find his wings again.”
“What if it means those wings will take him far from you?” Venom said softly. “What if it means Sparkle and Bluebell will no longer be spoken of in one breath?” He could see the problem because unlike Raphael or Dmitri, he hadn’t watched Illium and Aodhan grow up, wasn’t locked into the perception of the two as an unbreakable unit. He saw them as the best of friends—but friendships could break.
Illium physically staggered, bracing himself against the window right before Holly and the others walked back into the room. Venom didn’t say anything further. This was a conversation he and Illium had needed to have in private, and now it was done—and Venom had other priorities.
He looked at Holly. She met his eyes, came to join him . . . after a pause long enough to make it clear the decision was her own. Bright and wild and fragile. Nothing like the others in the Seven. Nothing like the people with whom Venom had surrounded himself after the last of his brothers died of old age.