Remus had made even Illium leave.
And then he’d whispered in Aodhan’s ear that Aodhan was a “broken doll” and that broken dolls needed masters. Lost in nightmares, Aodhan had nonetheless seen the man for the monster he was, and blanked him. Then Illium had caught Remus in the act—the end result of that had been a beating so bad that it had almost separated Remus’s head from his spine.
He would’ve died then and there if Aodhan hadn’t managed to call Illium back from the edge. His splintered bones and crushed organs, however, hadn’t been the end of Remus’s punishment. The instant he healed enough to walk, he was banished from the Refuge. The angel was a pariah among their kind, shunned and alone for all eternity.
But none of that erased what Remus had done, what he’d been.
“Remus was meant to be a healer. Keir, wise and perceptive, trusted him to look after me. And he did that? Try to break me? To make me into his puppet?”
Exhaling hard, he rose, his wing sliding out from under Illium’s. The sudden break in contact, the loss of the heavy warmth, it made his stomach clench, but he couldn’t sit still. Crossing to the mantel, he pressed his hands against the old and polished wood, staring down into the dance of the flames below. “It screwed me up for a long time.”
“Was that why you didn’t want me to touch you?” Illium asked, his voice gentle. “It’s okay if that’s how it was, Adi. I was never mad at you about that. I just wanted you to heal, any way it took.”
Aodhan swiveled, saw that Illium’s expression held no hurt, just worry . . . and love. A love that had stood beside Aodhan through time, through pain, through anger. “No,” he said very precisely. “You are one of the few people about whom I’ve never had a question in my mind.” No matter what else got screwed up between them, this, Aodhan would not do—ruin the trust that had bonded them since childhood.
So he told the truth, even though it scraped off his skin, left him raw and exposed. “I didn’t want you to touch me because I felt dirty and wrong and broken.”
Illium gripped at his own hair, his jaw clenched. “How could you—” A hiss of breath. “I want to shake you sometimes.” Releasing his abused hair, he took two deep breaths, then leaned back into the sofa. “Look at me, being all calm and civilized even though I’d rather wash your mouth out with soap.”
Aodhan felt his lips twitch. Such an unexpected moment of light in this walk into evil. So very Illium. “Your control is astonishing,” he said—and, if Illium wanted to shake him, he wanted to hold Illium right that moment.
The blue-winged angel had made this so much better, so much easier. “I know it was a stupid thing to think,” he muttered. “But I wasn’t exactly in a healthy mental space. Talking with the healers, that helped. And having Eh-ma around, ready to hold me at any time, that helped even more.”
Illium’s expression softened. “You permitted her touch because you knew she wouldn’t understand why you were flinching from her.”
“I think we both underestimated her, Blue. But yes, back then, that’s why I let her close even though I felt like I was contaminating her.” He’d had to fight every second not to pull away. “Then slowly, it became okay. She was Eh-ma and she was fractured, too, and it was all right.”
The heat from the fire glowed against his wings. “She was the reason I started to accept that while I wasn’t the same man I was before it all happened, being different wasn’t such a bad thing.
“The art I made after I could create again, it was different, too, and Eh-ma taught me that there was nothing wrong with that. ‘We grow, Aodhan’ she said to me. ‘Our scars change our brushstrokes.’ ”
“She’s extraordinary, isn’t she?” Illium’s smile turned a little crooked. “Sometimes, I think that I must be biased, because I’m her son, but then I hear about another thing she’s done, and my pride expands all over again.
“Titus calls her his small but fierce sun, and she is that, don’t you think?” The light from the fire picked up the silver filaments in his feathers, this angel strong and courageous and as fierce a light in this world as his mother. “Even when she was at her most lost, she glowed with life and warmth.”
“Yes.” A simple answer, because it was all true. “But Eh-ma wasn’t the only reason I started to come back to myself.” He took a step toward Illium. “The—”
A shrill sound from the window nook.
43
Jinhai had jerked awake and was staring out into a world gray with dawnlight under a rain of snow, both his hands pressed to the glass. They began to move toward him as one, and were by his side by the time he began scrabbling at the latch Aodhan had closed to keep out the cold.
Aodhan didn’t stop him, just said, “What is it?”
His voice made the boy jolt, his eyes rounding as he stared at Aodhan. As if he’d just realized he wasn’t alone. Chest heaving, he turned, looked at Illium, then back at Aodhan. Then he did the oddest thing. He reached out a single trembling hand and touched Aodhan’s arm before jerking back his hand as fast.
“We’re real,” Aodhan said. “You didn’t dream us.”
Jinhai went as if to speak, but then wrenched his face to the glass again, making small, mewling sounds in his throat as he pressed his hands to the clear pane, his body straining.
“What’s out there?” Illium asked. “Is it danger?”
A quick shake of the head.
“Do you want to be outside?”
Another shake of the head, those eyes so like his mother’s—but with a heartrending innocence to them—looking imploringly at Illium.
“Talk to us,” Illium said with the same patient gentleness as earlier. “We’ve helped till now. We’ll continue to help you.”
Skittering eyes, jagged breath.
A trapped animal sound.
Neither one of them pushed, for that would only engender fear.
Then, a single word potent with teary need: “Quon.”
A name. A person.
Aodhan looked out into the steadily falling snow, saw only a sheet of white. “Is Quon out there?”
Jinhai nodded.
Two chairs, Illium said, his cheekbones blades against his skin. A very large bed.
“Does he need help?” Aodhan searched the landscape, but knew the boy could be hiding behind a tree, in the shadow of one of Zhangjiajie’s pillars. “I’ll go out and bring him—”
A sudden darting movement, Jinhai’s hand locking around Aodhan’s forearm. “He hurts you.” The melodic clarity of his voice suddenly a rasp of sound. “He wears your skin.”
Fuck.
Aodhan echoed Illium’s mental reaction, though he managed to keep it from escaping his mouth. “Quon did that to the people in the hamlet?” When the boy only stared at him, he said, “Took off their skins?”
A spasmodic nod. “Take the skin. Wear the skin. Be the person.” It was a singsong sound. Almost as if Jinhai was repeating something he’d heard.
“Who said that?” Aodhan murmured, while Illium remained in the background, his eyes on the snow outside. “Quon?”
“Mother said. Wear many skins. Many faces.”
Ice crawled through Aodhan’s veins. “Your mother? His mother?”
“Our mother.”
Do you think she realized they didn’t understand she was speaking metaphorically? Revulsion in Illium’s voice, directed at the Archangel of Death. Surely even Lijuan wouldn’t turn her own children into monsters?
Blue, she buried them underground. They were always going to be monsters. Aodhan met his friend’s eyes for a moment, wished he could grab hold of him in a hug, protect him from his own soft heart.
Even as the thought passed through his head, Illium said, “You stay with Jinhai.” He shook his head when Aodhan would’ve argued. He’s bonded to you, will panic if you try to leave.
Aod
han looked down at the way the child clung to him. Illium might as well not have been present for all the attention Jinhai gave him—though he still wore Illium’s watch. As if he’d forgotten Illium now he had no use for him. That, too, was disturbing. But one horror at a time.
“Be careful.”
A speaking look from the man Aodhan had banned from looking after him, but Illium didn’t point out the hypocrisy of his statement. Instead, a small flash of a smile flicked over his lips as his voice entered Aodhan’s head: If a crazy child can bring me down and skin me, he deserves to wear my stupid dead pelt.
Scowling at the other man was a waste of time—Illium was already heading to the door. He reappeared outside the window soon afterward, a dazzling brilliance of blue in the white.
Aodhan’s heart stopped.
Sometimes, he forgot the sheer depth of Illium’s masculine beauty, and then it’d strike him hard without warning, especially when light sparkled in Illium’s eyes and a playful smile flirted with his lips. But it faded too soon into solemn vigilance as he said, Ask Jinhai how he knows his brother is out here.
When Aodhan did, Jinhai said, “I know. He knows. Two skins. One son.”
After repeating that to Illium, Aodhan said, I don’t know what Lijuan thought she was doing, but it appears she achieved some type of bond between them.
Or—Illium frowned as the snow settled on his hair, his shoulders, his wings—they might be twins.
Twins were rare in angelkind, but when it did happen, those births came with a high chance of some kind of a mental connection. Parents of angelic twins knew to watch for that during early childhood. Without intervention, the bonded ones could often begin to act like one being, the stronger personality overwhelming the weaker.
“Has Quon always been in your life?” Aodhan asked the slender boy who stared out the window. “And you in his?”
Jinhai touched his own face with fluttering fingertips. “Two skins. One face. One son.”
Twins, he confirmed to Illium. “Can you point toward your brother’s exact location?”
Jinhai did so without argument and Aodhan passed on the direction to Illium. His friend took off in a flurry of swirling snow in front of a rapt Jinhai, soon disappearing into the leaden sky. Aodhan’s heart thundered, every part of him straining to follow Illium into the fall of white.
He hated that Illium was out there alone in this cold and unfriendly place filled with hidden dangers, wished he could protect Illium as Illium had so long protected him. Would Illium even allow such protectiveness? No, was Aodhan’s instinctive reaction, but then he paused. Had anyone ever asked Illium? After all, Aodhan’s Blue had simply shouldered responsibility after responsibility.
The only person on whom Illium openly relied was Raphael, and that was a relationship that had been born during his childhood. While he took emotional comfort from Elena, he didn’t expect her to protect him—he saw it as his duty to watch over her. As he’d watched over Eh-ma. As he’d watched over Aodhan. As he’d watched over Kaia until the day she was placed on her funeral pyre.
* * *
* * *
Illium blinked the driving snow from his eyes, then winced at the shards of ice the sky decided to throw down like deadly confetti. It wouldn’t do him any damage, but fuck it was cold. I hate the cold, he muttered to Aodhan, the mental contact a thing of ease, the groove long worn in their minds.
No you don’t. You just hate it when it’s work not play.
Illium’s responding grin faded as fast as it had come. So without effort they fell back into their old ways, into paths trodden over hundreds of years. But that was the problem, wasn’t it? Old ways. Old patterns.
Flying as low as he could without risking a crash into the trees, he scanned the ground without surcease, but saw no signs of life. The snow had erased all footprints, all evidence of life of any kind. But he didn’t stop looking. Illium knew one set of bonded angelic twins. The two always knew each other’s location, even when divided by an entire state. If Jinhai said his twin was out here, he was out here.
Thinking he’d seen a flash of movement, he landed in warrior silence, and allowed the snow to obscure his wings. Then he listened. Only to hear the soft, hushed silence that snow alone could nurture.
Shaking off the white, he rose once more into the sky to continue his search—though he had to pause every so often to slide more snow off his wings. Such pauses weren’t a usual part of his snow flying, but he was moving at slow speed today and the snow was coming down like water.
Aodhan, I can’t see any sign of a second child. He wiped a hand over his eyes, felt ice on the tips of his lashes. If Quon is out here, he’s better at hide-and-seek than Naasir. And no one was better at hide-and-seek than the fellow member of the Seven who’d once played with their childhood selves.
Cubs, he’d called them. But of all those who’d known them as children, it was Naasir who’d most quickly adapted to dealing with them as adult warriors.
“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 na
ture.”
“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.”
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