“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.
But of course, it wasn’t about the physical. Not between them. Not when it came to the heart of it. Their bond was a thing intimate and layered, the pleasure to be found in tangling limbs and wings just one aspect of the whole. Even as he flushed at the idea of touching Aodhan in such a way, being touched by him, his hunger a painful ache, he tried not to worry about the distance between them.
Tried not to listen to the gnawing whisper at the back of his brain that said now that Aodhan was far from him, he might look back and decide their renewed friendship and nascent brush with intimacy had been a thing of circumstance, that he didn’t actually want to reconcile after all, much less go further.
“Stop being a drama queen, Bluebell.” His mutter made Smoke complain, and he petted her back into a doze in an effort to calm himself, her fur soft under his touch, and her body delicate despite her newfound health.
It didn’t work, a quiet panic taking root at the back of his brain.
Swallowing hard, he slipped Kaia’s pendant back into a pocket.
* * *
* * *
It was as if Kai was everywhere he turned in the days that followed—or perhaps that was simply his mind zeroing in on her as he came to terms with the cataclysmic change in his perception of himself. No longer the mourning lover was he, but rather a man who saw that first love as exactly that: a soft, lovely thing to be cherished as a memory of youth.
The man he was today? That man understood Catalina’s comment about dents and bruises. That man was marked by a love far more profound, a love that had built over centuries of loyalty and friendship, sorrow and laughter, anger and devotion, a love that defined him—and it was a thing quite apart from Kaia, bold and impatient and dazzling to his young heart, or her pretty, sweet descendant.
“You’ll break more than one heart when you go,” Arzaleya said to him one day, as the two of them stood with drinks in hand at the end of a long and exhausting day—while an inquisitive Smoke poked around nearby. “I’m hearing that you�
��ve turned down all offers.”
“Who even has the energy for that after the days we’re putting in?” Illium kept his tone light, in no mood to share his constant state of stress where Aodhan was concerned. It didn’t matter that his best friend had stayed in frequent touch, Illium couldn’t shut up that stupid panicked voice in the back of his brain.
He didn’t even understand what was driving the asshole thing.
Arzaleya’s low and earthy laughter broke into his cycling thoughts. “Isn’t that the truth? I, for one, have no desire to tangle wings with anyone.” Rubbing the back of her neck, she said, “I respected Aodhan always, but I’m now in awe of him.”
She resettled her wings, the fading sunset picking out the ruby and scarlet tones of the filaments that made up her feathers. “To step into the role he did, at the time he did, with China in the state it was . . .” She blew out a breath. “I don’t know how he did it. It’s just dawning on me, the task I’ve taken on—and that’s after Aodhan did all the groundwork.”
This was a conversation for which Illium had plenty of time.
They spoke about the jobs on Arzaleya’s plate, and of the future of the territory, were joined at some point by Yindi, Xan, and others. Illium stayed for a while, enjoying the company. But tiredness got to him at last. “It’s bed for me. Good night.” He hadn’t slept the previous night, having taken a security shift.
The others shouted out good night, and he headed off after picking up Smoke’s sleeping body. When he heard whispered giggling halfway through his journey, he glanced to the right just in time to see Kai running off with her hand in that of the mortal who loved her.
Again, he waited for the blow of pain. Again, it didn’t come.
All he felt was a warm affection for the descendant of the woman he’d loved as a young man just finding his wings. There was no envy or jealousy in him, nothing but the heart’s ache that comes with memories of times long past.
Looking up at the diamond-studded sky, he took a deep breath. No more clinging to the past because he was panicked about the future. No using a faded ghost as a talisman against the unknown to come. To make his love for Kaia into nothing but a habit of comfort, that would devalue them both.
Going to the tent he’d put up when the snow began to build on the ground, he placed Smoke on his bedroll, where she’d be comforted by his scent. Then, though he was exhausted, he flew far enough out to sea that the waters were deep and the waves wouldn’t wash anything back to shore.
The pendant was flat and small and thin on his palm when he pulled it out of his pocket. Hovering above the night-touched ocean, he lifted it to his mouth, pressed a gentle kiss on it. “Good-bye, Kaia. It was my joy to have known and loved you.”
Despite everything, he would never be sorry for having loved her, for she was part of the tapestry of his life, one thread weaving into the next. He wouldn’t be who he was today without her, and her memory would stay with him into eternity, a treasured part of his history.
But their time had passed lifetimes ago.
Heart at peace, he opened his hand and allowed the charm to float gently into the arms of the endless ocean.
52
Though he’d come to peace with his memory of Kaia, Illium remained edgy about Aodhan in the days that followed. He hated that they were so far apart when they’d just found their way back to each other. He’d had a nightmare the previous night that Aodhan would use the time apart to convince himself that he had to break the bonds of their relationship to find freedom.
What the fuck was wrong with him?
Aggravated with his own misbehaving subconscious, he slammed a beam into place, went to pick up one more. Suyin had asked him to track down some supplies, but he needed the physical outlet right now; he’d do the computer work once he’d burned off the tumult in his body and mind.
When Arzaleya waved him down from the sky, he thought about pretending he hadn’t seen her, but it wasn’t the general’s fault he was feeling pissy. He landed. “Yeah?” He shoved back the snow-damp strands of his hair at the same time, remembering how Aodhan had told him he needed a haircut.
“Package for you.” The other angel handed it over. “I saw it coming in and knew you wouldn’t be back to your tent till nightfall. Figured you might want to see it earlier. You should probably take a break anyway.”
Arzaleya raised an eyebrow. “You’re wearing out the crew with how fast you’re moving, and how much material you can shift on your own. Give them a breather or I’ll be dealing with a revolt.”
Illium scowled, but he didn’t argue. Fact was, he liked getting packages, and he was curious about who’d sent this and what was inside. If he had to guess the identity of the sender, he’d say Ellie or his mother. “I might grab something to eat.”
It wasn’t until after he’d wolfed down a filled roll, drunk half a bottle of fresh juice, and petted an insistent Smoke that he sat down on his favorite stone above the beach and looked at the package. It had come by angelic courier and was stamped with the seal of the Tower . . . but in the field for the sender’s identity was a name most unexpected: Aodhan.
He ran his fingers over the fluid black strokes, his cheeks suddenly hot. His fingers turned clumsy as he tried to tear open the box, until he finally made himself stop and take several deep breaths. Then he retrieved a pocketknife from his pants. The blade sharp as a razor, it took but a stroke to cut open the seal.
Inside was a small blue bag as familiar to Illium as his own sword. From Catalina’s bakery, it proved to hold her famous angel-wing alfajores, the filling in between coconut-infused dulce de leche. She’d come up with the initial recipe for the dulce de leche, while Lorenzo had struck on the idea of making the cookies in the shape of angel wings.
No one made cookies like Catalina. And she usually only made these in the holidays, which meant Aodhan must have placed a special order. Toes curling, Illium bit into one as he checked the other items.
A jar of his favorite peanut butter—a spread that Aodhan abhorred—a new book from a mortal author that Illium loved, a small bag of gourmet cat treats, a sealed pack of caramel-nut popcorn from Illium’s favorite snack store . . . and a handcrafted belt buckle that had been polished to a high, silvery shine. It was simple but for the feathers engraved on it and the stylized I hidden in among the feathers.
Putting aside the bag of cookies, he took off his belt. “You won’t like those,” he warned Smoke when she went to poke her nose into the bag. “Here, this is for you.” He took out one of the cat treats Aodhan had sent, and placed it in front of her.
Pouncing on it with glee, she ran off down the sand to enjoy it in some secret spot. He didn’t worry; she always found him when the day came to an end. Smoke taken care of, he replaced his belt buckle, and put the belt back on. It felt different. Heavier in a way that had nothing to do with actual weight.
No, it was as if it was full to the brim with all the emotions thick in his blood.
He swallowed, ate another cookie, and didn’t look for a letter or a note. Despite his beautiful penmanship, Aodhan wasn’t much for writing—even the messages he sent were short and to the point. No, Illium’s Adi spoke with his art, with his hands, with his talent. And with a belt buckle that he’d fashioned personally for Illium.
Closing up the box with care, he flew it to the tent.
He took the cookies with him when he returned to work, sharing them with the crew—who were happy to see him now that they’d caught up. No point hoarding the alfajores when they’d go stale now that he’d broken the seal. And he had what mattered most—confirmation that Aodhan hadn’t forgotten him. Stupid, how the fear haunted him . . . or maybe it wasn’t.
His mother had forgotten him.
It was a thing about which he tried not to think, tried not to look full in the face. Not even Aodhan knew about it. He hadn’t told. Ever. And he’d never ever b
ring it up with his mother. It would destroy her. But during the worst years, when she’d wandered the far depths of the kaleidoscope, there had been three terrible times when she’d forgotten Illium.
Only three times.
Seconds-long pauses where she’d looked at him without recognition.
Then the wrench at the unraveled threads of her memory as she fought to remember.
A forgetting and a remembering that had happened so fast he could’ve lied to himself, told himself he’d imagined it. Except he hadn’t. He knew how his mother looked at him, how her eyes warmed with love and with joy no matter if she was aggravated or annoyed by him . . . but those three times, she’d glanced at him with nothing more than polite inquiry in her gaze.
Three points of horror in his life, as he wondered if this was it, the final loss, his mother gone forever.
He brushed his hand over the belt buckle, a talisman against the dark. And unlike the pendant he’d carried for so long, this one wasn’t a memory of sorrow, but a gift of hope.
Grinning, he got back to work.
Thanks for the belt buckle. It’s perfect.
The new citadel is going up piece by piece and I have to say, it’s shaping up to be the kind of building that will make a mark. It’s not the Tower and it’s not Caliane’s Amanat. It’s very much Suyin’s Citadel.
Send more cookies next time. They were a hit.
Smoke approves of your offering. You may present her with more.
No extra weirdness to report.
Aodhan’s lips kicked up as he finished reading the message on his phone. He might be new to being the one who did the looking after, but it appeared that he was getting it right.
And because he remembered how his silence had hurt Illium, he made an effort to send back a message. He wasn’t as good at this type of thing as Illium, but that had never mattered between them.
I’ll order two dozen cookies next time. And I won’t forget Smoke.
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