Archangel's Light (Guild Hunter #14)(19)

Illium had already learned that the travel plan had been worked out well in advance of Suyin’s decision to move. It had been Xan who’d filled him in, while the two of them were strapping down a pallet full of tents.

“We always knew this wasn’t our final stop,” the vampire had said, his muscled upper body bare and several strands of black hair sticking to his cheeks after having escaped the tie he’d used to pull it back. “Even before finding that underground hellhole, we knew it was only a place to catch our breath.”

“The underground complex? How bad was it?”

A flinty look in the rich brown of his eyes, Xan had said, “I found fangs on at least one set of bones. Locked inside a cell.”

Vampires could starve to death, but it took a long, long time, most of it spent in agony as their body mummified around them. Such starvation could and had been used as a punishment for the most heinous of crimes, for many immortals believed death too easy a route. Illium agreed with them.

Yet to have been left behind to starve to the point of death?

Either the crime had been of the worst degree . . . or, given that the complex was under one of Lijuan’s strongholds, it had been an act of cruelty. It was clear Xan believed it to be the latter, the people who’d died within guilty of no crimes.

The image of bones scattered in the dark was at the forefront of his mind as he stepped away from the balcony where Aodhan stood. The other man looked like he wanted to argue, but Illium didn’t give him the opportunity—he turned and walked quickly out.

He knew he was avoiding the inevitable, knew they had to talk, put everything out in the open. But he wasn’t ready, because there was only one way that discussion could end: with a final break.

The slow erosion of their friendship was over.

It was brittle now. Ready to shatter.



* * *




*

Aodhan felt the reverberation of the door Illium pulled closed behind him even though Illium hadn’t banged it. It was as if the vibration had rocked directly into his body, fragmenting his thoughts and blurring his vision. He couldn’t even remember the name of the movie at the top of the stack Illium had held out, a stack which he’d deposited on a decorative table on his way out.

Despite his state, he picked up his paintbrush. Art was how he’d always made sense of the world. His hand moved almost automatically, working to the blueprint in his mind.

As was his tendency, he left the depiction of himself to last. Because he’d never seen himself in these real-life scenes, he was the most difficult person to paint. Most of the time, his workaround was to ask someone else if they had a memory of that moment, and if they could describe him, his facial expression, his energy.

He should’ve asked Illium. For a few moments after Illium scowled at the blob-like depiction of himself, it was as it’d once been, with the two of them so comfortable with each other that they never had to verbally ask permission for anything. Not because of a lack of respect, but because they could read each other with a glance, give and ask with a grin or a touch.

Things had changed.

Aodhan accepted that he’d begun the change and, despite the pain of it, he would do so again; he had good reasons for his actions. This fractured friendship, this distance with Illium, however, had never been the intended outcome. “Be honest, Aodhan,” he muttered to himself as he outlined half-formed wings of wild blue. “You never thought this far ahead. You were too angry.”

I’m no longer a broken doll who needs to be protected from those who might play roughly with me.

It seemed so long ago, that fight inside Elena and Raphael’s now-destroyed home in the Enclave, but that had been the beginning of everything. All the anger, all the frustration, it had been building and building inside Aodhan for years . . . only to explode outward in a merciless fury.

Of course it had landed on Illium. Because Illium had always been there, the strongest foundation of Aodhan’s life.

That was the problem.

Aodhan had become so used to standing on that foundation that he’d forgotten to rebuild and strengthen his own—and he’d blamed Illium for it. He needed to apologize for that part of it. The blame was equally his. He’d allowed Illium to take the reins, allowed him to pave the way, allowed him to be Aodhan’s shield against the world. That was on him.

But Illium had made his own mistakes. He hadn’t listened when Aodhan tried to speak, hadn’t accepted that his healing was done, that he no longer needed a keeper. Aodhan’s jaw tightened even as he picked up his finest brush to add in the details of Illium’s crouching form.

In this image, everything was as it should be, their friendship unbroken by time or atrocity or pain. But life moved on. To stagnate was to die.

Aodhan knew that better than anyone.





11



Yesterday

Sharine held one small hand in each of hers. She was holding on far too tight, but it was necessary for the two mischievous monkeys in her grasp. Honestly, she was giving serious thought to putting a leash on each of them—if Illium was naughty on his own, add in his quiet little accomplice and dear Sleeping Ancestors!

“He has never made mischief before,” Aodhan’s mother had murmured the last time around, after Sharine’d had to deliver Aodhan home with clumps of tar in his beautiful hair. She’d wanted to clip it, but hadn’t felt she had the authority.