Archangel's Light (Guild Hunter #14)(67)

It wasn’t the first time this day that Aodhan had slipped into using Illium’s childhood nickname, and, to Illium, it was a measure of his friend’s mental struggle with all they’d seen and experienced today. He wanted desperately to wrap Aodhan up in his wings, protect him from the nightmares of the past, but he’d gotten the message there: Aodhan was in no mood to be protected.

It grated on Illium to not be able to do anything, but he kept a grip on himself. “We know Lijuan was a monster,” he said. “We have no way of knowing what she did to this child, what she raised them to be.”

Eyes of crystalline blue and green, shattered outward from a black pupil, as familiar as his own, looking into his. “Do you think she purposefully raised a child capable of such evil?” He shook his head on the heels of his question. “Why am I asking you questions you can’t answer?”

Shoving a hand through the glittering beauty of his hair, he said, “You go and get the food, take care of Smoke. I’ll keep watch here in case the child returns.”

Illium hesitated. “We don’t know the danger—”

“Go, before I lose my temper again,” Aodhan muttered. “How do you think I’ve survived without you this past year? Go.”

Narrowing his eyes, Illium decided not to argue. Not when lines of tension marked Aodhan’s face and his skin was an unhealthily pale shade. Tucking Smoke close so she wouldn’t be buffeted by wind, he arrowed his body toward the stronghold—but couldn’t help throwing back a final caution. Don’t land. You’re harder to jump in the air.

One more word and I’ll pluck out your feathers one by one.

Even as Illium scowled, relief bled through his veins. Aodhan was sounding more and more like himself—though he was more irritable than Illium had ever before known him to be.

“He is the deep, boundless ocean to your tempestuous storm,” his mother had said to Illium once, her smile wide. “He anchors you and you take him flying.”

“Right now,” Illium complained to an alert Smoke—who didn’t seem to mind flying at all, “he’s a grump.” But he was Illium’s grump and this was far from over.



* * *




*

Alone in the stygian cold of the night, Aodhan began to do slow, steady sweeps over the area around the cavern while never losing sight of it. Given the darkness, it was likely he’d miss any signs of movement were his prey stealthy, but none of Raphael’s Seven ever just gave up. That wasn’t who they were—alone or as a group.

The forest and the pillars of Zhangjiajie remained motionless. Even the wind had fallen to silence.

Then it came, the first breath of air that held not only cold but an icy chill.

He glanced at the horizon, but of course there was nothing to see. When he looked straight up however, he could make out a sudden heaviness of clouds in the night sky. Snow? Possible in this time and place.

Zhangjiajie tended to have light snowfall in general, but angelic and mortal meteorologists had both warned of a high chance of a nasty winter across China due to the way Lijuan’s fog had altered the atmosphere. Not a permanent change, it was thought, more a lingering aftereffect that would fade after one bitter season.

If only Lijuan’s evil would fade as fast.

On the heels of that thought came another: would a child who’d grown up in that dank prison know how to survive in the snow? Even an angelic child was still a child, without the recuperative capacities of an adult angel. It was part of the reason angels were so careful to keep their children out of sight of mortal eyes until they were of an age where injury wouldn’t lead to death.

They were called immortals, but angels could die. It just took so much to achieve such a result that the point was moot—except when it came to children. Children could be killed far easier than adults. And this child’s growth was apt to already be stunted as a result of their captivity.

Fine white flecks began to hit his face—a pretty spray of sugar if not for what the cold of it could mean for the vulnerable. Like a child with no armor.

No, this wasn’t good.

He said as much when Illium appeared out of the softly falling snow, his wings dusted with white in the moments before each wingbeat. “We have to make it so the child feels safe to return to his cavern,” Aodhan said. “Else he’ll be out in the snow—and I can’t see him having the skills to survive that.”

“It’s cold in that place,” Illium said. “Did you notice? I don’t think an angelic child could’ve survived there while a babe. I’m guessing there must’ve been some system to provide heat—might be it broke down after Lijuan’s fall.”

Aodhan’s skin prickled under a memory he’d done his best to bury for two hundred years: of cold, cold water dripping onto his face, seeping into his skin, rising up past his nostrils until he drowned and drowned.

It had taken him until the war to realize he couldn’t outrun that piece of his past; he had to face it or he would always be the prey and the memory the hunter. He’d spoken to Keir privately in the immediate aftermath of Lijuan’s defeat, and the healer had made time for him many times this past year, regardless of all the other demands on his attention.

“Why now?” Aodhan had asked while New York lay devastated around them. “Is it because of the horror of what Lijuan did? It’s awakened my own horror?”