Archangel's Light (Guild Hunter #14)(82)

*

Illium’s shoulders knotted at the quiet question. He’d been ready to keep up their fighting as long as it took—it was easier to keep Aodhan at a distance with snark and bite than it was to face how much the other angel had hurt him.

He’d thought he was over it, that—given their renewed comfort with one another—they could just slide back into their previous relationship, but then he’d had to bite his tongue against his natural tendency to look after the people who mattered to him—as Aodhan mattered so deeply to him. And he’d realized that nothing was the same. He and Aodhan, they couldn’t just ignore the past year and more.

But the words stuck in his throat, too big to say.

He focused on his culinary creation with an attention that was all but blinding. Like most warriors, he could eat anything. Aodhan would eat even olives if he needed to do so to survive. So he wasn’t really thinking about what he was throwing into what he’d decided to call a stew.

Sounded better than “screw-it-all-salami.”

An echo of Ellie’s laughter in his mind, how she would’ve grinned and told him he should stick to that name for his mess of a creation. But the thought was a fleeting distraction, his skin burning from the force of Aodhan’s attention. “Stop staring at me.”

“I can’t even look at you now?” Aodhan was the one with a knife this time, and he whacked a giant hunk off the sourdough he’d broken in half. “What’s next, you’re going to banish me to my room? Won’t work. I banished myself for two hundred years and I’m not going back there.”

Illium’s hand squeezed the handle of the pan before he turned to pin Aodhan with a disbelieving gaze. “You’re making bad jokes about something you refused to talk about for fucking centuries? What’s changed? Let me guess. You and Suyin opened up to each other, had long heart-to-hearts.”

“If we did, what business of yours would it be?”

Illium threw something else into his angry stew. Chili peppers? Cinnamon? Who the hell knew? Who the hell cared? “None,” he said, even as his breathing accelerated. “It’s none of my business at all. I’ve only been your friend for five hundred fucking years.”

“Enough!” A tone in Aodhan’s voice that Illium had heard very, very rarely over their many years of friendship.

Then he turned off the stove with a decisive hand, and shifted so that they stood face-to-face, toe-to-toe. With Aodhan’s slight height advantage, they weren’t exactly eye to eye, and the fact he had to tip his head back a fraction to meet the blue-green translucence of Aodhan’s gaze infuriated Illium even more.

“What is wrong with you?” Aodhan bit out, all bright light ablaze with emotion. “Why are you so angry? You’ve been angry since the moment you landed, and we both know it, so don’t you try to deny it.”

Illium wasn’t about to beg for attention, not from anyone—and especially not from Aodhan, at whose side he’d stood through thick and thin, pain and hope. But neither was he about to allow his friend to pin the current fucked-up state of their relationship on him.

“You’re interested in how I’m doing all of a sudden? Funny, when you were fine ignoring me for an entire year. Guess you forgot how to write letters or make phone calls.” He slapped his forehead. “Oh, my bad, you didn’t forget. I just didn’t make your list.” Then, despite his urge to touch Aodhan, even if it was to shove him away, he stepped back. “I’m giving it to you—the distance you made it clear you wanted. Now get the hell out of my face so I can finish making my food.”



* * *




*

Excuses flittered through Aodhan’s mind, some of them even believable, but he brushed them all aside, his skin hot. He had frozen Illium out over the past months. It had been a self-protective act driven by angry desperation—and it had been a cowardly thing that shamed him.

“You don’t let go, Blue,” he found himself admitting, anguish in his voice. “You hold on so tight that I couldn’t breathe.”

Illium’s face went pale, the spark fading from his eyes as he dropped the red pepper he’d been holding onto the chopping board. “You really do see me as a cage.”

The whispered words hit Aodhan like a blow to the solar plexus. “No! No!” He went to grab Illium’s shoulders, but the other man stumbled back, his legendary grace nowhere in evidence and his hand clutching at the counter to his left to maintain balance.

“Shit.” Aodhan spun to slam his hands down on the counter. “You kept looking after me.” He glanced at Illium to see incomprehension on his face. “I needed looking after for a long time, I’ll accept that.”

He hated what he’d allowed himself to become in those years after his capture, hated it, and he’d finally taken responsibility for his actions. Only, Blue refused to see that. “But I don’t need that kind of care anymore,” he bit out. “I’m a warrior angel you trust to watch your back in any battle, but in anything else? You second-guess me, try to double-check my instincts, attempt to wrap me up in cotton wool.”

“Looking after you is a crime now?” Illium snapped, his hand fisted on the counter, and his wings bunched in.

It devastated Aodhan to hurt Illium, but they had to lance this boil, clear the slow-acting poison of it. “Remember that fight we had—I had information about the Luminata through my contacts, and you came down on me like a ton of bricks.”