Archangel's Light (Guild Hunter #14)(88)

“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.