Archangel's Light (Guild Hunter #14)(9)

Dmitri’d had a wife he’d loved. Children.

Every now and then, however, a sliver of their history would slip through. Once, Dmitri had joked about Raphael’s utter and total failure at plowing a field. “He wanted to help, so I let him—but I ended up laughing so hard I couldn’t even supervise. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a mud-covered angel trying to command a pair of stubborn oxen.”

So when Aodhan made his comment to Suyin, it had been a thing honest.

She’d accepted his words with grace. “I won’t have that opportunity. I must choose a second who is already in their power.” Eyes of impenetrable obsidian meeting his. “But at this moment, I need a friend even more than I need a second. Will you be that?”

Aodhan wasn’t a man to make quick friendships, had a small number for an immortal of his years. But he saw in Suyin an echo of himself. She, too, had been held captive by a cruel jailor. She, too, had been thrust into a world for which she was unprepared. But where he’d been encircled by a wall of support, Suyin had only a limited number of people on whom she could lean.

Yes, Raphael was available to her at any time and would never lead her astray, but he was also a member of the Cadre. The same with Lady Caliane. It made their interactions complicated on a level no one who hadn’t been around archangels could hope to understand.

So he’d said, “Yes, Suyin. I will be your friend.”

Today, her voice held a thrumming tension that ignited his instincts. I would talk to you. Will you join me in the wild garden?

I’ll come now.

Bring Illium if he is rested.

Aodhan’s jaw set, but he made himself walk out and knock lightly on Illium’s door. It opened moments later, a bright-eyed Illium looking at him. He’d changed out of his traveling outfit into faded old leathers of black with blue accents that left his muscled arms bare. Soft with wear and molded to his body, the outfit was genuinely ancient and one of Illium’s favorites.

“I’m starving.” A grin open and wide—and not fucking real. “Please tell me you’re about to lead me to copious amounts of food.”

“Archangel Suyin would like to speak to us,” Aodhan said, his voice coming out stiff and formal. “We can eat afterward.”

“We going off the balcony?”

“No, it’s faster to go through the stronghold.”

“Lead on.”

They walked in silence. It should’ve been comfortable, just two warriors heading down to speak to their archangel, but it was like prickles on his skin. Illium was never like this with him. So charming and lighthearted without giving away the smallest piece of himself.

Pretty and amiable and so false that Aodhan wanted to yell at him, have it out in a knockdown, drag-out fight to end all fights. And Aodhan didn’t yell or pick fights. Except it appeared, with everyone’s favorite Bluebell.

“Nice décor.” Illium pointed at a painting of a masked ball manic in its use of color, the brushstrokes going in countless serrated directions. “Good thing I didn’t see that before turning in. Imagine my dreams.”

“We haven’t had the time to worry about aesthetics,” Aodhan muttered, sounding like one of the stiff-assed old angels even to himself.

Illium didn’t roll his eyes and tease him about his abrupt descent into crotchety old age. He didn’t even scowl or make an annoyed face. He just carried on.

As if nothing Aodhan did or said mattered.

Aodhan’s hand fisted at his side, his lips parting before he clamped them shut. This wasn’t the time to confront Illium about his behavior.

Having reached the edge of the railingless mezzanine, he dropped down to the lower floor of the stronghold. As with most angelic residences, the central core of the place was open, giving him plenty of room to spread his wings to slow his descent.

He caught Illium coming down next to him—plenty far enough away that their wings didn’t as much as brush at the tips. Polite, so damn polite when Illium was never polite to Aodhan. He was affectionate, irritating at times, wicked always. Polite between them was a calculated rudeness.

Teeth gritted, he led Illium through a side door and into the untamed garden that flourished despite the biting cold that foretold bitter snows. According to Suyin’s scholars, this region wasn’t one for severe winters, but no one knew what Lijuan’s death fog had done to the land.

They wouldn’t know the whole of it for years, decades even.

Aodhan had advised Suyin to prepare her people for a hard winter when she first chose the stronghold as her interim base, and she’d immediately put a survival plan into action. No one would freeze or starve even if the entire landscape became a sea of endless white.

Illium whistled, the sound low and musical. “Now this is more like it.”

Having glanced at him in the split second before he breathed out that statement, Aodhan saw his first true glimpse of his friend. Illium’s eyes sparked with unconcealed wonder as he reached out toward a lush white flower so big and heavy that it drooped from its own weight.

Aodhan instinctively shot out his arm, blocking Illium from making contact with the flower—without ever touching the other man. Illium had made it clear that such contact was unwanted. “It has a narcotic-like liquid on its petals,” he explained. “Does actually affect angels if we forget we’ve touched it then rub our eyes or get it into our mouth. Visions, distortions of reality for an hour or so.”