Archangel's Sun (Guild Hunter #13)(62)

“Your city is grievously wounded.” Sharine had glimpsed a little of it when Illium moved the phone.

“Yes.” A bleak confirmation. “We’re finding that some of the areas Raphael had to scorch are reading as poisonous—it looks like there was something special about the insects Lijuan loosed in that direction, and their poison burned itself into the soil.”

The sheer scale of Lijuan’s and Charisemnon’s power-hungry evil continued to shock her. “Is there a solution?”

“Our scientists are working on it,” he said. “But for now, the entire area’s under quarantine. We’re also having to constantly monitor the situation to make sure that nothing from that sector is seeping into the groundwater or into the river. Even dead, Her Batshitness continues to haunt us.”

She had no idea what “Batshitness” meant but, from context, guessed it must refer to Lijuan. Listening as he filled her in on his other news, she noticed one omission. “Are you still feuding with Aodhan?” It would not do. “You know now that life isn’t guaranteed, even for an immortal. Don’t be so stubborn.”

“I’m not the stubborn one.” He sounded so like the little boy she’d propped on her hip as a babe that she smiled.

“I’m quite aware Aodhan is your equal in stubbornness.” Her memories from her lost years continued to be problematic, but she remembered sitting and painting with Aodhan for hours at a time when Aodhan had been swathed in broken darkness. Even in the fog, she’d known that the small, quiet, loyal boy she loved was hurting and she’d gone to him.

“But regardless of his mood,” she said to Illium, “he’s in a very dangerous situation—and he’s far from home and those he loves most. Tell me you’re looking out for him.”

“Of course I am,” Illium muttered. “I even sent him a package from home, full of his favorite things—including a horror movie Elena says he loves. But will he thank me? Hmph. He’s probably sharing everything with Suyin.”

Sharine frowned, unused to hearing such a lack of generosity in her son’s voice. “Do you not like her?”

An intense silence, followed by, “It has nothing to do with her.” Another quiet, so taut it hurt. “Mother—”

Her hand clenched on the phone as he broke off; she wanted to go to her knees and beg for him to confide in her. Beg for him to tell her what strained his voice and hurt his soul. All those years when she’d been lost, he’d been forced to rely on others and then to rely only on himself. She wanted him to know that she was here now and that she’d never again let him down.

“You can say anything to me.” Her voice came out rough, husky. “I won’t be shocked or dismayed. I will love you to the end of time.”

“He has always been my best friend,” Illium said at last, something in his voice that she couldn’t read and the aged gold of his eyes looking to some distant point. “I waited so long for him to emerge from his self-imposed exile, but now that he’s done so, he spreads his wings and leaves me behind.”

Placing one hand on the wall outside her suite, Sharine staggered under the unknowing blow Illium had just struck. Did Aodhan understand that Illium had lost not one but both of the most important people in his life to their own demons?

Her eyes stung, her mind cascading with images of two small boys who’d been as thick as thieves, one taking the blame for the other no matter what the situation, no matter what the other had done. “I know my son,” she said when she could speak again, glad that Illium was distracted enough not to notice the pause. “He isn’t small-hearted, and he wouldn’t begrudge his friend finding happiness, so tell me what it is that truly pains you.”

A shuddering breath, the wind his only reply for long moments. “I look back and I wonder if he hadn’t suffered such terrible harm whether he’d still be my friend. I wonder if he only stayed my friend because he was so badly damaged in the aftermath—” Voice ragged, he broke off again for several seconds.

When he came back, his voice was so small it caused her physical pain, and he wouldn’t look at her. “I wonder if the man I’ve always thought of as my best friend considers me nothing but a weight tying him to a past he’s attempting to forget.”

Her heart broke for her son, who loved so fiercely. “It took but a single word of your need to have him flying from the Refuge to meet you in Lumia,” she reminded him. “He didn’t have to do that.”

“That’s just it, Mother.” Illium looked up, his eyes fierce and hot; she could tell he was clenching his entire body, as he had a habit of doing in tense situations. “Aodhan is loyal and he pays his debts and I’m certain he believes he has a debt to me—because I waited so long, because I never gave up on him.

“I don’t want a friendship based on obligation.” Angry, hurt words, his face flushed. “If he wants to cut the bond between us, I wish he’d simply tell me instead of putting distance between us.”

She felt lost. So many pieces of time were missing or blurred from her head. She remembered holding Aodhan in the years he’d locked himself in the shadowed dark of his home, away from the sunlight that turned him into a shooting star against the sky. She remembered rocking him for hours, and telling him he would conquer this, that he would sparkle again, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t remember what it was that had hurt him so badly that he’d turned away even from Illium.