Archangel’s Ascension (The Guild Hunter Series)

Illium’s heart exhaled after Aodhan left, his muscles turning liquid—not in relief, but in sheer besottedness. You’d think he’d be over that stage after knowing Aodhan for five hundred years, give or take, but no, it looked like he was going to go through the whole besotted phase before he settled down into being a mature partner in love.

Grinning, he crouched down to give Smoke the scritches she loved. “Do you think he has any idea how soft it makes me to know he looked after you so well while I wasn’t here?” He’d known Adi would, of course he had, but to have his faith evidenced in Aodhan’s concern that Smoke not be lonely, well, it melted things inside him.

Smoke butted at his hand in demand.

“I have no idea where your food is, sweetheart.” Aodhan had taken care of it yesterday. “I’ll just ask—”

But Smoke was already bounding out of the living room into the small kitchen that was part of the suite. As always, Illium’s was pristine. He never used it except maybe to heat up a snack—he’d much rather eat with other people, and there was so much good food in the city.

Smoke sat with her paw on a lower cupboard door.

“Of course you’d know.” He bopped her on the nose. “And of course he’d put some in here.” Because that was Aodhan, thinking ahead, doing small, thoughtful acts.

His heart sighed again. “What am I going to do, Smoke?” he murmured as he opened the cupboard. It had a latch that meant Smoke couldn’t get into it on her own, but otherwise swung wide with smooth ease. “I have an image to maintain. Making heart eyes at Aodhan doesn’t quite fit my battle commander status.”

His pet was already at the sleek white food bowl that sat in one corner, next to an equally sleek water bowl. He knew Aodhan had hand-made them even before he got close. The man had put tiny golden sparkles in the material, then burned in Smoke’s name in a darker gold.

She happily began to crunch at her dry food after he filled up her bowl. While she’d eat anything, she’d always had a preference for crunch over what many would call more deluxe meals. “You’re a survivor, aren’t you?” he said as he put away the rest of the bag. “And so are we, me and Aodhan. The rest of it, we’ll figure out together.”

Illium would let neither the strange fear that overcame him at times, nor Aodhan’s nightmare memories, hinder their journey.

We have all the time in the world, Blue.

Yes, they did.

Illium, I forgot to tell you. Aodhan’s voice in his head. Smoke prefers to go outside when she needs the facilities so I set up an area for her and she’s made a beeline for it every time. She’s learned how to catch the elevator but never goes outside the Tower precinct.

Illium’s already soft heart turned ridiculously mushy. I told you she’s a prodigy, he said, because he couldn’t put the enormity of his feelings into words. Also a bit feral after growing up on a building site and hanging out with me in a tent—or in the open air when it got too hot.

Leaving Smoke to her breakfast on the feel of Aodhan’s mental kiss, he wandered into the bathroom for a quick shower to more properly wake himself. Angels did better with switching time zones than mortals, but it did still take their bodies time to catch up—especially after a long span in another region.

He wasn’t the least surprised when Smoke poked her head inside the open doorway after a minute, her suspicious form a smudged shadow against tiles of black riven with silver. “Still here,” he said from the wide expanse of the tiled shower room. “Not murdered by water.”

Smoke, for all that she’d spent her formative months next to the ocean, was of the opinion that water was the enemy, to be vanquished. The first time she’d seen him submerge himself in a pond, she’d jumped in after him in an attempt to drag him out.

He’d finally taught her that he didn’t need rescue, but she continued to believe him dim-witted to get so close to water. Today, she gave him the feline side-eye from the door; it said that she was not amused by his decision to drench himself, but she still didn’t return to her breakfast until he’d switched off the shower and was drying himself.

Did Smoke guard you in your shower, too? he asked Aodhan.

While Illium had a bath in his suite as well as the shower, Aodhan had only the shower. A deliberate choice on Raphael’s part when he’d built this iteration of the Tower. The archangel knew that Aodhan hated baths—an aversion born of the torture he’d endured where he’d been buried in water that drowned him over and over again.

No. Smoke finds me acceptable, but she wouldn’t pine for me if I died under the wrath of the shower. You’re the only one she finds worthy of guarding while you undertake the idiocy of voluntarily subjecting yourself to sprays of water.

Laughing so hard, he snorted—damn but he’d missed Aodhan’s dry humor—Illium finished drying off before pulling on fresh jeans along with a simple black shirt that had zippered closures at the bottoms of the wing slits. Shrugging it on over his shoulders, he did up the buttons down the front, closed the wing slits, then rolled the sleeves halfway up his forearms.

His hair he styled by thrusting his fingers through the strands.

When he walked out of the bathroom, Smoke indicated the desire to be let out. He opened the door, then called the elevator for her. “See you after you’re done.” No doubt she’d already trained other Tower residents to do her bidding when it came to summoning the elevator back up.

Leaving the suite door ajar for her return, he grabbed a cup of coffee and made short work of the croissant dusted with flaked almonds that had appeared in his kitchen while he was showering. Beside it was a plate of sliced fruit garnished with raisins and sugared cashews, all of it arranged around a small pot of his favorite blueberry oatmeal.

Illium’s face went hot in a flush of pleasure, his body feeling weightless. Being spoiled by Aodhan wasn’t anything he’d have ever said he wanted, but now that it was his reality?

Wow.

Stomach full and butterflies dancing in his bloodstream, he walked out to sit on the balcony railing he’d asked Aodhan to have installed before he came home. It made it harder for him to take off from this spot, but it meant Smoke could play safely here.

The city murmured with life beside him as he called his mother using the function that would permit them to see each other. After learning of that capability in modern technology, his mother hated audio-only calls.

Eyes of pale champagne against sun-kissed skin, hair ebony tipped with gold, and the wings that appeared behind her a wild indigo caressed by palest gold, his mother’s face came onscreen within a single ring, and he knew she’d been waiting for him—but she hadn’t reached out.

It wasn’t a power play, rather the opposite.

She was very careful to treat him as an adult these days, hesitant at anything that might be considered an overreach. Oh, she still told him to listen to his mother at times when he was teasing her, but things like this? Where it might be thought that she was attempting to be the adult while treating him as a child, she tried so hard not to do it.

In her lost years, she’d often thought him a babe. She’d made him honey cakes and kissed his hair and told him to be good for his teacher. He’d gone along with whatever she said, and not once had he blamed her for her fractured mind. That would be like blaming the earth for being cracked after an earthquake.

The one thing that had never changed was her love for him. She’d drenched him in maternal affection even as she lost piece after piece of herself.

But his mother was a survivor, too. She’d come back strong and defiant…except for this one thing, this churning guilt inside her when it came to her son.

He’d never mentioned that he’d noticed how careful she was about not crossing any boundaries, and he never would mention it. That would hurt her, shake the foundations she’d rebuilt out of courage and determination—and pure spite at Aegaeon; Illium wasn’t about to repay her endless love by causing her pain. He loved seeing her grow ever tougher and even a touch wild, Titus her willing accomplice.

Talk about besotted. The archangel who loved Sharine, the Hummingbird, was still in that stage. So perhaps it never passed when love hit hard, so real it spun you in circles.

Illium decided he was okay with that.

“Illium,” his mother said, her gaze awash in infinite joy and shadowed by black lashes dipped in gold. “I heard there was a party last night. I didn’t expect you to be up so early.”

“You have better spies than most archangels,” Illium teased, well aware that it must’ve been one of the people who worked under Titus’s spymaster, Ozias, who’d passed on the information.

Archangels, even those who were allies or friends, spied on each other. Illium thought of it as a game between the friendly archangels, but it also made him worry for what everyone said was the growing power in his cells. He wasn’t ready to play the games of the Cadre, might never be ready.

A vein on his arm glowed liquid gold at that instant, a silent reminder that the choice had never been his. Ascension couldn’t be controlled. In his case, all he could hope for was that it would wait until after his first millennium of life.

He might survive it then.

“You’re too thin.” His mother frowned. “I know Suyin too well to think she wouldn’t feed her people, so what have you been doing to get yourself in this state?”

He grinned. “Hollow bones, that’s what you used to say.” The truth was that he’d been running at full capacity the entirety of the time he’d been in China; Suyin had needed everything he had, and he’d seen no reason to hold back.

Suyin herself was as thin as a rail right now—and that took serious overwork by an archangel. “I would give of my blood if it would heal this land,” she’d said during his last week in her territory, as she crouched down with her hand on the dirt of a newly plowed field.

“But even an archangel’s blood can’t turn back the clock of this evil, magically fix what my aunt polluted. Hers was a power corrosive. But it also limited her—she could’ve never understood the heart of the people who are now mine. Their courage humbles me.” A glance up at Illium. “As does the power of the friendship shown to me by others.”

His mother’s voice broke into the echo of Suyin’s poignant words. “I’m going to find out how to order you meals in your city,” she said, then hesitated.

Wondering if she was going too far.

“I’d rather you make me a giant batch of your honey cakes,” he said with a grin that told her it was all right, that he didn’t see her need to care for him as an overstep. “I’m sure one of Titus’s spies—ahem, couriers—will drop it off for you.”

Her lips twitched. “According to my beloved, archangels don’t do anything as pedestrian as spy. They reconnoiter.”

Throwing back his head, Illium laughed, and when he met his mother’s eyes again, she was smiling with every part of her. “How’s my other boy?” she asked as Smoke called out to tell him she was back, then wandered outside to pounce on imaginary prey. “He came home too thin and exhausted, too.”

“He’s doing so well, Mother,” he said, knowing she’d understand that he wasn’t only talking about Aodhan’s physical status. “He sends his love.”

Sharine’s smile softened into tenderness. “I’m glad you’re together again. I never worry when you’re with Aodhan or Aodhan is with you.”

Illium’s chest expanded, contracted. “Mother…I think we’re changing,” he whispered. “Becoming more to one another.”

A tilt of Sharine’s head, an even gentler smile. “Ah, my baby boy,” she said, slipping unknowingly into maternal affection as Illium got off the railing to pace the balcony. “Life is complicated, is it not?”

Illium slumped back against the nearest wall. “Yes. I’m terrified.”

Her nod was careful, considered. “Change is terrifying,” she acknowledged. “But remember this, son of mine, your friendship with Aodhan is no glass bauble that will break if you mishandle it. It is a thing of steel and granite. Perhaps it will end up with a few dents or scratches if you make a mistake, but it will endure.”

He swallowed hard, wanting desperately to believe her. Because the idea of damaging the most important relationship in his life was a visceral fear that nipped at his heels when he was alone and his thoughts had too much room to roam. But the alternative? Not even worth thinking about.

“I’m tough,” he said, determined not to falter because he was scared. “I’m the son of Lady Sharine, who has tamed the great Titus himself and now has her own pride of lions that she rides every sunset!”

Sharine’s laughter at his repetition of that preposterous rumor was a waterfall of sound. “You are an awful child,” she said, her cheeks creased. “But we love you so. Especially Titus, who has told me that if we were ever to be blessed with a child, he would hope for just such a son.”

She touched her fingers to the screen as she had a way of doing when she spoke to him and to Aodhan. “You are strong.” A mistiness in her gaze. “You persevered through my shattered years—”

“M—”

“Hush now, Illium, let me speak.” A firm tone. “You stood beside me with a strength and a compassion that couldn’t have been expected in one so young. That kind of heart? It is a tremendous gift.”

A wisdom to her that was a thing of age so profound that he had no idea when she’d been born, she added, “You were my light in the darkness. If you’re afraid, Illium, it’s only because your heart is so huge. Never ever forget its power.”noveldrama

She touched the screen again. “Spread your wings, my cherished boy. You no longer have to watch over me, watch over anyone. This time is yours. Fly to your happiness. Claim the love of the one person who has ever been your heart’s mirror.”