Illium’s expression softened. “You permitted her touch because you knew she wouldn’t understand why you were flinching from her.”
“I think we both underestimated her, Blue. But yes, back then, that’s why I let her close even though I felt like I was contaminating her.” He’d had to fight every second not to pull away. “Then slowly, it became okay. She was Eh-ma and she was fractured, too, and it was all right.”
The heat from the fire glowed against his wings. “She was the reason I started to accept that while I wasn’t the same man I was before it all happened, being different wasn’t such a bad thing.
“The art I made after I could create again, it was different, too, and Eh-ma taught me that there was nothing wrong with that. ‘We grow, Aodhan’ she said to me. ‘Our scars change our brushstrokes.’？”
“She’s extraordinary, isn’t she?” Illium’s smile turned a little crooked. “Sometimes, I think that I must be biased, because I’m her son, but then I hear about another thing she’s done, and my pride expands all over again.
“Titus calls her his small but fierce sun, and she is that, don’t you think?” The light from the fire picked up the silver filaments in his feathers, this angel strong and courageous and as fierce a light in this world as his mother. “Even when she was at her most lost, she glowed with life and warmth.”
“Yes.” A simple answer, because it was all true. “But Eh-ma wasn’t the only reason I started to come back to myself.” He took a step toward Illium. “The—”
A shrill sound from the window nook.
43
Jinhai had jerked awake and was staring out into a world gray with dawnlight under a rain of snow, both his hands pressed to the glass. They began to move toward him as one, and were by his side by the time he began scrabbling at the latch Aodhan had closed to keep out the cold.
Aodhan didn’t stop him, just said, “What is it?”
His voice made the boy jolt, his eyes rounding as he stared at Aodhan. As if he’d just realized he wasn’t alone. Chest heaving, he turned, looked at Illium, then back at Aodhan. Then he did the oddest thing. He reached out a single trembling hand and touched Aodhan’s arm before jerking back his hand as fast.
“We’re real,” Aodhan said. “You didn’t dream us.”
Jinhai went as if to speak, but then wrenched his face to the glass again, making small, mewling sounds in his throat as he pressed his hands to the clear pane, his body straining.
“What’s out there?” Illium asked. “Is it danger?”
A quick shake of the head.
“Do you want to be outside?”
Another shake of the head, those eyes so like his mother’s—but with a heartrending innocence to them—looking imploringly at Illium.
“Talk to us,” Illium said with the same patient gentleness as earlier. “We’ve helped till now. We’ll continue to help you.”
Skittering eyes, jagged breath.
A trapped animal sound.
Neither one of them pushed, for that would only engender fear.
Then, a single word potent with teary need: “Quon.”
A name. A person.
Aodhan looked out into the steadily falling snow, saw only a sheet of white. “Is Quon out there?”
Jinhai nodded.
Two chairs, Illium said, his cheekbones blades against his skin. A very large bed.
“Does he need help?” Aodhan searched the landscape, but knew the boy could be hiding behind a tree, in the shadow of one of Zhangjiajie’s pillars. “I’ll go out and bring him—”
A sudden darting movement, Jinhai’s hand locking around Aodhan’s forearm. “He hurts you.” The melodic clarity of his voice suddenly a rasp of sound. “He wears your skin.”
Fuck.
Aodhan echoed Illium’s mental reaction, though he managed to keep it from escaping his mouth. “Quon did that to the people in the hamlet?” When the boy only stared at him, he said, “Took off their skins?”
A spasmodic nod. “Take the skin. Wear the skin. Be the person.” It was a singsong sound. Almost as if Jinhai was repeating something he’d heard.
“Who said that?” Aodhan murmured, while Illium remained in the background, his eyes on the snow outside. “Quon?”
“Mother said. Wear many skins. Many faces.”
Ice crawled through Aodhan’s veins. “Your mother? His mother?”
“Our mother.”