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.
“Some would say this is the business of adults, not a child,” she’d added, “but you’ve earned the right. You should know why your mother left you for all those years.”
“You didn’t leave me,” he’d protested.
“Don’t protect me from owning up to my mistakes,” she’d chastised him—then kissed him on the cheek. “Let me own up to the hurt I caused my sweet boy.”
A squeeze of his hand to stop him from speaking. “I tell you my past not as an excuse, but so that you are aware of the rich tapestry of history, and how it can alter a person—and so that you can be on guard in your own life against the wounds that fester deep below the surface.
“I didn’t know I had such wounds, you see, and so I wasn’t prepared for how I might be affected—how I might be damaged—by other blows of a similar nature.”
“You couldn’t have predicted that Aegaeon would turn out to be a giant flaming asshole,” he’d muttered.
She hadn’t told him not to talk about his father that way; they both knew the description was only the truth. Rather, she’d taken his hand and said, “But don’t you see, Illium? I should have seen the cracks in his facade, shouldn’t have permitted him to treat me—and you—the way he did.”
“Until he left, he was a fine father.” A grudging admission he’d made only so she didn’t take on more unnecessary blame. “He was with me as much as an archangel could be. So wipe that idea from your mind.”