She stroked a hand down his back, her knuckles brushing the underside of his right wing. “Aodhan and Illium?”
“I haven’t spoken to them, but I know Illium will be all right. It’s Aodhan about whom I worry.” He’d never told Elena what had happened to the angel made of light, and she’d never asked, for that was a piece of private history for Aodhan to share.
But she understood enough to wrap her arms around him again and say, “Illium’s there. You know those two will be fine as long as they’re together.”
46
Jinhai was silent on the flight to join Suyin, though it was a silence awash in wonder. The snow had stopped falling, the landscape a pristine carpet of white under cool winter sunlight that turned Aodhan into a star on one side of the sling that held the boy, while Illium took the other.
Jinhai was interested in everything, looking around with wide eyes.
Illium saw in his curiosity a glimpse of who this young angel might’ve become had he not been molded into a monster. For Lijuan had never been less than intelligent—and the same intelligence burned in the eyes of her son.
Driven by the situation, they’d accelerated the closing up of the stronghold. Now, only a day after they’d found Jinhai, Li Wei and her team traveled in three all-terrain vehicles on the ground below and just far enough behind them that Illium and Aodhan could check for threats on the road.
A grumbling Smoke traveled with them.
Li Wei had chafed at the rush that meant things weren’t up to her standards, but she was also a senior member of staff for a reason. She’d prioritized the list of tasks, mobilized her people, used Illium while Aodhan kept watch on Jinhai, and got the job done so they could leave this morning at first light. It had to be this way—Suyin was the only one who could deal with the boy, both because she was an archangel, and because she was his kin.
He and Aodhan landed often, but each time, they did so at a distance from Li Wei’s team, while still keeping them in sight. The sightline to ensure the team was never out of Illium’s or Aodhan’s protective watch, the distance a precaution in case Jinhai’s mental powers were more virulent than they’d initially judged. He’d had a long time to work on his guards, so it was probable he needed continuous access to manipulate—but there was no point in taking chances.
As for the regular landings, it was to give the boy a chance to stretch his legs, as being carried in a sling for a long period could be difficult on the body. Jinhai appeared to appreciate the breaks and used them to explore what there was nearby, but he never made any move to escape, too excited for further flight.
“I know he orchestrated a massacre,” Illium said to Aodhan during one stop, while the boy examined a frozen bloom on the edge of the clearing, “but right now, all I see is a child.”
Aodhan, seated right beside him on a large rock from which they’d cleared the snow, opened his wings in a slide over Illium’s, closed them back in. “Mentally speaking,” he said, never taking his eyes off Jinhai, “he’s younger than his chronological age.”
Illium agreed. “My gut says he’s around eighty, but he acts more like a child of fifty.” In mortal terms, it’d be the difference between a ten-or eleven-year-old and a sixteen-or seventeen-year-old.
An enormous gap in maturity and experience.
Illium had been offered a gorge aerie at Jinhai’s age and had already begun to run drills with what eventually became his squadron. He hadn’t accepted the offer, aware his mother wasn’t yet at a point where she could let him go, but that the offer had been made had been a source of enormous pride for him.
“Did she keep him immature on purpose, you think?” he asked Aodhan. His friend had always had a better insight into why people did the things they did. It was what made him such an extraordinary artist. He saw inside people, to their dreams and hopes and secrets.
“I don’t have enough information to say for certain.” Aodhan pushed back his sleeves, his skin warm against Illium’s when he put his arm back down. “But it could just be a consequence of his life. A flower won’t grow if deprived of light. How could he grow? He was in a place designed to make him small, make him less.”
In the distance, Jinhai went to pick the frozen bloom, hesitated, left it where it was. Again, a sense of loss stabbed at Illium. He’d never forget what they’d discovered in the hamlet—hell, the images would haunt his nightmares—but he found himself unable to simply condemn this boy. It would be like condemning a dog that had been trained to bite.