“In a heartbeat.” His throat tightened. Because it had never been about Raphael, for the archangel had never held Illium’s mistake against him. He was also open in his pride of the man Illium had become.
No, the forgiveness had to be Illium’s own.
Smoke meowed and butted her furry head against a hand that had gone still. Laughing, he scratched her a little more. “Yeah, I think that lovestruck kid can let go of the shame. He’s more than made up for it in the life he’s lived since then.” He stroked Smoke over her back, and thought again of his lack of a passionate response to Kai.
As part of that, he probed at the bruise of Kaia’s loss, a thing he hadn’t done for some time . . . and found that it was no longer tender.
When had that happened?
Staring into the flames, he realized he couldn’t pinpoint the instant. He just knew that the pendant had become less about Kaia and more about habit at some unknown point in time. In recent years, his main focus had been on his work as one of the Seven . . . and on watching Aodhan return to himself.
The memory of Aodhan’s startled smile after Illium altered the tenor of their relationship, it made his gut tighten and his heart squeeze. He touched mental fingers to the image of his Adi’s smile, and thought of the kiss that had melted him to the bone. Part of him was furious that he hadn’t taken it further, cemented their new relationship.
But of course, it wasn’t about the physical. Not between them. Not when it came to the heart of it. Their bond was a thing intimate and layered, the pleasure to be found in tangling limbs and wings just one aspect of the whole. Even as he flushed at the idea of touching Aodhan in such a way, being touched by him, his hunger a painful ache, he tried not to worry about the distance between them.
Tried not to listen to the gnawing whisper at the back of his brain that said now that Aodhan was far from him, he might look back and decide their renewed friendship and nascent brush with intimacy had been a thing of circumstance, that he didn’t actually want to reconcile after all, much less go further.
“Stop being a drama queen, Bluebell.” His mutter made Smoke complain, and he petted her back into a doze in an effort to calm himself, her fur soft under his touch, and her body delicate despite her newfound health.
It didn’t work, a quiet panic taking root at the back of his brain.
Swallowing hard, he slipped Kaia’s pendant back into a pocket.
* * *
*
It was as if Kai was everywhere he turned in the days that followed—or perhaps that was simply his mind zeroing in on her as he came to terms with the cataclysmic change in his perception of himself. No longer the mourning lover was he, but rather a man who saw that first love as exactly that: a soft, lovely thing to be cherished as a memory of youth.
The man he was today? That man understood Catalina’s comment about dents and bruises. That man was marked by a love far more profound, a love that had built over centuries of loyalty and friendship, sorrow and laughter, anger and devotion, a love that defined him—and it was a thing quite apart from Kaia, bold and impatient and dazzling to his young heart, or her pretty, sweet descendant.
“You’ll break more than one heart when you go,” Arzaleya said to him one day, as the two of them stood with drinks in hand at the end of a long and exhausting day— while an inquisitive Smoke poked around nearby. “I’m hearing that you’ve turned down all offers.”
“Who even has the energy for that after the days we’re putting in?” Illium kept his tone light, in no mood to share his constant state of stress where Aodhan was concerned. It didn’t matter that his best friend had stayed in frequent touch, Illium couldn’t shut up that stupid panicked voice in the back of his brain.
He didn’t even understand what was driving the asshole thing.
Arzaleya’s low and earthy laughter broke into his cycling thoughts. “Isn’t that the truth? I, for one, have no desire to tangle wings with anyone.” Rubbing the back of her neck, she said, “I respected Aodhan always, but I’m now in awe of him.”
She resettled her wings, the fading sunset picking out the ruby and scarlet tones of the filaments that made up her feathers. “To step into the role he did, at the time he did, with China in the state it was . . .” She blew out a breath. “I don’t know how he did it. It’s just dawning on me, the task I’ve taken on—and that’s after Aodhan did all the groundwork.”
This was a conversation for which Illium had plenty of time.