On an errand for Raphael, he’d landed late into the night and had snuck into the closed kitchen desperate for a snack. Two minutes after he entered, Li Wei had busted him poking through her cupboards, delivered a sharp reprimand, then made him the best sandwich of his life—with a side of a cold potato-spice soup for which she’d refused to share the recipe no matter how much he begged.
The woman was so good a cook that she could pick and choose her employment.
It surprised him that she’d chosen to come to this place so unstable when he’d always seen her as efficient and warmhearted, but also stodgy in terms of her preferences.
“Hungry, are you?” she said now, and passed across a roll she’d filled with layers of delicately flavored meat, caramelized onions, and more deliciousness. “Eat, skinny boy.”
Illium liked her a whole lot. She’d lived long enough that she had no time for anyone’s bullshit. Next to her, Kai—despite her innate confidence—was a fragile bloom barely budded, to be treated with care. He spoke to her as he ate, learned that her entire family had survived the fog.
“Our village was in a valley where the fog didn’t seem to be able to reach,” she said. “It hovered above us like a horrible cloud, but it never dropped.”
“Hell, that must’ve been terrifying.” Illium couldn’t imagine the kind of fear her family and the others with them must’ve experienced.
But Kai shook her head. “We didn’t know, you see. What the fog was doing. We thought it was a bad storm—so bad that it had cut off all communication with the outside world. It was only after that we . . .”
She took a shuddering breath. “Later, when the archangel flew away with her army, she didn’t call us up. We think perhaps she didn’t know us because the fog didn’t touch us.”
It was an excellent theory, the fog an extension of Lijuan’s power.
“More?” Li Wei asked after he was done, and had chased it all down with a tall glass of water.
“No.” He grinned and bowed over her hand. “I thank you for the sustenance, my beauteous Li Wei.”
“Ha! Off you go, you scamp.”
He left with a light salute for her, and a soft smile aimed Kai’s way. While he was assisting with the sentries so they could take more breaks, he had no official assigned area. He decided to use that freedom to check on Aodhan, having not seen his friend for the past hour.
This place . . .
He shivered, just not liking the feel of it. Especially now that they had a survivor who’d come out of nowhere and who spoke about Lijuan walking the earth.
* * *
*
Aodhan stood underneath a sky smudged a charcoal gray that said night hadn’t yet released its grasp on the world. Having flown to the highest point in the area—the forested tip of one of Zhangjiajie’s unearthly pillars—Aodhan waited for the light, his intent to search for any signs of unusual movement or activity.
Lijuan’s monstrous creatures weren’t the smartest when they were hungry or injured.
“Why are you lurking in the dark like a bloodborn vampire out of one of your horror movies?”
Aodhan didn’t startle; he’d heard the snap of Illium’s wings as he landed behind him, felt the wind it generated. “Since when do you know anything about horror movies?” he said, light bursting inside him in tiny bubbles at the fact Illium had hunted him down.
“I know many things, young grasshopper.” The other man came to stand beside him. “Oh, I see. This is the best vantage point in the area. You’re waiting for the dawn?”
Aodhan nodded, his throat dry without warning and his face hot. It happened like this sometimes, a sudden flashback to the endless darkness that had been his world once upon a time.
He’d learned to live in the night again, learned to accept that the sun and the moon couldn’t always be his companions—but right then, he came to understand that part of why he so loved New York was that Raphael’s city was never truly dark.
A brush of a wing across his own.
His heart twisted, clenched, clung. He said nothing. Nothing needed to be said. Illium knew his nightmares, had seen him at his most broken, when his wings had been nothing but tendons held together by rotted webbing, and his spirit a thing splintered. Illium understood the horrors the dark held for Aodhan, understood that as long as the night existed, Aodhan could never truly forget.
He didn’t know how long they stood there in a silence that wasn’t comfortable or uncomfortable. It was . . . It had no words. No description. It was a thing formed out of time and friendship and loyalty.