Aodhan had turned up to all of Illium’s flying contests and races, and Illium had attended every showing of Aodhan’s art—where he’d once talked up a painting with such enthusiasm that it had ended up being bought by an angel of old who’d once shared a bottle of honey wine with Gadriel himself.
In the distance, the dot of blue halted, hovered.
What do you see? Aodhan asked.
Something we need to explore—but I don’t think we should do it in darkness.
Aodhan frowned. Phone flashlights?
You really were paying attention when I gave you phone lectures. Yes, that should work for a while.
I’ll finish the sweep on this side, then join you. There was no point in leaving things half-done when that might mean their mouse fled through the hole.
But he found nothing, and twenty minutes later, was hovering beside Illium, night on the horizon. There was just enough light to reveal the face of a short, squat pillar that looked a bit “off.” It took him a minute to work out why. “There’s no moss or other greenery growing in a pattern that looks like the outline of a door.”
“Good to know I’m not seeing things,” Illium murmured. “I think our hopes of a human psycho were premature and are about to be dashed.” He withdrew his sword from the sheath on his back, the sound a quiet slide.
Aodhan left his dual blades on his back, and they landed together in silence as night fell in a pitch-black curtain. Though he’d mentioned the phones, he wreathed his hand in light instead. That part of his ability had always been brighter than Illium’s for one simple reason—any light near Aodhan was multiplied many times over by his skin, his hair, even his eyes.
It was why he so often wore long sleeves even when around people who never made a mistake and forgot his aversion to touch. The coverage made him a little less like a streak of white fire in the sky. But today, he’d pushed up his sleeves as he landed, and so the light bounced off the skin of his arms to throw a glow around them.
“Way better than a phone flashlight.” Illium grinned before crouching down; the kitten, who’d climbed up to sit on his shoulder, stayed quiet. “Signs of recent movement.”
The dirt was rucked up, the small plants crushed.
“Could be an animal,” Illium added as he rose to his feet, “but I don’t think so, not with the door to nightmares right there.”
“I’ve always liked how you think positive.”
A snort of laughter that actually sounded real, sounded like Aodhan’s Illium. “Sparkle, there’s thinking positive, and then there’s suicidal mania. I have the sword, I go first.”
Aodhan rolled his eyes. “I have the light, you idiot.”
“Which is quite wide enough for me to stand in. You also can’t focus on that and still focus on attack or defense.”
Aodhan shrugged. “I can see over your head anyway. I’ll just shoot bolts of power at anything that comes.”
He could all but hear Illium’s narrowed eyes in his response. “You’re exactly one and a half inches taller than me. Don’t try to convince anyone otherwise.”
Oddly happy with their bickering—normal, so fucking normal—Aodhan didn’t argue any further as Illium stepped in front of him and they began to move toward the door that shouldn’t exist. His heart was quiet, his breathing calm. He’d moved into full combat mode, with no room for extraneous emotion.
It wasn’t how all soldiers worked, but it was how Aodhan worked.
Having reached the strange pattern in the rock, Illium pulled, pushed, and had no success whatsoever in opening it. “Well, phew, false alert.”
Aodhan blinked out his light . . . and there it was, the faintest glow emanating from the rock . . . in the shape of a rounded door.
“Fuck.” Illium followed up the harsh expletive with words far quieter—and far more potent. “Adi, you can’t go in there.”
Aodhan bristled against what sounded like an order. “I got over my fear of confined spaces a long time ago.”
Raphael had never pushed him, never made overcoming his phobia a condition of his position in the Seven. It was Aodhan who’d been desperate to shake off the chains left behind by his captors. He’d gone to Keir, and the healer had worked with him over a period of a decade to patch over that broken piece inside him.
“Don’t snarl at me,” Illium muttered, his face invisible in the pitch-black of the night. “I know you can do it. I also know you hate it beyond anything else in the entire world.”