Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 121854 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121854 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 487(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
“We snuck into Aegaeon’s territory and put statues of butts facing his palace,” he whispered.
Her eyes widened before she caught his twitching lips and threatened him with an invisible slipper. “I swear, you’re getting worse the older you get.” Her own lips twitching now, she turned to Aodhan. “I used to think you’d be a good influence, but then I realized you’d happily do things like make butt statues for him.”
Aodhan’s laugh was a huge thing as full of light as his voice. “I love you, Eh-ma,” he said before enfolding her in his arms and wings.
Illium didn’t hear what his mother said in response, but whatever it was made Aodhan’s cheeks crease again before he released Sharine. “We haven’t been doing mischief,” he said before holding out his wrist with its amber bracelet.
Sharine’s hands flew to her mouth as she looked from Aodhan’s wrist to the hand Illium flexed next to it. “Oh, oh.” Her eyes filled, her tears welling over as she took both their hands and just looked.
“I always knew your hearts were bound together,” she said later, after she’d dragged them to the privacy of the sitting area in her and Titus’s suite. “That your friendship would never break, no matter if you quarreled.” She ran her hand over Illium’s cheek. “But to see it come to this…my joy is infinite.”
For a moment, as she looked at him before turning to Aodhan, Illium saw endless rivers of time in her eyes, pain upon pain, happiness upon happiness. She was changing, becoming, but Sharine, the Hummingbird, already carried lifetimes within her.
“I am so grateful to be your son,” he found himself saying even as Aodhan drew her into a side hug, more comfortable with her than he still was with most people. “Your love taught me the meaning of love.”
Her lower lip quivered.
“Blue has the pretty words, Eh-ma, but he says what’s in my heart, too.” Aodhan’s voice was rough. “You helped me grow into the man I’ve become in a way so significant that I’ll never be able to tell you the entirety of it.” A kiss pressed to her temple. “Thank you for being you and for fighting to hold on to me when I wanted to forget myself.”
Sharine cried again, all the while scolding them both for making her lose control even as she hugged and kissed them at the same time. “You must stay,” she said when she could speak. “We will celebrate like the mortals do when they wed each other. It’s not the done thing in angelkind, but Titus says I have a rebellious streak.”
“Where do you think he inherited it from?” Aodhan said, pointing at Illium.
The dry words made Sharine laugh and Illium grin, and of course they stayed—and two nights hence, after Aodhan’s parents and sister and her family accepted the invitation to join them, Sharine and Titus celebrated Illium and Aodhan in a small inner courtyard awash in flowers and lights and overflowing with food.
It was a small and intimate gathering of family, but that made it no less raucous. Especially when two of Titus’s sisters joined them…to be followed by Naasir and Andromeda, then Raphael and Elena.
36
Illium lifted Elena off her feet with the strength of his hug. “How are you here?!”
“Lady Sharine called, and of course we were going to be here. Everyone wanted to come, but we couldn’t abandon the territory en masse. So you’ll have to hold a second celebration in New York.”
As for Naasir and Andromeda, it turned out the couple had been close by.
“We went to see my parents,” Andi said to him during a lull, while they were seated together sharing a plate of small foods. “I don’t know quite how to be with them, but seeing this…” She indicated the smiling faces, the lights, the happiness. “I want to one day be in a place like this with them. Not physically, but of the heart. It might take centuries if we ever even get there, but they’re not who they once were, so maybe…”
Illium took her hand, squeezed. “I’ve seen it from both sides—my father went to Sleep an asshole, woke up an asshole. But my mother…she was fractured, lost, and look at her now.”
Sharine glowed as she danced with Aodhan—who was teasing her in that quiet, dry way of his. Illium could tell from the look on his mother’s face, the way she kept pursing her lips to fight the losing battle to laugh.
If he hadn’t already been madly in love with Aodhan, he’d have fallen then and there. He’d tackle his lover tonight, smother him in kisses and caresses and possibly a few bites. Because the man was bitable.
“Lady Sharine gives me hope,” Andromeda whispered. “I feel as if Lailah and Cato were lost in a dream, too, and they’ve woken up at last. So…we shall see.” Wariness and hope entwined.