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)
How do you bear it, Blue? he asked, not for the first time. These mortal lives are so fragile.
Illium’s eyes met his, a tender empathy in the gold. The day I distance myself from mortals is the day I lose a piece of that thing mortals call a soul. I don’t want to live in a walled city, my heart protected from bruises…and from the wonder of knowing extraordinary people who exist only for a single moment in time.
Love overwhelmed Aodhan in a storm surge.
Illium’s courage and grit were legendary, but this? This was an altogether different kind of valor.
He curled his fingers around Giulia’s, careful of his strength…and suddenly aware that touching her had caused no subconscious recoil inside him, no flinch. He didn’t know if it was because he was healing on a level deeper than he understood, or if it was because of Giulia. Her love for her son, her refusal to just accept his death, her willingness to go to Marco’s dangerously powerful angel himself for answers—they all showcased a spirit as extraordinary as Illium’s.
“I won’t rest until I find out who did this to your son and his beloved,” he promised her. “It doesn’t matter how long it takes—I’m immortal. I will find an answer for you.”
“I believe you,” Giulia whispered. “And I’m glad Marco and his Tani have you in their corner.”
“May we take these boxes with us? It’ll be easier to examine them in a larger space. We’ll bring it all back, I give you my word.”
“Yes. But if you find anything that obsessed murderess gave him that he kept for some reason, then get rid of it after you use it to find her. I don’t want it polluting the rest of Marco’s belongings.”
Aodhan inclined his head in a small nod before releasing her hand.
Given the space constraints in the apartment, he and Illium decided it’d be too difficult for them to maneuver both their wings and the boxes out at the same time, so they told Giulia they were calling friends to assist, then stepped outside her apartment to wait close to the main doors. She came with them…and squinted as the weak sunlight that poured through the doors hit Aodhan, transforming him into dazzling white fire.
Before he could apologize, she gave him a smile incandescent in its joy. “Marco’d be so proud of me right now,” she said. “Standing here with the angel who always flies so high that mortals hardly get a glimpse of him. Hold on while I go get a pair of sunglasses.”
Aodhan looked after her as she vanished back into the apartment. “She is extraordinary.”
Illium, who stood across from him, the open doorway between them, smiled. “I think, Adi, you’re about to make another mortal friend.”
The thought was terrifying for all the pain it would one day entail…but no less beautiful for it.
12
“That’s better.” Giulia walked out wearing black sunglasses and with a plate in hand. “Here, I wasn’t thinking before. I hand-make these savory pastries. Marco’s favorites even after he became a vampire. He’d eat one half a day because that was all his system could handle so soon after his Making, but he’d finish them.
“Now I have too many when I bake but I can’t stop. Eat, eat.” A frown at Illium that was pure maternal disapproval. “Especially you. You never used to be that skinny.”
So they stood there and ate several of the little pastries heavy with mozzarella and finely sliced meat and other things that all added up to delicious. When Janvier and Ransom walked inside after pulling up on their motorbikes from two different sides of the city, the vampire and the guild hunter cleared off the plate.
“I wish I could process more,” Janvier groaned after he’d finished his second one. “Merde, but no one ever told me how much I’d miss eating when I became a vampire.” His Cajun accent was thicker than it had been prior to his recent visit to his family in Louisiana, the moss green of his eyes languid, and his brown leather jacket soft with how long he’d had it.
Illium had met his family, the vampire having invited him along to more than one fais do-do over the time they’d known one another. Descendants of Janvier’s adored little sisters, that family was a rowdy bunch that absorbed people into it with a warmth that was disarming. Illium had ended up full of Cajun moonshine, good food, and plenty of numbers slipped into his pocket.
Shy, Janvier’s family wasn’t, he thought with an inward grin.
“Marco felt the same.” Giulia’s smile was real and all the more poignant for the agony written in the swollen grittiness of her eyes. “He had a little book where he’d write out all his favorite things to eat, and then he’d schedule them. Said he had no time for bad food. Only the best. These were in permanent rotation.” The last words were a near-whisper.