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)
Overtly sensual, with invitation in hauntingly lovely eyes of a near-translucent brown intermingled with gold, she’d oddly not repelled him—because Lailah looked that way at everyone. Aodhan had been no different. She’d have coupled with him if he’d shown an interest, but she’d had no particular desire to seduce or entrap him.
If anything, he’d felt sorry for her.
“I always had the feeling that Lailah didn’t care,” Aodhan said, his eyes on the ceiling of the suite and his mind on the last memory he had of Andromeda’s mother; it was from at least a century ago, when she’d visited the Refuge. “For all her dissolute ways, it seemed to me that she felt nothing. That she was just going through the motions.”
Illium lifted himself up on one arm—careful not to disturb Smoke—to look down at Aodhan. “When did you meet her?”
“The odd passing conversation in the Refuge during the time I was based there.” He spread his hand on the heat of Illium’s back. “She and Andi’s father, Cato, used to run Charisemnon’s Refuge stronghold for short periods and I dealt with them as part of my duties.”
Eyes of aged gold grew darker. “Have you ever noticed the pattern of Andi’s wings when open?”
Frowning, Aodhan thought back. “A dark brown with delicate gradations to a pale sunlight shade. I never really thought about it, but they’re not similar to Cato’s or Lailah’s. But Charisemnon had brown in his wings.”
Illium nodded. “That’s what I always thought—that she got his genes on the wing coloring. Only I saw Dahariel training with her when she first came to the Refuge. That remote training area on the western edge.”
“Ah.” Aodhan saw it now, what Illium’s quick mind had done at once; in flight, Dahariel’s and Andromeda’s wings would be all but identical. “Dahariel doesn’t do favors for baby angels.” The ruthless angel was an excellent warrior, but he had a vein of cruelty in him that meant Aodhan had always kept his distance.
“I’ve never mentioned it to anyone else,” Illium said. “None of my business.”
“I won’t, either,” Aodhan promised. “Our poor Andi didn’t have the best of luck, did she? In either the man she calls her father, or the one who may be her blood father?”
“I don’t know too much about either Cato or Lailah.”
“Cato is…faded, that’s the best word I can find to describe him, and it has nothing to do with the pale blue of his eyes, or the soft blond of his hair, even the mist gray of his wings. His presence simply doesn’t leave a mark. Lailah is different.”
Aodhan thought back to the single conversation he’d had with the other angel that had nothing to do with his duties as one of the Seven. “She looks like Andi and yet she doesn’t—that’s why I never quite link them together. Andi is…vibrant, alive, fascinated by the world.” Not only was Naasir’s mate a scholar intrigued by everything around her, she also had an inner wildness and a sense of unjaded wonder.
“I once ran across Lailah seated in a small grove near where Eh-ma used to live.” He had a vague memory of helping his mentor plant small bushes there, his hands flecked with dirt and his heart happy. “The morning fog was thick, and I was simply walking and there she was.”
A lovely creature seated on a stone bench, her curls sleek and glossy where they fell down her back after being pulled partially back by a diamond comb, and her airy gown a misty green that reached her ankles. Her wings—a rich cream with primaries of gold—had flowed with as much grace, while an emerald as deep a green as the forests of Tanzania sat between her breasts, aglow against the dark honey of her skin.
“My apologies, Lady Lailah,” he’d said. “I did not mean to disturb your contemplation.”
Lailah had looked at him with those eyes that had become even lovelier in her daughter, and said, “No, Aodhan, I am sorry for all the people that look at you like you are an object to contain and hold. They don’t understand that the best gifts are given, not taken.”
Then she’d glanced away, her gaze turning inward.
Today, he repeated to Illium the words Lailah had spoken in the haunting quiet of that morning. “It was so strange because we’d never had a conversation about anything but minor territorial matters until that day. I always thought of her as a touch vacant even if she was strong in terms of angelic power. But after that morning, I began to wonder what it was to grow up as Charisemnon’s child.”
Illium’s gaze turned distant. “Sometimes, I wonder who I would’ve been if I’d grown up as Aegaeon’s son. It gives me nightmares.” Quiet words; not a joke.
Aodhan reached up to squeeze Illium’s nape. “You didn’t,” he said. “You grew up as Sharine’s cherished son, as your adored Rafa’s little shadow, and as my best friend.”