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)
He tried to find words to say what he wanted to say.
But it was Illium who did. “You have the experience to know that while she did things to Andi that have caused the gulf between them, she was also a child once, a child raised in the grip of evil.”
“It makes me wonder how many wounded ones walk the earth,” Aodhan said, the knowledge a quiet sorrow within. “And it makes me realize how lucky I am.” His nose brushing Illium’s. “I was never alone in the fight, not even in that box they put me in.”
Illium stopped breathing. “Adi,” he murmured, cupping the side of his neck with one hand, his lover’s tendons strong against his touch. “You don’t have to talk about that.”
“I know.” Aodhan pulled back only enough that they could look each other in the eye. “But proving that I can is important to me. I’d like to show you something after we talk to Jessamy.”
As it was, Galen was the one who answered their call. “She’s sleeping,” the weapons-master said in a gruff tone. “Was working on an ancient script till all hours for days. Finally went down today.” Scowling, he shoved a hand through the deep, pure red of his hair. “I used to think scholars were soft and gentle creatures.” A snort. “No one warned me about their refusal to back down when on the quest for knowledge.”
After leaving a message with him, they decided to go over everything they had so far, to ensure they hadn’t missed a critical clue and to make a plan for their next move. They were just finishing up when Jessamy returned their call. Her chestnut hair in a loose braid, and her face marked by sleep lines, she held a large mug of something that was emitting curls of steam.
The mug was misshapen, no doubt created by a student.
“Galen said you called.” Her voice, husky from her recent sleep, put Aodhan in mind of a hundred childhood pranks, a thousand happy moments of her holding his hand as she walked him to the playground or just crouched down to talk to him, those kind brown eyes a gentle horizon. The same eyes had watched over him in the Medica.
She’d brought him his favorite sweets from childhood, and a book of stories of wild imagination. Stories to give him escape. It hadn’t worked, not then. But he’d read the book in the darkest part of night three decades later, found peace for a few hours at least.
“You didn’t have to call straight after you woke.” Illium threw up his hands. “Galen will have our heads.”
A grunt sounded off-screen. “You’re safe. It’s all her doing.”
A soft smile on Jessamy’s face, she murmured something to Galen in a language Aodhan couldn’t understand. When he glanced at Illium, Illium shook his head. But it was clear Galen knew exactly what she was saying, because he growled back an answer in the same language.
“Hey, no secret love messages in front of the children,” Illium protested.
Jessamy’s smile made her eyes crinkle. “What did you want to ask me, small sparkles and small blue wings?”
Aodhan laughed. If anyone had earned the right to tease them thus, it was the teacher they’d tormented with their rambunctiousness. “We’re trying to trace an angel once called Bijou.”
Jessamy sipped her drink as he repeated Lailah’s description of the angel, her eyebrows drawing together to create a pointed vee. “She’s not using that name now, and her hair is an ice-white, her eyes sharp green, but I’m certain it’s the same person.”
A small nod to herself. “She likes altering herself in whatever way is available in that time period. She once told me she would do the surgery that mortals do to change their faces if angelic healing wouldn’t override the changes within two or so years.”
“Two years,” Aodhan murmured. “Lailah did say she was old but not powerful.”
“You spoke to Lailah?” Jessamy’s gaze was suddenly opaque, her fingers tightening around the mug. “How are she and Cato?”
“Both seem to be doing well. They’re focusing on the animals that live around them. Lailah asked me not to mention her to Andi.”
“I won’t, either,” Jessamy said at once, with no attempt to hide her protectiveness where Andi was concerned. “The decision to reach out or not must be Andromeda’s and hers alone. As for your Bijou, if it’s the angel I’m thinking of, her current name is Vixen.”
“Vixen?” Illium rolled his eyes. “She has a high opinion of herself.”
“I don’t know her well, but I think part of her problem is that she doesn’t have that high opinion,” Jessamy countered. “About four centuries ago, her long-term vampiric partner left her rather cruelly. He’d found a younger lover—an angel of barely a hundred and three. An adult by angelic law, but the tryst made distasteful by the difference in their ages. He was well over two thousand by then.”