Archangel's Heart (Guild Hunter 9)

“No,” Ibrahim replied. “His eyes show angelfire burning him up from within.” Ibrahim’s entire body seemed to sag. “The artist is one of the brotherhood. He was once a healer, but now he chooses seclusion and art. But this is the only scene he ever paints. Over and over.”

“Was he a friend of Nadiel’s?” Because Elena was certain beyond any doubt that she was looking at an image of Raphael’s father in the moments before his death.

“He has never said.” Ibrahim tucked his hands into the sleeves of his robe. “The older Luminata tell me that he came to us in silence and in silence he has remained forevermore.” Pausing, the blue-eyed male seemed to be about to say something further, but then simply shook his head.

Lifting her fingers, Elena traced the lines of Nadiel’s face. It was eerie, the resemblance . . . but even if the hair and eyes were changed, she would never mistake one for the other. There was something in Raphael that was missing in this man, and there was something in Nadiel that she’d never seen in Raphael.

A brokenness. A subtle madness that was visible even in the final throes of his life.

Magnificent but broken, that was Raphael’s father. And this painting captured his death, when his beloved consort had been forced to execute him lest he drench the world blood red in his insanity. “He never speaks?” she said to Ibrahim. “The brother who painted this?”

“Never with his voice. I was more curious than I should’ve been,” Ibrahim added, “and I looked up his record in the Repository. He once bore the name ‘Laric,’ but my brothers have come to call him Stillness.”

Poetic and sad.

And an erasure.

Elena knew one other person who’d given up her name—Sorrow had chosen that name in despair over the changes ravaging her body, so it hadn’t exactly been a free choice, but it had been her choice. It didn’t appear as if this healer artist had made any choice at all. “Where does Laric live in his seclusion?”

“The north tower.” Ibrahim nodded in that direction. “I do not mean to say he never emerges. He does. It is simply that he rarely interacts with us, and so he carries his seclusion with him.”

Aodhan’s wings flickered, a surprising movement from an angel who knew how to be still, until you could almost forget him despite his shattering otherness. “I would meet him.”

Ibrahim looked at Aodhan for a long moment. “You, too, were silent for a long time,” he said unexpectedly before inclining his head. “He seems to exit for sunset most often.” A pause. “I walk with him at times. I do not know if I intrude on his seclusion, but he has never given any indication that he wished for me to leave.” A hesitant but very real concern in his tone for this brother who lived in aloneness.

“Thank you.” Aodhan’s voice.

Forcing herself to walk away from the disturbing but compelling painting of Nadiel, she said, “Do you know when Laric first came here?”

“It was not in the records that I saw.” Ibrahim shrugged, then winced. It was followed by a sigh. “I am new to the brotherhood. Only on the first step to my path for luminescence.” A lopsided smile that was infectious. “You will not report my behavior?”

The more time she spent with this man, the more she liked him. And the more she worried that he was a hapless lamb among wolves. “Your secret’s safe with us. Right, Aodhan?”

“We are vaults.”

An actual grin before Ibrahim seemed to remember himself and suddenly was all contemplative quiet again.

“Who did the work on the Gallery?” Elena asked out of curiosity. “I mean, the Luminata are meant to be a closed sect and, no offense, but I can’t see your brothers learning construction skills.”

Ibrahim winced again. “I think I am not meant to talk of such.”

“Let me guess—the rules get bent now and then?”

A subtle nod. “As you say, there are certain things we need that we cannot provide for ourselves. And those of the angelic squadron that patrols our borders also have need of supplies, so Lumia has certain ties with the closest town.”

“What about shelter for the squadron and their lovers or families?” She hadn’t seen any soldiers in Lumia.

“None who have families are asked to serve here,” Ibrahim replied. “Those who do live in barracks located by the eastern wall, and during their rotation in Lumia, they maintain their chastity.” Flushing almost immediately on the heels of those surprising words, Ibrahim said, “I talk too much. Gian is in despair that I will ever achieve anything close to luminescence.”

“According to the angels I know,” Elena said, “even a hundred years of doing something barely makes you competent at it, so you’ve got a few thousand years at least to figure out luminescence.”

Ibrahim’s face creased into a smile at her dry tone. “Yes, this is so. But here, surrounded by so much peace, I wish to hasten my journey.”

“Have you ever considered that you might not want to be Luminata?” As far as Elena was concerned, he was too good for this place.

“Of course,” Ibrahim said at once. “That is part of the path—all of us who wish to become Luminata are given a century to make our decision. It is the rarest initiate who ever chooses to leave.” A tranquility to him that, all at once, made Elena believe this man would achieve the luminescence he sought. “A thousand two hundred years of adventure, excess, wealth . . . nothing in that life spoke to me as do the ancient teachings on which Lumia is built.”