Archangel's Heart (Guild Hunter 9)

“Yes. It would burn even an immortal to the bone—only the fact he was so distant and descending rapidly saved him, I think.”

They walked in silence for several minutes, and a number of times, as they entered covered external walkways, Elena felt the pummeling force of the wind, saw lightning stabbing at Lumia, the clouds above thunderous black. Nothing would be flying in that until it was all over. “Good thing Lumia’s built to last.”

“This lightning is scoring the stone nonetheless.” Aodhan pointed out the signs of charring she’d missed in the erratic flashes of light. “If the storm doesn’t abate within a day, it may threaten the integrity of even this place that has stood for millennia.”

Because the Cascade made its own rules.

Her eyes took in the purple-hued sky split with lightning. “You know what that would mean.” Raphael and the other archangels would have to fly out, drawing the lightning with them—and risk being smashed to the earth by the bolts.

“It won’t kill him,” Aodhan reminded her softly.

Elena’s hand fisted. “But it’ll hurt him badly.” Forcing herself to flex her hand after they passed back into an internal hallway, she blinked away the after-images of lightning on the backs of her eyes. “Let’s not borrow trouble, focus on the now.” Thinking of Raphael heading out into the malevolence of that unnatural storm made her stomach churn, a cold hand choking her throat.

“I think Laric is hiding here,” Aodhan said after nearly a minute, the words heavy. “As I hid in my home in the Refuge. At least I was protected in a sense by my appearance. It is unusual, but also coveted by many.” A long pause before he continued. “Immortals do not have to face physical ugliness in anything but a fleeting manner—many were not kind to him. Especially the girl he was courting at the time of the fire.”

Elena thought of her own comments about immortals winning the genetic lottery, her mind awash with the searing beauty of the angels and vampires she knew. And she thought of Jessamy, so gifted and kind, but with a twisted wing that defined her in the minds of many immortals.

Her heart squeezed. “He’s been here the whole time?”

“From about a decade after the incident,” Aodhan told her. “He says this place had a kind heart once, that the Luminata in charge had true luminescence in his soul, and he offered Laric sanctuary with no end date attached.

“Not only that, Laric says the Luminata sat with him for many hours, offered him wise counsel, urged him to return to his studies at the Medica, and spoke to him in the silent tongue.” Aodhan moved his hands to show what he meant. “But that man has long been Asleep. I think he is afraid, Elena, afraid that the heart of Lumia is gone and he will be shoved out into the world again.”

Elena thought of how Laric kept his shoulders hunched in, his face angled in a way that kept light from illuminating his scarred face. “How old is your new friend, Aodhan?” From everything Aodhan had said, she didn’t think Laric was very old. “Or I should ask—how old was he when he came here for sanctuary?” Because he’d stayed in stasis since then, no matter the physical passage of time.

“A hundred and twenty.”

Elena sucked in her gut. “He was a baby.” So close in age to Izzy that the difference didn’t matter a damn.

Aodhan nodded. “He was far too young to request entry into Lumia, but the then leader of the sect made an exception for him—the sole exception ever made—because he came not to be a novice but as a terribly wounded being who needed refuge.” Aodhan’s voice was no less potent in its emotion for being quiet. “The Lumia of today, however . . . I don’t want to leave him here, Ellie. It’s not a good place.”

“We’ll figure something out.” If Laric wanted to leave with them, no one was going to stand in his way, Elena would make sure of it. “Is that his tower?” It was at one far corner of Lumia, a light burning in the window high above.

The covered but open corridor that led to it howled with wind, lightning slamming into the stone directly above their heads and gusts of rain pelting their faces and bodies as they ran to the tower. Aodhan took the windward side, his wing raised to block out the worst of it.

“Thanks,” she said, her heart thumping as they reached the end.

Folding back his wing, he gave her one of those rare smiles that lit him up. “I ran with a girl like this once,” he said, a wonder in his tone that said the incident had been long buried under far darker memories. “I wasn’t even eighty yet. She let me kiss her afterward, called me her hero.”

Even in the storm-lit darkness and with the ugliness of what had happened to Ibrahim fresh in her mind, the story held a stunning sweetness that had Elena’s cheeks creasing. “Your first kiss?” He’d have been a young teen in human terms, if she was doing her calculations right.

A slow nod that made the fine droplets of rain on his hair waterfall with translucent light, his smile growing. “I strutted for months afterward.” He pulled open a side door to the tower that was old but appeared in good working order.

Elena entered to find they were on a lower floor that was basically just stone with a staircase in the center. Aodhan told her to go on up to the first floor. “I must follow, Ellie,” he said, once more her grim-eyed escort. “The danger is more apt to come from the outside rather than the inside.”

Moving without delay, Elena went up, her gun in hand. The staircase opened out into a small library that had books on three walls, a fireplace set into the fourth, with two antique armchairs suitable for angelic wings placed in front of the small fire Laric must’ve left going. The carpet on the floor was as ancient, this place frozen in time but for the books she could see stacked here and there.