“I’m afraid I committed the grave mistake of caring for my half sister. When she was murdered, I hunted down and killed the man responsible. For that, I was punished.”
“By having your wings torn off? Fucking hell.”
“I believe I said words to that effect at the time.”
Despite the horror that still swirled through me, I couldn’t help laughing. “I think you would have said a bit more than that.”
“You could be right.” Again, that delicious smile teased his lips. “In fact, I believe I got rather physical. Not that it did me a lot of good in the end.”
“So who …?” I didn’t finish the sentence, simply because I didn’t need to.
“The priests,” he said, “they’re the only ones who can.”
“But why didn’t they understand your reaction? It’s a normal response, after all.”
“For humans—or people like yourself—maybe. But Aedh cannot be judged by human standards, and the priests are the least human of us all. They are cold, clinical creatures who believe in duty, logic, and the power of clear, concise thought. According to them, emotion is an aberration that should not exist.”
I frowned. “But there are no priests left. They died out a long time ago.”
“If that were true, I would dance through the streets.”
“So there are Aedh priests left?” And if there were, how come Uncle Quinn didn’t know about them? He’d once trained to be a priest, after all.
“There are no working priests left, but there are Aedh still living today who undertook but never completed the training.”
Of which Uncle Quinn was one. I half wondered if he’d know Lucian, then shoved the thought away. It wasn’t important right now.
“So if the priests tore off your wings, that would mean you’re—” I hesitated, trying to do the calculations from what Uncle Quinn had told me about the time span of Aedh priests. All I got was old.
“It means I have seen many centuries on this earth.” He leaned forward again. The heat and scent of him washed over me once more—a siren song calling to the baser parts of my soul. “Does the thought of me being old enough to be your grandfather—many times removed—appall you?”
I grinned and let my gaze sweep the length of him. Or the bits that were visible, anyway. “When it comes in such an admirable package, most certainly not.”
He reached across the table and caught my right hand, turning it over in his. My skin looked pale against his, my hand small.
“When they took my wings, they robbed me of many things.”
He touched a finger to my palm and began to trace gentle circles. My heart slammed into my chest and desire crashed through me. It was all I could do to say, “Like what?”
“I can no longer fully become one with the breeze, nor will I ever be able to walk the worlds between this one and the next.”
“Why? Are wings the source of an Aedh’s power?”
He grimaced. “Not really. But the process that strips us of our wings also limits our skills.”
The skill of seduction obviously wasn’t one of them. His gaze rose to meet mine, and something within me stilled. It was the weirdest sensation, as if I were standing in the eye of a storm that no one could see and no one but me could feel. And it was so peaceful, so right, that it scared the hell out of me. Without even thinking about it, I tugged my hand free from his and picked up my glass with fingers that were still trembling. The cool wine did little to ease the tumult inside, or the sudden feeling that I’d been right before. This man was dangerous in ways I couldn’t even begin to understand.
“What skills were you left with?”
He shrugged like it didn’t matter, but I could feel the tension in
him, sense the lingering, ever-burning fury. He hadn’t forgiven them, but I guess that was understandable if he’d been left half the man—half the being—that he once was.
“It leaves me pieces of everything, but not the whole.” He smiled, and it was both beautiful and poignant. “I am trapped in this flesh—and this world—until my time is nigh or the world ends.”
“Well, it could have been worse,” I said teasingly. “You could have been trapped in ugly flesh.”
He laughed softly, and some of the fury in him seemed to ease. “There is that.”