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)
Already, Aodhan could see others readying themselves to do the same, all of them wanting to impart what they knew and willing to brave their fear of powerful angels to do so, because this, what had happened here, was wrong.
Illium moved to meet the first woman, graceful and strong and with a heart that refused to stop loving even when it hurt him.
11
Illium hadn’t minded talking to the shopkeepers who’d been determined to share what little they had out of their respect and liking for both Giulia and Marco, but he exhaled as they landed in front of a small apartment building only a fifteen-minute walk from the shop. “The idea of facing a mother who’s lost her child…” His entire self throbbed as if bruised from the inside.
Aodhan squeezed his shoulder. “Unless she finds it difficult to talk to me, I can do most of the talking here.”
“You sure?”
Aodhan nodded. “Your heart is too soft, Blue. I’ve grown a carapace.”
The words wounded Illium—because Aodhan had been the more softhearted of them growing up, the gentle boy with an artist’s soul. It would’ve been easy to mourn who his friend had been—but that wouldn’t only be an insult to all that Aodhan had become, it would mean that Illium didn’t adore this version of his childhood friend.
They were all pieces of Aodhan.
Today, he just accepted Adi’s offer, and they walked into the building one after the other. Per the details Navarro had shared with Dmitri, Giulia Corvino had moved from her eleventh-floor apartment to a ground-floor residence in this building six weeks before the war.
Her home was just to the left off the main entrance.
When she opened the door, it was with no surprise in her expression, her features drawn. “Gino called me,” she said in greeting, her simple dress as dark as her pain, the cardigan she wore over it so oversize that it could’ve fit Illium. “I’ve made coffee.”
A sudden frown, a glimpse of her mobile features when she wasn’t being suffocated by the weighted blanket of grief. “Oh dear, I’m not sure your wings will fit through this door.”
“It’s doable,” Aodhan said. “Awkward, but doable.”
Moving back from the door, Giulia did them the courtesy of going into her living room instead of watching them enter. Because it was more than awkward, and required the cautious bending of their wings. Bending that could lead to a break if they weren’t careful.
Aodhan went first.
Entry into the living area is much easier, he told Illium from up ahead, as Illium navigated the door. It’s through an arch.
Such arches had gone out of fashion in mortal homes a few decades ago, but they were far more angel-friendly than doors. However, given that the majority of mortals never interacted with angelkind on that level, they didn’t build for wings.
Finally inside, he shook out his wings to ease up the cramping, then shut the door behind himself before walking into the living area. To find himself facing a sideboard on which were arranged multiple frames featuring photos of the same boy.
A chubby toddler gripping the edge of a sofa.
A smiling boy of four or five with his hands on the straps of a daypack, his face painted like a lion’s.
Taller now, sitting in between a younger Giulia and a bearded man who had the boy’s face with more maturity to it.
Photos of what looked like a beach vacation, Marco and his father running into the surf, followed by one of the boy holding a sports trophy, then in a graduation gown beside a beaming Giulia, other celebrating graduates in the background. Still later, an image of the boy become a man—long face, handsome bone structure, thick black hair, eyes the hue of bitter chocolate. He was flashing his fangs in a wicked grin, his hands clawed in an imitation of a vampire out of a mortal horror movie.
“He was always smiling.” Giulia straightened a frame that didn’t need to be straightened. “I told him the fang photo was silly when he gave it to me, but oh, it made me laugh. He hugged me until I admitted how much I loved it.”
Her lips trembled in a shaky smile as she ran her fingers over the glass of the frame. “I know some parents don’t like their kids becoming vampires, but all I could think was that our child would live forever now. His father died so young, and I was always scared I’d lose Marco, too. Then he became a vampire. Safe, I thought.”
“He should have been,” Aodhan said bluntly. “For centuries, even millennia.”
Giulia blinked rapidly before rubbing her eyes with the crumpled tissue in her hand. She, at least, had no trouble facing or talking to Aodhan. It helped that he was inside, with no sunlight on him—but Illium thought it was mostly because Giulia’s grief and anger had numbed her to any other emotion.