Archangel's Heart(115)

“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.

“Where does he get his books?” Somehow, Elena didn’t think Laric would’ve caught on to the Internet and mail order.

“There are some Luminata who are still kind to him. Donael is one, Ibrahim another,” Aodhan added. “They make sure he has books.”

“Glad to hear they’re not all bastards.” Reaching out with her mind, she touched Raphael’s. Any news?

Not yet. We have asked Gian to gather all those who might’ve walked through the nearby areas at the time Ibrahim was attacked.

She told him about Donael getting Laric his books. Not sure what that tells us except that he’s not totally self-absorbed in his quest for luminescence.

I will keep that in mind.

Elena found a small table in front of the armchairs, and taking a seat in one since the table was too low to use standing up, she put her gun on the table, then retrieved the map and spread it out. She placed a throwing blade on each edge to keep it pinned down. “It’s beautiful.”

Shock had her staring.

She’d been expecting an old-fashioned blueprint at best, but this was a three-dimensional artwork that showed Lumia as a dollhouse peeled open, with more detailed smaller drawings around the edges for areas where the dollhouse approach didn’t permit an inside look.

Candles, books, even tiny pots and pans in the kitchens, they’d all been drawn with stunning attention to detail. And of course, there were Luminata scattered throughout, going about their daily business. “They’re not all wearing robes.”

Instead, they were dressed in various types of clothing from warrior leathers to flowing garments of color and more prosaic outfits that said “everyday wear” to Elena. The robes were present but not many of these Luminata wore them with the hood pulled up. In fact, in the scenes she could see of people passing each other in the corridors, the one with the hood was always shown as pulling it back to greet his fellow resident.

Only one thing remained the same: this was a brotherhood. No women.