Archangel's Heart(62)

Maybe it was empty flattery meant to put Aodhan at ease, but though Elena was no art expert, she agreed with Ibrahim. Aodhan and the Hummingbird were both astonishingly talented—and each was unique in what they created. “Do you have many of her pieces here?” she asked Ibrahim.

“As many as we have been able to acquire.” His expression became mournful. “Her work is beloved by those lucky enough to have obtained a piece. Not many will pass them on even though the Luminata wish only to hold her art safe for future generations.”

And keep them out of view of the world, Elena thought privately. It wasn’t as if this Gallery were a museum anyone could come by to visit. In fact, it struck her as being more like Lijuan’s creepy “Collection Room,” where she apparently pinned up dead angels with beautiful wings: a secret hoard.

As Aodhan and Ibrahim exchanged further comments, it became clear that Ibrahim wasn’t only a student of art but a practitioner, too. “I am an unknown, nowhere near your level of skill,” he said modestly when Aodhan asked him about his work. “But it gives me joy.” A soft smile. “It is my contemplation.”

“The greatest art,” Aodhan replied, “comes from great joy and great despair.”

Ibrahim’s smile faded. “I think for the Hummingbird, one turned into the other centuries ago.”

The comment resonated within Elena. There was such terrible sadness in the Hummingbird now, but she’d seen a work in Raphael’s Refuge stronghold that Illium’s mother had created two millennia ago—it burned with such radiant joy that to look at it was to smile.

However, even as she thought about art, even as Ibrahim told them about his favorite works in the Gallery, she was noting every step they took, creating a mental map of this sprawling maze. The stone of Lumia itself began to change as they got closer to the secret heart of the stronghold. Carvings done with time and care became apparent on the walls, while the floor beneath their feet turned into a delicacy of mosaics.

Those mosaics were earth-toned and gentle at the start, but the pale turquoise blues and faded reds slowly flowed into jewel tones so brilliant Elena wondered how the colors had been captured with such depth. And on the walls, the carvings turned into paintings of great events in angelic history.

“Who painted this?” Aodhan asked, stopping in front of a breathtaking piece that appeared to show an angel bursting into flame. His tone was dangerously quiet.

A heartbeat later, Elena noticed that while the angel’s hair was gold, his face was one with deeply familiar lines. She’d always thought Raphael strongly favored his mother, but the face that stared out at her from that painting was his. Change the golden hair to midnight, the equally golden eyes to a blue too pure to be mortal, and she’d be looking at a portrait of her archangel.

Wait. “His eyes aren’t golden.” And the hair whipping across his face was created of flame.

“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.