Archangel’s Ascension (The Guild Hunter Series)

Today

Aodhan stared out across the Hudson from his position in the trees he and Illium had planted for privacy after they first purchased this house from an angel who’d decided to relocate permanently to the Refuge. He knew what was happening, understood that Illium would be drawn to land in front of Raphael first, and he knew, knew that there were no two archangels less likely to do violence to each other, but still he worried.

Power altered people. It had altered even Raphael at one time. The archangel he’d known as the indulgent Rafa, then as a strong but fair warrior, had become cold and distant, a remote being who could mete out the cruelest of punishments without emotion. He’d once broken a vampire’s bones with such methodical precision that the vampire had been nothing but stones in a bag of flesh.

Aodhan had been glad not to be in the city at the time, not to have to bear witness.

Raphael was no longer that man, hadn’t ever regressed after he met Elena, but he was also about to lose both his first general, and a second member of his Seven.

Archangels did not always react rationally. Dmitri, he said, reaching out with his mind, do you know what’s happening?

We can’t see them, came the immediate answer in a voice as taut as Aodhan’s muscles. Glamour.

Time slowed, became a river of molasses.

He’s on his way, Dmitri said at last, the tension replaced by emotions far more complex. You both remain ours, Aodhan. This territory will always be safe ground for you and Illium.

Aodhan knew the edict must’ve come from Raphael, but he still didn’t take a complete breath until he spotted Illium over the water after what felt like a lifetime.

It hurt going in.

And though he’d waited for this, he found himself stumbling his way back to his half-destroyed studio. Not for privacy, for the trees provided more than enough—and anyone who dared spy on a newly ascended archangel was an idiot who deserved to be blasted out of the sky—but because it was familiar.

While the man he loved beyond all reason was suddenly unfamiliar.

An archangel.

Illium had just become a being of such power that he could annihilate Aodhan in a heartbeat should it ever come to that.

He began to pick up broken and fallen items with mechanical numbness.

A gust of wind pulsed fine particles of debris into the air as Illium landed through the large hole in the roof and side wall that he’d created during his ascension. Falling fast, he came down on one knee, one hand braced on the floor, the dust he’d created from the speed of his landing drifting down to land on his hair and wings in a gritty coating.

He looked no different.

Then he raised his head, and in the aged gold burned the breathtaking power of an archangel.

“Does it hurt?” Aodhan asked in desperation, moving toward him in an instinctive jerk.

Illium’s grin was wild and of Aodhan’s Blue. “I feel high.” Laughing, he rose in a fluid movement and ran to clasp Aodhan’s face in his hands, haul him down for a kiss that hummed with an energy new and intense and violent in its voraciousness.

That unearthly power crackled over Aodhan’s skin, down his wings, into his mouth. It was a spark everywhere they touched, tiny shocks that caused no pain but were a constant reminder that the Illium he’d always known had changed forever. But his kiss, despite the new taste of archangelic power…that was familiar.

His lips so soft against Aodhan’s even when the kiss itself was hard and playful at the same time, his breath with its hidden whisper of sweetness, the way he liked to play with Aodhan’s hair while they kissed.

Illium’s eyes glowed as he broke the kiss. So did his wings. Archangels only usually did that when they were angry or powering up to strike, but Illium was afire with happiness. “Overflow,” he said, showing Aodhan his forearm; power crackled over his skin. “I wasn’t close enough to Suyin during the ascension to see this, but it makes sense that it takes a while for the new energy to settle.”

Aodhan touched his finger to a single spark of power. It jolted him.

Jerking back his hand, he shook it out. “At least you weren’t that electric when we kissed.” He was trying to make a joke of it, but fear was a stranglehold he couldn’t escape. They’d always said they were forever, but they hadn’t understood at the time what becoming an archangel actually meant.

Illium was no longer the same being.

“Sparkle, you’re looking at me like I’m an alien.” Illium was moving around, his wings restless. “I’m still me.”

Aodhan met his gaze when the other man paused for a moment. “No, Blue. We can’t pretend. You’re you…but you’re also something different.”

Illium’s smile faded. “Whoever I am, I love you. Always have. Always will. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten that.”

Heart tearing in two at the vulnerability in Illium’s voice, Aodhan strode across to haul the other man into his arms. “You’re dazzling,” he whispered. “And you’re mine. I’ll fight for you even against the power of ascension.”

The sparks of energy on Illium hit Aodhan again and again, but he clenched his teeth and rode them out, Illium in his arms. “What did Raphael say?” He needed to hear it directly from Illium.

“We’re allies.” He looked up at the sky revealed by the hole in the roof. “Adi, I need to fly, use up some of the excess.” A glance, a silent question.

“Let’s go.”

Aodhan wasn’t surprised in the least when his lover took off like a bolt of lightning once they were in the sky, only to return a minute later at the same speed.

Aodhan kept on the same path until, at last, Illium had flown hard and fast for long enough that he could be in one place. Except, of course, he spiraled up to do a complicated aerobatic maneuver that had him flying under then over Aodhan.

Aodhan laughed. “You’re an archangel! Act with decorum!”

“Hah! Never!”

And for that moment, it was all right—they were once again just Illium and Aodhan out for a flight.

When the two of them landed, it was in the snow-kissed mountains north of the city.

Walking to the edge of a small cliff, Illium stared out in the direction of their home. “Raphael won’t push me to leave, but the power inside me tells me I have to be gone soon. It’s like a cresting wave—I can never allow it to crash in the territory of another archangel.”

He turned, looked at Aodhan. “That’s when things go wrong; I feel it in my cells. When archangels draw blood. Too long too close together. I’d never forgive myself if I pushed Raphael to hurt me or if I did the same to him.”

Worried as he was about what ascension meant for them, Aodhan’s first priority would always be Illium’s huge and glorious heart. A heart that was breaking at the sudden cessation of a life that had been the culmination of all his hopes and dreams. Striding over, he clasped Illium’s nape and tugged him to his side while sliding his wing over those of silver blue.

It should’ve felt odd to do this with a being of such power, but this was Illium, the friend who’d been by his side his entire life, the lover whose back he’d stroked only this morning while kissing his nape to wake him to the glowing dawn. Illium had been smiling even before he’d opened his eyes, slumberous and beautiful. Aodhan had kissed his shoulder then, before stroking his hand down his lover’s muscled arm to entwine their fingers.

He loved waking with Illium, his Blue who saw beauty in every dawn, and had not a drop of jaded ennui in him.

Illium came into the embrace with familiar grace, his head against Aodhan’s shoulder.

“It’s still friendly ground.” Aodhan ran his thumb over Illium’s pulse. “You’ll always be welcome in Raphael’s territory; you know that.”

“But never like I was,” Illium said, his voice rough. “Never again like that, Adi.” His hand fisted on the back of Aodhan’s tunic as he turned so their eyes met. “Everything has changed—everything but one. You.”

Illium spoke on before Aodhan could respond. “More than anything else in this world, I need you to be my Adi, need you to be my friend and lover. Don’t ever treat me any different, or you’ll break my fucking heart.”

Illium saw Aodhan’s pupils flare, those stunning crystalline eyes devoid of the wary barriers he’d glimpsed after first returning home. Barriers that had kicked him in the gut, awakening fears from long, long ago.

“Shit,” Aodhan said, and shoved a hand through his hair. “I’m acting weird.”

That quickly, the fears retreated under a wave of affectionate amusement. Because they were them again. “A little. But you’re excused. It must’ve been a shock to have your studio destroyed.”

Aodhan squeezed his nape. “Asshole.” He pressed a kiss to Illium’s hair in that way that had become a habit with Aodhan over the years, a caress with an edge of protectiveness to it that always warmed Illium from within while making butterflies flutter in his abdomen.

That he’d done it now, when Illium had just ascended, the power differential between them a gulf vast enough to absorb oceans? It calmed any worry Illium might’ve had.

“You do owe me a new studio, by the way.” A nuzzle of Illium’s temple, the scent and heat of Aodhan home in a way nothing else could ever be. “I was…out of balance for a short time, Blue. I worried.” Huskiness in his voice. “About us. If you’d want us now that you’re an archangel.”

Realizing he wasn’t the only one who’d been kicked in the gut, Illium pressed his lips to Aodhan’s jaw. “I want you more,” he said. “I need you more.” Meeting those incredible eyes, he laid it all out in the open. “In private and in public, you’re the one person with whom I don’t ever have to be an archangel. With everyone else, I have to walk a fine line. Never you.”

“You don’t have to ask. I’m here.” An unwavering look. “I’ll also skewer anyone who dares try to take my place.”noveldrama

Illium grinned because this was the man he knew and loved. “As for the other…Adi, Ellie used to be mortal. She’s still much, much weaker than Raphael and always will be.” Elena’s power had grown over the years, but she was no archangel—and, like Illium, had never desired to become one.

“Rather stab myself in the eye with a blunt blade,” she’d muttered one night when the question came up during an informal dinner hosted by Honor and Dmitri.

Everyone had laughed at her answer, especially Raphael, but Illium knew it had been sincere. As had his own: “I’ll join you in the one-eyeball league.”

But the choice had never been his and now he had to learn to live with his new reality.

“Our power imbalance is no imbalance at all in comparison to Ellie and Raphael,” he pointed out. “We’re closer to Dmitri and Raphael.” The man who stood as Raphael’s second had become ever more brutally strong over the years, his discipline growing apace with his vampiric power.

Aodhan blinked, thought of Elena as she’d been when they’d first met. Such a fragile life, so easily snuffed out. Yet she’d held her own against Raphael over and over again. Power in a relationship was what the people involved decided it should be—and as Ellie knew Raphael would never use his archangelic powers against her, Aodhan knew Illium would never use his.

“I’m glad one of us is thinking,” he said, taking Illium’s hand and raising it to his mouth to press a kiss to the palm.

“I’ll have you know this pretty face conceals a genius brain,” Illium quipped before kissing Aodhan’s knuckles in turn.

Aodhan’s smile came from his very core. “So, my pretty genius,” he said, “where do you think the Cadre will put you in terms of your territory?” Then it hit him. “Where do you think you and the Cadre will decide?”

Because Illium was one of the ten most powerful beings in the world now.

“I’ll find out soon. I’m guessing a meeting will be called within the next few hours.”

Illium, Raphael said into his mind that very moment, we meet three hours hence.

Raphael gave no more instructions on the how of it because none were needed—Illium was one of the team who’d set up the Cadre’s current private communications system when the technology first became available. A team of nine, one from each of the territories, Illium given the task rather than Vivek both because everyone knew Vivek was basically Raphael’s secondary spymaster, and because Illium had always made sure to learn any new tech as it emerged.

Which was why he also understood the reason he hadn’t received a direct notification of the meeting. He needed to be put into the system—which would occur the first time he accessed it. It likely had to do with tradition, too. Outside of exigent situations like war, the Cadre was of an age overall that preferred the personal touch.

You are welcome to stand with me at the facility inside the Tower built for such things, Raphael continued, but I suggest it be better that you stand on your own for this first gathering. Use the setup in the basement of our Enclave home.

Thank you, Raphael. Illium forced himself to address the other man archangel to archangel so that he wouldn’t make a mistake when they were among the others. I appreciate the advice. Because this first meeting after his ascension would cement his position in the Cadre in the minds of the others.

He wasn’t an Ancient risen, his power long set in stone. He was a new archangel, a man all of the current Cadre had known well before he became a first general. Should he stand with Raphael, certain other archangels would see it as a weakness—and it wouldn’t be just those who weren’t his allies. That was the thing he’d come to understand since ascension altered the elemental structure of his being.

“I get now why archangels seem to war over nothing,” he said to Aodhan. “The power inside us is a feral force that wants total dominion, and that’s ready to strike at any overreach—or what it sees as overreach. It’s always watching the other predators, looking for weaknesses.”

Aodhan’s expression was tight. “You make it sound like a being apart from yourself.”

“No, it’s me.” Illium frowned. “And it’s not. It’s the me I’ll become unless I fight to maintain my personality.” Folding his arms, he stared down that vast internal force. “I will be myself, Adi. Even if I have to fight this battle every day for the rest of my life.”

“Illium the Bold, Illium the Courageous, Illium the Brilliant,” Aodhan said, a slow smile lighting up his face. “Do you remember how we used to make up those titles for each other?”

“You forgot Illium the Favorite.” Illium grinned. “Aodhan the Bright, Aodhan the Loyal, Aodhan the Audacious.” They’d been so proud of thinking up the last word.

“Well, I have one more for you.” Aodhan cupped the side of his head, those artist’s fingers in Illium’s hair. “Illium, the Determined, Archangel of his own destiny.”