Archangel's Heart by Nalini Singh

without waiting for an answer. “Not just on the outside.” He slapped his free hand against his heart. “This, the part that makes Aodhan who he is, it was so badly damaged that I thought I’d lost my friend forever.” Tears glittered in his eyes.
    Glancing away, he stared at Manhattan with such harsh focus that she knew he was fighting those tears. His throat moved, his jaw a brutal line.
    It hit her hard, because beauty and playfulness aside, Illium was one of the toughest fighters among Raphael’s people. He gave no quarter, was a warrior who’d fly headlong into an enemy squadron if a pitiless charge was what was required.
    â€œHey.” She flexed her fingers around his, tugging lightly until he turned to face her. “I can take it, Bluebell. Whatever you want to unload.” She smiled. “It can’t be any worse than Ransom’s love life before Nyree took pity on him.”
    The bleak despair that gripped him seemed as if it would defeat the bonds of their friendship, but then his lips tugged up a little. Lifting their clasped hands, he pressed a kiss to her knuckles. And he was her Bluebell again, beautiful and wild and with power humming in his veins. So
much
power.
    She sucked in a breath, suddenly realizing she could seeevery vein in Illium’s body—on his neck, down his arms, across his face. They glowed, as if his blood was molten gold. Her heart slammed into her ribcage, propelled by memories of the blazing light that had shoved out of him two years ago.
    He’d almost died that day.
    â€œIllium.”
    â€œIt’s nothing dangerous. Comes and goes.” A shrug. “There’s no attendant surge of power.” A sudden grin. “I’m just glow-in-the-dark for a minute or two.” The smile faded as quickly as it had come, along with the golden light in his veins.
    Consciously taking a deep breath, then another, Elena lifted a hand to brush his hair off his forehead. Her heart was a racehorse in her chest, but this wasn’t about her. “Aodhan hurt you.”
    â€œIt’s more that he’s hurting himself.” He looked out at Manhattan again, but he was no longer holding his wings to his back with unforgiving tightness. Opening them a fraction, he allowed his feathers to slide against hers.
    Many people would see that and think it an intimacy. It was. One between friends. Raphael called Illium her favorite. That was true, too. But he wasn’t her lover, would never hold that position—that part of Elena belonged always to her archangel. That was why she could hold his hand, why she could slide her wing over his, why he could kiss her knuckles.
    â€œDuring his recovery,” Illium said into the quiet, “right at the start, when Keir was basically trying to put him back together, Aodhan didn’t speak, didn’t meet anyone’s eyes.” Such pain in his voice. “He’d just stare at whatever nightmares existed in his mind, a broken doll.”
    The use of those words, Elena grasped, had been deliberate on Aodhan’s part.
    â€œThe person who described him that way was an angel named Remus.” Illium’s hand clenched around Elena’s with such strength that her bones hurt.
    She said nothing, just listened.
    â€œRemus was Keir’s assistant at the time.” He released a breath, eased his grip. “I’m sorry, Ellie.”
    â€œI’m hunter-born, Bluebell. A little squeeze won’t do me any harm.”
    Chest rising and falling in an uneven rhythm, Illium said,“Remus was a failed member of the Luminata.” He shifted to walk in the direction of her greenhouse, tugging her along with him.
    She went, the glass structure a beacon of light on that side of the yard. It was the heat lamps within, the ones that nurtured her plans. “Did Remus get kicked out of Lumia?”
    Illium’s satisfaction was in his voice when he answered. “I always