𝗪𝗔𝗜𝗧 𝗙𝗢𝗥 𝗠𝗘 ━━ l. valdez

ix ━━ love left me like this and i don't want to exist

04. chapter nine

━━━━━━━━ ( 💫 ) ━━━━━━━━

I FIRST SAW THE ANGEL AT THE ICE-CREAM CART.

The Argo II had anchored in the bay along with six or seven cruise ships. As usual, the mortals didn't pay the trireme any attention, but, just to be safe, Jason, Nico, and I hopped on a skiff from one of the tourist boats so we would look like part of the crowd when we came ashore.

At first glance, Split seemed like a cool place. Curving around the harbour was a long esplanade lined with palm trees. At the sidewalk cafés, European teenagers were hanging out, speaking a dozen different languages and enjoying the sunny afternoon. The air smelled of grilled meat and fresh-cut flowers.

Beyond the main boulevard, the city was a hodgepodge of mediaeval castle towers, Roman walls, limestone town houses with red-tiled roofs and modern office buildings all crammed together. In the distance, grey-green hills marched towards a mountain ridge, which made me a little nervous. I kept glancing at that rocky escarpment, expecting the face of Gaea to appear in its shadows.

Nico, Jason, and I were wandering along the esplanade when I spotted a guy with wings buying an ice-cream bar from a street cart. The vendor lady looked bored as she counted the guy's change. Tourists navigated around the angel's huge wings without a second glance.

Jason nudged us. "Are you seeing this?"

"Yeah," I agreed. "Maybe we should buy some ice cream."

As we made our way towards the street cart, I worried that this winged guy might be a son of Boreas the North Wind. At his side, the angel carried the same kind of jagged bronze sword the Boreads had, and my last encounter with them hadn't gone so well.

But this guy seemed more chill than chilly. He wore a red tank top, Bermuda shorts and huarache sandals. His wings were a combination of russet colours, like a bantam rooster or a lazy sunset. He had a deep tan and black hair almost as curly as Leo's.

"He's not a returned spirit," I murmured.

"Or a creature of the Underworld," Nico added.

"No," Jason agreed. "I doubt they would eat chocolate-covered ice-cream bars."

"So what is he?" Nico wondered.

We got within thirty feet, and the winged dude looked directly at us. He smiled, gestured over his shoulder with his ice-cream bar and dissolved into the air.

I couldn't exactly see him, but I had enough experience with moving spirits that he could track the angel's path–a warm wisp of red and gold zipping across the street, spiralling down the sidewalk and blowing postcards from the carousels in front of the tourist shops. The wind headed towards the end of the promenade, where a big fortress-like structure loomed.

"I'm betting that's the palace," Jason said. "Come on."

Even after two millennia, Diocletian's Palace was still impressive. The outer wall was only a pink granite shell, with crumbling columns and arched windows open to the sky, but it was mostly intact, a quarter mile long and seventy or eighty feet tall, dwarfing the modern shops and houses that huddled beneath it. I imagined what the palace must have looked like when it was newly built, with Imperial guards walking the ramparts and the golden eagles of Rome glinting on the parapets.

The wind angel–or whatever he was–whisked in and out of the pink granite windows, then disappeared on the other side. I scanned the palace's facade for an entrance. The only one I saw was several blocks away, with tourists lined up to buy tickets. No time for that.