Chapter 8 Feather
Feather
Over the centuries, I’d gotten used to being an outcast. For some reason, even after dozens of new lifetimes, I’d never been born into a family that had enough money to get by, or enough love to go around.
It used to tick me off. Like, couldn't the universe throw me one bone? Just a few years as a daughter who was wanted or treated like I was necessary in some way, who didn’t have to suffer from starvation at the same time?
But no, I would die in one life to find myself waking up in a new one every bit as awkward and painful as the last.
Almost as awkward and painful as walking alone into the cafeteria after I’d finished cleaning up the group therapy torture chamber, and gone for another round in the Maker Hall of Horrors.
At least the cafeteria door had swung open in front of me without me reaching for it.
If I’d touched it, I'd probably have to clean it again later.
Every face swiveled to me as I walked across the gleaming white floor to the dinner buffet, noses wrinkling as soon as my stench reached them.
The Dining Hall was about the size of a school cafeteria on earth, filled with what looked like cushions made of golden cloth, with five or six scattered around each low-lying round table.
I waved to a few of the Protectors I'd seen at group therapy, who were seated together at some of the nearest cushions. “Hey, Diligence… or Vigilance?” The girl who'd been so proud of thwarting the college cheaters looked aghast to be singled out. She didn't respond. Maybe it was Benevolence.
When no one replied to my greetings, I made it a game. I would catch the eye of the staring Protector, smile, shoot a finger gun or a thumbs up or a high five, and then watch them flail around trying to make it obvious they were not friendly with Sewage Girl. Their loss.
The Dining Hall inhabitants might not be the friendliest, but the buffet itself was amazing.
I piled more than a few berries on my plate, and then some cubes that looked like cheese.
Everything gleamed with a subtle light, like the food had all been grown in an irradiated field.
Possibly, eating it would turn me into some sort of Godzilla monster.
I popped an enormous, juicy globe into my mouth.
Oh, holy poison berries, I don’t even care.
The taste exploded on my tongue like an orgasm in my mouth.
A mouthgasm? A fruit finale? A culinary climax?
I piled so many berries up that a few dropped to the floor and rolled away. I was just chasing one of those when I almost ran into a wall of white cloth and golden skin.
“What are you doing?”
“Chasing down my next happy ending,” I muttered, looking up slowly and memorizing all the muscles for my spank bank.
Then I realized I already had this one cataloged.
It was the guy, Righteous, from that morning.
“Hey, Ry!” My plate wobbled; I really needed to find a cushion to sit at before my aching arms stopped working entirely.
“My name is Righteous,” he spat out, pushing his tumbling dark hair away from his forehead. I took a moment to appreciate his bone structure.
“Mmhm. Very Dom Voice of you,” I mumbled, staring.
Who could forget that perfect nose, those cheekbones, that thick, gleaming hair and skin that begged for a stain or two more?
And I’m just the dirty girl to give it to him.
My plate tilted again, another grape rolling away.
“Hey, Ry, I’ve got my hands full. Maybe I can sit with you.
” Or on you? He sputtered when I licked my lips, his eyes following the small movement.
Honestly, my second favorite discovery on Earth had been that, unlike lying and cursing and murder, sex wasn’t sinful—not if it was consensual.
I had good memories of happy—albeit short-lived—moments, even if I hadn’t had them recently.
For some reason, over the last century or so, I’d mostly died before I was old enough to even consider hanky-panky.
All those years had caught up with me now, though.
I shifted under my toga as Righteous finally found his tongue.
“The Guides said you weren’t welcome. There is no seat here for you,” he explained, but glanced at the grouping he’d been sitting at. The one with two empty cushions.
Gah, where was the camera when you needed one? I could sell a million copies of a college bully romance with that exact lip angle on the cover. If I could get him to slip the toga-robe thing down a little, I could sell ten million.
When he rustled his wings in agitation, I looked around. Every single seat was taken in the entire room, except for those two. I wondered if the room was magic, providing just the right number of cushions for angel butts.
Speaking of angel butts, Ry was talking again.
I started eating from my plate where I stood; I knew where this was heading.
Still, it was worth a shot. I interrupted his recap of my horrible group therapy session.
“Hey, you’ve got a lot to say. Let’s get comfortable for this talk, ’kay? ” I took a step toward the cushions.
He moved in front of me again, blocking my way. “You cannot sit with us.”
I snorted. “Oh, Regina. That’s so Mean Girls of you.”
“So… what?”
I sighed, still eating. “It’s a movie.” I scanned the room looking for Sunny. I could use a ride or die birch about now.
“You need to leave.” His nose crinkled. “The smell is affecting everyone.”
“Weird,” I said, raising the plate up so I could sniff dramatically at my armpit. “I don’t smell anything.” I was so lying. I reeked.
“Look around you. No one can eat until you leave.” Ry nodded to the nearest tables, where the Protectors were, indeed, not eating. “We need to eat so we can complete our meditations before merging this evening.”
Well, that sucked. It was one thing to tease Righteous, but I didn’t want to ruin classes or merging or whatever for the group. And he wasn’t wrong; I did stink. “Is there anywhere else I can sit?”
Ry snapped his fingers and shouted, “Sunny!”
Suddenly, Sunny appeared, scurrying across the room. I peered at the distant grouping where she'd been sitting. All the Protectors there seemed a little less glowy. But a lot less assholey. Maybe there was a free cushion there?
“Sunny, escort your charge back to her room.”
My ears heated up. “You snapped for her, like a dog?”
“I am the ranking Protector in Sanctuary.” Ry stuck his nose in the air. I peeked inside his nostrils, hoping against hope there would be a tiny golden booger there, something to make him less perfect. “So, yes. She comes when I summon. And you listen when I give an order.”
“Yes sir!” I snapped to fake attention, then stopped. “Or do you like to be called Master?”
“Master? What can you possibly…” His ears—those perfect golden shells which I in no way wanted to lick and see if that would make this guy’s robe fit funny—started to turn pink.
I leaned in, forcing him to step back, and whispered a bit too loudly, so the Protectors around us could hear, “I mean, honestly, that whole Dom thing you’ve got going on does kinda do it for me, know what I mean?
I’ve never actually played that game, and I’m not super submissive, but a girl’s gotta learn.
Teach me, tiger.” I growled, and almost couldn’t hold in my laughter as he scrambled away, his perfect hair falling into his horrified face.
“Go! Go, take her away, Sunny! Now!”
“Yes, Righteous,” Sunny replied, biting her lip. She was having almost as much trouble not laughing at the pompous jerk. “This way, Feather.”
I tucked my plate to my chest, but after a few steps, I blew him a kiss over my shoulder and growled, “I’ll see you later, Sir.” As Sunny opened the door for me, I called out loud enough for the whole room to hear, “Don’t forget you promised to bring the strap-on! I’ve got plenty of lube!”
We made it out the door before breaking into peals of laughter. “Oh, thank you, Feather,” Sunny managed to choke out. “That was the best… the funniest…”
“Yes, yes.” I waved one smut-covered hand like Queen Elizabeth.
“I know, I am the best and most perfect being ever to grace these halls.” I followed her down an endless series of white corridors that looked exactly like all the others.
How did she not get lost in this place? “What’s up with that guy, anyway?
He’s in charge? There’s some sort of ranking system, a hierarchy, and he’s the Head Boy or whatever? ”
“Pretty much.” Sunny bit her lip again. “You know, they tell us we’re all equal here. I mean, except for the High Angeli. Gavriel, and the Maker—”
“Mikhail?”
Her eyebrows flew up. “You use his name?”
I frowned; I didn’t want to admit I called him Growly Bear about half the time. “What else would I use?”
She stammered for a bit, then shrugged. “Well, it’s funny about that joke you told in the Dining Hall. He is usually called Master. Or the Maker, or High Angelus Mikhail. Nobody calls him just by his name.”
“Master? For real?” I followed her down some marble stairs.
“But not as, like, a kink thing—it’s his title?
Who or what is he the master of?” I mean, before he had forced me to torture myself all day, I would have said he could be my master.
But having him see me at my weakest made me think that ship had probably sailed.
Not much sexy about snot, grease, blood, and tears.
“No one anymore,” Sunny murmured, “but centuries ago, he had an Apprentice who was supposed to take his place. The Maker was done with all his Constructs except one—"
“His what now?”
“Oh.” Sunny stopped at the top of the stairs, thinking. “So, in his workshop, you saw the dais?”
I recalled the empty stage, the golden cloth, and the name. “The Beautiful One.”
She nodded and started walking down another hallway. “Arabella was the last Construct the Maker attempted. The one meant for Gavriel.”
“Meant for?”
“To be his paired mate. His perfect complement. The only one he will ever love, could ever love.”
The weirdest emotion, some sort of internal dragon, opened one narrow eye deep in my gut, waking at this news, and blew a trail of smoke from its scaly nostrils. What the hello? Jealousy? I didn’t even like the mysterious Gavriel. “Ah, so his wife?”
“Well, more than that,” Sunny said, her face going tragically dreamy. “Before the catastrophe, the Maker spent his life creating perfect mates for the Protectors who’d moved on to become one of the Angeli.”
“Wait, you mean you don’t hook up with each other? You have to have a new person made?” That seemed excessive.
She rolled her eyes. “Protectors don’t normally bond, only Angeli—though honestly?
A bunch of us really do have strong bonds.
Anyway, when a Protector’s ready to ascend, if they haven’t found another Protector who called to their soul, one would be made for them.
” I nodded like I didn’t think this was completely nuts.
“Once it was apparent you would ascend, the Maker would start work on finding the true name of your bonded, so he could pull their soul from the Well and create the Construct that would house it.”
I didn’t interrupt, although I was dying to ask questions. Scooping up the stuff to make your soulmate? That wasn’t like love on Earth at all. Unless you thought of making an ice cream sundae as love. Which… actually, I got it now. My soulmate would definitely be made of un-meltable ice cream.
“After you bonded, you had a choice: work with Protectors here, or go through the gate to the Celestial Realm with your mate.”
I filed away the knowledge that Protectors could become Angeli. And that staying in Sanctuary was a choice. “The Celestial Realm is Heaven?”
Sunny scrunched her brow. “Close enough, I guess. I mean, no one has been there and returned in millennia. The entrance to the Celestial Realm is beyond the Great Gate, but it hasn’t been opened for four hundred years.”
Four hundred years. That number kept coming up. Oh, please let me not be the reason all this went wrong. But coincidences had never been on my side before. “Wait up, girl. What actually happened four hundred years ago?”
Sunny blew out a breath. “So the Maker had chosen an Apprentice, and his training was almost complete. And then, the day Arabella received Gavriel’s feather—”
“Back up! A feather?” Gah. This felt like watching the middle episode of a soap opera I hadn’t ever seen.
“From what I learned in my History of Protectors lessons, the thing that ignites the pair bond—and actually brings the new Construct to life—is receiving a part of the mate into yourself.”
“Yes, Sunny,” I said soothingly. I felt like she should know this by now. “It’s called sex. The Daddy angel takes a very special part of himself and puts it into the Mommy angel—”
Sunny stopped walking, her face stern. “No, not just physical merging, Feather. This is more. Gavriel took a part of his soul and placed it into his intended mate.”
The jealousy dragon opened another eye. Gavriel had given some woman a part of his soul? That was more than a wedding ring. But why did I even care? I shook the feeling away again. “What happened then?”
“No one knows for certain, but somehow the Apprentice must have been allied with the Abyss.” She held up a hand when I took a breath to ask about it.
“That’s a subject for another day. Just know, they’re the ones who’ve tried to upset the balance forever, the reason the gates were built and later sealed. ”
I fought the sudden urge to run back to the Great Gate, to be near it. What was this feeling? I wanted to lick Mikhail, and Gavriel… and Righteous, to be fair. And now a gate? Was there something in the cheese here, making me ridiculously attracted to everyone and everything around me?
I leaned forward and licked Sunny’s cheek. Nope. Sunny tasted nice, like powdered sugar, but I didn’t want to jump her like I did the dude angels… or jump into her like I did a freaking gate.
She shoved me away. “Ew, what was that?”
“Sorry, I was just testing a theory.” I grinned, and she rolled her eyes, handing me the food she was carrying.
“You are so weird. Hold this.”
“Sure.” I looked around. I couldn’t be certain, but I was pretty sure we were nowhere near my room. “What are we doing here?”
Sunny winked one dark eye, before pressing her hand against a wall. “We’re going shopping.”