Chapter 16 Righteous #2
Her shoulders shook with a soundless laugh, wings throwing a crystal web of sparkling light all around us, as she nimbly untied my belt and moved up so that her core was hot and slick against my pulsing cock.
To my shock and delight, she rubbed so that the tip breached her narrow entrance slightly.
Then she slid deeper, and my melody became a moan.
Her eyes crinkled at the edges, mischief spilling out of them with sparkles of brilliant, silver light.
After a few movements, I realized she was fucking me to the tempo of the song I was singing.
I had never felt this before. I sang into her ear, speeding up and slowing down, making her chuckle silently.
Her eyes poured light into mine, her lips traveling over my face and neck, leaving searing lines of bliss where they met my skin.
I almost didn’t notice when my soul began to merge with hers. But she did.
The instant I prepared to speak my name into her heart, she pulled away, her eyes flaring wide, her wide wings beating behind her. She lifted one glowing hand to her mouth, covering it, as if she couldn’t believe her own actions.
“Who are you?” I sang, but she shook her head, stepping back until she reached the dirty Novice. Then a bright flare of light forced my eyes to close. When I opened them, she was gone… but all around me, as I searched for her with my eyes and senses, the air smelled of crushed roses.
And the rancid, sour stench of smut. My dream was gone, replaced by this unworthy, fallen creature.
I stalked toward Feather, enraged that my vision had passed, and she was what was left. Her presence felt like an insult. I fought to keep my tone civil. “Don’t come back here, no matter what you hear. I’ll sing to the gate this week; it should settle.”
“Can everyone hear it screaming for help, and they’re just ignoring it?
” I almost answered her truthfully, almost shared my own indignation that the others who could hear it never sang to it.
That the High Angeli who had left us to care for the gate hadn’t told us how to do so…
but she was still talking. “No one else in Sanctuary knows any lullabies?”
“They don’t hear it,” I explained, and warned her away. As I prepared to leave, I noticed her hair was glistening with something unexpected. Feathers. Were they hers? Was this proof that my soulmate had really been here?
I reached for one, horror filling me as I examined it. They were mine. My feathers, falling, but not vanishing. The cool wind that blew from the gate was almost pushing them into her sticky layer of smut, plucking them from my wings and threading them through her clotted hair.
What had she done to me?
I lifted my head, staring into the mirror of the purification chamber and repeated the question aloud. “What did she do?”
My Guide had shaken their head when I insisted on finding Feather and making her spell it out.
Force her to tell me, show me, what trick she had used to remove her stains and transfer them to me.
They’d said, in a voice dripping with condescension, “It’s better for you to stay far from her.
Better for all of us. We will have her Dining Hall privileges revoked: you won’t have to see her at all.
Perhaps never again! Once you are purified, I’ll make certain you’re assigned a long mission. With time, your anger will fade.”
For some reason, the thought of never seeing Feather again enraged me almost as much as her original crime, and I twisted the stained cloth I still held in my hand until it ripped.
When I’d insisted on an interview with her before my next mission, my Guide had threatened to report my “unusual” behavior to Mikhail.
Then they’d had the gall to chide me for my smut.
As if I had chosen to be so filthy. Somehow, her smut had entered my soul. Ruined me.
“Righteous, you know that any smut that remains after ritual purification can only remain because you have, in your weakness, allowed it to attach to your soul.” The memory made me scrub harder at my face, my neck. My lips.
Weakness. I’d been so careful not to become stained during my missions, after that disastrous one so long ago.
I lifted my arm, glaring down at the souvenir I still bore from that trip to Earth.
If anything, it had deepened over the years rather than faded, a map of my failure.
Ironically, in the shape of the very place I’d made my greatest mistake.
I’d been careful to keep that old stain hidden, though the High Angeli knew I still had that scar.
They’d agreed to keep it secret while I worked to heal it, to purify myself.
As far as anyone else knew, I’d been the strongest Protector for a century.
The purest, up until that moment when she had touched her lips to mine.
I closed my eyes, remembering. Her brilliant green eyes had shocked me.
Held me still long enough for her to take advantage of the moment.
Hypnotized me somehow, into kissing her back.
Those green eyes had gone wide with a matching surprise.
She hadn’t meant to kiss my mouth; I could admit that.
I’d turned my head at the last second, accidentally. It had to have been, right?
Her kiss had reminded me, viscerally, of my dream mate. That same pulsing magic and music had, for one moment, thrummed through me. But even thinking they could have anything in common was obscene. My dream mate had filled me with strength and vanished; Feather had wrecked me.
Now I was broken, obsessed. Jealous of any looks she gave to others, of the dark-haired escort that stayed in her room—in her bed. Somehow, she had infected me with her weakness. I would find her and force her to take the responsibility, take the blame. Take the smut back.
And if she wouldn’t, I would punish her until she broke, until she cried out under my hand, and begged me… No. I could not hear her weep again. I would unmake myself, throw myself into the gate. Voices in my mind supplied uglier and grimmer suggestions as to what the little wretch deserved.
Was I going mad? It was possible. But the voices said it didn’t matter.
They promised I would get my revenge. I scrubbed at my old stain and my new ones, making unspoken vows to those voices, not noticing until too late that as I scrubbed and dreamed of foul deeds, the hems of my robes had grown more and more shadowed, until they were as covered in smut as my lips.
Until I was nothing but stain.