Chapter 22 #2
Mikhail didn’t answer. After watching him press the soul knife into the tiny Novice’s hand, wrapping her fingers around the handle, and begin the process of carving away handfuls of smut from her body—a task she must have been helping with at least somewhat—I sat, my knees inexplicably weak.
I’d seen horrors beyond comprehension on Earth.
Crimes and injustices that had made me weep.
But until this long night, sitting vigil as the smallest Novice I had ever seen—who had somehow saved an unworthy Protector—suffered in agony, I had never known true fear.
Not only because I feared for her survival. But also because I feared the emotion budding inside. One I had no right to feel, not for her, or anyone like her. Not for anyone besides my Arabella.
The minutes rolled into hours, and Mikhail carved and hummed.
The night passed, yet he never turned away from the task.
Sunny, Feather’s friend, came in with food and drinks, and I took a turn so Mikhail could rest for a moment and eat.
My hands shook like leaves in a storm as Feather’s breathing stuttered. I cut shallower strokes, and prayed.
Mikhail took back the knife, resuming his patient work. From time to time, he took the blade and set it on his own arm, nicking the skin. Balancing the blood and ichor that welled up, he fed it into her swollen mouth.
The first time he’d done it, I’d protested. Mikhail needed his strength for his vital work, his creating. But each drop seemed to help her breathe, for a few moments at least. And before long, I was offering my own arm, and my own blood, to help her battle while he carved.
It wasn’t enough. “Sing, Gavriel,” Mikhail pleaded. “You remember some of the healing songs, don’t you?” My throat tightened up, and I opened my mouth to deny it, but there was something in Mikhail’s demeanor that made me hesitate.
“I-I can’t,” I rasped. “I haven’t sung in so long…”
“Please.” Mikhail’s plea was a broken, single word, but I couldn’t deny him.
I took a breath and tried to shape the air into a note…
and failed. The sound that emerged was reedy and thin.
I tried again, and no sound came out at all.
Mikhail’s eyes flared wide in shock. I felt my own mirror his. “You’ve lost your voice?”
I shrugged, fighting to control the panic that raced through me.
I was the only one in Sanctuary who knew all the songs Seraphiel had written, and what they were for.
If I could never sing them, pass them on…
I remembered when the Great Library of Alexandria burned. This felt like an even greater loss.
“I suppose it doesn’t matter if I have. I’ve already lost everything else.” I rose and paced away from the suffering Novice, and the too-sharp gaze of my only friend. “Just… keep using the knife on Feather.”
“She needs more help than I can give her,” Mikhail said, as the heart-wrenching sound of Feather’s struggle to breathe echoed in the cavernous room.
Sunny had gone to get more food, and Mikhail set down the knife.
“I can’t cut too fast, or she’ll die. But the weight on her lungs is killing her slowly. It’s an excruciating end.”
“What are you planning?” If anyone knew how to save a Novice, it would be Mikhail.
But his grave expression made me think he had something dire in mind.
“You’re not going to unmake her.” The words came out unintentionally as a command.
I softened my tone at Mikhail’s furrowed brow.
“I meant to say, if you’re not going to unmake her, and you can’t heal her, what options are left? ”
My eyes fell on the Well of Souls. Maybe long ago, he could have used the pure material from there to perform all sorts of miraculous cures.
When Protectors had been assigned vital, yet terrible tasks, they’d often returned to Sanctuary damaged.
Usually, Mik could save them. A small infusion, even a drop of pure soul from the ancient well, was enough.
And that same material was what we had used to keep the gate strong, repairing it over the years. Azazel had stolen so much from us.
“I would cut out my own flesh and feed it to her, but it’s not powerful enough. She needs more than I can spare.” His gaze dropped, and I had a sick feeling in my gut. “I can only think of one way to save her.”
The silence in the room battered my ears. “Feather’s not breathing,” I whispered, almost glad for the distraction. Mikhail paused, then set the knife to his hand, adding another scar to the hundreds that littered his skin.
As he tended her, I stared at my best friend, the only friend I had left. His expression was a strange mixture of emotions I had grown unused to seeing. Regret and grief. Despair and acceptance. Longing, affection… and hope.
When he lifted his gaze from her, his eyes shone with a decision. “Will you stay while I complete the bond?” The blood rushed from my face, and I staggered, suddenly dizzy. I gasped as he reached for one of his wings and folded it around his front.
“Don’t do it, Mik. You can’t take it back.”
“I understand,” he said placidly, as if he wasn’t about to commit the worst sort of moral crime. “But I owe this small soul more than you know.”
I began pacing, running my hands through my hair. “What could you possibly— How could you? You’re going to tie yourself to her? For eternity? You’ll never be able to take a mate—”
“I was never going to have one anyway, friend,” he pointed out. His eyes shone even brighter, as if saying it aloud had eased the pain of his lonely life. “If I can sacrifice this unused part of me, and save this wonderful Novice—”
“You haven’t thought through the implications.” His raised eyebrows had me spelling out the heresy he was considering. “You will be drawn to her, Mik. Sexually, physically, as well as spiritually. She’s not one of us. You’d kill her, and… it’s wrong.”
A spark of turquoise flashed as he clenched his jaw in that familiar way. He had decided, and there was no moving him. But when he spoke softly, my gut churned. “There may be a way I can be with her if she wants me. There’s more to this woman than anyone else assumes.”
I tasted bile in my throat. “You can’t… You can’t be contemplating her in…
that way.” I couldn’t get the words to come out.
In the back of my mind, though, a perilous thought slithered.
Hadn’t I been thinking of her in a similar fashion not a day ago?
Not attracted to her body, but her indomitable spirit.
Her core of strength that persisted, even when she was alone and broken.
And her eyes, they had drawn me in, lured me closer…
I, too, had been feeling things I should never have felt toward one so far beneath me.
No. “No, Mikhail, I can’t allow it.”
He laughed then, and the sound shook the rafters.
“There is a lot you have control of in this place, dear friend. But this is not one of those things.” He stood, flexing his wings.
“Leave. Or stand by me, as I save the soul who will be my mate.” His eyes welled up with boundless pain and an even deeper determination. “Though she will never know it.”