Chapter 25 Feather
Feather
If someone had told me I had enough energy to laugh, I would have known they were lying, or not paying attention.
I couldn’t manage to keep my eyes open for more than a few minutes, and when I was conscious, the pain was excruciating.
But Righteous’s voice at the door gave me a reason to fight the lethargy.
Eavesdropping was almost as good as sleep at making me forget the pain.
And the conversation that followed had me holding in more than a few giggles.
“You sent for me, Maker?” His voice was as snooty and tight as ever.
Mikhail’s sounded more like a tiger growling. “I did indeed. I have a very important task for you.”
Mikhail led him into the room, but I heard Righteous balking when they got close. “I am cleaned, Master Mikhail. Thoroughly purified and ready for a new mission. I can’t touch the Novice. My work is too important.”
“Oh?” Mikhail’s tone was acidic. “I suppose Valor or Hope could be summoned, and they might be more competent as well. You are dismi—”
“No, I’m sorry. Please, I can help. What is the task?”
Mikhail’s voice, for the first time, sounded silky.
Sinister. “One of the most challenging threats you will ever face. A pernicious, ever-present evil, an impossible task. Perfect for a shining, mature Protector such as yourself. And vital to keeping you and all the rest of Sanctuary pristine. But if you hesitate for even a moment… if you don’t appreciate the gravity of the threat, you’re not the Protector I need. ”
“Maker, I am sorry. I’m ready for whatever task you assign. I will protect.”
“Yes, you will,” Mikhail agreed. There was something in his voice that reminded me of a coiled-up snake.
An invisible trap, spring loaded and ready to strike.
I opened my eyes the smallest crack. I had to see this.
Mikhail held out a golden box to Righteous.
“Have you ever encountered a box like this, one made to contain a great evil?”
“No,” he answered, taking it. “You made it here?”
“I did. I fashioned it today. I am leaving the workshop in your hands.”
“For how long?” Righteous’s question was way too eager.
Mikhail scoffed. “A few hours. I’m going to the baths for purification, then to meet with a Guide to make mission plans for our next cohort of Novices. The girl by the fire is sleeping, but do not wake her for any reason. It may kill her.”
“Kill her?” Panic, and a fluttering of wings that I knew were white ones, filled my ears. I slammed my eyes shut. “Unmake her?”
“Not precisely,” Mikhail purred. “It could kill her physically by stopping her heart, her breath. But it might also extinguish her soul’s light.
The smut she wears now—which strangely matches in texture, color, and scent to that which you bore earlier—has affected the very core of her spirit.
It’s crushing her slowly. To save her, I had to take steps that even Gavriel counseled me against.”
Righteous was silent, but my mind was buzzing. I didn’t feel like I was being crushed slowly, not anymore. And what steps?
Mikhail started up again. “I’ve been cutting it away as fast as I can in an effort to save her, but I have to go slowly. If a Protector, or even a High Angeli, with half this much smut removed it suddenly, they would die.”
“D-die?” Righteous sputtered. “But I had smut, and removed it—”
“Did you?” Mikhail’s growl was a promise of harm.
“Did you really? Do you think it so easy to lose the evil you placed upon yourself?
You think you would not have remembered every single instant of the agony that cutting away your own evil choices and evil thoughts causes?
Look at you, shining with your own self-righteousness.
So sure you have done no harm. That you own no blame.
“Look at her, Righteous. You did that,” he accused, almost too quietly for me to hear. “I don’t know how, I don’t know why, but something caused her to take your smut on, though that should be impossible.”
“It wasn’t mine!” Righteous was panting with some emotion, though I knew better than to sit up to see whether it was panic or regret or anger. “I swear, I didn’t mean for her to be afflicted.”
“Of course you didn’t. You’re not evil enough to plan or perpetrate such a thing.” The room hummed with a strange, violent energy. “You’re ordinary.”
A gasp. “Ordinary? Are you trying to insult me?”
“Insult? Boy, don’t add the taint of pride to your robes right before your vital task. I was merely echoing what is so obvious in all the choices you made here in Sanctuary. And on Earth.”
“What do you mean? I have completed every mission, done all that was asked, cleansed myself thoroughly and completely—” His last words rang with a flat, sour note, and Mikhail laughed.
“Oh, I imagine you still have that stain from Italy, eh? You know, Gavriel and I had long discussions about what you’ll need to do to get rid of a mark that old. We were on the verge of offering you the soul knife for your own use, until she showed up and needed it more.”
My mind whirled. I knew the smut he was talking about, the one on his arm. But what was the big deal?
Mikhail’s voice dropped. “You can’t ever become one of us, Righteous, until it’s gone. You know that. You can’t ascend.”
“I’ve tried to cleanse it.” For a moment, the heartbreak and angst in his words made my heart ache.
“You’ve tried all the ordinary ways to redeem yourself,” Mikhail purred.
“But nothing else. You have done only what was expected.” The room filled with the sound of Righteous’s erratic breathing, and Mikhail moving something around on tables.
Then Mikhail spoke again. “But today I need you to do something unexpected. An unusual task. Out of the ordinary, one might say.”
“Anything,” Righteous promised.
“Good.” I heard Mikhail stride to the door. “Then when I return, I expect to see every single speck of glitter in this room in that box. Every single one. Protect the Maker Hall and the Novice, boy.”
“G-glitter?” Righteous sputtered, but Mikhail must have been gone. Righteous cursed, “Fucking glitter?!” and I fell back asleep, my cheeks aching from forcing myself not to smile.
I had no idea how much time had passed when I awoke to feel something moving on me. Small, short movements, like a sparrow picking at my feet. I cracked one eye open.
Righteous had a pair of golden tweezers, and was gently plucking away the specks of glitter that had fallen onto me, placing them one by one in the box. The firelight flickered on his hair.
He didn’t look at my face, although I could tell he knew I was awake.
His body stiffened slightly, and his lips thinned.
Should I thank him for picking the glitter off?
No. He’d just get pissy. I let my eyes flutter shut again, feeling the meticulous pecking of the tweezers on the clumped muck, wondering why he was bothering.
Wondering if it was my imagination when I felt hot tears landing on my toes before he withdrew.
“So, can I ask a few questions?” I asked Mikhail the next day.
Righteous had spent most of the day and the evening before collecting the glitter, so I’d had to pretend to be asleep.
He’d hovered over me a few times, like he wanted to tell me something, but never did.
I feigned sleep the whole time. I wasn’t ready to talk to him about… any of it.
But being in such close proximity to Mikhail made me burn with curiosity that needed to be satisfied.
Along with other things. I wasn’t sure when or how, but the small crush I’d had on Growly Bear had blossomed into a borderline terrifying obsession.
All I could think about were his hands on me.
His lips sliding over my shoulders, my neck, down to my breasts.
His feathers stretching wide over me as he lifted my hips up to meet…
I slapped myself lightly, ignoring Mikhail’s quizzical glance.
Mikhail and I had slept, him on a bed along one wall, me on my cot by the fire.
Then we’d shared breakfast, visited the baths—separately of course—and I’d been expecting to get started on the self-mutilation/soul knife work.
But he’d muttered that his heart was too weak to bear it, whatever that meant, and he’d escorted me over to a table that was apparently mine now, announcing that it was craft time.
Sometime in the night, he had taken all the supplies I’d amassed in Sanctuary, and organized them, even supplementing them.
He hadn’t given back the glitter, saying something about letting the Abyss into this realm one microscopic shard at a time, but I had my fabric scraps, sequins, rhinestones, metallic puffy paints, and my trusty hot glue guns, as well as large scraps of leather and some new fancy-looking brass rivets, along with a tool to apply them.
I sort of wanted to make Mikhail a pair of assless chaps with them.
Or Gavriel, I supposed. He could definitely pull them off.
“You may ask any question you like,” Mikhail told me.
“As long as you agree to answer some of mine.” Oooh.
That sounded tricky. I had a lot of secrets, and I had the feeling lying to a High Angelus was kind of an unmaking offense.
Still, I was pretty sneaky. I could hide stuff.
Or create a diversion. Fake my own death!
I’d done that before, and it had worked super— “Well?” he interrupted my thoughts.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “It worked super well. Um, I mean, sure. But I’ll go first.”
“Fine.” He wasn’t looking at me; that made the first question easier.
“So, do you ever go to The Merge?” Some tools dropped on the floor. Unusual.
“No.” A very definitive answer. Dangit. I should have asked, Do you ever go to The Merge and if not, why not, and if so, what type of Protector or Guide or whatever would you consider merging with? And what should I wear to that merge? But it was too late.