Chapter 25 Feather #2
He was already asking his first question. “What was the best thing about your time on Earth?”
Oh. That was unexpected. “The very best thing? Like, besides pie?”
“Was the best thing pie?”
I felt his dark eyes on me as I began dotting hot glue onto a piece of fabric I’d cut into a headband. “No. But pie is not to be missed.”
“I have not had pie.”
“Wait, never? They don’t have pie here?” I gasped.
“I knew this was Hell…o.” He shot me what could have been a quelling glance.
I felt quelled, anyway. “That’s a travesty,” I declared.
“Those berries you gave me the other day…” I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, remembering how wonderfully awkward that had been.
“Anyway, they would make a great pie. I’ll bake you one sometime. Well, I’ll bake you a mini pie.”
He coughed. “Why a mini pie? Do I seem like a mini pie type of Angelus?”
“Oh my stars, Growly, did you just make an actual joke?” I pretended to faint until he growled for real.
“Okay, the thing is, I’m not good at… almost anything.
Like, anything useful. I can’t weave, or sew, or make clay vases, or change a tire, or do laundry well.
Seriously, if a skill is useful, I’m not your gal.
On Earth, I thought I was just talentless.
Now I know that’s because some basshole gave me the world’s worst name, which isn’t just a name.
Although whoever named Righteous missed the boat.
He should have been named Douchey McButtface. ”
“I named him,” Mikhail muttered.
“Oh, sorry,” I said over him murmuring something that sounded like, “But you are not incorrect.” I concentrated on my glue gun work while I spoke.
“Anyway, I digress. I figured out that if I tried to do something important, something that had actual value, I would fail. Every. Time. But if I did something similar that was sort of superfluous? Like with my crafts. I can’t make anything lasting or that anyone else would really want—but I can make pretty, disposable things, like those shirts I made you.
By the way, do not wash those. I’m pretty sure the glue up here is purification water soluble.
“Anyway, see this headband?” I placed it over my forehead. I hoped the silver and pink sequins accented the silver my hair was underneath. “Cute, but not noteworthy. As it turns out, I’m pretty darn good at that sort of thing. So, mini pies.”
“Mini pies?” Mikhail grumbled, carving something. It was odd, he was sort of hiding whatever he was working on. And he wasn’t wearing one of my shirts today, just his loose robe and leather trousers. “I still don’t understand.”
“Well, when a person wants a piece of pie, they want a real slice. A slice of pie can fill you up. It makes you feel, I don’t know, pie joy.
But a mini pie, they just make you wish you had more pie, see?
So getting a mini pie is like getting a single potato chip.
It’s not bad; you get to taste what pie would be like.
But it will leave you deeply unsatisfied. ”
“Like this conversation,” he muttered, before clearing his throat. “So, pie was your favorite thing.”
“No.” I carefully placed sequins as I thought. “I would have to say hugs. Yes, definitely hugs.”
“Hugs? That was the best thing?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, a good long snuggle in bed with someone you love, falling asleep holding each other—that’s the very best kind of hug.”
“And you have experienced this sort of… hug. On Earth.” His voice sounded tight. I nodded, remembering Lily, and the long evenings we’d spent telling each other stories and planning our future combination bakery and toy store.
And long before that, the very best hugs had come from Dina. Always Dina.
“With someone you loved?”
“Yeah.” I caught a tear before it fell, then rubbed it over my hair, watching as it dislodged a chunk of smut that had really been bugging me.
Silence filled the workshop. “He was a very lucky man.”
I looked up, shocked. “A man?”
He blinked. “Oh, apologies. A woman, then.”
I fought back a smile. “Not a woman either. It was a little girl. My charge.” I watched as the expressions on Mikhail’s face flashed by like a disco ball at a roller rink.
Relief, embarrassment, discomfort, hope?
And about fourteen other things I didn’t quite have names for.
Angel faces were hard to figure out. Especially his.
“Sooo,” I said when the silence got too awkward. “My turn. Now this is a hypothetical question.” He nodded, so I went on. “What if one of your new Protectors, the ones you’re making right now, went to Earth and got lost?”
“Lost? What do you mean?”
“I mean, what sort of system is there to make sure the Protectors go to Earth for one visit at a time? Is there some way that a Protector could end up cycling over and over down there?” I was afraid I was revealing too much, but he didn’t react. He merely shrugged.
“It would never happen.”
Demonstrably untrue, I wanted to shout. Instead, I hummed, “You know, it happens to foster kids all the time. They get shuffled around from one home to the next. They have case workers who are supposed to make sure they’re where they should be.
But like, a case worker could lose a file, or misdirect one, if they were evil or something.
” He shot me an odd look, and I went on.
“You know, what if something went wrong with… with a name.”
I could feel his gaze on me, heating the back of my neck as I worked.
I waved a hand across the room, toward the tray with four new Novices in a line, shining balls of soul energy.
“Like, if one of those didn’t get a name like the others.
One that gave them purpose. Then, maybe that one could… get lost.”
Mikhail’s voice was raspy when he answered. “Every Protector has a purpose.”
“Well, I’m the mini pie of Protectors, then. A scrap, right? And not all that useful.” I tried to laugh, but that seemed to make him mad.
“You are not useless, Feather,” he ground out. “No matter what your name turns out to be. That is not the core of what you are. You are a Protector.” My eyes flew wide when I heard the lie in his words. I could almost taste the sourness on my tongue.
“Mikhail?” I breathed. “I’m not a Protector, am I?” I stared at the fabric in front of me until two large hands picked me up and sat me on the table edge, facing him. He stepped in between my parted legs, his massive hands cradling my chin, tipping my face toward him.
“Feather, whatever you are. Whoever you are. You belong here. You belong in Sanctuary.”
“How can you be sure?”
Something burned in his eyes. A secret, a mystery.
A promise of some kind. His fingertips moved gently over my face, over my hairline and behind my ears, caressing me.
They came to rest on my nape, and I fought to control the rush of lust that tore through my whole body.
My lips fell open in a silent gasp, his eyes fixed on them.
“Feather,” he crooned, one finger skating over my lips as if he were learning the shapes for a masterpiece he planned to create. “Feather,” he repeated in a broken voice.
“I like it when you call me that. I wish it really was my name.” I swallowed, my mouth inexplicably dry. “I wish… I wish…” I didn’t dare to say what I wanted out loud, but Mikhail’s eyes flared. He leaned down, his vast wings spread behind him, sheltering me, and placed his lips on mine.
The world exploded into ice and fire, pain and pleasure, life and death and every emotion I’d ever felt packed into the fleeting second when our lips fused.
Brilliant sparks seemed to burst into firework displays behind my closed eyes and, for some reason, that spot at the back of my neck grew hot and pulsed with an intense, physical surge of bliss.
And then his lips were gone. His eyes were as wide, as I knew mine were, and we spoke on top of each other. “I should not have done that,” he rushed out at the same time that I said, “I think I just had a neck-gasm.”
I blinked. Mikhail blinked. He opened his mouth to speak, and I laid a smudged finger on his lips. “No take backs. That was the best kiss in the history of lips, and I’m not going to let you ruin it yet.”
A sweet, slow smile blossomed on his scarred face.
His arms circled me as he leaned down even farther, his lips meeting my forehead this time.
I clasped my arms around his neck—or as close to around as I could get, with his wings there and my arms not quite long enough to reach.
I could already tell he wasn’t planning to kiss me again, not properly.
“One for the road?” I lifted my face, pressing our lips together again.
Once again, the world burst into flames, melted and was remade, all of it taking place in the infinitely small space where our lips met.
I lived a thousand lives in that space; I explored every nuance of pleasure, and more than pleasure.
It felt like… love. “What is this, Mikhail?” I murmured into his mouth, breathing in the whiskey and woodsmoke scent of him.
He let out a loud groan and tore himself away. No, wait. That was the door groaning, and Gavriel tearing him away.
“Mikhail, what are you doing?”
“Gavriel!” Mikhail extended his wings and stood in front of me, keeping me from seeing what was on Gavriel’s face. From the weird light that kept flashing around the room, I had the feeling they were having an eyeball-lightsaber fight. After a few seconds, it stopped, and Mikhail lowered his wings.
“You must understand,” Gavriel argued. I wriggled to one side to see around Mikhail’s body. Expressions kept flickering across Gavriel’s aristocratic features—disgust, shock, fear, anger, and regret—maybe a few more.
Then Mikhail slumped, rubbing a hand over his face. “I know. It’s much harder than I anticipated.”
“Wait, you guys have telepathy?” They both winced. I lowered my voice. “When was someone going to tell me we got telepathy?” I gasped. “Has everyone heard all the things I’ve been thinking? That would explain a whole lot—”
“You don’t have telepathy, Feather.” Mikhail’s lovely half-smile was back on his face, only this time it was tinged with sadness. “Only Gavriel and I have that power.”
“High Angeli?” I chewed at my lip. I knew some Protectors could become High Angeli. Maybe you could develop telepathy as well.
“Yes. And you are not one of us,” Gavriel said.
Gingerly, I lowered myself down from the tabletop and walked around Mikhail, letting my fingertips trail over the edge of his wing as I did.
Gavriel tracked the small movement like an eagle.
A look of confusion—or possibly revulsion—flickered in his storm-blue eyes.
“I never thought in all my years that I would have to say this aloud. But Feather, you and Mikhail are not allowed to… be together in any way.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “You are not compatible.” I winced, and his eyes narrowed. “You already knew this,” he accused.
“Sunny said something about that,” I hedged. “Said we wouldn’t find each other attractive.”
Gavriel went on, each word hammering my heart. “You have, in a very real way, injured him deeply. He has forgotten himself, lost his sense of what is right and good, and what is very wrong. It’s a sign of how dangerous the smut you brought into Sanctuary is—”
“Gavriel, no.” Mikhail ground out the words. “That is not true.”
Gavriel opened his mouth, and one of those angelic-sounding words came out.
My eardrums burned slightly, but it didn’t hurt like it had before.
The word might have been silence because nothing in the workshop made any sound.
Not even Mikhail, who had dropped to his knees and was frantically examining me, his hands on my head as he moved me gently to each side to… check my ears?
Slowly my hearing began to return, and I realized Mikhail was shouting—at Gavriel. “You know better than to speak in that tongue in the presence of someone so much younger than you!”
“I thought you knew better than to try and merge with a Novice, but it seems we’re all making mistakes.” He sounded almost as panicked as Mikhail.
“You may have burst her eardrums. Cauterized them. She may never hear again,” Mikhail muttered. “If I use my blood, drip it inside, it may stop the damage.” To my shock, he picked up the soul knife and aimed it at the side of his arm.
“No!” I shouted. “Don’t hurt yourself for me.”
His eyes met mine. “You can hear?”
“Yes,” I said, my heart pounding and my earlier exhaustion returning in force. “Growly Bear, don’t worry. I know you said we couldn’t kiss again. I shouldn’t have taken advantage of the moment. Sunny explained it was super forbidden.”
Gavriel let out a soft curse. “You knew it was forbidde—”
“Enough, Gavriel!” Mikhail’s upper lip curled up into a snarl. “There is no law forbidding it, only tradition.”
“To protect us all.” Gavriel’s gaze followed Mikhail’s hands as he gathered me up into his embrace, but the jerk’s expression held more envy than disgust. I had to be imagining that, right?
The desperate longing that bled out of Gavriel’s shining eyes, mixed with a strange, puzzled question.
“How is this possible? I don’t understand it. ”
I wasn’t sure what he was asking. Maybe he was thinking of Arabella.
“I… We shouldn’t have done it,” I admitted. And I even meant it: we should not have kissed without locking the door first.
Mikhail’s voice rumbled by my ear, sending small vibrations throughout my body. “I would kiss you again if it cost me my wings, sweet soul. No take backs, isn’t that what you said?” He lifted my chin in one massive hand, and I smiled up at him, before pulling away from his arms.
I pointed at both of them. “You and Gavriel have a lot to work out. I’ll go back to my room and hang out with Sunny.
You two patch things up.” I rolled my eyes when Gavriel ruffled his feathers, protesting at me telling him what to do.
“Yeah, yeah. Listen, we don’t get that many true friends, no matter how long our lifetimes. Don’t fight over me. I’m nothing.”
On my last word, somewhere deep in the workshop, the naming chime sounded. I couldn’t help it; I laughed so hard I almost fell over, while both Angeli stared at me in horror. “That’s perfect. See, I told you. I’m Nothing, a Useless Scrap.” Sighing, I left as the naming chime rang out even louder.