Chapter 30 #2
By the last three words, my voice had risen to a terrifying shout, and I cleared my throat.
Mikhail’s eyes twinkled, one corner of his mouth twitching, and I knew at least he wasn’t horrified at my threat.
It wasn’t even a threat; it was a promise.
The thought of these sanctimonious morons, unwilling to pay the cost themselves, but totally happy to let an innocent, unconscious woman do it for them made me feel more than a little murder-y.
I stewed while Mikhail released the others from their silence and began lecturing them all on something that he was calling basic gate theory. It sounded technical, all about how much energy could be saved by reducing power use elsewhere in Sanctuary, blah blah.
I ignored his chatter as Sunny slid around the edges of the room toward me.
A few weeks before, she could have done so unobtrusively, but now she shone as brightly as Hope or Righteous.
I scanned the room as she sidled up, close enough to whisper in my ear.
Righteous was stationed by the door, but his eyes were fixed on me.
On my body, not my face. My cheeks heated up as Sunny hissed, “Is that High Angelus Mikhail’s robe? ”
I glanced down. It was pretty obvious; only the High Angeli had robes this color, golden instead of white.
And this one was sort of rumpled. I blushed harder, remembering how it had gotten that way, and clutched it around my neck.
I was almost certain I had at least one hickey, and from the way Sunny was grinding her teeth, she’d seen them before I covered up.
Others had seen too, and they were whispering, pointing, and moving closer as a group.
“Why not ask the most tainted ones to make the sacrifice?” a Protector called out from the crowd. “Choose the six least valuable members of Sanctuary and ask them to shore up the Great Gate.”
I gulped. For all that I was cleaner than I had been, I was definitely still one of the grimiest. Sunny put her arm around me and yelled back, “Can’t the gate be damaged by smut?”
Mikhail frowned down at her. “What are they teaching you young Protectors these days? When a Great Sacrifice is made, the smut is burned away in the act itself.”
“That’s not how it works for me,” I muttered, remembering all the smut I’d taken on over the centuries. Mikhail’s eyes narrowed, and he shook his head slightly. He moved away, arguing with a Protector, and I felt Righteous’s eyes burning holes into me.
Before I knew what was happening, I was surrounded by Guides. I couldn’t see all their faces with their billowy hoods obscuring their features, but their scorn was obvious in their tone. “She must be an agent of the Abyss. Look at her.”
“Filthy, foul, repulsive. Sanctuary isn’t for souls like hers.”
“If her smut won’t taint the gate, I say we send her through, unmake her. She could be the reason it’s falling now.”
The group picked up on that idea and ran with it. Sunny’s arm went tighter around me as the crowd pressed in, and I saw someone struggling to get to us—Ry?
Then, behind me, Mikhail burst through the wall of sneering Guides, and the air filled with screams and flying feathers. “What are you doing to this Novice?” he demanded.
A voice sneered back, “A better question might be what have you been doing with her? But we can all tell. It’s taboo.”
Mikhail stopped next to me, but didn’t reach down to hold my hand. Didn’t touch me. He didn’t even look at me, like he was afraid to meet my eyes, and a dark flush was working its way up his bronzed neck. Was he embarrassed about what we’d done? Oh, shizz. He was.
He was ashamed of me.
Valor landed in front of me, his eyes flashing at Mikhail.
“She’s already tainted you, High Angelus Mikhail.
It’s obvious.” He waved at the smut that shadowed Mikhail’s face.
“You’re a disgrace. What you’ve done... it’s perverse.
Maybe you should be the one to sacrifice for the gate if your smut won’t harm it.
Give us some real time to work out a solution. ”
“Who’ll make the new Protectors then?” Sunny shouted, while Mikhail just stared gravely at the arrogant jerk. Like he was considering it. My heart thudded in my throat.
“There won’t be a need for more Protectors if the gate falls,” Valor replied, smirking.
I really, really wanted to punch him in the mouth.
“And Maker Mikhail is the one who allowed the Well of Souls to be sealed. He did whatever sent Arabella into her state. He should give more of himself since he’s the one who made the situation so much worse. ”
A rusty laugh rang out at my side, and Mikhail extended his wings, forcing some of the Guides to back up.
Valor stayed right in his face, though. “You think I haven’t given enough to Sanctuary?
” Mikhail’s hands went to the belt of his robe, and he untied it slowly.
“You believe I have balked at my duty? That after the Well was sealed, I rested?” His robe dropped to the ground, and he tore the simple white shirt straight down the middle with a twist of one hand.
The fabric fluttered to the floor as he straightened, revealing his chest.
I’d felt the divots, the hundreds of scars, when we’d been together.
I hadn’t thought they were ugly—nothing about Mikhail could be.
But seeing them like this—laid out on display for these hypocrites who didn’t deserve to witness the sacrifices he’d made for each one of them—made me want to be sick.
I heard a sound like retching from somewhere in the crowd, and a soft sob, and was glad at least some of these ungrateful jerks felt the same.
Sunny’s voice was choked with tears. “Maker Mikhail, what happened to you? Who did this?”
Folding his wings back, he looked down at her.
“When the Well was closed, and the imbalance was made so much worse, we needed new Protectors more than ever. But Sanctuary didn’t have the power.
I did.” He smiled gently when she gasped and put a finger on a deep scar by his second rib.
“This was where I harvested your naming mark, sweet Sunny.”
She sobbed, turning to throw her arms around me, and I held her close. The room was silent, aghast.
Mikhail turned to the others, stretching his arms wide, revealing a torso littered with old and new scars, his skin so mottled that it looked more like bark than flesh.
“I haven’t given enough? Hundreds of you have been carved from my flesh.
Many of you truly are my children, inasmuch as Angeli can have them.
If you decide that I need to give more—to sacrifice my whole self—I could do so.
But be very certain. After I’m gone, there will be no more Protectors, no more Novices.
” He sighed, his gaze on the crowd filled with disappointment and grief.
“Be very sure you want me to make that sacrifice for you, my family. I will meet you again at the Great Gate in the morning for you to share your decision.”
With that, he smiled softly at me, whispered for Sunny to take me back to my room, and gazed across the room at someone else, his eyes flashing. Then he leapt into the air, flying out of the room over the stunned gathering.
I crumpled to the floor, sobbing. No one besides Sunny comforted me, though when I looked up at last, my tears wrung out of me, Righteous stood silent guard over us both.
He escorted us back to my room, his eyes troubled.
Sunny fell asleep almost instantly, her hiccupping sobs continuing even in her dreams. Sanctuary quaked and shuddered in the darkness, as if it, too, was living through a nightmare.
I lay awake, thinking, until the incessant screaming from the gate forced my feet to move. In moments, I stood one corner away from the gate. I peeked quickly, noting that Hope was on guard there. She’d never let me near it. I changed course and tiptoed into Arabella’s room a few minutes later.
Her room was dimly lit as always, though most of the glow seemed to come from her.
That was new. Mikhail had said his power was tied to Sanctuary’s somehow.
Maybe when he took on my smut, Sanctuary got dimmer.
I peered around the room, making sure we were alone, then climbed up next to her, wondering once more at how perfect she was.
“Mikhail told me how I got my name,” I said softly, letting my fingers trace a sweeping line over her brow.
“I was supposed to be a part of you, did you know? Or… I guess I wasn’t.
I was a mistake. A scrap, that he couldn’t find a place for.
That’s what he named me, though he swears it was an accident, that he didn’t know the name would stick.
I was supposed to be unmade way back then.
Instead I’m Nothing, a Useless Scrap of the Beautiful One.
” I laughed humorlessly. “Where would I have gone, do you think? If there had been a place for me on you, or if he had forced it. Bigger boobs? Longer hair? Fingernails, probably. Something not super useful.”
I sighed, and the room itself seemed to sigh with me.
I entwined my fingers with hers, wondering at how warm they felt, even in the cool night air.
“I had a sister on Earth, four hundred years ago. Dina. When Azazel threw me away, I guess I ended up there. That’s why I was lost. I was never supposed to exist. No one even knew I was down there.
No one loved me, until I came here.” I was about to tell her about Sunny, when a voice that brought memories of pain intruded.
“He can’t truly love you,” Gavriel said in a low voice, stepping out of the shadows.
“W-what?” I sat up, scooting away from Arabella, with a quick glance to make sure I hadn’t messed up her hair or robe. “What are you talking about?”
He took another step into the room, his lip curled in a strange shape. He looked like a lost man, grief and pain oozing from his gaze. The shadows that fell from him as he approached me were hideously warped and long, almost like the ones that I would see in my moments of choosing on Earth.
What I wouldn’t give to have Rumple here with me now. I had a feeling Gavriel was about to attack me. And he did… but with words.
“You think Mikhail mated you because he loves you. He may feel some sort of connection now, but that’s the effect of the soul bond, the one created when he saved you.
He felt responsible for you. He felt guilty, that a Novice in his care was so horribly tarnished.
” He gritted his teeth, his face wreathed with confusion and a strange desperation to understand.
“I know how he justified mating you… but to merge with you? You’re not his equal.
Not capable of being what he needs in a mate.
The Guides will accuse him of spiritual incest.”
“He knows I’m not a Novice,” I sputtered. “I’m not one of his... children, or whatever.”
“No, you’re not.” Gavriel’s voice was a sinuous snake that curled up in my eardrums and oozed venom.
“You’re not a Novice. You’re not a High Angelus.
He told me your name: Useless. Trash. Nothing.
” He dropped his head, muttering, “You could be the reason Arabella fell in the first place. You were some… impurity that found its way into her creation. Maybe that’s why she never looked at me with love.
Or longing. Or even lust, the way Mikhail looks at you.
“Maybe you’re the reason I’ve been alone.”
I felt my scalding tears as they fell onto the bed, onto the sheets and Arabella as well, but I didn’t look away from Gavriel to wipe them. His features were twisted in a scowl, and he circled the bed like some beast, waiting for the moment to strike.
“Mikhail is probably sitting in his hall now, preparing to sacrifice himself to the Great Gate for you. For the others as well, but when I asked once before why he would contemplate a similar foolish sacrifice, he said he owed it to you.”
I gasped. He may as well have punched me in the stomach. “I don’t want him to sacrifice himself. I love him!”
He barked a short laugh. “You’re destroying him.
He was already weak, apparently from centuries of carving new soul light out of his own flesh.
With your burden of shadows on his shoulders, he’s fading.
He knows, as well as I do, that he only has so much time now that he’s carrying weight for you as well. ”
“But Sanctuary needs him,” I cried.
“Yes, it does, far more than it needs you.” He let out a breath. “Or me.”
“I’d do it myself if I could. I’d save Sanctuary.” I needed him to understand, needed to erase the suspicion and distrust in his eyes. “I would protect it, for him. For all of you.”
His voice was soft as he twisted the knife one more time.
“Would you, though? If you’re made of the same stuff my mate is—if you’re really who he thinks, then you could save him, and all of us.
But almost no one who says they’d make that sort of sacrifice would really do it.
Only great souls like Mikhail.” And with that, he turned and vanished back into the hidden entrance.
I cried until there were no tears left. Then I stared at Arabella.
What would it be like to have someone love you that fiercely?
Loyal for centuries, even though you could never speak to him, never kiss or touch him?
In the farthest corner of my heart, I had hoped Mikhail and I could share something like that, wished for it.
But I’d known before Gavriel had hammered the point home that Mikhail was too good for me. Too pure, too important, too generous.
If I stayed here with Mikhail, as he grew weaker over the years, I would always know that he had mated me out of kindness. But not love.
And whether he loved me or not, I did love him. I wouldn’t be the millstone around his big, muscly neck.
I lifted myself off the bed, feeling centuries older than I had just that morning, and pressed a kiss to Arabella’s brow.
Her face was wet with my tears, and they made her glow and sparkle even more.
“My sister Dina wasn’t pretty like you. But she was amazing in every way that mattered.
I failed her, though; I didn’t do a good job of protecting her.
Maybe I can do a better one protecting you, and everyone else here. ”
I climbed down and slipped silently into the hallway, my heart heavier than all the smut I’d worn for all those centuries. I knew what I had to do. I just hoped I had the courage to go through with it.