Chapter 7
Feather
Rumple. Can I ask you some questions?
I felt more than heard his sigh. He knew I was getting antsy.
I’d asked about Mikhail, and he’d been cagey.
Not telling me whether or not my leaving Sanctuary might have had side effects for my Growly.
If I’d hurt Mikhail by leaving… No, I wasn’t solid enough to let myself think that. I’d explode all over again.
“Go ahead, Little Sacrifice.”
Why are you still here? They need you in Sanctuary. Why did you get called to help in the Abyss in the first place? Why did you leave them? I hesitated. Did your mother really mean for you to be gone for so long?
I felt something colder than ice land on my head, and wondered if he was crying.
“I’m not sure. When I was called to go through the gate, I didn’t expect to be…
trapped on this side for so long. The imbalance was like a current that grabbed me the moment I sang my name and walked through.
I was swept away to the deepest part of the Abyss. ”
Deeper than this? Where really bad souls go when they die?
“Much deeper than here, but there are no bad souls, little one; all souls are redeemable. The Abyss was formed as a place where souls could contemplate their choices, and meditate on their mistakes before moving on to brighter realms.”
All souls are redeemable? For some reason, this idea filled me with peace. Even me? I’m a murderer.
“Oh, little one, you must forgive yourself for that crime. Look at all the good you did, because of that one error, that one step into the shadows. Think of all those you saved. There is no limit to grace.”
That’s not what the Guides say in Sanctuary, I whispered. They said my crime was unforgivable.
Rage crackled in the cosmos. “I am very frightened for us all if the Protectors have been taught that evil fallacy.” After a moment, he went on.
“Some crimes are not forgiven, though. You know that.
But it is the soul itself that must do the work of understanding, and changing.
Some turn away by choice from the difficult path toward the Celestial Realm, and some only need time to perceive a better way.
The Abyss is where they sit in darkness, in isolation, until they choose differently.
When I was called, over two thousand years ago, some religious sects had begun to teach that perverted doctrine—that souls are in essence disposable.
That the Singer of All Songs would care so little for Her children, that She would give up on them. That there were limits to Her grace.
“Humans began to believe they could never be redeemed. They were meant to leave that sort of thinking, those polarizing, separatist ideas, behind with their physical forms. But they believed it so strongly that when they found themselves in the Abyss, they despaired. They lost hope, those broken souls.”
Atom girls like me?
He ran a hand through what I was sure was my hair.
“No. Broken in a more fundamental way. You could be disassembled a thousand times a day, and each individual particle would still be gloriously you. These souls began changing, as they wallowed in hopelessness. Shifting, wreathing themselves in shadows, and intent on taking more with them into the deepest mire.” His voice grew raspy.
“They were so lonely. They wanted company.”
For the very first time since I met Rumple, I felt a frisson of fear. Was he talking about himself? Was he one of the shadowed beings who was so lonely, he was trying to tip the balance on Earth, to fill the void? No. I couldn’t believe that of my Rumple. He had saved me. He was saving me again.
So what happened? Why didn’t you... fix it? Or tell the Celestial Realm what was going on, so they could help?
Bitter laughter rang out. “I tried. If others had held to their promises, I would have succeeded. Gavriel, for one.”
Gavriel’s face surfaced in my thoughts. His sharp nose, and full lips. Those aristocratic cheekbones, and the blazing blue and golden-ringed eyes that seared straight through my clothing. I mean, my soul.
I had to stop thinking about him like that, not that he had given me much reason to lust after him.
He had insulted me, shown his disapproval blatantly, and given me no more than a few smoldering looks to feed my fantasies.
I chastised the tiny pulses that I was almost certain were my ovaries, probably crying out for Gavriel babies, the stupid things.
Why was it always the bad boys that made me melt the fastest?
What did Gavriel do?
“Lied to me. Broke the last promise he made, and trapped me here.” Oh, shizz, that was worse than the regular douche behavior he’d exhibited.
I hoped for Gavriel’s sake that Seraphiel didn’t get back onto the Sanctuary side of the gate; I had a feeling it would be a bloody, painful reunion.
“If it were functioning correctly, I could use the gate to communicate with Sanctuary, and Sanctuary could send messengers through it to share news with the Celestial Realm. But the gate draws power from the inhabitants of Sanctuary—through their songs and heartfelt prayers—and at some point in the past two thousand years, Gavriel stopped singing to it, as he’d promised. ”
So I was right. The gate did like singing.
“More than like—it needs it to work. For the energy to flow both ways. I sang to the gate for millennia… and the gate sang back, stories from the past and the future. The Singer of All Songs sent me visions of so many things… Best of all, I saw you in them.”
Me? I must have had cheeks now, because they flared hot.
He hummed a yes. “But I didn’t recognize you. You were sleeping… in a glass casket, for some reason.”
Suddenly, I was cold. “No, that’s Arabella. I was a scrap of her. She’s Gavriel’s mate.”
“He mated?” Suddenly, all Rumple’s rage was gone, as his voice cracked. I had never heard that before. “To someone besides y—” He stopped, but I had a feeling the word he’d cut off wasn’t Yolanda. Or Yennifer. Or yogurt.
He had to be kidding. Gavriel would become my mate the day I waltzed back into Sanctuary and took over. The thought was beyond ridiculous.
I stopped laughing to hear Rumple muttering. “…has to have been corrupted in some way. He doesn’t even recognize his own… His songs should be enough to reveal the truth…”
He doesn’t sing, I interrupted. Gavriel hasn’t sung for a really long time, according to Ry.
And there’s no music in Sanctuary at all now.
The Guides decided they needed to focus on war efforts.
They locked every instrument up in this big storage closet, not long after the Well was sealed by the betrayer, Azazel.
“Poor Azazel,” Rumple sighed. “He was the one who was betrayed. I never meant to break him. I was trying to speak through him.”
You… spoke to him, like you did me?
“I sent him visions. He was a weak vessel, a sweet soul. I was desperate. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.”
A part of me wanted to ask what Rumple had done to Azazel, but I was more worried about Gavriel. Rumple needed to understand why Gav was failing.
Gavriel’s broken, Rumple. I think when you left, and then especially after Arabella fell, it broke him in a way he can’t come back from on his own.
The void pulsed with despair as he began singing again, this time a song of grief, and waves of it flooded me.
I felt those frigid droplets falling on me again, on my hair and wings—I had my wings again.
I flexed my back and they moved slightly, brushing up against an invisible torso.
I waited, thinking about Gavriel, Mikhail, Sunny, even Righteous, and wishing I could see them again.
But I wouldn’t do it if it meant leaving Rumple alone here again.
I felt hands moving along my wings, stroking each feather softly. He came to a spot on one wing where a feather was missing, the one that I thought had gotten stuck in the gate. I felt Rumple’s surprise, and then amusement joined his sorrow.
“I didn’t think it would be possible. But of course, with you… you change all the rules, don’t you? Is there no end to the surprises?” he rasped, after a long while. “I have to send you back, Little Sacrifice. I can send you back.”
“You’ll have to come with me,” I said aloud. Yes! I have lips and vocal cords. “I’m not going to leave you.”
“I don’t want you to. But if you don’t go, if you don’t sing the songs for me, no one will. I can’t. I can’t reach across the gate into Sanctuary.”
“But you did,” I complained. “You’ve been coming to me on Earth for years, and in my dreams in Sanctuary, and—”
A finger stopped my lips. “That was because you were on the other side of the gate, darling one.” A hand curled behind my ear, stroking my hair back.
“I can’t return there now, little one. I’ve changed too much since…
since my first sacrifice.” He laughed softly.
“If they think Mikhail is ugly, they would know me for a monster.”
My heart raced so fast, I thought I might fragment again. “What do you mean? Are you scarred like Mikhail?”
“I’m glad you can’t see me here. I want you to think of me as beautiful. Is that vanity?”
“No,” I said. “Or if it is, I don’t think it’s a sin.” I sighed. “And I do think you’re beautiful.”
Then a gentle, teasing touch landed on my chest, where the small, feather-shaped birthmark I’d had since forever lay. I couldn’t see it, but it felt… different now. Thicker, somehow.
Holy shizz.
“Rumple?” I swallowed. “Seraphiel? Did you put that feather on me, in me, when I was created in Sanctuary? Before I was thrown away all those centuries ago?” Had he somehow placed it inside me when I was born?
“No,” he said softly. “I did not.”
A part of me threw a tantrum like a three-year-old. For a split second, I had wanted that feather to be his—had hoped it meant he was my soulmate, too. But of course, it couldn’t be. He was the legendary leader of Sanctuary, a million times older than me.