Chapter 12 Gavriel
Gavriel
My thoughts were wild, almost uncontrollable, as I stared at the miracle before me. Feather had returned. Somehow, she had found a way back to Sanctuary.
She had merged with Mikhail, who was healed.
And in the middle of that merge, which I had watched in shock and amazement from the shadows for far longer than I wanted to admit, far longer than was decent, she had called out for our long-vanished friend Rafe… and for Righteous.
But not for me.
That unworthy thought spun through my mind as I locked eyes with my friend who held his mate—and they were mated again, from the look of the glowing silver feather that stretched from his hand and up his forearm.
For a moment, I had a stray thought—that may prove to be an awkward place for an erogenous zone—but then my mind spun back to the incomprehensible words I had heard when I burst into the room through the hidden door.
Another man’s name on her lips as she surrendered to her orgasm, and Mikhail urging her on. Two men’s names. No anger, no jealousy. He’d been pleased, and smug. I bit the inside of my cheek, fighting to look away from her sweat-dampened chest, her flushed face.
Why was I the one feeling those things? Unwarranted rage and a burning envy. Almost a sense of righteous anger, as if my best friend had stolen something from me.
I needed to ask what had happened, how she had returned, but her doubting expression, her vulnerability, her nakedness, made me drop my eyes. And then drop to my knees. The one thing I had prayed for, but known I would never receive, was in my grasp. The chance to seek forgiveness.
My knees ached, and I turned my palms upward, closing my eyes. “Forgive me, Feather. I don’t deserve it, but I beg you. Forgive me for what I said. For the harm I did you and Mikhail. For the hatred and suspicion I carried in my heart.”
She didn’t answer, though I heard a shifting of cloth as she moved. Then a small hand was there, pulling my face upward by my chin. I stared into bright green eyes that swam with uncertainty and distrust. Her face was stained with smut, but for some reason, I welcomed the familiarity of it. “Why?”
I didn’t need her to explain. I knew what she was asking.
Why would the leader of Sanctuary, a High Angelus with power beyond anyone in the realm, stoop to verbally abusing a young Novice…
No. Not a Novice. Her power was well hidden underneath a fresh coating of smut, and so others might not see her inner light.
I was in tune with the currents of energy in Sanctuary, though, and I felt the way the realm reacted to her presence.
No, she was definitely a High Angelus, a strangely petite one.
Small, and sweet, and I wanted to taste her pleasure the way Mikhail had more than anything else I could imagine, though I would not voice that thought now, or ever.
Her scent—a sweet, honeyed musk—rose up as she stood there, the evidence of her pleasure and Mikhail’s staining the sheet that she’d wrapped around herself like an unwieldy toga.
“Why?” she repeated, her voice stronger, gaze shuttering.
“I was jealous,” I admitted, and steeled myself not to react to the utter disbelief in her expression.
“I was,” I insisted as she tightened her arms around herself.
“Jealous of Mikhail having a mate when my own lay as dead. And more than that. Jealous of his ability to see the goodness, the beauty beneath the… smut you wore.” One corner of her mouth twitched at that.
Her eyes were warming, but I had to finish this.
I clenched my jaw. “I was jealous beyond reason that he had a mate. Has a mate.” I sealed my lips before I said what wanted to burst out.
My true envy lay in that he would be allowed, even though their stations were so unequal, to touch her, taste her. Fill her and merge his spirit inside her… and I never, ever would. Not even if she would accept me.
She was a mated Angelus. And so was I.
She swallowed hard and wrapped herself more securely in the sheet, glancing at Mikhail on the bed. “Well. I guess… that’s understandable.”
Mikhail muttered something that sounded like, “A High Angelus telling half-truths?” but I didn’t look away from her face. Her glorious, glittering face. Was it her skin? I blinked. No, there was glitter on her face as well as the smut stains, small specks of it catching the candlelight.
“You have… a little something there,” I said, pointing to her cheek. She dabbed at it with one hand, the sheet falling precariously low. I glanced at Mikhail, but he was… pretending to sleep? I cursed him mentally.
She’s covered with glitter.
Leave it, he replied lazily, though something in his tone hinted at a challenge. It doesn’t bother me.
It’s distracting.
He didn’t answer. I crawled forward, still on my knees.
Even at this level, we were almost the same height.
“Allow me to clean it off,” I said softly, and she stepped toward me, jutting her chin forward.
I used my thumb to wipe away a few pieces of glitter, but every time I got one, another seemed to pop up.
Finally, I had her face clear, but I let my hand move as if I was still searching, to keep this moment from passing.
The moment when I was able to feel her skin beneath mine. To touch her.
It was the worst irony that I had once thought her beneath me. Now I had to force myself not to think of her physically beneath me. Wanting me. That would never come to pass.
“Forgive me?” I asked again, my voice low.
“I vow on my wings to be a friend to you. To be a better Angelus, one worthy of that friendship. Never to be cruel to you again, little one.” For some reason, when I called her that, her lips parted, and one hand flew to her chest, pressing as if something was there, underneath the gathered sheet.
“On your wings? Will you tell me what that means?” One delicate eyebrow flew high, and I marveled at her silvery hair, so like my mate’s in all but color. She had patterns in gold and gray on her skin that had changed during her time away. What else had changed?
“When I vow on my wings, it means that if I am proven untrue, I will make a sacrifice of wings to atone for the lie.”
Her jaw dropped. “Like, literally. You would, what? Cut them off?”
I nodded. “With the Celestial sword, or one of the soul knives.” I tilted my head toward the cauldron. “In the past, the material was given to the gate, to strengthen Sanctuary. No one’s had to pay that price in thousands of years, of course.”
“Of course,” she repeated, her voice strangled.
“Do you accept my vow, little one?” I used the pet name again, wondering what it meant to her.
She blinked repeatedly, blushing. “That’s what Rumple calls me, sometimes.”
“Rumple?” I glanced at Mikhail for clarification.
He had risen from the bed and clothed himself while we spoke.
Now he carried a plate with food and drink over to one of the clean, larger tables.
We pulled up chairs around it, Mikhail hauling Feather onto his lap, where she squirmed in her sheet.
My mouth grew dry, watching the cloth slip lower.
I shifted in my chair. If my cock got any harder, I would need to mend my trousers.
I had just popped a grape into my mouth when Feather blithely announced, “Rumple is what I call Seraphiel. I’ve known him for ages, since he helped me in Italy when my sister was killed.
” She sketched the story of her first life for me, and I had just opened my mouth to ask a question when she continued.
“He’s the one who found me in the Abyss and smooshed me back together. ”
Immediately, I began choking on the grape. “What— What do you mean?” I asked once I could speak again.
“The one you call Rafe, the old leader of Sanctuary. He’s on the other side of the gate. And he’s pretty pissed, Gavriel. Um, I mean, High Angelus Gavriel.”
“You don’t have to call him High Angelus now that you’re no longer a Protector, Feather,” Mikhail said, feeding her a cheese cube. “You’re a High Angelus now, too.”
“Really?” she said, at the same moment that I snapped out, “No, she’s not!”
They both gaped at me. I sighed. “You know as well as I that becoming a High Angelus takes time, training, and experience. It’s not just the material you’re made out of—”
“What about the mates, then?” Feather asked, licking grape juice off her fingers.
I stared at her small tongue as she lapped at each digit, and held my breath so I wouldn’t whimper.
“Mates like the ones Mikhail made for other Angeli.” She skirted around Arabella’s name.
“They were called Constructs, right? Were they High Angeli when they were formed?”
“No,” I sputtered, but she had me there.
Even with her smutty coating, Feather was every bit as much a High Angelus as any created mate, even if she knew next to nothing about what that meant.
She would never have survived merging with Mikhail even once if she hadn’t been.
“Well, sort of. But the mate bore the responsibility of caring for, of teaching the newly made Angelus.”
She twisted on Mikhail’s lap, a mischievous smile on her lips. “Gonna teach me, Daddy Bear?” I tried not to choke again at the way she purred the inappropriate nickname, and took advantage of that moment when neither was looking at me to adjust myself.