Chapter 20 Feather #2
“You haven’t sung in angelic before today, have you, High Angelus Feather?
” I shook my head, and she smiled. “You know, I heard other High Angeli sing, long ago. Their voices were almost as phenomenal as yours. But they didn’t have the depth of emotion I hear in yours.
So much suffering you’ve lived through, for such a young soul.
” I ducked my head. Glory rose, her movements graceful, and poured me a cup of water, carrying it back to the bed.
“Don’t talk. Let us take care of you now. ”
While I took small sips and tried not to cough, Glory examined the room.
With the fire burning brighter, there was enough light for her to make out the dozens of tables covered with tools, the one lined with exquisitely carved figures of High Angeli, and the shorter one piled high with my t-shirts and craft supplies.
“I never thought I’d see inside here. Everyone talks about the Maker Hall like it’s this untouchable, sacred space.
But it’s filled with more love than any other room in Sanctuary.
” Her eyes fell on the bed. “More love recently, too.” She fanned her face.
“This bed… The energy it’s giving off feels like watching a live sex show.
We tried to sleep on it but…” Glory laughed at my blush as she gathered a still-sleeping Heart in her arms. “What can we do to help you, High Angelus?”
She rolled her eyes when I insisted hoarsely that she call me Feather. I might technically be a High Angelus, but it just felt weird to hear it.
“Feather, then. We aren’t whole—we’re weak.
Our bodies are healed, but our souls are crying out inside for their missing pieces.
The drain on our energy is constant. We still believe you should let us be unmade sooner rather than later, and use our energy for whatever you need.
The Guides who did this must be stopped. ”
I whispered, “You could mate again.” I lifted my wing and pointed to the space where the feather I’d given Mikhail had been.
Glory’s eyes were shuttered. “We could and would, but with no soul knife? Neither one of us can carve out a feather. Heart and I only risked this because, well, she’d just returned from Earth.
She’d been forced to make some choices on her mission to save her charges.
When she got back, there wasn’t enough purifying gel to help her get clean.
We’d been planning to mate for a long while, and when I asked the Guides for permission…
” I already knew what she was going to say.
“They denied us. Said she had made poor choices, and should pay the consequences.” Glory’s voice went brittle.
“She was suffocating underneath the weight of it. She’s named for sacrificial love; she made the only choices she could on Earth.
I’m named for love as well. I had no choice but to find a way to save her. ”
I nodded, understanding completely. “There’s no other tool in Sanctuary that can cut your flesh? Besides the soul knife?”
She shook her head, long dark hair spilling over her shoulders. “No. If we can’t be together in this life, we will sacrifice ourselves to save Sanctuary. To save you, High Ang— Feather.”
I shook my head back at her; I was not worth them sacrificing themselves. But I knew someone who was. “Righteous is in danger,” I managed to say, though it made me cough again. “Help find him?”
“Done,” she said. I lifted my hands in question, then mimed looking around, and Glory of Love smiled sweetly.
“Do you know, I sensed only the most painful currents from Righteous for so long. Centuries. Righteous’s ongoing anguish made it difficult for me to physically be in a room with him.
He had damaged some part of his heart, and could not let the shame and guilt of whatever had happened go.
“He wallowed in agony. Until you arrived in Sanctuary, stinking up the place and changing everything… for the better.” Her eyes crinkled up in the corners.
“One of my skills is to read emotional currents. It means I’ve stayed separate out of necessity for a long time.
The pain of others hurts me.” She gripped her head.
“But I can use that gift, if I open myself up, to more or less… sniff out Righteous, using the intense connection.”
“Like an emotional hound,” Heart teased, awake at last. Glory fussed over her, and my heart lifted to watch it. There had to be hope for these two.
Glory wrapped her arm around her mate. “Just so. No matter where they’ve put him, as long as he’s still in this realm, I’ll find him for you. It won’t be hard. To be honest, the hard part was blocking his feelings for you before now.”
I scrunched up my brow. I didn’t understand.
She leaned down to whisper in my ear, “Mikhail is your mate, and adores you so much that when he is in Sanctuary, it feels like floating in an endless ocean of love.” She brushed my hair back, like a mother would.
“But when Righteous looks at you, it’s like being tossed into a volcano of emotion.
Months ago, it was rage and frustration and so much longing, I attempted to pull him aside to speak to him about it.
Since you left… No, before then. It started changing even before you and Mikhail found each other.
Righteous’s heart began to bloom, like a desert flower.
At this point, it’s almost overpowering.
I can feel his heart reaching for you now. ”
I gasped. “Where?”
She sighed. “I’m not sure which room, but I can tell he’s downstairs.”
“The dungeon,” I whispered.
“They call them cells,” Heart interrupted.
“They were never intended for incarceration. They were built as a place for… privacy. Later on, to isolate injured Protectors while they recovered. Once the group therapy sessions began, they fell out of favor. Until recently.” Her tone darkened.
“Now they’re used to imprison dissidents.
I saw the new rules, signed by High Angelus Gavriel himself. ”
I gaped. “He knows?” Had Gavriel reopened the cells to be used as prisons?
“We’re not sure.” Glory of Love clutched my hand.
“For all that Righteous’s pain felt like a thorn when I was near him, I haven’t been capable of remaining in the presence of High Angelus Gavriel for four centuries.
We were friends, once. But his anguish is a tidal wave—no, a whirlpool.
Many of us who are sensitive to such things had to stay away from him in self-preservation.
And those who got closer to him… they were the ones who fed on the shadowed currents that flow in a heart as tormented as his.
I believe Prosperity and Vigilance, and possibly Tradition, fed his fears of losing more of us.
Convinced him that wartime footing had to be the norm. Encouraged him to stay on Earth.
“And with him gone, and Mikhail locking himself away and carving himself into pieces to keep us going… I am certain Gavriel doesn’t know what was in the Guides’ hearts, or what could happen to us.
Or that Righteous would ever be trapped in a cell.
Or that they have forbidden soulmates to commit.
But…” Her eyes closed, her brow furrowing in pain.
“I’m not certain if he would care. Compassion has dripped away from his soul, creating a wound much more permanent, and more dangerous, than the one on my mate.
When High Angelus Gavriel returns, if he returns, we pray he will stand with us. ”
Heart cleared her throat, interrupting the runaway train of panic and fear that had started racing down the invisible track of my mind.
“Luckily for us, we can reach Righteous. And he can travel to Earth if necessary, and recall the High Angeli.” Her smile was sly.
“I am one of the eldest Protectors in Sanctuary. I was at one time trained by a High Angelic counselor whose job was to remediate Protectors returning too damaged to be reintegrated into our community without help. And I still have the words to unlock those cells. I can teach you.”
It took more than a day to reach him. Glory and Heart needed a little more time to heal, and there were constant search parties, ripping up every space in Sanctuary to find them.
Sunny carried me to my seminars, and we sat next to each other in group therapy, though we weren’t allowed to sleep in each other’s rooms. We both kept our heads down, though she said she had a mental list of a hundred resistance sympathizers.
I used my growing telepathic powers to listen in on the Protectors around us, and helped point out potential recruits for our side, as well as a few who had hidden their shadowed hearts.
Honestly, I hated listening in. It made me tired, and made my heart hurt.
Most of the Protectors were one lukewarm cappuccino away from asking to speak to Sanctuary’s manager.
They felt cheated, as if Gavriel and Mikhail had trapped them in some horrific cycle, and they selfishly wanted more.
Felt they deserved more, were entitled to some sort of compensation for their work and “sacrifice.”
The Guides were even worse. Listening in on most of them made me physically ill as well as exhausted, so I stopped doing it after a day or two. I would assume they had all grown twisted. It seemed like a safe bet.
Sunny told me the resistance saw me as their spiritual head. We needed a real leader, though, and since Gavriel and Mikhail hadn’t come back—and no one knew precisely why not—that meant Righteous. Glory assured me he was still alive, though she said he was growing weaker. We needed to move soon.
I worried that they were starving him. The food in Sanctuary, which had been scarce but had recovered somewhat after I walked into the gate, was once again being rationed. Without a High Angelus in Sanctuary to cycle the energy into Sanctuary itself, we would eventually run out.
I didn’t tell Sunny, but I felt weaker by the day as well. I had a feeling Sanctuary had found a High Angelus to leech off, just not a very big one. Or one who knew how to say no. I needed that energy to live, but Sanctuary was like a giant tick, draining me more each hour.
I practiced calling out for Mikhail and Gavriel daily, and tried to dream of Rumple, to ask for help, every night. But no help arrived, and my dreams were filled with earthquakes, floods, and walls crashing down around me, trapping me.
The Guides set guards on the doors to the Flight Hall, and instituted a curfew.
Any Protectors found wandering the Halls would be given time to rethink their choices in a cell.
If they were caught a second time, they would be punished more severely.
Valor had taken to patrolling the corridors above, the soul knife tucked into his belt as if he had a right to it. But he almost never looked down.
So as he flew over me now, I stayed still and silent, keeping even my thoughts quiet.
I was wrapped in white from head to toe like a mummy to blend in with the marble floors, and I froze as his shadow swept past. Valor flew on, and the other two Guides who flew above didn’t notice me either.
I turned the corner and smiled when I saw Merry, the guard outside Arabella’s room.
“Feather, I’m so glad to see you,” he whispered softly, beckoning me forward.
Merry looked terrible, with dark circles under his eyes, and his normally rounded cheeks sunken.
I reached into my mummy wrappings and pulled out a flask of juice and a hunk of bread and cheese.
Sunny had somehow managed to make nice with one of the chefs, and they had snuck her extra rations.
I handed it to him, and we both slipped into Arabella’s room while he scarfed down the food.
“I can’t believe they won’t let you eat,” I said, mad all over again.
He shrugged. “I’m following an order that wasn’t rescinded,” he mumbled through a mouthful of bread, “so they can’t charge me with disobedience. But they can refuse to deliver nourishment.”
“Do you think they’d really do something awful to Arabella?” I asked after a moment.
“I know they would,” he said, his hand hovering at his waist. He didn’t have a soul knife, but he had a wicked-looking sword there, with some oddly colored metal along the edge. It looked more like thick smut; I wouldn’t want to get cut with it. Soul tetanus would suck.
“What do you mean? Has someone tried?”
“Valor.” His eyes were haunted. “I’m so ashamed I once called him my friend.”
“What does he think he can do with her?” I said, tiptoeing over to check on Arabella. She lay as still and beautiful as ever.
“He found a book, an old one. Or someone did. He showed me a page. Wait.” Quickly, he finished eating, then took a deep breath.
“It’s a book they once used in senior-level seminars, Great Sacrifices of the Ancient High Angeli.
It was the only copy, written by Seraphiel himself, and it went missing four centuries ago. ”
My mind spun. I really didn’t like it when the words “four centuries ago” came up in conversation; it set off my conspiracy theory radar.
“Before Sanctuary existed, when the Celestial Realm and the Abyss had no dividing line between them, no defenses, High Angeli had to create weapons to fight the shadow creatures who came against them. They created soul knives from sacrificed feathers mixed with shadows, but also Celestial swords.”
“I’ve seen one,” I said. “Gavriel’s.”
“Yes.” Merry grinned weakly. “Would it creep you out if you knew it was made of a sacrificed wing from the Celestial Realm?”
I slapped my own hand over my mouth. “That’s disgusting!”
“Not really,” Merry explained, as we walked back to the door.
“There’s only so much pure soul energy that can be taken to form new Protectors.
The Well was always sacred for that purpose alone.
The Great Maker of All instructed Her First Children never to use its fire to create a weapon, only soulmates and souls.
When they needed a weapon, one of the High Angeli gave his wings to create the two Celestial swords that exist. One is in the Celestial Realm, so far as we know, and one is Gavriel’s. ”
I shivered, though the room was warm. “And you think they want to harvest Arabella’s wings to make swords? To fight the Abyss?”
“No.” Merry shook his head, and I’d never seen his face so grave. “I think they want them to break out of Sanctuary.”