Chapter 30 #2
I pulled his smut into me, knowing I would use it to help. Confident that I would be able to control it. All around me, the invisible, judging presence pulsed with anger now. Warning.
I don’t want to use these shadows, I thought, at whatever it was. Whoever was listening, watching. Judging. But if I have to sacrifice myself, my goodness, to save Sunny? Fudge it. I would do it a hundred times.
Fudge it? the judging one asked. I startled to hear the voice in my mind. A strangely familiar voice. Not Rumple. My mind ached with the weight of this voice. I felt a trickle of something warm drop from one ear, and from my nose. Blood?
Yes, I answered. I would sacrifice myself a thousand times over to protect the good, the helpless, and the vulnerable. The truth, and this place. To keep them from stamping out love.
I let my mind turn to Heart and Glory. To Mikhail, Gavriel and Arabella. To all my friends who were trapped. Even to the idiots in this Hall who had condemned me. They were lost, vulnerable, afraid.
Even Tradition, who wanted only to do what was right, and feared change.
Even Valor, who wanted to break down what was good. Who had taken the one I loved first away forever. I was called to protect him as well, though I also wanted to punish him for a while first.
This is why I sacrifice. This is who I must protect.
The presence subsided, uneasy, and I tuned back into the scene before me.
The knife was in Valor’s hand, and I was almost there.
I had just reached into my soul to grab a handful of shadows—though I’d decided to think of them as dark chocolate razorblades—to knock it out of his grip, when the doors burst open.
Heart supported Glory as they made their way down to the center of the Hall, walking straight to Tradition.
They looked both better and worse. Their hair was lank, their skin fevered and damp, and they’d lost too much weight to appear healthy, but the fire in their eyes blazed as brightly as the sun.
“Tradition, hear us! What is happening here is not justice. It is in fact against the foundational laws of Sanctuary itself.” No one stopped them as they walked up to the base of the podium. The crowd seemed to slump with relief.
“Two of your Guides, Prosperity and Vigilance, and Protectors Fidelity and Valor, held us down and cut my mating feather out without any trial. It was a crime against our realm’s laws, and the love that we bear to one another.
A crime against the Goddess of Divine Love, the Singer of All Songs.
The one who counseled you, who ordered this brutality, is devoid of love and compassion.
He is the enemy, and you have given him the knife again.
“Valor is the tainted one.”
Tradition’s eyes flickered with confusion, though I still wasn’t certain at what.
That Glory was still alive? That she and Heart were standing there, stopping his chopping block routine?
That anyone had called out the evil he had allowed?
“I don’t understand.” His eyes narrowed slightly, and I wondered for a moment what he meant.
His gaze on Valor, who still held the soul knife, grew troubled.
Maybe he would stop this farcical judgment. But I didn’t trust him to do it.
I knew better than to trust the Guides of Sanctuary.
I know better than to let any of them live.
Wait, what?
Don’t wait. Act now.
Who was talking? Was I channeling a motivational poster?
Strike him. Strike them all down, a dark voice inside me murmured, encouraging me to take the power I’d collected and use it. Kill this sanctimonious, false prophet. Rend his soul into pieces so small they will never find them. They will float around the burned hallways of a ruined Sanctuary until…
“Feather,” Sunny rasped. “Your eyes. You need to chill the fudge out, birch.”
I blinked. When had the world turned red and black, with weird bloody stuff running down all the walls? And down the people, too. Heart and Glory were backing away from me, their eyes wide, shaking their heads.
Glory looked like she might throw up, and when she stumbled, Heart tucked her under a wing, bustling her off the podium and toward a door. Strangely, no one stopped her. Everyone else had stopped moving, and was staring at me in horror.
I snuck a glance at Sunny, who was no longer freaking out about having her wings cut off, even though she was still being held open like a pinned butterfly.
She was now freaking out at me.
I blinked, and blood spurted from my eyes.
Oh, shizz. I’d seen this movie. Except it didn’t have dicks or butt plugs.
This one ended with a dead exorcist priest, a lot of vomit all over the place, and a major crick in the possessed baby’s neck.
Calm down, Feather. Think about puppies, or vibrators, or orcs who love librarians.
No! Rend! the shadowy power counseled, as I felt the swirling blades of smut that I’d drawn inside me refusing to be controlled. I stepped up to Tradition, and his breath stuttered to a halt as the power sucked the air away from him. My power.
Yes, I would tear this ashhole into pieces, ones small enough to use as glitter in a t-shirt for Growly Bear.
Glitter? the power grumbled.
Yeahhhhh, I said to the shadows, rubbing my hands together, wondering when they’d come untied. I’ll make a shirt that says I Heart Feather’s Penis Fly Trap. I’ll do it in green glitter… and black, like my soul.
Wait.
No, I know what I can use the angel scraps for!
I’ll glitter bomb the entire realm. They’ll be picking the stuff out of their ash cracks, out of their eyeballs.
The bathtubs will be filled with glitter, and it’ll work its way into ears, mouths, nostrils.
When they sneeze, it’ll be like a rave. When they poop, the toilets will run with my colors.
My colors! I cackled like an insane witch.
It sounded awesome and echoey, so I did it again. MY COLORS!
I… I don’t understand. The dark voice sounded as confused as Tradition had.
Confused enough that the power started swirling in the other direction, subsiding.
The walls stopped bleeding, mostly. But I felt awful as it began to drain away.
Sick, and weak, and almost definitely concussed.
I was eighty-five percent sure I was dying.
I had felt this same way in Mexico once, when I’d been starving. I’d found a discarded half-bottle of tequila, an empty white-sand beach, and a guy named Enrique who knew how to bust open coconuts and taught me the words, “I don’t understand, that’s never happened to me before,” in Spanish.
Something loud made an enormous cracking sound at the far end of the hall. Then roared. My nape prickled and burned. “Growly?” I tilted my head, and wondered why it felt so heavy. Almost like I had a headband on. Or a hat.
Tradition inhaled sharply. “Kill that demon!” he shouted, pointing at me. “Kill it before it gathers strength again!” Why did he keep pointing at me?
But before I could figure it out, the power inside me snarled and emitted a burst of force.
In less than a second, every Guide on the stage was flat on their ass.
I thought they might still be alive, but they looked unconscious.
I didn’t have time to find out, though; the power had resurged and was fighting me for control again, and it was all I could do to keep from sending out a much larger blast and obliterating the entire Hall.
I forced myself to think about the t-shirts I’d made for Mikhail, and Righteous’s roses, and Rumple’s super sexy horns.
Sexy? With that whispered query, the last remnants of the power trickled away, and it was all I could do to stay erect.
While I had fought my evil internal parasite, Sunny had untied Hope, and Hope had pulled her away from Valor.
He was screaming with rage, flailing about with the soul knife, cutting anyone who came within reach.
Apparently, he had given up on slicing Sunny, and was trying to get to Righteous.
In fact, he was going to reach him in a few steps, and he had the blade lifted, ready to stab my bound mate in the heart.
I had no weapons. I’d quenched the dark voice, and the power that had come with it. Now the smut on me wasn’t power, just burden—burying me, crushing me more every second. But I had to try to get to him… had to rescue him.
The air filled with the scent of roses, and the presence that had gone quiet spoke in a voice that rang like a thousand church bells in my ears. It was feminine and masculine, and the beauty of it was overwhelming. And it was still giving me a choice, as it did every time.
Protect!
But there was no choice. I would always sacrifice to save the ones I loved. There was no smut to take on to use as a twisted energy source. All I had was me.
But that had always been enough. I moved faster than I ever had, my wings pushing me forward as the knife came down toward Ry’s chest.
And I got there just in time to take his place.
Thank you. Thank you for giving me this chance, I prayed. I closed my eyes as the blade flashed toward my heart, and blessed the Singer of All Songs for letting me at least know my Ashtad again, my Ry. For giving me those moments with Mikhail. And Rumple.
For letting me know what it felt like to be loved. Wanted. Cherished.
I heard what might have been Mikhail, his shout filled with holy power. And then an unfamiliar, buzzing sound behind my head, like a hummingbird hovering there.
Time slowed, which I expected.
Then stopped. Which I did not.
Something made a sweet cooing noise in front of me.
I opened my eyes. The room had frozen, and a small dark gray creature—a baby with the most gorgeous skin I’d ever seen, that glittered all over—flapped clumsily in front of me.
She wore a pink and purple onesie that said Daddy’s Little Angel but had the word Angel scribbled out and Devil written over it in calligraphy.
She had slightly curly purple hair, two tiny dark horns, and eyes that were entire galaxies… like Rumple’s.
“Mama?” she chirped.