Chapter 36 #2
Rage boiled inside me at the memory. I hadn’t been gentle in reading the Guides’ memories.
In fact, I’d been so filled with righteous fire that at one point, I’d had to ask Perception to take my sword from me to keep me from killing the lot of them.
With him on guard at the doorway to this level—as the only other High Angelus left in Sanctuary—they were safe from me, and the rest of the realm protected from their weakness.
I’d decided I would keep them locked in separate rooms on this level, while I pondered their fates.
And then I’d calmed myself, and made stuffed toys out of my soulfire.
Grief buried me under an avalanche, and I welcomed the agony. Was this what being unmade felt like? Was this a punishment from the Creator?
Why would She even need an Abyss, when my heart was a vast, fathomless plain of loss?
I grabbed a pillow and scrunched it in my fists, before burying my face in it, wondering if a soul could survive the despair I was feeling. How had I imagined I could play some part in trying to care for a child? I had failed so utterly at caring for a realm, after all.
Better for Mikhail and Righteous to be gone as well… with Feather. She would be loved beyond measure. Adored as she deserved.
Cherished in a way I would never have been allowed to express. Perhaps now I could move past the shame of wanting Feather. Dreaming nightly of her. Wishing she were mine, and no one else’s.
Filled with shame and regret, I prayed to the Singer of All Songs for understanding, for hope in the darkness, and drifted into what had to be a dream, though it felt more like a memory. Or maybe a promise.
“Grumpy, did you forget what day it is? It’s chocolate fondue Friday.
We can’t start without you.” Feather’s voice drew my attention from the musical score I was working on.
I’d been trying to get the melody line right, but there was something missing.
It was too... ordinary. I threw down my quill and stood, flexing my wings.
“Show-off.” Feather’s small arm threaded around my waist from behind, and she ducked under my wing to stand in front of me.
Her brilliant green eyes narrowed slightly. “You look tired, Grumpy.”
I couldn’t speak; I was breathless with wonder at her beauty, as I always was. She was shining so brightly today that I had to blink away tears as I stared into her face. Her cheeks were slightly pink with exertion, her lips swollen, and her gleaming hair tousled.
“Can’t start without me, hm? Then what have you been up to?
” I teased, tugging on one of the strands.
It felt like silk in my hands, and I lost the battle to focus on her face and ran my fingers through her hair a few times, until she made a soft purring sound.
I suddenly noticed that there was a streak of chocolate on her neck that vanished under her hastily tied fuchsia robe.
“We were waiting for you, but you never showed up for our date,” she murmured, leaning her cheek against my hand. “We’re up to my top five fantasies. What kept you?”
“I’m sorry, love. I couldn’t get the melody right on this song,” I explained. “It’s too ordinary. Plain. It needs something.”
“Glitter?” she mused, leaning over the page and scanning the notes.
“Oh. I think I know what’s wrong.” She grabbed the quill and began adding to my composition, including a few more staff lines above and below on the page.
Her nose scrunched up, she hummed one of the new lines she’d created, and on the repeat, I added in the original melody.
It was perfect—or would be—when it all came together.
“You make it look so easy,” I grumbled, leaning down to embrace her from behind.
She leaned instantly into my touch. “Never forget, my sweet Lightbearer, that harmonies are where the magic happens.”
“Harmonies?” I rasped as she rubbed her small wings against my chest. “You’ve added four lines to the melody, little minx. Do you think that one line can handle four additional harmonies all at once?”
Her eyebrows waggled up and down as she smirked over her shoulder at me. “I think she’d like to try.”
I frowned at her until I could hold in my laughter no longer, then reached down, sweeping her into my arms, nuzzling her neck to make her giggle as I stalked toward the adjoining bedroom. “Well, let me see if I can find three more voices to help me carry this tune…”
Mikhail’s laughter drew my eyes to the door that led to the secret corridor. He stood in the doorway, with Righteous and Seraphiel right behind him. They pushed through the opening, all wearing t-shirts covered with glitter and sequins.
Seraphiel’s eyes met mine, and we both grinned. “Consider us found,” he said as they clustered around us, each one reaching out to tenderly stroke the small woman who was our heart. Our center. Our sun.
A woman’s voice I knew, but couldn’t quite place, hummed in my mind as I laid my silver-haired love down on the glitter-speckled sheets. Remember this moment, my sweet boy. Hold fast. Be true. Let her show you how to love.
And then I leaned down and kissed the most beautiful soul in Sanctuary. She tasted of sin, and redemption, and rich Belgian chocolate.
A sharp rapping interrupted the dream. It had to be Perception, knocking at the door with the handle to the Celestial sword, the only sound we had determined could be heard through the barrier I’d erected.
I dragged myself off the sofa and threw open the door, ready to ask for at least another hour, when his odd expression stopped my words. I had no idea what he was sensing, but there was a mixture of fear and excitement and pity on his features.
He thrust the pommel of my sword into my open hand. “Gavriel, something is happening.”
I opened my senses, quickly realizing where the disturbance centered. “Arabella’s room,” I shouted, sending him ahead. I ran as fast as I could, my wings still useless.
If one of the Guides or Protectors had taken her for some nefarious purpose, I would flay them. She was all I had left. A broken mate, one I had never had the chance to love. But she was the only thing keeping me from total madness.
The door to her room was still closed, and I burst through it, sword in hand, ready to take on whomever may have believed my inattention was their chance to strike at her. But what I saw had me dropping the Celestial blade on the marble floor.
“Arabella?”
She stood next to her casket, staring down at it in confusion and unease.
Her eyes flicked to me, and I was shocked at the color.
I would have sworn they had been gold when she opened them for those few moments, years ago, but now…
there was the slightest hint of green in them, a thin ring around the outer rim of her iris.
“Gavriel?” she asked, and her voice was every bit as gentle and perfect as I remembered.
Her golden hair tumbled to her waist, her gown floating around her slender legs and bare feet.
She looked like an illustration I’d seen of one of the first Celestial Children, the ones formed by the Mother long before even Mikhail’s making.
She was perfection. And she was finally awake.
Was this the second chance Haneul had whispered in my ear?
“How,” I began, unsure what to say, to ask. “What… What happened to you? And how did you awaken?”
“I fell into a dream,” she said, not looking at me, but at her bed.
“Or a nightmare. I had a purpose, but the way I was forced to travel, my journey here… erased my knowledge of it. I arrived, re-formed, and you were standing by my side. You, and so many others, seemed to know me. But I couldn’t remember who I was—my name, my purpose.
I do remember you trying to kiss me, of all things.
And when I went to explain your error… a small fragment, it fell?
” She lifted one gleaming golden hand and laid it over her breast, where my mating feather had fallen from her four centuries before.
The spot had been an empty place, a hollow divot in the shape of that feather.
But now it wasn’t empty. I sucked in a breath and stepped closer to examine it. “Whose is this?” I asked, but I knew. The feather was tiny, not big enough to replace mine, but Arabella’s flesh had filled in the space around it to make it fit.
It was small, downy, and pure silver.
Arabella’s eyes grew shadowed, the corners of her lips dipping into a soft frown. “You don’t know?”
I shook my head, mute with frustration and a dawning sense of horror.
Something in Sanctuary was humming like a beehive had been kicked over in a distant Hall.
Or was that the sound of my thoughts as she took my hand in hers and spoke gently, as if to a child?
I grew dizzy as she explained, and her grip on my cold fingers was all that kept me from falling.
“Gavriel, I was sent by the Singer of All Songs through the Well, when the gate was closed to us, and the Abyss too perilous to traverse.” She hesitated. “I chose to be sent, for a divine purpose.”
“Sent? As a… Celestial Messenger?”
A shadow passed behind her vibrant gold-and-green eyes.
“Of sorts, I suppose. But when I entered through the Well, there was another soul there. One meant for you, on her way to you, in fact. We floated together, sang together, in the space between realms. She was like a little sister. Funny and naughty, a spark of wonder. I’d never seen a spirit so bright, so small.
She came through with me, at the very same moment—I know she did.
I remember her holding me, laughing as we were pulled into this realm.
We were drawn out as one, it seemed. Where is she now? ”
When I spoke, I couldn’t hear my own voice under the clamor of the persistent, maddening hum in my head.
“I don’t know who you mean. Who was in the Well with you?
” I reached out with a trembling hand and laid it over the small, silver feather, feeling the pain that had nearly crippled me abate, but only for as long as I touched it.
When I dropped my hand, the humming intensified.
“Whose feather?” I managed to ask, though I already knew.
Images of the past few months flickered through my mind. Words. Memories I had ruthlessly suppressed. I let my eyes close, remembering.
“Who are you?”
Feather.
“Lie.” I slashed her face, hoping to surprise an answer from her. Wondering why my own cheek also stung. I held still, refusing to react to the unexpected pain.
Ow! I told you my name!
“That isn’t your name. Lie again, and your judgment will be more severe. Your name, now.”
I don’t know.
Stubborn creature. Rage moved my hand before even my thought. Another slash, a cry from the girl, and my own arm was alight with fire. With agony that matched hers.
How had I cut myself? Did this filthy soul have some sort of invisible weapon? Her voice was small, her tone filled with fear. But also a spark of anger. Impudence.
It used to be Tili. I call myself Feather.
Beneath her confession, I felt a layer of intense longing.
The undercurrent of thought that only the most powerful of the High Angeli could hear, a melody sung by the very particles that made up the soul of every being in all the realms. Rafe had taught me long ago how to hear it, though it had never been so clear as this moment.
This creature’s being was made of the music. And her tune was thrumming with questions: Who am I? Tell me who I am? Please. Know me. Know me.
You know me.
Why don’t you know me?
When I was able to open my eyes once more, tears were coursing down my face, searing lines of fire across my cheeks. I ignored them. I ignored everything but the beat of my drumming heart, a music that now had no place, no purpose.
It should stop. Should have stopped when the one I’d tortured had left this realm. She had been mine, had always been mine, though I had not seen it.
The one I had been faithful to for centuries regarded me somberly. Arabella’s eyes swirled with sorrow for a moment before she finished the destruction of my soul, which I had begun months before with my cruel actions and callous words.
“You must know whose feather this is, Gavriel. It belonged to the soul who was intended for you. She already bore your mark, though I wasn’t sure how you could have given it to her before she was even formed.
“It’s your soulmate’s.”