Chapter 1
Feather
“What is your name?”
The question woke me, thundering out of the vast, infinitely cold, and utterly empty space where I floated.
I knew who I was. The last thing I remembered was following a blue thread of light through a narrow opening of the Great Gate in Sanctuary, singing my name as clearly as I could.
Haneul, the uncomfortably hot Celestial Messenger who’d suddenly arrived in Sanctuary and whisked me away just as quickly, had been right behind me, laughing her head off.
I’d felt my t-shirt vaporize, leaving me bare-assed to the void—and to the Great Gate, which was concerning, since I’d been warned that gate was a total lech.
And I’d been thinking about what Haneul had said.
Not to talk to anyone about anything, just to follow my mates, my best birch Sunny, and my Glitter Baby to paradise.
And to keep singing, no matter what.
But I wasn’t singing now. I’d fallen asleep, or been knocked out. Something had made me stop.
Everything hurt. My whole being felt as if it was diminishing, like I was a ball of string being quickly unwound.
Was I stuck in the void? Was I being unmade?
And if I was, would Rumple, my first love, the one who had protected me forever, be here to put me back together again?
“What is your name?” The voice hammered into me again, leaving me breathless, and my chest seared with a strange new flavor of agony, which distracted me for a moment.
I’d known a whole lot of pain in my existence, everything from stubbed toes to broken bones to torture with thumb screws during one short but memorable life in Spain in the late 1600’s.
I’d been trying to keep a priest from spending the church’s offering for the poor on his personal supply of opium.
Of course, I hadn’t expected the thieving priest I was harassing to have enough clout to bring real Inquisitors into the game.
But no one expects the Spanish Inquisition.
“Sing your name, quickly, before you are unmade!” The unfamiliar, masculine voice was bordering on panicky now, and I realized it wasn’t the source of the pain.
That was my chest. Or more precisely, my birthmark, the feather-shaped patch that had been there since I was first born on Earth over four hundred years before. It boiled like a small lake of lava, or superheated acid, seeping through me and into my chest cavity.
Maybe if I sang my name, the pain would end. I opened my mouth, sighing in relief to feel I had lips—I hadn’t been unmade entirely at least, not like before—and began to sing.
“My name is Feather, the Beautiful Sacrifice, Beloved of Mikhail the Great-Souled, Maker of Sanctuary; best friend to Sunny, The Light of Truth, Ride or Die Birch; Treasured Little One of Seraphiel, known as Rumple, my Teacher and First Love; Secret Crush of Righteous Arm of Justice, Head Protector of Sanctuary who shall henceforth be known as Anaconda Pants; and Chief Antagonist and Adored Nemesis of Gavriel the Grumpy Lightbearer; Leader of Sanctuary.”
The space around me ballooned with a peculiar silence. Then the voice murmured, sounding faintly amused, “That’s a really awful name.”
“Thanks, I made it myself,” I snarked back. Honestly, some void creatures don’t have any manners at all.
The voice obviously heard that thought, because the space around me shuddered with soundless laughter. “It’s not your whole name, Feather, the Beautiful Sacrifice. Quit stalling. Finish your song.”
I blinked. Or at least, I tried to. It was still dark.
Was I being tortured again? No matter what this guy thought, I wasn’t torturing myself for fun, though I knew that was a thing.
People on Earth paid hundreds of dollars to get trapped in sensory deprivation water tanks, something they used to do in Siberia for nothing more than the price of an honest opinion.
“That’s all the name I know,” I said, though some part of me twisted like a three-year-old caught lying about cutting her own hair.
Impatience and urgency rippled through the darkness. “There’s no time to be coy. Not here.”
“Where’s here? The gate to the Celestial Realm?” I crossed my imaginary fingers.
“No. I’m a different gate.” The space pressed in on me and whispered a soft apology before it tore through my mind, delving into my thoughts, my memories, looking for something. I’d had my thoughts rifled through before. That had been unpleasant. This was excruciating.
But it still didn’t hurt as much as my birthmark.
“Oh, small one, I understand now. Perhaps I could pull you back, but you’re tethered on both sides. Getting you through could prove problematic, Beautiful Sacrifice.”
“What do you mean? Why do you say that?” I didn’t ask who the voice was, though I had some suspicions. I thought of the name of the Great Gate, the one Haneul and Rumple had both mentioned. “Revel?” The space around me pulsed with a sense of longing, but the voice didn’t confirm my suspicion.
“Your mates and family wait for you at the threshold to the Celestial Realm. But you can’t join them. Not until you know your full name.”
“What the fudge? I know my name. I named myself in the Abyss when Rumple—when Seraphiel remade me. I sang the whole thing to you! Now let me go. I need my Growly Bear, Ry, Sunny, and Precious…” I had a whole family now, and I wasn’t going to let some perverted gate keep me from the big reunion in the sky. I needed them.
The space around me pressed close. “And you shall have them.” He hesitated. “When you pass into the Celestial Realm, tell my family I miss them. Tell Mother.”
I knew who he meant, and the pain in his voice made my own heart ache.
Before I could answer, he spoke again. “Sing after me. Sing your entire name.” And then the voice sang my name back to me, but added a few more words.
Those words hurt worse than anything the Inquisitors had done to me.
Worse than the centuries of violence and brutality, and all the deaths I suffered at the ends of my short lives.
Worse than the months in Sanctuary where I was hated, scorned, and tormented, and the ages in the Abyss when I was unraveled from myself.
Those last few words taught me who I was.
And they broke me.
Revel vanished as I sang what was, indeed, a terrible name. The blue thread appeared again, but I was too weak, too heartsore, to follow it.
And maybe a little bit too pissed off.
My voice faltered. Then, when the last note I could bear to voice was still ringing in the space around me, a new presence appeared, like a bursting star.
I felt a cleansing fire sear me, refining me.
Healing me, though the blessed flames never touched the wound that I now carried in my heart.
She spoke, three words filled with eternal compassion.
Oh, My Daughter.
I slept on the invisible shoulder of the One who could only be my Mother as She carried me the rest of the way across the void, and wished with all my heart that I hadn’t learned the rest of my fudging name.
Because even if I wasn’t only the Chief Antagonist and Adored Nemesis of Gavriel Lightbearer, but also his Forgotten Soulmate? There was still no way to get back to the basshole now.
No way for me to heal and be whole, ever again.
I fell into unconsciousness, my soul inconsolable. Mourning what had never been, and now would never be.