Chapter 4
Gavriel
“You must know whose feather this is, Gavriel. It’s your soulmate’s.”
My trembling hand rested on a small silver feather that lay embedded on the chest of the second most beautiful being I had ever seen in my long, cursed life. Arabella, the woman I had mistakenly believed to be my soulmate for centuries as she lay in perpetual sleep.
Awake now, she stood with her soft hands on my shoulders, and her green-ringed golden eyes, warm with compassion and dawning pity, were fixed on my face.
My own eyes were frozen. If I moved, if I even blinked, I would start screaming. I would unmake myself gladly. I deserved no less.
Feather. It had been her all along.
“What happened to her, Gavriel?” Arabella gripped my shoulders so tightly that I winced. I was amazed I could feel anything other than the agony searing through me, a pain I suddenly understood. I had sent my soulmate away to the Celestial Realm, without even a glance over my shoulder.
Without once touching her, kissing her, holding her as I had been meant to do since I met her. She’d been mine somehow, even before her birth, if what Arabella said was correct. And I knew it was. Every syllable she spoke rang with stark, merciless truth.
“She left,” I said, when I could finally form words again. “She went to the Celestial Realm.” Bile threatened to fill my mouth. “With her mates.”
Arabella’s mouth dropped open. “Her mates? Gavriel. You didn’t form a mating bond with her?” I shook my head once, and her eyes narrowed. “You didn’t recognize her?”
I clenched my jaw as I remembered what I’d tried to ignore for so long.
Feather’s unspoken pleas when I first met her on Earth, the subconscious undercurrent of thought I had heard and dismissed while I tormented her innocent soul, echoed in my memories.
Who am I? Tell me who I am? Please. Know me. Know me.
You know me.
Why don’t you know me?
I had believed Arabella was my mate. So I’d ignored the evidence, obvious now I knew the truth, that had been piling up since the moment I met the lost Novice.
I’d wanted her. I’d resisted, and taken out my frustrations on her more than once.
That knee-jerk reaction—my decision to push her away brutally, coldly—had been the very opposite of what I should have done.
She had been meant to stand at my side. To sing with me alone.
My bizarre reaction to her love for Mikhail also made sense now. I’d watched my best friend save my own soulmate when I wouldn’t, by mating her. Embedding his feather in her nape.
I’d watched their love blossom into what had been fated for me.
And then she’d tied herself to Righteous as well. I’d wanted to tear his wings off. Of course I had. Anyone would be enraged to watch his only true mate find relief, love, and pleasure in the arms of another.
And I had done it to myself. I’d hurt her, instead of loving her.
What might be worse was that I’d hurt so many others by letting the realm fall into ruin while I wallowed in self-pity over being alone. My gut churned as I thought of the neglect I’d perpetrated while I suffered and waited for Arabella to awaken.
It had been for nothing. All the years I’d spent mourning had been wasted time.
Arabella’s expression was stern now, her lips pulled tight, eyebrows lowered. “Didn’t you love her? Gavriel, what did you do?”
I stared into her eyes, this Celestial Messenger who had just delivered the most brutally painful news of my life—and the knowledge that I didn’t have much longer to live, not with my soulmate excised from me—and answered truthfully.
“I didn’t love her. I tortured her. Abused her.
Told her that she was trash and drove her to unmake herself. ”
An invisible force pushed down on me, forcing me to my knees as Arabella seemed to grow taller, an invisible wind whipping her golden hair around her face. “How could you? She was the brightest, best soul I’ve ever seen! I shared my energy with her—I loved her. She was my sister!”
It felt as if all my molecules were shaking apart, and I closed my eyes, welcoming the end. “Let me die,” I murmured. “I want to. I deserve to.”
“But she doesn’t!” Arabella’s words cut through my self-pity. “If she went to the Celestial Realm, she’s left a part of her soul here, with you. She will be in agony. She will die slowly, unable to heal. And when she passes into nothingness, her death will take her mates as well.”
“Feather will die?” I cursed myself and my short-sightedness. Of course she would perish if I did. “I would lose Mikhail, too. His soul is more tightly bound to hers than any other bond I’ve seen.”
Arabella stumbled back in shock. “She mated the Maker instead of you?” I helped her sit in the chair where I’d spent countless hours staring at her while she slumbered. Then I paced, trying to see a way to rectify the error I’d made when I let Feather slip beyond my grasp.
“Yes, she did. Twice.” I ignored her muffled exclamation. “She assumed some of his powers when he mated her the first time.”
“I don’t understand,” Arabella stated, her voice grim. “Tell me everything, Angelus.” It wasn’t a request; it was a command. And she outranked me, as a Celestial Messenger. I squared my shoulders, stared at the wall opposite me, and began the tale.
An hour later, I was done. Arabella was silent, but her rage and sorrow had tainted the air with an almost palpable energy.
She rose, her eyes sparkling with righteous fire, and had just opened her mouth to speak when the room shook.
“What was that?” She closed her eyes, and I did the same, sending my awareness through the realm that was mine to lead.
Or had been. It was still weak, and oddly sluggish to respond to me now. As if it answered to someone else instead, or as well.
As if there were another leader of Sanctuary that was not me.
I released a bitter laugh when I realized what had happened.
My lost mate’s lilting, resolute voice echoed in my thoughts.
“My name is Feather, the Beautiful Sacrifice… Chief Antagonist and Adored Nemesis of Gavriel the Grumpy Lightbearer.” And then she’d finished her long, ridiculous name amidst laughter and tears, with a pause for breath, and to be heard over the hilarity. A pause that had become punctuation.
“Leader of Sanctuary,” she’d said. But she had inadvertently turned it into a part of her name when she disconnected it from mine in her song.
“You’re in charge here, aren’t you? Shouldn’t you be concerned that your realm is under attack?” Arabella’s tone was curt. “Why are you laughing?”
“Because I’m not the leader anymore,” I replied as we both raced for the door, my Celestial sword in my hand. “Feather renamed herself, and me. Apparently, she snatched my title when she left.”
The door slammed open before we reached it, and a red-faced, red-haired figure tumbled into the room, followed by the guard I had assigned to watch over Arabella. “What’s happened, Merry?” I asked the guard, who was staring in awe at Arabella.
But it was Perception, the newly ascended High Angelus who’d stayed in Sanctuary to help me heal the corrupted realm, who answered breathlessly, “Gavriel! He’s here. He’s tearing a hole in the foundation.”
“Who?” Arabella breathed, but I already knew.
“Seraphiel,” I said, feeling him as he crawled up through the underbelly of the realm. Was he letting the Abyss inside? I closed my eyes and focused on the broken strands of the realm’s energy that I had once held as thick golden ropes of power in my mind.
“Is he bringing the Abyss with him?” Perception asked.
“No,” I answered as I ran, my wings useless, as they had been since Feather left.
I had only minutes to reach the place where Seraphiel was breaking the final strands of what had once been an infinitely complex and powerful web of Celestial power.
A web he himself had spun when he built the realm.
“He’s coming alone. And he’s coming for me. ”
I had known, after I’d heard Feather’s wild tale of her “Rumple,” that he was Seraphiel. She’d told me he was pissed.
She was right. I could feel his rage like a burning brand sweeping through the fiery material of Sanctuary’s shell, breaking through and cauterizing the breach. He was coming to kill me.
Please, Singer of All Songs, let him still be the Rafe I knew and loved. Let him remember his love for Sanctuary. Spare them.
Arabella sent a thought into my head. I must go to Revel.
Revel? She didn’t answer, but I saw the Great Gate in her thoughts.
“Merry? Go to the youngest Protectors and keep them calm.” I turned to Perception, handing him my soul knife.
“Take Arabella to the gate and guard her,” I instructed.
He began to protest, but I cut him off. “I still have my sword. I trust you to use the knife wisely. If I fall, send her through. Keep her safe.”
I spun on my heel, the pain in my very bones growing with every step I took from Arabella, who bore the only piece of my soulmate that was left in this realm. The silver feather that belonged to my adored nemesis.
My beautiful, lost Feather.
Sanctuary had three levels. The topmost was filled with classrooms and rooms for the Guides.
The main floor held the rest of the accommodations, the assorted Halls, and central purification and dining areas.
The lower level—a basement built long ago to muffle the psychic noises of newly mated couples expressing their love—was where I would find Rafe.