Chapter 9 Seraphiel #3
“Stop!” I cried out, and said something I had never thought would cross my lips. “It’s… It’s enough.” I wasn’t certain if what I said was true, but I would make it be enough. I couldn’t watch him suffer like this.
But I couldn’t forgive him either.
“Hold onto those, and keep your eyes on the Well,” I commanded Thysia as I crossed quickly to the cauldron.
I set it on a clear space on the floor and focused on the buried core of my old self, where I still held some of my Celestial power.
I sang a deep bass note of command for that energy to rise, fighting the impulse to mix demonic words in with the angelic ones.
But that would create an entirely different sort of alloy.
I didn’t want to manufacture a hybrid seal, one that would answer to both sources of power.
So, once I had drawn enough pure soulfire forth, I sang one of my earliest songs of creation, calling on the elements themselves to be present, and tore away chunks of smut from my hands and neck to use as fuel.
Air and fire answered, spinning above and beneath the bowl, and the smut caught flame.
Fire came easier now than it had when I was the leader of this realm.
The smut I wore burned nicely, smelling almost sweet as I called more away from me and sent it with a thought to the base of the cauldron to heat it.
It wasn’t getting as hot as I needed, though; the corruption that had threaded its way into my very core made the shadowed fire less potent.
Gavriel watched me for a moment, and seemed to see my difficulty. He sent some of his own power toward the fire, and the metal of the drum began to change hue, turning from a dull, blackened pewter to a shimmering gold.
“Arabella,” he called. She hurried over, handing him the sword and feathers. Without looking away from the flames, or breaking my song, I took the sword from him and placed it into the heated bowl.
I won’t use these, I thought, handing the feathers back to Gavriel.
He shook his head. “I can’t stick them back on, Rafe.”
I mentally scoffed, still singing. I can.
His eyes went wide. I could tell he wanted to question me, but I needed to focus. I sang louder, increasing the tempo of the song. But my vocal cords were as encrusted with filth as the rest of me, and my voice faltered just as the sword was beginning to melt.
The humming grew more violent, as if the shadows could sense I was faltering. Of course they could. I was linked to them in the same way I had been connected to Sanctuary, though this exchange was far more painful.
And more permanent.
I drew a breath, and a stray spark flew down my throat. I began to cough, the flames sputtering out. I felt the evil rejoicing of the trapped souls in my skin. I was not the Maker I had once been, and now the realm might fall because of my weakness.
Suddenly, I felt a hand on my elbow, and heard something I hadn’t in centuries: Gavriel’s rich tenor. It had been my favorite voice in the world.
He’d memorized my repetitive words, and took up the refrain. His voice had changed. Once, it had been pure and clear and whole. Now it was as scarred as my flesh beneath the crust of sin I wore.
It’s still beautiful, I thought when I caught a wash of shame in his tone. Even broken, it’s beautiful to hear. He kept singing, and I continued. She said that, you know—that sacrifice makes a soul more beautiful.
He startled slightly. She saw you?
No. I would never want her to… I fought a wave of regret.
She couldn’t want this, could she? No one could.
I knew precisely what I looked like now.
I’d traded all my physical beauty just to stay alive, and to hold back the tide of evil until it overtook me.
And my soul was as pitted as the rest of me. No, she meant Mikhail.
His lips turned up slightly as he sang. Mikhail is very scarred. And she loves him without reservation. He hesitated, though his song never faltered. He wanted her even when she was covered with filth. He was always the—
Most perceptive of us all, I finished. I waited a moment, then thought, When I first met her, I didn’t see it. I couldn’t tell she was anything special until she was on the brink of death, moving between the realms. It wasn’t until I saw her eyes that I knew.
I couldn’t see past her smut even then, Gavriel admitted.
There was so much shame in his voice, I took the melody line and waved him to silence as he relived his grossest error.
What does it say about me, that I tortured my own soulmate the first time we met?
That I broke my promise to you to sing to the gate?
I sang on, not knowing how to answer him. His gaze traced my ruined body, my hardened wings.
You said the gate was Revel. Haneul said that as well.
Why did I never know? There was no accusation in his voice.
No blame. Just curiosity, the same tone I remembered from all those centuries ago, when I was not only his friend, but his teacher.
I had taught him everything he needed to know to run Sanctuary in my absence. But not forever.
Not for this long. I had kept secrets.
I almost staggered when I realized what I’d done in my ignorance. My mind raced, considering what effects my negligence in this one matter might have had.
No. There was no “might.” It was precisely why everything had gone wrong.
It’s my fault. I… I did it to myself.
He blinked at me, those long lashes falling on his golden cheeks.
I remembered when he was a Novice running through the halls of Sanctuary.
He was so intent on learning everything he could, on being as strong as me, as knowledgeable.
And I had told him I would teach him all he needed to take my place.
I’d known he would need to while I completed the mission I’d dreamed.
But I had never once suspected I would leave him for so long.
I’d prepared him for me to be away for a short while, given him the tools to stand in as leader.
But left him utterly unprepared to hold the realm for the length of time I’d been trapped in the Abyss.
What, Rafe?
I told you to care for the gate, to sing.
But I never told you why. Not the true reason.
His presence there was a secret; all my siblings kept it, to protect him when he inhabited his new form.
My mind spun. I was the one who had enforced that vow.
I could have broken my silence, would have, if I had known…
I thought I would be back, Gav. I thought we had time.
A pulse of silence, and then, What secret? Whose?
Revel. I almost stopped singing, and he took over again, a new energy in his tone. Gavriel always did love a good mystery.
His voice held a hint of frustration. Who is Revel? Your brother?
Yes, my brother, I admitted. My youngest brother.
He was… joy itself. The life of the Celestial party.
I dug up an image of Revel, with his gleaming dark skin, his flashing eyes, the way the space around him seemed to press in on him, like even the very atoms of the air wanted to be closer to him.
Everyone who saw him wanted to touch him.
Gavriel’s thoughts ran next to mine as I showed how ridiculous the fawning had become by the time we left the Celestial Realm to build Sanctuary.
He was so happy.
Almost too happy. Frivolous. He became consumed with pleasure, and knew it.
He was fascinated with Sanctuary. He was here in the very first days, helping me plan the shape of it, the hallways.
When it was almost done, the imbalance in the Abyss was growing dangerous.
The currents of shadows lapped at the walls of the realm, attracted to its light, and began to degrade the energy we’d placed here.
He got the idea that he could do something more meaningful with his power, his strength. He asked the Singer of Songs to let him hold back the tide of shadows until this realm was established and could act as a barrier between the Abyss, Earth, and the Celestial Realm.
“And as a school. Not only for the High Angeli who resided here, but also for Revel. He wanted to learn to live for others. Not for their approval and adulation. But to give of himself while hidden, uncelebrated. Unappreciated, even.” My sister’s voice was soft.
I’d known she was privy to my thoughts, but hadn’t cared.
If there was any soul I could trust in the realm besides Gavriel, it was her.
She handed me a cup of glowing water, and I drank it down, the purity of it burning my throat. But it helped me sing again.
While I sang, I grappled with my recent realization that I had been the instrument of my own downfall, and how to tell Gavriel what I’d done.
Meanwhile, Thysia—Arabella—filled Gavriel in on her mission. “I came to call Revel home. His lesson was learned, his mission ended.”
“Is that your message? For him to return to your realm?” he asked. When she nodded, Gavriel’s furrowed brow eased, but he sent us both an image of the mythical Atlas, unable to set down the Earth. “How can he be freed?”
She smiled gently at him, but didn’t answer. Her mind was closed to us, and though I knew I could tear through her mental barrier, I let it lie.
Gavriel and I worked in tandem for most of a day, taking turns with the melody and harmony.
The Celestial sword changed texture entirely, first lying in the bowl in its original shape: the wing of a Celestial being I had known long before.
And then, as we kept up the chorus, it melted into a small, shining lake of molten ore. Yet it wasn’t enough.
With a sad smile, Gav dropped the feathers he’d harvested into the bowl, and we continued singing, finishing the task. Finally, it was done.
Gavriel and I were both exhausted, but we wrapped our hands in Mikhail’s heat-proof gloves and carried the whole thing across the Hall.
Once there, my sister dipped a small cup into the bowl, singing prayers of healing and sacrifice over it as she poured the heated liquid around the disintegrating seal.
As if they sensed her work, the shadows behind the seal began to scream and shake.
The whole wall rumbled with the force of their protest.
I stepped away, placing my hands on the wall, and sent a command through Sanctuary to them. Stop! There is nothing for you here.
I felt the mass of shadows rear back, roiling in confusion. And then the horde withdrew. The wall stopped shaking, and Gavriel and Thysia finished repairing the seal. All three of us were breathless with fatigue by the end, and we slumped into the closest chairs available.
Gavriel, still leaking his soulfire from some internal wound, slipped into unconsciousness.
I nudged Sanctuary to send energy into him, and it complied, funneling a faint thread of power directly through his feet where they met the floor.
Even Thysia seemed drained as we rested from our work.
She eyed Mikhail’s bed for a long moment, then shook her head and stayed in her seat.
“Had enough napping, I bet,” I murmured as I went back to check on the cooling seal while Gavriel slept.
When I laid an ear against the side of the Well, I could hear nothing, and there was no sense of connection between the shadowed souls I carried in my physical form and their cousins in the void.
I let myself lapse into sleep for a short while, knowing the angered creatures had truly fled.
But I woke not long after, with a very bad feeling about where they might have gone. The newest entities that had formed from shadows in the Abyss were more dangerous than any I’d ever faced. Intelligent, and endlessly hungry.
I hadn’t had space in my soul to siphon off enough evil to weaken the largest of those beasts. And without a Celestial weapon, we would be helpless against it if it found a way inside.
If it found the weakened spot in the basement.
Fuck. There was no if about it.
I’d just turned to wake Gavriel and ask where the other soul knife was, when the unlocked Maker Hall door slammed wide, and an angry mob poured into the sacred space.
“There it is!” a Guide near the front shouted, directing a dozen Protectors who were armed with blades to advance on me. “Kill the demon!”