Chapter 29 Feather #2
My head jostled to the side, and suddenly I was nose-down in a moldy, dusty bucket. I needed to sneeze so badly, but I literally didn’t have the energy to do it.
“Is she all right?” Gav asked.
“She’s fine. Probably likes it,” Rumple said teasingly.
I instantly began picturing all the times I’d killed a perpetrator on Earth, all the times I’d stuck a knife up under a ribcage and thrust through the heart. And I put Rumple’s face on them.
“I love you, too, honey bunch,” he said, pecking me on the head.
I let my rage show in my eyes, and remembered the time I’d smashed open a coconut on a beach on Vanua Levu.
I’d almost broken my foot doing it, but the way it cracked and all the milk flew out…
By the time I got to that part of the memory, Rumple had turned away.
Shizzgrits and sausage patties. This was worse than the time I’d scavenged some old grain and got ergot rye poisoning.
I’d been paralyzed, but my neighbor’s daughter had thought I was faking being sick, and shaved all my hair off while I lay there.
It had gotten rid of my head lice in that life, though.
Maybe something good was coming here, too.
I tried to pretend the funky smell was pleasant, like horse poop.
It wasn’t a bad smell on its own, and it made me remember the cute stableboy in France who had actually lasted almost two min— Whoops!
I’d started moving as Gavriel began to push the wheelbarrow toward the door, then stopped abruptly.
“I can’t. Rafe. I’m too weak.”
“Can you draw more from Sanctuary? Siphon the energy you need?”
Gavriel’s short laugh was devoid of any humor. “I think I would be catatonic like my mate if I hadn’t immediately opened that connection. I’m pulling as much as I can without cauterizing my soul. Internally, I’m already burned; if I survive this, it’ll take decades to heal.”
“Shit. Of course you are. I’m sorry.” Rumple dragged a clawed hand across his forehead, muttering, “Think. Think.” I remembered a medical video I’d seen years ago where they cranked open a ribcage to do open heart surgery, and Rumple sighed heavily.
“She keeps trying to tell me she’s broken.
That her heart is broken. It’s… wait. Could you carry her if I tie her to you?
” he asked Gavriel abruptly. “Can you walk and not drop her?”
“I think so,” Gavriel answered. “You’re able to fight with both swords, I remember. What will we tie her with?”
MY SHEETS, I thought as loud as I could. I brought forth every memory of my gorgeous beds in Sanctuary, remembering how I’d wrapped myself in those perfect linens, how I’d rubbed them all over me. USE MY SHEETS.
“I’ll get some of that extra muslin I found. It should be strong enough.”
Muslin? What muslin? Wait, does he mean the burlap? I stared knives into their souls while Rumple wrapped me in the scratchiest, worst fabric ever to be invented, while my sheets—my strong, lustrous, million-thread-count sheets that smelled of Mikhail and Righteous and me—lay gleaming on the bed.
It was one of the most pointless sacrifices of my life. Of all my lives.
Finally, Rumple had me trussed up like an enormous baby in one of those cloth baby carriers, hugging the front of Gavriel’s chest. I could hardly see anything, and it was so tempting to close my eyes, just to escape the humiliation of it all. But I didn’t. I listened.
“Stay behind me. I’ll go out and engage them. When I’ve drawn them off, run for the gate.”
“Should we douse ourselves in dark glitter again? Even if I can run, they’ll be drawn to us like this.
Look at the walls, Rafe.” I knew what he meant; facing inward, the shine from Gavriel was eye-watering.
The effects of a recent significant sacrifice.
Weirdly though, there was as much light seeping from his back, which was still wrapped in bandages.
I hadn’t noticed that in bed, but now, from the corners of my eyes I could see prisms dancing on all the surfaces in the room.
The dim Maker Hall sparkled like one of Mikhail’s t-shirts.
It gave me an idea. I only hoped Rumple would check back into my thoughts before he opened the doors.
I tried to remember every rave and wild party I’d ever been to, or watched on TV, or streamed.
Every single instance of glitter. And then I called up older memories, of signals on watchtowers with mirrors, and blinding opponent armies with polished shields.
“Gavriel, did you know Feather is a tactical genius?” Rumple said, tousling my hair again as he swept past. I felt the squishy bag, fashioned from a crib sheet from the nursery and still filled with glitter, pressing on my back. I relaxed my eyelids. He’d understood.
Rumple kept running back and forth, grabbing things.
He tucked the crystal feather-knife in Gavriel’s belt, and tucked the other feather—the one he hadn’t made into a knife—into my toga top.
“For you, my love,” he whispered, and something in his tone raised my hackles.
Gavriel went even more still as Rumple reached out, stroking my hair away from my face with one clawed hand.
He cupped my chin, angling my face toward his, and pressed a kiss to my unresponsive lips.
In another life, this feather of mine would lie alongside Gavriel’s mark.
His words dropped like stones into the silence of my mind, his galaxy eyes whirling.
Or be the twin to Righteous’s feather. If we had time enough, if I knew for certain I would return to you…
I could use it to tether your spirit more firmly to your form.
Or bind you to me, and take the love you have offered me for so long.
The corner of his lip trembled, as he pressed the feather into my skin with a shaking hand.
At least now I know my soul hasn’t been corrupted entirely.
If I were more selfish, if my love for you hadn’t kept my heart tuned to you as my true north and saved me from the void’s despair, I might not be able to resist the urge to be one with you.
But I can resist. I can be the sacrifice you need now, because I love you more than myself. I always have. And I always will.
Helpless, silent, I stared into his gleaming eyes, hoping he would see the love I felt for him shining in my own gaze. Couldn’t he see that I needed him as much as I needed the others? He was my first love, my teacher. My mystery.
How would I live without my Rumple?
I felt a single, cold tear leak from one eye.
He caught it with his hand, and stroked my hair one more time, shushing me.
“My beloved, thank you for the very best years of my long life. Thank you for showing me how to love. For giving me the chance to stand in your sunlight for a moment. I will go to my end knowing I had more love with you in these short days than most will ever know.”
And then, while my heart was quietly dissolving into dust, he moved away and spoke to Gavriel.
“Hold the sheet around the top; I’ve already untied the cord.
As soon as I get outside and engage them with the swords, I want you to race through.
Throw the glitter as you go, and let your light shine, Gavriel.
All of it. Pull on as many of Sanctuary’s threads of power as you can bear, and run as fast as you did in Egypt that time. ”
“We agreed never to speak of that,” Gavriel growled, but Rumple’s humor had his shoulders relaxing. If they could still laugh, not all hope was lost, right?
Though I knew all was lost. Or was about to be. As I thought that, the feather on my chest burned like an ember, but somehow, made me feel less despair than I had a moment before.
Gavriel must have felt the pulse of heat because he cursed and called out, “Rafe? Why is your feather reacting?”
Rumple’s gaze fell on me. “That’s our little one’s fault, I would think.
You never knew my whole name, did you, imp?
I was named Seraphiel, First of the Celestial Children, Bringer of Hope to the Hopeless.
” He smiled somberly. “Don’t give up hope.
You may not be able to move, but I know your heart, and it’s stronger than any other in existence. Keep hoping.”
The feather burned again, but now I relished the sting of it on my skin. It felt as if a tiny current of energy moved from it and into me, and I sucked in a shallow breath, feeling my heart speed back up.
Rumple had given me a battery. A tiny generator of Celestial power that kicked in when things seemed bleak.
Suddenly I had hope, buckets of the stuff.
Squirting fountains of hope. Hurricanes of it.
Gavriel, Rumple, and I were going to get back to Mikhail and Righteous, kiss them alive on whichever body part would do the trick, and we were all going to live together in the Celestial Realm, exploring new ways to combine my love for chocolate, naked Twister, and all four of my guys.
I held onto that hope as Gavriel shouted a word of power that made the doors to the Maker Hall crash open, and as Rumple dove into the roiling mass of shadow beasts.
And then I just held on, as the world exploded in great blooms of glitter and fire.