Chapter Twenty five
Gabriel
My howl reached the heavens.
Before I even knew what I was doing, I charged off the edge of the cliff and arrowed downward, sword forgotten. My heart beat with one rhythm: Eve, Eve, Eve, Eve.
She had to be well. She couldn’t die. She could not die. Not after everything. She was my mate, my other half, my beloved, the reason my ayim surged in my veins.
I threw myself over the edge, heedless of the height or the sharp ground below. My wings extended, and my right scraped down the cliff face, breaking my primaries off. I didn’t care. All that mattered was Eve.
My feet hit the ground, and the sharp rocks cut my feet open. The pain barely registered. As the clouds opened and rain fell, I saw the bodies of two people lying still and broken on the rocks, limbs twisted and clothes ripped, like little dolls dropped during a child’s tantrum.
The man lay dead, one sharp stone piercing up through his chest.
And Eve.
Eve.
My heart stopped, and I dropped to my knees.
She lay on her back, hair twisted around the rocks above her head. Her skirts had rucked up to her knees, displaying a broken leg. One bone jutted through her ripped stockings, blood turning the wool red.
No. No, no, no, no.
I caught her up in my arms, gently putting her back on my bent legs. “Eve?” I whispered.
Her eyelids fluttered.
She was alive. Oh, stars, she was still alive.
Blood trickled out of her open mouth. “G-Gabriel?” Her voice was thin and broken. “I—I’m sorry.” She coughed, and blood bubbled from her mouth. Tears slid from her eyes.
“You’re fine,” I lied. I stroked the wet hair back from her forehead. “I need to get you home.” Thunder roared, drowning my words.
Her face was pale, oh so pale. One hand fluttered, weakly reaching to touch my nearest wing. “So beautiful,” she murmured. “I need to-to-to tell you.” She gasped, grimacing.
Frantically I scanned her body. A patch of red bloomed on her side. Gently, I touched the blood soaking her dress.
Her eyes widened, and she twisted in my arms. “H-hurts.” Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes, spilling onto my exposed hands and arms. I barely noticed the burns.
“Eve, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. What I did to make you run—please, forgive me.”
Her hand drew up to cup my face. Eve’s fingers trembled against my cheeks, and I could feel the strength leaving her. As her hand began to fall away, I caught it with my own and pressed it back. I turned to kiss her palm. “Eve, my beloved, my mate. Starlight.”
“I love you,” she breathed, her eyes rolling back. She sagged in my arms, and I could feel the life leaving her.
“No!” I roared. “You cannot die. Eve, you’re my mate.
I just found you.” My voice cracked as grief overwhelmed my fear.
It was a grief that surpassed all loss I had ever known before.
I reached instinctively for magic, trying to harness the lightning.
It slipped through my fingers again. Frantic, I grabbed again, and again it spun away from me.
A small smile graced her lips, even as her eyes closed. “Mate,” she murmured. Her chest barely rose anymore.
I raged inside my body, raged at the cruelty of life and fate and the frailty of the human body. A seraph could survive this. I didn’t have healing magic. Even if I could bend nature to my will here, I wouldn’t know what to do with it.
Magic wisped past me. I’d learned over the decades to ignore it, like the pain of a phantom limb, but this time I reached and wrenched.
My mind caught on a little tail floating past, like a frayed string breaking from a tapestry.
I pulled it toward me, toward Eve’s fading life force, and tried to shove it into place, to force the magic to heal.
It evaporated into the aether, and it was like my soul faded, too.
I had never felt so helpless in my hundreds of years.
My own tears burned my eyes, and buried my head against her chest. “Eve,” I wept.
“Please don’t leave me. I beg of you, please don’t leave me.
” My shoulders shook with sobs, and I slipped by torn and bleeding hand through the tear in her dress, covering her wound. She grunted, her brow creasing in pain.
My tears fell, streaming down my face and splashing on her face and body.
Her chest stilled, and I heard her breathing no longer.
I tilted my head up to the skies and screamed, grief and anger ripping out of my body, scalding my throat, and filling the moors. I screamed and screamed, pleading for relief, begging to be wrong. My voice turned hoarse, my throat shredded—and it was only a fraction of the pain I felt.
I cradled her body, letting her face roll into the crook of my neck. Her own tears and blood smeared against my skin. Her tears seared my flesh, and I welcomed the agony.
Rain hit my beck, sharp as needles.
Suddenly, I felt a puff of breath against my throat. I froze. Could it be? No, it was my imagination.
But then she moved in my arms, her hand coming up between us and pushing against my chest.
I drew back, staring down in shock.
“Gabriel?” she whispered. The blood at the corner of her mouth was drying now, sheltered from the rain by my body.
My mouth opened, but nothing came out. My mind raced, trying to make sense of it. “You’re alive?”
She smiled, though her face was pale and her body trembled against mine. “I think so.”
“Wh-wh-what happened?” I lay her on my legs and ripped open the tear in her bodice. The deep, gushing wound I’d seen was slowly disappearing, closing and growing smaller on its own. Healing at a speed inconceivable to a human. I blinked, shaking my head in disbelief.
“How is this happening?” Eve’s body warmed, and she moved restlessly. I glanced down at her legs to see the white bone protruding from her stocking shift back into her leg on its own.
“This is…this is how a seraph heals,” I told her. But my own arms still blazed with pain in the pattern of her tears, proof we didn’t always heal quickly. Saltwater could destroy us.
Rain fell around us, and I drew my wings up to shelter her from the cold water. It pattered against my slick feathers, wicking off my wings to stream down like a waterfall around us.
She reached up to cup my cheek, this time with strength I never thought I’d feel again. Her thumb brushed tears from the corner of my eyes. “Did you weep for me?”
A ragged laugh tore out of me. “Of course I did, my mate, of course I did.”
She drew her hand back and looked at her fingertips. “Like your wings.” At the confused expression on my face, she turned her hand so we could both see. My tears glistened against her skin. “Your tears.”
My eyes widened. “That’s how,” I breathed. “I didn’t know…I didn’t think—ayim is in them, too.” Seraphim so rarely wept. I’d never considered the ayim in tears because we always went to blood.
She pushed on my chest to balance as she struggled to her knees.
“Gently, gently,” I soothed, holding her shoulders and supporting her weight. “You’ve been grievously wounded.”
Eve grunted with pain and glanced down at her leg. “Did I break it?”
“You broke many things.” Unable to resist, I wrapped her in my arms and drew her back into my lap. “Let’s get you back to Mirkwold. We need to see what injuries remain.”
She frowned. “I thought I was dying.”
I pulled my wings back, and rain splashed on our faces and her body. She glanced at the dead man nearby and shuddered.
“Is Absalom dead?”
I didn’t know who Absalom was, but I nodded.
She clutched at my shoulders. “Gabriel, I need to apologize. I kept secr—”
Standing and gathering her in my arms, I frowned. “Hush. We can discuss this later.” I crouched and shot into the air, a touch wobbly from her weight and the missing feathers from one wing.
I blinked the water from my eyes and set my jaw, heading home.
“Gabriel, how am I alive?”
“We…mated,” I told her, somewhat reluctantly. I’d never heard of a mating bond happening while one of the seraphim was unconscious or dying. I’d thought both had to participate. But technically, we needed to mix ayim, and she didn’t have that, either. What would she think?
Eve sucked in a breath, but didn’t say anything.
“The ayim in our body is what gives us our healing abilities.” I focused on the faint gray blur of Mirkwold ahead.
My hands were slick with her blood. I wouldn’t trust that she was healed until I stripped her and examined her body myself.
The fear from watching her fall to her death would never, ever leave me.
“I didn’t even consider it would work. You have no ayim to mix with mine.” My wings beat the air, bringing us ever closer to home.
“Just like you never considered I could be your mate,” Eve said slowly.
My heart skipped a beat, hearing that word come from her sweet mouth. What did she think about that? I was too worried to ask. Me, the warrior of Aerie who led an elite force, was terrified of what this woman might say.
“If your ayim from your blood and tears mixed with me, then…what does that mean, exactly?”
“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “The only other species I know we’ve ever mixed with are the Gar, and that was thousands of years ago.” We reached the steep roofline of the manor. I tucked my wings and landed in the stone courtyard. My feet left bloody footprints behind to be washed away in the rain.
“I’m well, Gabriel,” Eve murmured as I strode into Mirkwold. “You can set me down. The pain’s mostly gone now.”
I ignored her, turning the corner toward the grand stairs. All I wanted in all the worlds was her, safe and sound, wrapped in my wings by a roaring fire. We turned into the Great Hall to reach the next corridor.
Castiel stood in the Great Hall, his wings flexing as he saw me. “Captain!”
My steps faltered.
His eyes flicked to the human woman in my arms. “You found her.” Relief was evident in his voice.