At that exact moment, I realized a few things.
First off, his father was batshit crazy.
Second, I couldn’t sit back and watch this happen.
And third? Neither would Bernard.
CHAPTER4
Rumple
The souls that swarmed inside me, just under my skin, howled into the void, as always. Only now, their voices were not all I could hear. Though I had left my Little Sacrifice on Earth weeks ago, after that bastard’s heart had given out from the strain of beating her, I could still hear her voice as if she stood at the end of a long hallway.
And she was saying…Huh.I fought to understand the words, though they were muffled. “That’s not it.”
Was she having… sex? Or trying to?The nobleman,I remembered. The golden prince, as she’d thought of him. My chest burned with an odd fury at the thought of her sharing pleasure with the fool. He’d been handsome enough for a human, but the man had only looked at my little one with pity, not lust. Had I read him wrong?
I heard a frustrated feminine grunt, then some muffled conversation.The lost souls went still for a moment, the weight of them lessening the slightest amount, as I stifled what might have been a chuckle.
If any creature in the void, or the greater universe, had hinted that I might be amused, that I would be tempted to laugh, even a mere hundred years before, I would have dismissed the suggestion as another one of the ploys of the shadows. An attempt to make me doubt what I knew: that there was nothing for me anymore, save suffering.
Suffering, darkness, and an eternity of regret for my pride, in thinking I could correct the imbalance. That I was enough to plunge myself into the void, go deep into the Abyss, and demand the universe to listen to my voice.
I couldn’t save the universe, or Sanctuary, or myself. I hadn’t even been able to save my little one, though I’d tried. I’d given her nothing but pain. Pain, and a song while she wept, again and again.
“That’s. Not. It,” she repeated, her voice filled with frustration.
Another chuckle tried to emerge. She’d hoped this was the lifetime in which she would find sexual gratification. That would never happen, not that I would tell her that.
She had no idea why the insufficient mortals on Earth could not bring her pleasure. I only had a suspicion myself, though I wasn’t certain what she was, other than an innocent, bearing the mark of one of the strongest High Angeli who lived, the one who had been my best friend. Trapped in a web of evil that I had helped her create, in an effort to save her.
Feather was an innocent who distracted herself from her pain with silly thoughts, though it had shocked me when she’d entertained them about me.
She was too young to have such thoughts. Only a few… no, a hundred and fifty years. I’d been watching over her for fifteen decades now. I supposed she had reached the age of maturity. Where had the time gone?
Where was her soulmate? If he never came for her, if he somehow didn’t feel her presence, would she be alone forever, as I was? The shadows inside my skin jeered and shouted, mocking me.Never alone.I was never alone now.
A dark slither of temptation whispered that someday, she might be mature enough. She might be lonely, as I was.
She might not mind the filth I wore…
The thought that followed was unworthy, and I banished it to the farthest corner of my consciousness. She was far too young for me now, too good, and always would be. Even if I weren’t a ruined creature, tainted beyond repair… She was innocent, which made her irresistible to the darkness that lived inside me now. I wouldn’t touch her, not ever, not when I might harm her. But I could watch her, help her grow. I could go right now, and keep an eye on her. The void would wait.
It was always waiting.
I found myself almost laughing, sliding through the shadows on my ruined wings and down to Earth, drawn by her voice, which resonated with the same glimmering fire and innocence in every form she’d worn since the first one, outside Rome.
What was her name again this time?Ah, yes.Fou Fou. A perfect name for her. My face cracked, oozing filth as a smile forced its way to the surface.
I flew on swift wings through the shadows to the south of France, and found her in a chateau in a room with a bed, a gaudy princeling, a massive dog… and a murderer.
CHAPTER5
Feather
“Woof!” The sound of the enormous dog’s deep cry—half-bark, half-growl, all denial of Charles’s father—froze the room for an instant. Then the man’s face hardened, and the poker began to swing downward again.
The dog was faster, though. Faster than me, faster than any normal dog should be. His coat almost shimmered, glittering in the dim morning light, as he lunged to intercept the arm that held the poker.
