My motherflinched.
My father’s hand wrapped around her wrist and pulled her back toward him. “We could have traveled to Earth, but we chose not to make the trip,child.”
“Why?”
“You are our third offspring,” Raphaelsaid.
Perhaps hearing that I had siblings should’ve been what stuck with me, but jealousy sprang up instead. “And what? You used all your vacation days onthem?”
My father’s eyes narrowed. I’d known him all of a minute, and he already disliked me. We were off to a great start. “Our two other Fletchings never completed theirwings.”
“And it destroyed us, because we’d traveled to the guilds, built relationships with them,” Sofia said. “We couldn’t go through that again, Leigh.” She smiled, her hand moving toward my cheekagain.
I sucked in a breath but allowed her palm to bond with myskin.
“We are so happy to meet you and so proud.” My mother’s voice shook. “We heard you gave Seraph Claire’s husband a run for his money. A Triple. Well done, my beautifulgirl.”
I bristled. Jarod wasn’t a Triple, not anymore. And lowering his rank wasn’t an achievement; it wasjustice.
“You’ll get to meet him soon.” I glanced toward Asher, who was staring at the Pearly Arch as though he’d never seen it before. “His rank’s dropping fast. He’ll reach Elysium in notime.”
My mother nodded. My father didn’t even twitch. Apparently, I hadn’t inherited my effusiveness fromhim.
Silence billowed around us like the smoke from theChannels.
“How wonderful,” my mother finallysaid.
The luminescent stone made Raphael’s silver feathers glitter. “We should let her get settled,Sofia.”
“But wejust—”
“May we come visit you tomorrow,child?”
I wished he hadn’t felt the need to ask for my permission, but I was as much a stranger to him as my parents were tome.
I sighed, tabling my unduly chilliness. They’d lost two kids. Even though I wished they’d visited, I understood their reticence. “You can come to see meanytime.”
The set of my father’s shoulders relaxed, and a smile breached his stiffexpression.
It was strange to think of them as my parents since they both looked so young. I wondered if that incongruity would ever change. What if my trips to Earth—once I became a Malakim—left more traces on my face than existed ontheirs?
I stared around me again, at this home I’d need to apprehend, and it reminded me of the first time I’d entered Jarod’s realm. How lost I’d felt that night, and yet I would’ve given anything to turn the needles of time and go back to that day. I would’ve given anything for Jarod to find me all overagain.
I glanced back at the lavender smoke curling from the portals and whispered, “Hurry.”
Chapter 62
Asher ledme under the Pearly Arch that loomed breathtakingly high and glistened like the inside of an oyster shell in spite of the entrenching dusk. Did angel-fire also irrigate it or was some other magic making itglow?
I was about to ask Asher when I got distracted by a flock of angels gliding overhead, wings extended, feathers fluttering, voices crisscrossing the warm air. Their gazes arrowed to Asher, then to me, and their eyebrows rose, but they didn’t land to greet me or salute thearchangel.
“You can do that too, now.” Asher’s voice made me jump. “Want totry?”
“Um.” The breeze tickled my feathers. No. Not the wind. They were twitching. “What if Ifall?”
“Wings make you fly, Leigh. It is only their absence that make youfall.”
He smiled an encouraging smile, the sort of smile the Ophanim offered us Fletchings when we doubted ourselves.Us Fletchings. . . I was no longer a Fletching. I’d graduated from the guilds, but since there’d been no celebration, the promotion went unnoticed. I’d celebrate when Jarod arrived. My chest squeezed for the trillionth time, dropping another invisiblecrumb.
