“I’m sorry. Sorry I believed him when he told me you didn’t need me.”
“It was my fault. I should have told you I loved you before,” he replied calmly. “If you’d been more secure, you would have come to me.” He took a drink, then set the cup down, his grip growing steadier by the second. “Will you tell me where you’ve been?” His eyes darted up cautiously to meet mine. “And how… how you’ve returned.”
“I will,” I said, drawing the word out. “But you have to let me do something while I talk.” He tilted his head, and I grabbed some of the cloths from the table. “You have to let me wash you. You stink almost as much as I did when I first came to Sanctuary, Growly. Like an actual bear.”
Our combined laughter rose to the rafters, and for the first time since I’d entered the Hall, I felt like maybe there was a chance I could repair what I’d done.
Maybe he would want me to be his mate again. If it was possible.
“Ready for your bath time with a stern, firm-handed angel mistress?” I teased. “This may or may not have been a recurrent fantasy of mine for the past few months.”
“I’m afraid you’ve got me at a disadvantage,” he grumbled. “I’m not what I was before.” He pulled his shirt off, revealing his sunken chest, and the scars that stood out even more prominently on his skin. I fought to keep my expression serene, dipping the towel into the warm, glowing water—obviously it had been mixed with some sort of purifying gel—before using it to wipe my tears, then rubbing it in broad strokes on his chest.
“Lie back and listen,” I said quietly. “I’ll tell you everything that happened.”
An hour passed while I spoke. Then two. I’d washed him twice by then, and his skin was clean, even if he still wore an alarming amount of smut, and was lacking the glow that had marked him as a High Angelus. When I told him about Seraphiel and how he’d been trapped in the Abyss, how he’d tried to communicate through the gate, I used the tears that streamed from his eyes to help loosen more of the smut and grime from his body.
My smut, which he’d taken on when he mated me.
“He remade you,” Mikhail said at last when my story was done. “He renamed you?”
“Well, I chose the name,” I admitted. “I didn’t want to be useless anymore.” His hand caught mine, and he pulled me into his embrace, one arm wrapping behind me.
“You were never useless. You were always necessary. And beloved.Mybeloved.”
Across the room, the naming chime, the small silver bell that he’d used to find my former name, rang out merrily.
His eyes grew wide with wonder, and his cheeks darkened. Was he blushing? I put my hand to my own face. I knew I was. “You renamed yourself my beloved?” The bell hummed again.
“Well, that was part of it,” I confessed, meeting his eyes. “Rumple—Seraphiel—said to pick my own name, that I could make it whatever I wanted. I may have gotten slightly carried away.” I covered my eyes when Mikhail laughed again.
“What did you pick?” He waited, and when I didn’t answer, his hands landed on my waist, and he hauled me onto his lap. Mikhail might have been much weaker than he was before, but he was still one of the oldest and strongest beings in Sanctuary. I let my body melt into his, and shivered when his hand stroked the place on my nape where his mating feather had been. I wanted to be his mate again so badly, I could taste it.
I wasn’t going to admit my whole name right now—to be honest, I had a feeling my brain had still been sort of wobbly when Rumple had pressed the name into me before sending me back, and it was embarrassing.
But sitting here, staring into the fire, I found the courage to ask a question of my own. “Do you still want me?” I asked softly. “If you would choose me to be your mate again, I won’t leave you, I promise.”
He sighed and pulled me closer to his chest, his chin resting on the top of my head. “More than anything,” he said. “But I can’t.” I held my breath, afraid that if I let it out, it would be on a sob. Then he continued. “I’m too weak. If I cut away one of my feathers now, it could be my death. When I’m stronger… when I’m myself again, nothing will keep me from asking you formally to be mine.” He turned me in his arms, pulling my chin up with one finger so I was staring directly into his beautiful, swirling turquoise eyes. “We have so much to do. Someone will need tofind Gavriel and tell him about Rafe. I don’t accept that he’s lost to us. If he’s alive, in whatever form, Gav will find a way to rescue him.”
“What will I do?” I glanced down at my arms. Whatever smut I had worn on my skin before was gone, though I had a feeling it might be the weird gray stuff that swam under my skin with the gold and silver. Inextricable, now.
“You’ll go to Protector classes, I assume. And you’ll need to sing to the gate.” He lay back, his face paler than it had been only seconds before. “I’ll try to recover my strength. I have a reason to now.”
“Does that mean we can’t… you know?” I waggled my eyebrows. “Merge? I could stay on top, and do all the work.” He laughed so hard the bed shook, and my heart soared. If he was laughing, he couldn’t be dying, could he?
But then his laughter turned into coughing. I grabbed a cloth and held it to his mouth, my insides freezing as I saw the blood and golden ichor that came away when I lowered it.
“Growly, what’s this? Is this new?”
He drew a breath as if to speak, but his lungs rattled, and his eyes went wide with shock and alarm. “Get Sunny. Too late,” he wheezed.
With my arms still around him, he slumped to one side on the bed. “Mikhail?” I patted his cheek. Was he asleep, or had he fainted? Crapola, was he breathing? I leaned down, feeling the faintest shiver of a breath on my ear. “Sunny!” I shouted when nothing I did would wake him. “Sunny, come quick!”
The door slammed wide, and she was at my side in an instant. “What happened?” She helped me set him onto his back, and examined him. He lay as still as death, not breathing for long moments, then gasping. My heart felt like someone had replaced it with a boulder.
“What’s wrong? Did I do something?”
Sunny shook her head. “Bring me the bell,” she said. I knew which one, and I ran to grab the naming chime. She took it, held it over his head, and said clearly, “Mikhail the Great-Souled, Maker of Sanctuary, Beloved of Feather.”
