“What do I say? Besides the names?”
She snorted. “I don’t know. I’m the equivalent of a seventeen-year-old in angelic terms. It’s not like anyone’s taught us aboutthis sort of thing yet. Just… make something up. Vows or something. How bad can it be?”
“You haven’t heard my new name yet,” I muttered. Her gaze narrowed. I turned away and double checked the feather’s placement. “Mikhail the Great-Souled, Maker of Sanctuary, Beloved of Feather, I give you this mating feather as a sign of my eternal love. With it, we will be bound forever, loving each other, supporting each other, protecting each other, and having wild merging sex with each other as often as possible.” When I said his name, the chime rang, and the feather in my hand twitched on his flesh. I watched him take a labored, shallow breath. And then his chest stilled.
“Feather,” Sunny begged. “Hurry!” Her panic was contagious once I realized he was almost gone. I could feel his soul slipping away, diminishing. Turning from a honeyed stream of energy into dry, small flakes, like glitter. Almost invisible.
Almost gone.
Quickly, I leaned close to his ear, whispering, “Your name is now Mikhail the Great-Souled, Maker of Sanctuary, Beloved of…” And then I took a deep breath and recited my entire new name while I held the feather against his wrist as firmly as I could.
Sunny let out an amused, “Feather, you didn’t!” at the same moment the feather sank into Mikhail’s flesh.
And my world exploded.
It was like getting caught in a massive whirlpool, or a black hole. There was no escaping it. I found my body plastered to his, and felt my energy spiraling out of me and into what resembled a vast, invisible, bottomless pit. For a moment, I knew I’d made a mistake; Mikhail was ancient, and had been so strong. The well I needed to fill with my own soul was far deeper than I’d imagined.
It had been foolish to think that I was enough for him. That my soul could in any way be a match for this exquisite man.
I was emptying out, vanishing into the void that had been his reserve. He had given so much to Sanctuary, to all his children, and to me. I wished I could have been enough for him. But I didn’t regret trying.
Okay, I would miss my Sunny. And my sheets. And the gate.
To be truthful, I’d regret not getting to explore Righteous’s anaconda pants. And I’d be sad to lose the hate-sex fantasies I’d wanted to play out in the real world with Gavriel, especially the ones where he came groveling on his knees and apologized with lots and lots of skilled oral.
But maybe Rumple would be there for me, in the void. This felt a lot like the beginning of being unmade, after all.
As my regrets flashed into my mind, and flew away as quickly as flecks of glitter in a hurricane, I became the feather I had cut out. My entire soul swelled in that small fragment… and then I landed in the deepest part of the void that had been Mikhail’s power.
And I felt him beneath me. Or something. It was moving. Coils of pure energy, enormous beyond imagining, shifting under me like snakes.
Wait. Is this my leviathan fantasy? Or the alien one, with the metallic tentacles?
Feather?A voice too deep for anything but thought rumbled up beneath me, setting up trembling echoes of pleasure in my… well, not my body. I was a feather now.
Yes?I thought back.Growly Bear?
And then, in a blinding blaze of light, the void I had tumbled into became a sun. Every empty inch of the well was filled up, as if a bomb of light had gone off, filling it in less time than it took to blink. Power—terrifying, overwhelming power—was all that surrounded me.
The void was now a supernova, brilliant and clear and pure… and I blinked, my soul no longer torn away but present.
In my own body, and in the face of the Angelus in front of me, who stared with mesmerizing, swirling eyes that I knew only hinted at the vast force he held inside. His wings were wide, and larger than I remembered, his body renewed. The scars he’d had everywhere were blazing golden sickles on his gleaming bronze flesh. His face was firm and strong again, his muscles thick. I lifted a hand and laid it on his forearm, on top of the feather.
And the world exploded again, but this time with pleasure.
“Feather,” Mikhail murmured, his eyes swirling so fast, I couldn’t look away. “What did you do? That was incredibly dangerous. You… renamed me?” His words were chastising, but I could feel, deep down, that he wasn’t angry at all. He sounded awestruck.
“Didn’t think I had it in me,” I rasped, and cleared my throat. Suddenly, I realized that something had changed. I felt Sunny’s hands on me, and then I was being lowered into the bed, with Mikhail standing beside me. “You’re tall,” I said dreamily. “Big everywhere. I dreamed about your cock in the Abyss so much that Rumple asked me to stop.”
Sunny giggled, though her voice sounded teary when she said, “Yeah, I’d save that conversation for a birch like me, not a love interest.”
Mikhail’s cheeks went ruddy, but his eyes kept swirling. “My sweet soul, how?” He grinned, and I fell even more in love with him when that elusive dimple formed on one cheek. I had done this, made him this happy. He’d only smiled wide enough to reveal that once before, and I tried to reach up to poke a finger into it before it vanished again, to capture it.
But my arms weren’t responding. I glanced away from his hypno-eyes and groaned.
My skin was once again coated with a thin layer of greasy, gray film. “What the fudge?” My voice was still raspy, and I gladly accepted the water Sunny offered.
She sighed. “That’s half the smut Mikhail still had on him. From your last mating.”
