“I was jealous,” I admitted, and steeled myself not to react to the utter disbelief in her expression. “I was,” I insisted as she tightened her arms around herself. “Jealous of Mikhail having a mate when my own lay as dead. And more than that. Jealous of his ability to see the goodness, the beauty beneath the… smut you wore.” One corner of her mouth twitched at that. Her eyes were warming, but I had to finish this. I clenched my jaw. “I was jealous beyond reason that he had a mate.Hasa mate.” I sealed my lips before I said what wanted to burst out.
My true envy lay in that he would be allowed, even though their stations were so unequal, to touchher, tasteher. Fill her and merge his spirit inside her… and I never, ever would. Not even if she would accept me.
She was a mated Angelus. And so was I.
She swallowed hard and wrapped herself more securely in the sheet, glancing at Mikhail on the bed. “Well. I guess… that’s understandable.”
Mikhail muttered something that sounded like, “A High Angelus telling half-truths?” but I didn’t look away from her face. Her glorious, glittering face. Was it her skin? I blinked. No, there was glitter on her face as well as the smut stains, small specks of it catching the candlelight.
“You have… a little something there,” I said, pointing to her cheek. She dabbed at it with one hand, the sheet falling precariously low. I glanced at Mikhail, but he was… pretending to sleep? I cursed him mentally.
She’s covered with glitter.
Leave it,he replied lazily, though something in his tone hinted at a challenge.It doesn’t bother me.
It’s distracting.
He didn’t answer. I crawled forward, still on my knees. Even at this level, we were almost the same height. “Allow me to clean it off,” I said softly, and she stepped toward me, jutting her chin forward. I used my thumb to wipe away a few pieces of glitter, but every time I got one, another seemed to pop up. Finally, I had her face clear, but I let my hand move as if I was still searching, to keep this moment from passing.
The moment when I was able to feel her skin beneath mine. To touch her.
It was the worst irony that I had once thought her beneath me. Now I had to force myself not to think of her physically beneath me. Wanting me. That would never come to pass.
“Forgive me?” I asked again, my voice low. “I vow on my wings to be a friend to you. To be a better Angelus, one worthy of that friendship. Never to be cruel to you again, little one.” For some reason, when I called her that, her lips parted, and one hand flew to her chest, pressing as if something was there, underneath the gathered sheet.
“On your wings? Will you tell me what that means?” One delicate eyebrow flew high, and I marveled at her silvery hair, solike my mate’s in all but color. She had patterns in gold and gray on her skin that had changed during her time away. What else had changed?
“When I vow on my wings, it means that if I am proven untrue, I will make a sacrifice of wings to atone for the lie.”
Her jaw dropped. “Like, literally. You would, what? Cut them off?”
I nodded. “With the Celestial sword, or one of the soul knives.” I tilted my head toward the cauldron. “In the past, the material was given to the gate, to strengthen Sanctuary. No one’s had to pay that price in thousands of years, of course.”
“Of course,” she repeated, her voice strangled.
“Do you accept my vow, little one?” I used the pet name again, wondering what it meant to her.
She blinked repeatedly, blushing. “That’s what Rumple calls me, sometimes.”
“Rumple?” I glanced at Mikhail for clarification. He had risen from the bed and clothed himself while we spoke. Now he carried a plate with food and drink over to one of the clean, larger tables. We pulled up chairs around it, Mikhail hauling Feather onto his lap, where she squirmed in her sheet. My mouth grew dry, watching the cloth slip lower. I shifted in my chair. If my cock got any harder, I would need to mend my trousers.
I had just popped a grape into my mouth when Feather blithely announced, “Rumple is what I call Seraphiel. I’ve known him for ages, since he helped me in Italy when my sister was killed.” She sketched the story of her first life for me, and I had just opened my mouth to ask a question when she continued. “He’s the one who found me in the Abyss and smooshed me back together.”
Immediately, I began choking on the grape. “What— What do you mean?” I asked once I could speak again.
“The one you call Rafe, the old leader of Sanctuary. He’s on the other side of the gate. And he’s pretty pissed, Gavriel. Um, I mean, High Angelus Gavriel.”
“You don’t have to call him High Angelus now that you’re no longer a Protector, Feather,” Mikhail said, feeding her a cheese cube. “You’re a High Angelus now, too.”
“Really?” she said, at the same moment that I snapped out, “No, she’s not!”
They both gaped at me. I sighed. “You know as well as I that becoming a High Angelus takes time, training, and experience. It’s not just the material you’re made out of?—”
“What about the mates, then?” Feather asked, licking grape juice off her fingers. I stared at her small tongue as she lapped at each digit, and held my breath so I wouldn’t whimper. “Mates like the ones Mikhail made for other Angeli.” She skirted around Arabella’s name. “They were called Constructs, right? Were they High Angeli when they were formed?”
“No,” I sputtered, but she had me there. Even with her smutty coating, Feather was every bit as much a High Angelus as any created mate, even if she knew next to nothing about what that meant. She would never have survived merging with Mikhail even once if she hadn’t been. “Well, sort of. But the mate bore the responsibility of caring for, of teaching the newly made Angelus.”
She twisted on Mikhail’s lap, a mischievous smile on her lips. “Gonna teach me, Daddy Bear?” I tried not to choke again at the way she purred the inappropriate nickname, and took advantage of that moment when neither was looking at me to adjust myself.
