She shook her head, long dark hair spilling over her shoulders. “No. If we can’t be together in this life, we will sacrifice ourselves to save Sanctuary. To save you, High Ang— Feather.”
I shook my head back at her; I was not worth them sacrificing themselves. But I knew someone who was. “Righteous is indanger,” I managed to say, though it made me cough again. “Help find him?”
“Done,” she said. I lifted my hands in question, then mimed looking around, and Glory of Love smiled sweetly. “Do you know, I sensed only the most painful currents from Righteous for so long. Centuries. Righteous’s ongoing anguish made it difficult for me to physically be in a room with him. He had damaged some part of his heart, and could not let the shame and guilt of whatever had happened go.
“He wallowed in agony. Until you arrived in Sanctuary, stinking up the place and changing everything… for the better.” Her eyes crinkled up in the corners. “One of my skills is to read emotional currents. It means I’ve stayed separate out of necessity for a long time. The pain of others hurts me.” She gripped her head. “But I can use that gift, if I open myself up, to more or less… sniff out Righteous, using the intense connection.”
“Like an emotional hound,” Heart teased, awake at last. Glory fussed over her, and my heart lifted to watch it. There had to be hope for these two.
Glory wrapped her arm around her mate. “Just so. No matter where they’ve put him, as long as he’s still in this realm, I’ll find him for you. It won’t be hard. To be honest, the hard part was blocking his feelings for you before now.”
I scrunched up my brow. I didn’t understand.
She leaned down to whisper in my ear, “Mikhail is your mate, and adores you so much that when he is in Sanctuary, it feels like floating in an endless ocean of love.” She brushed my hair back, like a mother would. “But when Righteous looks at you, it’s like being tossed into a volcano of emotion. Months ago, it was rage and frustration and so much longing, I attempted to pull him aside to speak to him about it. Since you left… No, before then. It started changing even before you and Mikhail found each other.Righteous’s heart began to bloom, like a desert flower. At this point, it’s almost overpowering. I can feel his heart reaching for you now.”
I gasped. “Where?”
She sighed. “I’m not sure which room, but I can tell he’s downstairs.”
“The dungeon,” I whispered.
“They call them cells,” Heart interrupted. “They were never intended for incarceration. They were built as a place for… privacy. Later on, to isolate injured Protectors while they recovered. Once the group therapy sessions began, they fell out of favor. Until recently.” Her tone darkened. “Now they’re used to imprison dissidents. I saw the new rules, signed by High Angelus Gavriel himself.”
I gaped. “He knows?” Had Gavriel reopened the cells to be used as prisons?
“We’re not sure.” Glory of Love clutched my hand. “For all that Righteous’s pain felt like a thorn when I was near him, I haven’t been capable of remaining in the presence of High Angelus Gavriel for four centuries. We were friends, once. But his anguish is a tidal wave—no, a whirlpool. Many of us who are sensitive to such things had to stay away from him in self-preservation. And those who got closer to him… they were the ones who fed on the shadowed currents that flow in a heart as tormented as his. I believe Prosperity and Vigilance, and possibly Tradition, fed his fears of losing more of us. Convinced him that wartime footing had to be the norm. Encouraged him to stay on Earth.
“And with him gone, and Mikhail locking himself away and carving himself into pieces to keep us going… I am certain Gavriel doesn’t know what was in the Guides’ hearts, or what could happen to us. Or that Righteous would ever be trapped in a cell. Or that they have forbidden soulmates to commit. But…”Her eyes closed, her brow furrowing in pain. “I’m not certain if he would care. Compassion has dripped away from his soul, creating a wound much more permanent, and more dangerous, than the one on my mate. When High Angelus Gavriel returns,ifhe returns, we pray he will stand with us.”
Heart cleared her throat, interrupting the runaway train of panic and fear that had started racing down the invisible track of my mind. “Luckily for us, we can reach Righteous. And he can travel to Earth if necessary, and recall the High Angeli.” Her smile was sly. “I am one of the eldest Protectors in Sanctuary. I was at one time trained by a High Angelic counselor whose job was to remediate Protectors returning too damaged to be reintegrated into our community without help. And I still have the words to unlock those cells. I can teach you.”
It took morethan a day to reach him. Glory and Heart needed a little more time to heal, and there were constant search parties, ripping up every space in Sanctuary to find them. Sunny carried me to my seminars, and we sat next to each other in group therapy, though we weren’t allowed to sleep in each other’s rooms. We both kept our heads down, though she said she had a mental list of a hundred resistance sympathizers. I used my growing telepathic powers to listen in on the Protectors around us, and helped point out potential recruits for our side, as well as a few who had hidden their shadowed hearts.
Honestly, I hated listening in. It made me tired, and made my heart hurt. Most of the Protectors were one lukewarm cappuccino away from asking to speak to Sanctuary’s manager. They felt cheated, as if Gavriel and Mikhail had trapped them in some horrific cycle, and they selfishly wanted more. Felt theydeserved more, were entitled to some sort of compensation for their work and “sacrifice.”
The Guides were even worse. Listening in on most of them made me physically ill as well as exhausted, so I stopped doing it after a day or two. I would assume they had all grown twisted. It seemed like a safe bet.
Sunny told me the resistance saw me as their spiritual head. We needed a real leader, though, and since Gavriel and Mikhail hadn’t come back—and no one knew precisely why not—that meant Righteous. Glory assured me he was still alive, though she said he was growing weaker. We needed to move soon.
I worried that they were starving him. The food in Sanctuary, which had been scarce but had recovered somewhat after I walked into the gate, was once again being rationed. Without a High Angelus in Sanctuary to cycle the energy into Sanctuary itself, we would eventually run out.
I didn’t tell Sunny, but I felt weaker by the day as well. I had a feeling Sanctuary had found a High Angelus to leech off, just not a very big one. Or one who knew how to say no. I needed that energy to live, but Sanctuary was like a giant tick, draining me more each hour.
I practiced calling out for Mikhail and Gavriel daily, and tried to dream of Rumple, to ask for help, every night. But no help arrived, and my dreams were filled with earthquakes, floods, and walls crashing down around me, trapping me.
The Guides set guards on the doors to the Flight Hall, and instituted a curfew. Any Protectors found wandering the Halls would be given time to rethink their choices in a cell. If they were caught a second time, they would be punished more severely. Valor had taken to patrolling the corridors above, the soul knife tucked into his belt as if he had a right to it. But he almost never looked down.
So as he flew over me now, I stayed still and silent, keeping even my thoughts quiet. I was wrapped in white from head to toe like a mummy to blend in with the marble floors, and I froze as his shadow swept past. Valor flew on, and the other two Guides who flew above didn’t notice me either. I turned the corner and smiled when I saw Merry, the guard outside Arabella’s room.
“Feather, I’m so glad to see you,” he whispered softly, beckoning me forward. Merry looked terrible, with dark circles under his eyes, and his normally rounded cheeks sunken. I reached into my mummy wrappings and pulled out a flask of juice and a hunk of bread and cheese. Sunny had somehow managed to make nice with one of the chefs, and they had snuck her extra rations. I handed it to him, and we both slipped into Arabella’s room while he scarfed down the food.
“I can’t believe they won’t let you eat,” I said, mad all over again.
He shrugged. “I’m following an order that wasn’t rescinded,” he mumbled through a mouthful of bread, “so they can’t charge me with disobedience. But they can refuse to deliver nourishment.”
“Do you think they’d really do something awful to Arabella?” I asked after a moment.
“I know they would,” he said, his hand hovering at his waist. He didn’t have a soul knife, but he had a wicked-looking sword there, with some oddly colored metal along the edge. It looked more like thick smut; I wouldn’t want to get cut with it. Soul tetanus would suck.
