She protected.
I watched as almost all the smut from Sunny’s choice, Valor’s murder, fell not on the one who had committed the act, but on the tiny, already-overtaxed High Angelus. It looked like askyscraper made only of shadows collapsing and folding into one small space. But Feather didn’t budge. She didn’t even move.
As she held Sunny, tears streaking down both their faces, she did something else completely unexpected. And yet totally in character. She sang. Her liquid, lyrical voice was heartbreakingly beautiful, and the song was one of Rafe’s. A healing song. The whole Hall stilled again, listening. Sunny stopped weeping. And to my great surprise, an old, painful wound began to close in my heart as tears seared my cheeks.
Maybe she was right. Maybe Rafe was alive in the Abyss, and not yet twisted beyond redemption. If he’d taught her this song, given her this powerful weapon, then possibly he could still be rescued. I could save him.
While Feather sang, the shadows continued to fall on her, and she flinched under every new weight, her voice wobbling with each blow. When the song trailed off, the room began to grow lighter, as if an invisible sun were coming out.
To my surprise—though I needed to stop feeling that around her, it was a useless reaction—Feather rose, popped her neck, and wiped her hands on her repulsively dirty toga. The Hall was utterly silent, with all eyes on her. “Motherfudger!” she yelled, looking down at herself, then at Mikhail, who had at last reached her side. She was every bit as smut-covered as she ever had been. “Now I gotta start all over again!” Her hands flew to her head, and she wrapped her fingers around the horns that had formed. Then she yelped, and inexplicably cried out, “Clit horns? What the actualfudge?”
Mikhail moved to embrace her even with all the smut on her, but someone else got there first. “My love,” Righteous rasped. Perception had been untying him while Feather sang, and now Ry gathered her into his arms and laid the sloppiest, most intimate kiss I had ever witnessed, right on her filth-covered mouth.
I blinked in disbelief. He… dared? And she was letting him, was returning his ridiculously artless kiss? I blinked again, noting her small, filth-encrusted hands rhythmically squeezing the cheeks of his robe-clad butt.
Was I hallucinating? Was I unconscious and dreaming? There was no reality in which this sequence of events made sense.
“My love, my Tili,” Righteous gasped, pulling away before kissing her again. He held her as if he didn’t even notice the filth on her, though it rubbed off on him in great slabs, and… turned to glitter when it hit the floor.
Glitter? I must be dreaming.
Righteous’s hands slipped and slid all over her body. “Clit horns?” he asked, laughing. Then he held her face in his hands, and I noticed something at the exact same time Mik did. A new marking on Righteous’s left hand and forearm that matched Mikhail’s right arm precisely.
Mik began growling like a feral wolf.
“My perfect Scrap,” Righteous said. “My mate.” Every soul in the Hall simultaneously inhaled, so suddenly I could feel a breeze, right before Mikhail’s fist sailed through the air and landed on the Head Protector’s jaw.
Within seconds, the room resembled Madison Square Garden in the middle of a prize fight. Mikhail was pummeling Righteous, and Righteous was doing his best to duck and weave, shouting unintelligibly. The shining crowd was cheering on both fighters.
The energy from the podium and the assembled spectators bombarded me, and I fought for control, but was driven to my knees. I was the leader here. It was my responsibility to keep order.
My eyes flew to Tradition, the Guide who had helped me for centuries to do just that. He had backed up against a wall, andlooked as if he might flee. Horror at what was happening here distorted his face… No. Horror at the tiny, dark gray demon who darted at him repeatedly, spitting on his robe. Tiny wisps of smoke rose where every droplet landed.
Why was she attacking the Head Guide? She had only ever attacked the worst sort of criminals on Earth. Was he… But no. She wasn’t trying to kill him. Just expressing her displeasure. With acidic spittle.
“Demon!” someone yelled, noticing the baby at last. “The Abyss is here!”
When others finally averted their attention to the little menace, they panicked and began stampeding from the Hall. The floor quaked with the sound of thousands of feet, the walls themselves shaking with their passage. Dozens of Protectors were unwisely taking wing and crashing into one another, falling back onto their comrades below. I heard screams of fright and pain. Some of them would be injured. Maybe worse. I had to stop this.
Still, I ordered in my mind, then repeated it, in High Angelic. “Still.” I was commanding the very fabric of the realm to halt the riot. But to my shock, for the first time, Sanctuary wasn’t listening. I gasped when I realized why: it was almost totally depleted. Quickly, I channeled as much of my personal energy into it as I could safely give at one time. I rocked back on my heels for a moment, breathing through the dizziness.
What had happened here? Why had Sanctuary’s reserves dwindled this far? Mikhail and I had been gone, but not long enough for this to have happened. We’d both sent power into the realm before we left for Earth, and it had been healthy for the first time in centuries.
A memory from over two thousand years before, when Rafe had first begun teaching me how to guard the realm’s resources, welled up and carried me away.
“Rafe, be reasonable. No one being can control all the energy in Sanctuary. It’s a realm. An entirerealm.”
My best friend put his harp down and laughed. He might have been laughing at my expression, or at my painting. I shot him a look, stepped back and squinted at the landscape I’d just created, using thin ribbons of energy as paintbrushes to learn control. I thought it looked pretty good, and I told him so.
“Well, I like the dolphins,” he said in a condescending tone. He tilted his head, and his gleaming hair fell in a perfect wave over one gold and silver eye. “They’re very abstract.”
“Those are horses,” I grumbled. Gathering up a small line of Sanctuary’s energy, I snapped it across the canvas, burning it into ash that disintegrated before it hit the ground.
He laughed again and snapped his fingers, creating a plate piled high with fruit and small cakes. “Don’t be mad. The Singer of All Songs loves every voice, not just the beautiful ones.”
“I can sing,” I muttered, popping a cake into my mouth. It tasted divine, of course. Since Rafe’s premonition that he would be leaving someday, and his subsequent decision to train me to fill in for him while he was away, I’d needed to eat more. Manipulating the balance of energy on Earth and in Sanctuary was difficult work, and it built up an appetite.
But he insisted we take breaks every few days to focus on art. Music, I didn’t mind one bit. Singing a duet with Rafe—or sometimes a trio, if Mikhail could get the crusty old Maker to let her Apprentice have a few hours off—was as close to the Celestial Realm as I imagined I’d ever get before I went there with a soulmate.
