“Glitter?” she mused, leaning over the page and scanning the notes. “Oh. I think I know what’s wrong.” She grabbed the quill and began adding to my composition, including a few more staff lines above and below on the page. Her nose scrunched up, she hummed one of the new lines she’d created,and on the repeat, I added in the original melody. It was perfect—or would be—when it all came together.
“You make it look so easy,” I grumbled, leaning down to embrace her from behind.
She leaned instantly into my touch. “Never forget, my sweet Lightbearer, that harmonies are where the magic happens.”
“Harmonies?” I rasped as she rubbed her small wings against my chest. “You’ve added four lines to the melody, little minx. Do you think that one line can handle four additional harmonies all at once?”
Her eyebrows waggled up and down as she smirked over her shoulder at me. “I think she’d like to try.”
I frowned at her until I could hold in my laughter no longer, then reached down, sweeping her into my arms, nuzzling her neck to make her giggle as I stalked toward the adjoining bedroom. “Well, let me see if I can find three more voices to help me carry this tune…”
Mikhail’s laughter drew my eyes to the door that led to the secret corridor. He stood in the doorway, with Righteous and Seraphiel right behind him. They pushed through the opening, all wearing t-shirts covered with glitter and sequins.
Seraphiel’s eyes met mine, and we both grinned. “Consider us found,” he said as they clustered around us, each one reaching out to tenderly stroke the small woman who was our heart. Our center. Our sun.
A woman’s voice I knew, but couldn’t quite place, hummed in my mind as I laid my silver-haired love down on the glitter-speckled sheets.Remember this moment, my sweet boy. Hold fast. Be true. Let her show you how to love.
And then I leaned down and kissed the most beautiful soul in Sanctuary. She tasted of sin, and redemption, and rich Belgian chocolate.
A sharp rapping interrupted the dream. It had to be Perception, knocking at the door with the handle to the Celestial sword, the only sound we had determined could be heard through the barrier I’d erected.
I dragged myself off the sofa and threw open the door, ready to ask for at least another hour, when his odd expression stopped my words. I had no idea what he was sensing, but there was a mixture of fear and excitement and pity on his features.
He thrust the pommel of my sword into my open hand. “Gavriel, something is happening.”
I opened my senses, quickly realizing where the disturbance centered. “Arabella’s room,” I shouted, sending him ahead. I ran as fast as I could, my wings still useless.
If one of the Guides or Protectors had taken her for some nefarious purpose, I would flay them. She was all I had left. A broken mate, one I had never had the chance to love. But she was the only thing keeping me from total madness.
The door to her room was still closed, and I burst through it, sword in hand, ready to take on whomever may have believed my inattention was their chance to strike at her. But what I saw had me dropping the Celestial blade on the marble floor.
“Arabella?”
She stood next to her casket, staring down at it in confusion and unease. Her eyes flicked to me, and I was shocked at the color. I would have sworn they had been gold when she opened them for those few moments, years ago, but now… there was the slightest hint of green in them, a thin ring around the outer rim of her iris.
“Gavriel?” she asked, and her voice was every bit as gentle and perfect as I remembered. Her golden hair tumbled to her waist, her gown floating around her slender legs and bare feet. She looked like an illustration I’d seen of one of the first CelestialChildren, the ones formed by the Mother long before even Mikhail’s making.
She was perfection. And she was finally awake.
Was this the second chance Haneul had whispered in my ear?
“How,” I began, unsure what to say, to ask. “What… What happened to you? And how did you awaken?”
“I fell into a dream,” she said, not looking at me, but at her bed. “Or a nightmare. I had a purpose, but the way I was forced to travel, my journey here… erased my knowledge of it. I arrived, re-formed, and you were standing by my side. You, and so many others, seemed to know me. But I couldn’t remember who I was—my name, my purpose. I do remember you trying to kiss me, of all things. And when I went to explain your error… a small fragment, it fell?” She lifted one gleaming golden hand and laid it over her breast, where my mating feather had fallen from her four centuries before. The spot had been an empty place, a hollow divot in the shape of that feather.
But now it wasn’t empty. I sucked in a breath and stepped closer to examine it. “Whose is this?” I asked, but I knew. The feather was tiny, not big enough to replace mine, but Arabella’s flesh had filled in the space around it to make it fit.
It was small, downy, and pure silver.
Arabella’s eyes grew shadowed, the corners of her lips dipping into a soft frown. “You don’t know?”
I shook my head, mute with frustration and a dawning sense of horror. Something in Sanctuary was humming like a beehive had been kicked over in a distant Hall. Or was that the sound of my thoughts as she took my hand in hers and spoke gently, as if to a child? I grew dizzy as she explained, and her grip on my cold fingers was all that kept me from falling.
“Gavriel, I was sent by the Singer of All Songs through the Well, when the gate was closed to us, and the Abyss too perilousto traverse.” She hesitated. “I chose to be sent, for a divine purpose.”
“Sent? As a… Celestial Messenger?”
A shadow passed behind her vibrant gold-and-green eyes. “Of sorts, I suppose. But when I entered through the Well, there was another soul there. One meant for you, on her way to you, in fact. We floated together, sang together, in the space between realms. She was like a little sister. Funny and naughty, a spark of wonder. I’d never seen a spirit so bright, so small. She came through with me, at the very same moment—I know she did. I remember her holding me, laughing as we were pulled into this realm. We were drawn out as one, it seemed. Where is she now?”
