When I spoke, I couldn’t hear my own voice under the clamor of the persistent, maddening hum in my head. “I don’t know who you mean. Who was in the Well with you?” I reached out with a trembling hand and laid it over the small, silver feather, feeling the pain that had nearly crippled me abate, but only for as long as I touched it. When I dropped my hand, the humming intensified. “Whose feather?” I managed to ask, though I already knew.
Images of the past few months flickered through my mind. Words. Memories I had ruthlessly suppressed. I let my eyes close, remembering.
“Who are you?”
Feather.
“Lie.” I slashed her face, hoping to surprise an answer from her. Wondering why my own cheek also stung. I held still, refusing to react to the unexpected pain.
Ow! I told you my name!
“That isn’t your name. Lie again, and your judgment will be more severe. Your name, now.”
I don’t know.
Stubborn creature.Rage moved my hand before even my thought. Another slash, a cry from the girl, and my own arm was alight with fire. With agony that matched hers.
How had I cut myself? Did this filthy soul have some sort of invisible weapon? Her voice was small, her tone filled with fear. But also a spark of anger. Impudence.
It used to be Tili. I call myself Feather.
Beneath her confession, I felt a layer of intense longing. The undercurrent of thought that only the most powerful of the High Angeli could hear, a melody sung by the very particles that made up the soul of every being in all the realms. Rafe had taught me long ago how to hear it, though it had never been so clear as this moment.
This creature’s being wasmadeof the music. And her tune was thrumming with questions:Who am I? Tell me who I am? Please. Know me. Know me.
You know me.
Why don’t you know me?
When I wasable to open my eyes once more, tears were coursing down my face, searing lines of fire across my cheeks. I ignored them. I ignored everything but the beat of my drumming heart, a music that now had no place, no purpose.
It should stop. Should have stopped when the one I’d tortured had left this realm. She had been mine, hadalwaysbeen mine, though I had not seen it.
The one I had been faithful to for centuries regarded me somberly. Arabella’s eyes swirled with sorrow for a moment before she finished the destruction of my soul, which I had begun months before with my cruel actions and callous words.
“You must know whose feather this is, Gavriel. It belonged to the soul who was intended for you. She already bore your mark, though I wasn’t sure how you could have given it to her before she was even formed.
“It’s your soulmate’s.”
Epilogue
SERAPHIEL
“Are you there, Little Sacrifice?”
The Abyss consumed my cry, swallowed up every sound.
Little Sacrifice!I called again with my mind, spinning out a narrow thread of thought to her, waiting for an answer. Listening, as I held the writhing mass of shadows away from the weakened place that I knew lay at the bottom of Sanctuary.
I was beyond weary. The shadows had grown too strong for me to hold. Too evil for me to drain their corruption into my own soul’s vessel, which was now as tainted and stained as the Abyss itself. I was dying, dissolving under the weight, and all I could do was allow the shadows to tear at my being.
I had to lay down this burden before the Abyss owned the last vestiges of my once-great soul. Before it could use me to corrupt the realm where my love was safe. Where she had found her home, her family, at last.
To protect her, I would unmake myself; no other being besides the Mother was strong enough to do so now. I could not allow the shadows I had restrained with my own soulfire to touch her.
All I wanted was to hear my love’s gentle laughter one more time. To feel her soft hand on my eyelids. To close my eyes so I could sleep and never wake.
So the pain would end.
