She smiled tightly. “They’ll survive.”It’s you I’m worried about.
“All right. Then let them go first.” Mikhail started to protest, but I finished, “It’ll give me even more reason to get through.” As if my words had activated it, a huge door appeared in the side of one of the clouds. A fire door, with a bar handle, like elementary schools had. “That’s your gate?” I scoffed. “Not sexy at all.”Not like Revel.
Ry leaned in and kissed me hard. “You’re such a deviant,” he murmured. “Gates, Feather? Really?”
Haneul was laughing as she pushed him through the door-gate. I patted Growly’s chest as he put me down. He kept one hand on me until the very end, and then, with a snarl that told me exactly how he felt about leaving me behind, he slammed through the door.
The throbbing discomfort in my chest became debilitating in less than a breath, and I dropped to one knee. Haneul was there immediately. “Can you walk, Feather?” I held up one finger, unable to speak. Her voice was calm, but a thread of panic was buried in her tone. “You understand why there’s so much pain?”
The breath I took to answer felt like razors inside my lungs, but her expression was worth it. “Gavriel… the… Goatfudger. Leader of… Loserville. Soulmate of Suck. Goddess has a mean streak.” I began to fall sideways.
Haneul sang in High Angelic as she scooped me up and carried me the rest of the way to the gate. I felt a pulse of sadness, a sense of farewell.
“Wait,” I rasped. “What’s wrong?” Wasn’t she going through after me?
She smiled tightly. “Oh, nothing. It’s just, I’ve always been a bit of an explorer at heart. I enjoyed my trip outside the Celestial Realm. Becoming a Celestial Messenger was the only way I could ever leave and return, though, so I jumped at the chance.”
“You can only enter this gate once?” Something about that bothered me.
“Yes. Messengers are given an extra share of Celestial soulfire that works as a sort of key, activated by the gate itself as I re-enter.” She pressed a hand to her abdomen. “It’s heavy to carry, but it’s the only way the gate will recognize me and allow me to come home.”
“Why not go for a quick joyride around the place first?” I suggested, nodding my head at the void beyond the cloud edge. “If you only get one field trip, you should make it worthwhile.” She leaned close, and I whispered, “Go to Las Vegas. Trust me, every High Angelus should visit Sin City at least once.”
“Don’t tell Imriel that,” she muttered. “He’ll have a conniption.”
“Imriel? Who’s that? Does he have a stick up his ash?”
“He’s the Choir Leader, Feather.” She looked properly horrified, even though she was snort-laughing. “The head of the realm.”
“Hmmm, Choir Leader. So what you’re saying is it’s a conductor’s baton wedged in his rectum. I get it.”
She laughed so hard she almost dropped me, then hugged me close. “I’m not sure the realm is ready for you, my friend.” Lowering me to my feet, she set my hand against the bar.
My fingers trembled with weariness and fear. I was already in so much pain; I didn’t think I could handle more. “What will it feel like?”
“Like coming home, Feather,” she crooned, already humming her own name song. “You are home, most beautiful sacrifice. Home at last.”
Home.I tried not to sigh at her confident assertion. It wasn’t anything I’d felt in all my lives, though my time in Sanctuary had come close—once I’d met Sunny and Mikhail, and Righteous. Perception, Truth, and Hope. Then it began to feel like it might be where I belonged.
Maybe, after everyone I loved got here, I would start to believe I really did have a home. Like Heaven was the right place for a smutty, beaten-up scrap like me. I began to sing my name, each note like dragging an anchor through mud. At the end of the final note—those extra few hateful words added in—the door-gate opened, and I was blinded temporarily.
When I blinked, the space I stood in was still empty, but the new clouds were blue-ish. And the pain in my chest had subsided considerably. Were my mates nearby?
I shouted out, “Growly? Anaconda Pants? Birch? Anyone?”
No one answered, and I realized I was between realms, somehow. No one else was here. No one but… the clouds roiled around me.Daughter?The voice from the void filled the skies with sudden music, followed by an unimaginably vast silence.
I remembered the message I had for Her. “Your son, Revel, asked me to tell you he misses you.” An immense wave of sorrow threatened to swamp me. I struggled to think of what to say—had I made the Singer of All Songs sad? I couldn’t bear the thought, so I opened my mind, trying to remember everything I could about the Great Gate in Sanctuary.
How he looked, and the crazy pictures that played over his surface. Every inappropriate comment I’d made. How I’d teased Mikhail and Righteous about the gate’s thick columns, and the midnight picnics I’d had at his base. The moment when Haneul had started counting how many golden figures on his surface were physically merging. How he’d winked at me the first time I’d seen him.
In my thoughts, I dressed the gate up in a sparkling, glitter-covered t-shirt that readI have a gate kink.The wave of sadness ebbed, and the world suddenly spun, as if everything flipped around 360 degrees. I shook the dizziness away as a chorus of joyful trumpets started up. Right next to my ear.
“Crap on a crabcake, that’s loud.” My ears ringing, I sent up a prayer of thankfulness that I had been able to ease Her pain.
The trumpets grew quieter, and the voice spoke again, this time filled with a mixture of joy, surprise, and tears.Your first thought in this realm was of Me. Caring for Me. Concern for My heart. Oh, daughter, you may yet save them all.
I felt an embrace, like being smothered by a million down pillows all at once, and then the presence was gone. I took a step toward where She had gone. “Singer? Goddess, is that You?”
