The Guide shook their head slightly. Their eyes were bleeding, and I wasn’t certain they could even see, but the cloak of evil Rafe now wore obscured everything that would have made him recognizable to the elder Guide, in any case.
“I’m the one who made those rules you’ve been subverting, Worthless One. I’m the one who built this cursed place.” He shook the listless Guide harder, and I saw trails of Tradition’s soulfire emerging from their body everywhere that the blood and ichor welled out. Their whole being vibrated, and began to come apart, bit by bit. I watched, horrified, as the particles of golden light that was their innermost soul began to float toward Rafe. Toward his mouth, and his dark gray, forked tongue, which crept out, licking them up.
He wasdevouringthe Guide. Consuming his soul.
“Stop,” I begged, and Rafe turned toward me. “Don’t do this.”
“Why not? There is nothing you can offer me.” His eyes sparkled like twin lakes of lava. “Your soul?”
“I would,” I said, moving close, so close my wings brushed against Rafe’s twisted, ruined body. I pushed in between him and the dying Guide, embracing Tradition, spreading my wings around us both.
“You think I won’t kill you?” Rafe shouted, reaching around with his other arm, and crushing me in the same way he had Tradition. Crushing us together at the same time. I felt my soulfire begin to seep out of my ears and nose. I almost welcomed death.
“I know you will,” I managed to wheeze. “But it will kill her as well.”
The air itself stopped moving. “What did you say?”
His grip lessened, and I took a small breath, twisting around to stare into my executioner’s eyes. “When you kill me, Rafe, you’ll kill Feather.”
His voice was a vicious hiss as he replied, “She’s already gone. I felt her unmaking.”
My heart lurched. If she were truly gone, wouldn’t I have felt it? Wouldn’t I be dead, too? Perhaps Iwasdying; I felt close to it. But no. “She… lives.”
“How could she?” I didn’t speak, but he dropped Tradition to the floor, grasped my skull in both clawed hands, and took the answer. His thoughts tore at my mind, like all my mental shields were tissue paper, but I pushed back, using every scrap of power I had to hold onto the only pieces of Feather I had left. I let him witness the centuries of loneliness, but I kept him from stripping away the memories of her.
I struck back with a thought:I abused her, yes. But you did far worse, old friend. You forced her to bear an obscene burden. She told me that herself.
“You think I wanted to do that?” Rafe growled, squeezing my skull even more tightly. “That was your failure as well,old friend.Let me show you.” Then he pulled me into his own mind, thrusting me into a memory. His memory of meeting her.
As I’d expected, the stable was dark and bloody. The shadows I’d been following were the worst sort: strong enough to escape the Abyss and wreak havoc on Earth, and attracted to the spiritual aftermath of the most heinous crimes. Normally, I stayed in the void and took no notice of them, but some peculiar urge had drawn me here. Tugged at me.
I’d seen so many scenes like this one in the past—a dead man, an equally dead and violated young woman—that I’d grown immune to the sight. From the drifting threads of energy, I could tell the woman’s spirit had fled to the Celestial Realm.Good for her,I thought, but something was off.
I turned to examine the scene and realized the shadows were not feasting on the man’s twisted soul. They were gathered around a small figure, crumpled on the ground. I growled at them to move, and some of them did, sulkily. When they moved, a scrawny child was revealed, bleeding from a number of wounds and internally from what looked to be broken ribs.
She was unspectacular. Dark hair, tanned skin, thin limbs that spoke of hunger in her short life.
But then her eyes opened, and she looked at me.
My world exploded into silver fire.
Her soul was magnificent. Brilliant, like a supernova. I had never seen such power and resilience, except in the other First Children. But she was not my sister. I reached out with tendrils of divine perception, and could sense the touch of two souls on her that I had known in Sanctuary. Mikhail and one other. Azazel? But there was another presence in some parts of her, a feminine one. Almost intermingled with her own brand-new soul.
Who are you? I thought.
She didn’t answer, but the music of her every particle was repeating versions of that same question.Who am I? Do you know who I am? Am I yours? Are you mine?
Can you tell me who I am?
The shadows pulled at her soul, and her silver light sputtered for a moment. I sent out a pulse of my own power to frighten them away, but they would not retreat, sending the understanding to me that they had earned this meal. My gaze fell to the hoof pick in her hand, and I tasted bile.
She had committed a murder, fully understanding the consequences. And though human children were never consigned to that fate, she possessed an angelic soul. So she was doomed to be consumed and taken to the Abyss.
“What have you done, little one?”
Her chin wobbled, then firmed. So brave. “I t-tried to save her.”
My heart ached. “And yet you did not. She was already gone when you killed the man. You know what that means?”
