She pouted. “I got the extra wingspan. But you got the extra heart, sister. You have more compassion than anyone I’ve ever known. Thank you for teaching me, little Maker.”
Her final words coincided with a significant vibration directly under my feet. I tapped into my Sanctuary link to perceive what was happening, and caught a glimpse of something infinitely long and thick, pressing on the exterior of the realm. The Abyss had wrapped so many shadows around themselves, it had formed an enormous snake.
All the myths and legends slithered into my thoughts. Jörmungandr. Python. “Shai-Hulud,” I breathed, thinking of the sandworms in Dune as invisible scales rubbed against the bottom of the realm. I felt waves of hunger, which seemed to set the gray streaks in my skin humming. Hunger and loneliness and hopelessness. The Abyss was going to burrow up into Sanctuary and consume us all, but not because it wanted us to die.
Because it was a galaxy-sized moth, coming for the candle that was this realm.
I laid one hand on the shadow beast at my feet, feeling that same hunger there. Its skin was sharp, and it scratched at my palm as it shivered. “There are no bad souls,” I murmured to it. “There are no souls that are beyond redemption.” It went still, and then slumped against the bonds. It felt so helpless, submissive.
I chewed at my lip. I knew one way to help this beast, but I didn’t have time or the energy to take on its smut right now. The lethargy that had begun earlier was returning, as the pools of power my mates had given me dwindled. I couldn’t use that energy up on this one, not if I was going to save my friends, and this realm.
“Come.” Arabella pulled me away from the trussed-up beast. “Come back to it later. We have to go.”
I pressed my palm against the creature, feeling a tiny bit of my blood squish out of the cuts its serrated flesh made, and promised, “I will come back for you. You spend your time in the ropes thinking about this, beast bunny: you are worthy. The Maker of All made you, and misses you. Come back to Her. Remember who you are.”
Then Arabella had me in her arms, and was flying as fast as she could to The Merge, dipping into my thoughts for directions. I heard a stray thought as she flew, one she was obviously trying to suppress.How can she be so far from her other mates, and still so strong? She truly is a miracle.
I shivered, wondering what price my mates had paid to give me this much energy.Fly faster,I whispered.
Chapter 14
Righteous
“It will be a miracle if he survives.”
Haneul’s voice was low, but she’d left the door to the healing room ajar, and sound traveled very effectively in the otherwise silent space. Sabriel, the Healer, had appointed Haneul as her assistant. As Mikhail’s former mentor in Sanctuary, she’d jumped at the chance; her deep affection for her student hadn’t diminished at all over the centuries apart.Haneul had gone to get more of what Sunny jokingly referred to as our “Celestial go juice,” and was speaking to Sunny outside.
I wanted to ask her to shut the door. Mikhail lay next to me on the bed, and when I cracked open one eyelid—an action that was surprisingly pain-free—I saw he hadn’t woken. That worried me. Why was he so much worse off than me? Both of us were swaddled in blue blankets, with ropes of blue light attached directly to our flesh everywhere Sabriel and Haneul could fit them.
Well, even if he was asleep, I didn’t need to hear this kind of pessimism. I wasn’t sure how bad Mikhail felt. He kept his features impassive, though his breathing was raspy and every once in a while, he stopped altogether. I knew it felt like every inch of my skin was being lightly sanded over and over again. As if all my organs were being slowly heated, swelling inside me, and my heart was being compressed slowly. I was so tired I could barely lift my head.
It had been worse at first; I’d passed out right after the gate had shut behind Feather. When I eventually woke up, the pain had been manageable, if constant. But as the hours and days wore on, the pain grew teeth and began to gnaw at me.
If feeling this was the price to have my Scrap back, though, I would gladly accept it. In some sick way, the pain felt like penance. Like I was paying the very smallest part of the debt I owed her for my initial cruelty. And I knew it was nothing compared to what she’d suffered for so long, agony she’d never deserved.
“Do you mean Righteous?” Sunny whispered to Haneul. “Or Mikhail?”
I held my breath, waiting. After a long moment, Haneul replied, “Righteous should have died already. He’s only been a High Angelus for days, Sunny. If Mikhail weren’t taking on almost all the energy drain for both of them, Righteous would…Well, never mind. Let’s get in there and add some more juice to the system, hm? Smile.”
When the door finally opened, I had my eyes closed again, but my thoughts were humming like a fallen hornet’s nest.
“Hey, Anaconda Pants,” Sunny said, touching my forehead gently with one hand. It felt like she’d placed an ember on my skin. I hissed in pain, and she snatched her hand away. “He’s freezing,” she whispered. I was grateful for the quiet; loud noises felt like an icepick being driven into my ears. But any sound made me nauseous.
The only thing worse was mental communication. We’d discovered that the first few hours after Feather had gone. For some reason, our souls were wide open, the soulfire inside us exposed, as if they were seeking any hint of her. This meant that the movement of energies around us was the psychic equivalent of having our souls filled with boiling lava. Or chocolate fondue, I supposed, thinking of Feather.
“More blankets on him,” Haneul whispered back. “Use them all.”
I forced my eyelids open. “Any word?” I croaked, and Sunny was immediately there with a cup of blue juice. It felt cool sliding down my throat, and I swallowed gratefully.
“None. We just know she reached Sanctuary.”
I remembered that moment. When the feeling of having my insides stretched across the universe—a pain that was matched by the exhausting joy I felt as I funneled everything I could down the threads of energy to her—suddenly snapped off, almost entirely. Only the thinnest thread remained. Mikhail and I both had fallen to the ground, and I’d thought I was dead for a moment. Then Mikhail had wrapped his arms around me like I was a child, and pushed some portion of his spirit into my chest. It was like a flare of pure energy, a bolt of solid lightning, and my heart began beating once more.
Had he sacrificed some part of his own soul to keep me breathing?
“Well, we haven’t heard anything since. But I know the Celestials are all praying. Imriel actually let Precious come into one of his musical meditations.”
I fought through the pain to ask, “How was it?”
