He shrugged, dropping his eyes. “I read a book that said clean diapers are very useful in a nursery. For burp cloths and cleaning rags, and even…” He trailed off.
“You read a baby book for Precious?” I was so choked up, I didn’t know if I could speak. For some reason, this was almost more than seeing the room.
“No,” he answered, rubbing his face like he was embarrassed. “I read a lot more than one.”
Gobsmacked, I grabbed the diapers, pouring water onto one from the small jug Gavriel had pulled out of the magic box. Then I lifted his chin. “Hold still, I’m going to clean you from top to bottom. I’m afraid what might happen if the smut those shadows left on you gets into the cuts. After I wash them off, I’ll start…” I paused. Fixing them? Stitching them together? What I knew about High Angelic healing could fit into a very small kazoo. “Do you know how to use Sanctuary’s power to heal? Wait. It can’t be reached here.”
“No. But I know some healing songs. Just give me a moment to gather my strength,” he said, his eyes fluttering shut. He had the longest eyelashes I’d ever seen on a man. And the squarest jaw, high cheekbones, and a long, straight nose. I moved the white cloth over his features, and sang the song I’d learned from Rumple that I used for cleaning. It always gave me energy—I was pretty exhausted, but nothing compared to Gavriel—and in no time, his face was clean.
Grabbing a fresh diaper, I moved on to his hair, then down his neck, moving the fabric in long slow strokes. He wasn’t wearing his robe, and the shirt he had on was in tatters. I tried to slip it off, but he hissed in pain, so I cut it away with the soul knife.
He opened his eyes in shock. “What?” I grumbled. “Just because it’s a soul knife, doesn’t mean it can only cut souls. I bet we could open a can with it. It’s got a wicked sharp edge.” I dampened the cloth with some water. “Now close your eyes. I’m going to try healing you with a little of my own store of energy, but I can’t do this with you glaring at me.”
To be honest, I didn’t want him to see me staring. I couldn’t look away from the shining, golden skin that had been revealed when I wiped away the blood and smut. I hummed my name song, the strongest music I knew, and it seemed to rush over him, touching every part of him like a warm breeze. I didn’t get rid of the scratches, though, and that frustrated me.
“I know a song of healing,” he murmured. “It should take care of the minor wounds. If you have enough energy, I’ll teach you.”
“I can keep an eye on my power levels,” I said, truthfully, though mentally I was already tapping an empty gas gauge. “I came here with a lot in the tank.” Also technically true.
He nodded once and sang a short, four-line song. It was simple, with only a small amount of power infused in the lyrics. He sang it one more time before we sang it together, while I wiped at his thickly muscled forearms, then his hands.
“Your fingers are long,” I said, making conversation. “That’s, um, useful for playing instruments.” The corners of his mouth turned up slightly, and I cleared my throat. “Turn a bit. I need to get to your back.” Folding his wings, he shifted enough that I could see the wounds there. I hissed. “I should have gone for these first,” I muttered, angry at myself that I’d been basically petting him while he was oozing ichor down his back. His wings were almost matted with gold and red. “I’m sorry.”
“Never apologize to me,” he rasped, after I’d begun wiping his shoulders. “Especially not for caring for me. Touching me.” He made a strange sound. “No one has touched me in so long…”He broke off, and I was glad, because with every interchange, my own heart was breaking a little more for how I’d seen him. The role I’d cast him in, in my thoughts. I’d seen him as cold and aloof when he’d been lonely and lost instead. I knew the pain of being judged unfairly, and it made my stomach twist to realize I’d done that same thing to him.
I wiped more blood away, singing my cleaning song, then switching to the healing one to staunch the heavier bleeding. When I took a break for some more yogurt—it was growing on me, and was giving me enough power not to pass out—my lips started moving before I could stop them. “How long has it been? Since you were touched.”
Blue and gold eyes met mine, the torment there mixed with sheepishness. “I haven’t touched another living being in that way, for pleasure, for four hundred years.”
“Of course. You were faithful to Arabella.” A flare of envy, followed by sorrow, seared my heart.
“Not entirely,” he said, shocking me. I refused to look at his face. Who was I to judge whether he’d slipped once, or even a few times. I’d literally merged and mated Righteous without technically asking my then-current mate, Growly.
But Iwasjealous. And weirdly, it wasn’t Arabella I was jealous of. It was whoever he’d fooled around with. “They must have been pretty amazing to tempt you,” I managed to say, congratulating myself on how steady my voice was. I worked on another long slice down his shoulder blade, pulling him so that he was sitting with his elbows on his knees, and his wings… well, sort of everywhere. I had to lean over them, and my traitor nipples kept brushing against his feathers.
“There was only one,” he replied, his voice muffled with his head lowered. “One in all those years, who made me break my vow of fidelity.”
I scrubbed a little too hard at a cut, and he flinched. For a moment more, I hummed and healed, finishing the main cuts on his back and moving on to his stained feathers. “She must be something special, to snag a High Angelus. The leader of Sanctuary.”
He chuckled. “You know, she is. She’s the most beautiful being I’ve ever seen, though when I first met her, I thought she was hideous. Called her that, to her face. Filthy.” My hands stopped, and I noticed them trembling. He went on. “It was only after I watched her sacrifice herself over and over for my best friend, then for one who was her enemy, and even for my realm when I was not there to save it… Only then did I understand that I had learned many things in my long life, but I had never learned to recognize true beauty.”
I closed my eyes, wondering why he was telling me this.
His voice was gentle as he went on, only a thread of the pain he was still in creeping into the tone. “I have amazing self-control. I had to learn that as a musician. Singing High Angelic lyrics incorrectly can have dire consequences.”
My eyes flew wide. I kind of wanted to get some clarification on that—I’d been riffing on almost all the songs I’d sung for a very long time—but he kept speaking, and his voice was so beautiful. No, thesentimentshe was professing were so beautiful, like rain in a desert to my heart. I had to let him speak.
“For the past four centuries, I thought I was going mad. Every time I traveled to Earth and smelled roses, I’d be overcome with lust. I prayed about it, fought harder, flew high until it would pass. Do you know, I used to visit Righteous in his rooms? They were mine when I was a Protector, and I visited them like one would a childhood home.” He chuckled. “I’m fairly certain Righteous was afraid I was going to ask him to merge more than once. I started wearing the leather pants so my hard cock wouldn’t show through the robe.”
I giggled, wiping at his wings. “I gave Righteous roses when I was little, in my first life. He kept them in the same bag all these years. It was the gift he received when he got to the Celestial Realm.”
Gavriel’s shoulders were shaking, and I hesitated. Was he… crying? After a moment, he stilled. “You chose well with that one. He has potential. I think he might turn out to be a gardener in the Celestial Realm.”
“They have gardeners?”
He wiped his face. “Of course. Gardeners, artists, teachers, dancers. It would get awfully boring, living for eternity without good work to do.” He shivered as I kept cleaning his wings, even though most of the blood was now gone.
“What would you—” I began, but then realized. “You’d be a musician. A composer, right? Sunny told me once that you wrote a lot of the songs the Novices used to learn.”
