The jagged blade carved the brave shadow ball almost in two, a split second before Gavriel could turn and recognize the danger. With a roar, Gavriel sent a burst of light at the beast that had attacked, and it fled.
Slim couldn’t flee; he was dead. He had to be. But before I could mourn the little guy, Gavriel sang a note, and then another. A tune I knew: a naming song Mikhail had used once. The notes wrapped around the two halves of the ball, and it rose and reformed as Gavriel added a name to the end of his song. One that was familiar. The naming chime in his pocket rang out in agreement, the overtones making my teeth ache.
Gavriel’s eyes glowed, a gorgeous smile stretching across his face as he finished the song with a coda in High Angelic. “And thus you have earned your name once again, my friend. Thank you, Valor in Service of the Light.”
Valor?
Gavriel channeled more power into the crumbling shadow, and it began to change color and shape. Unfurling like a sail, it expanded and grew into a very familiar form.
If it was Valor, it was a new iteration of him. The last time I’d seen him, he’d been trying to kill me, had tortured Righteous and Sunny, and stabbed Precious, though the soul knife hadn’t made a dent in her. The old Valor had always worn a cruel expression, and walked as if he had something to prove and didn’t care who he hurt to prove it. This Valor’s eyes were filled with gentleness, penitence.
He was also not precisely himself. He was semi-transparent as he had been as a shadow, but instead of glowing with gray smut, he shone with brilliant, glittering fire. And also actual glitter. There were tiny specks of purple caught inside him, and his wings were the same transparent shade of silver-gray that Rumple’s had been when I saw him in the void the first time. It looked amazing. As I stared, he became more and more opaque, until it seemed he was made of shimmering starlight.
Valor bowed his head to Gavriel, and then, with luminous tears falling from his eyes, he reached out, gesturing toward theknife at Gavriel’s belt. “Go,” he said, his voice clear and pure. “I can buy you more time.”
Handing the knife to Valor, Gavriel bowed his head, then reached one hand to the floor. I felt a twin pull to the one I was still channeling into him.Sanctuary, I need the rest. I need it all,I heard him say, his voice strangely majestic.Protect your maker, and your leader, and your servant. Give me your light. I will bear it to the next realm and return it when I can to the Maker of All Realms, if you will allow me to carry it.
I gave my blessing, felt Sanctuary’s resoundingyes, and realized why Gavriel had the name Lightbearer. Between one heartbeat and the next, the entire realm emptied itself, not into me, but into him.
And he was able to hold it.
Some of it spilled out of him. Not just in trickles, but streams of fire, draping his entire form with light. I couldn’t close my eyes, though they ached. I needed to bear witness to this miracle. Fountains of light surged from his face as he glanced at me and moved to the open gate.
“Hold on, love,” he said, and began singing his name as loud as he could, and mine as well. Gavriel’s song traveled through us, and the gate sighed happily as we pushed through an invisible barrier.
Make wings,Revel had instructed Gavriel. Whatever that meant. I knew Gavriel hadn’t understood what to do. But even if I had, I’m not sure I would have had the faith to even attempt what he did next.
He stepped off the edge of the realm, and we fell… until enormous wings of golden light suddenly split the void. The wounds left from his sacrifice, those long, straight scars, now bloomed with silver-white beams. The power of Sanctuary substituted light for feathers and pure energy for flesh, replacing Gavriel’s wings so that he could carry us home.
One downbeat, then two, and we were rocketing forward.
The gate was already closed. I stared behind us at the once again sealed hull of the realm I had fought to save, that we had all struggled to rescue. As I watched, the pearly shell changed, becoming the chalky white of old bones, crumbling at the edges into the void. For the longest time, I stared as Gavriel flew on his wings of light, and mourned soundlessly.
I grieved for Revel and Valor. I knew that inside that dead shell, they were both fighting as Sanctuary crumbled around them, to give us the head start we needed to get away, to get home. And I knew that they might never have that same chance.
I didn’t allow myself to grieve for Rumple. If I succumbed to hopelessness now, when I didn’t have the feather he’d given me to smack me around for it, I wasn’t sure I’d survive the journey to the Limen. And I did have hope, even if it was no larger than a single grain of glitter.
I knew he’d meant to sacrifice himself, but the thought that he had done so didn’t ring true. He hadn’t been created to be a sacrifice, like Arabella. He’d been created to be mine. My lover. My teacher. And someday, my soulmate.
I couldn’t believe in the ultimate goodness of the Dreamer of All Dreams, in a world where Rumple was taken from me forever. For some reason, Arabella’s words to me echoed in my thoughts: “My Mother would never throw away one of Her children. Would never give up. Who am I to believe that this is my ending? Perhaps it is my beginning.”
All I had to do was hold on, and believe that this wasn’t the ending, not for any of us. I wrapped my soul around that belief, that impossible hope, as Gavriel held onto me and flew, Sanctuary becoming at first a pinprick of white, and then only a memory in the void.
Thank you, Revel, I thought, sailing my gratitude for his sacrifice through the space between us.I won’t forget you. None of us will.
And then, I began a song that I knew I would never stop singing, until Rumple walked back into my life again.Come back to me, my first, perfect love. Follow this song. Follow our love.
Chapter 32
Seraphiel
My heart had been frozen in the Abyss for so many centuries, I’d wondered if it would ever feel again. When a scrawny, ill-treated child had looked up at me from the floor of a filthy stable, and proudly declared that the Abyss wasn’t the worst fate a soul could suffer, that knowing she’d been a coward but that she hadn’t tried would be a truer Hell, my heart had thawed in an instant.
For her. Only for Feather.
At that moment, the youngest Novice alive had taught me, the eldest of the Celestial Children, how to love. With bravery and confidence. Sheer determination and will. And no regrets, even if it meant her own suffering was excruciating.
What mattered wastrying.
