“Where are they?” I asked, still not looking down at the cold figure I held. I staggered, and then Perception and Hope were at my sides, helping to lift Feather, though I did not fully relinquish her, keeping one arm under her back. For some reason, I was terrified at the thought of breaking the last connection with her. The memory of her warmth. I walked with them through the clouds, paying no attention to anything other than bringing us to her mates.
But when I saw Mikhail and Righteous, and saw they were as lifeless as the woman I loved, I let loose a great, heaving sob. Hope tsked, and gathered Feather’s still form from my protesting arms. “Now, is that any way to act around our patients?” she chided, leading me to sit on the cloud bed that somehow grew large enough for me to lie next to my tiny soulmate.
Perception was on the other side, moving Mikhail onto his side so he lay with his back to Righteous’s chest. In less than a minute, we were all four curled around each other, our arms being arranged like some strange bouquet by Sunny and Hope, who continued to hum snatches of the song as they worked.
The golden light that had formed my wings now spilled all around the room, bouncing off the cloud walls, the large bed, and the smaller one nearby, covering us like a strange glowing blanket. It sank into Mikhail and Righteous’s still, shadowed forms, like sunlight vanishing into a massive pit. It played on Feather’s silhouette, creating a landscape of softly sloping curves, illuminated as if the sunrise were about to occur on the other side of her.
Finally, Sunny nodded. “That looks right.”
“Perception?” Hope said. The young man stood, waiting for her orders. “I’m almost certain there’s something we’ve forgotten. There’s got to be something in this room that will wake them all. I’ve been hoping Gavriel would arrive with everything we needed, and I know that hope would be answered. Can you help me perceive it?”
It was the strangest thing. As if the two of them were using code words to communicate. To give hints to… each other? Me? The realm itself? They kept looking around.
Perception, in particular, stared at Feather’s chest. “What does she have there?” he breathed.
I blinked. “The naming chime, Mikhail’s tool. I brought it from the Maker Hall. We had to… leave it all, let the realm die. Rafe sealed the Flight—” I broke off.
“Gavriel Lightbearer,” Perception said at last, pushing his shaggy red hair away from his forehead and staring gently at me. “The chime on Feather’s heart doesn’t feel like a tool to me. It feels like a key. And you bear a great power within you.”
“Yes,” I rasped. “The light of Sanctuary. The realm. We had to empty it out, in order to keep the Abyss from devouring it. It became my wings, so that I could bring them home. Much of it still resides in me, though. I swore to return it to the Celestial Realm…” I went quiet as the realization struck me that they had brought Mikhail and Righteous back out of the Celestial Realm.
They had all left, and now none of them could return. The magnitude of the sacrifice they had all made in a wild leap of faith that they would find us… My heart stuttered.
I felt the clouds beneath me send a blossoming, healing energy through my aching limbs. It felt wonderful. I could almost hear their soul songs as they directed the healing energy of the bed—or wherever the blue light was coming from—toward Feather’s physical wounds, ignoring her statue-like appearance.The two young Angeli fairly thrummed with the force of hope, with optimism even in the face of death.
“What can I do to save her?” I asked quietly.
Sunny shrugged. “Well, when Mikhail was legitimately already dead, Righteous gave him a little gift, and it brought him back.”
My jaw dropped when I saw a second feather alongside the one my soulmate had given Mikhail back in Sanctuary. “That’s Righteous’s mate mark. On Mikhail.” I blinked at it, then at the High Angeli. “You expect me to mate Mikhail?”
Hope shook her head, still smiling, but her tone was deadly serious. “My guess is you’ll need to bond with them both, Gav. All that power in you, plus that naming chime—though who even knows how that might work—should be plenty to kick-start those three.” She patted me on the hand. “You’ll figure it out.”
“You’re… not going to stay?”
They looked at each other for a moment, then both burst into laughter. “Ah, no, Gavriel. We like you and all—or I mean, we like you now that you saved Feather’s life,” Sunny corrected wryly. “And trust me, when she wakes up, Feather will no doubt give me the run-down on all your kinky fuckery. But we’re not into watching.”
Their good humor seemed so at odds with the situation, I didn’t know what to think.
“Just go with it,” Hope whispered. “It works. Accepting nothing but the best outcome, holding onto it as if there’s no other way. I can feel it sustaining them here. Sunny can feel the truth of it. That’s all we know.” She winked, pulling the small, child-sized cloud bed out of the room as she left.
“Hope?” I called at her retreating back. “I don’t have any feathers left to mate with.”
“I thought he was a big shot composer in his day. He’s really not at all creative, is he?” she muttered to Sunny.
“Be nice, babe,” Sunny chided, then called back, “Gavriel, we’ve been learning a lot of things up here. In the Limen, rules are more or less suggestions. There’s a whole lot of room for improvisation. I think this realm was made for my best birch.”
“Sounds like it. So…” Wrapping my fingers loosely around the naming chime, I tried to sit up. “I’ll just… come up with something?”
“We’ll give you some privacy,Lightbearer,” Perception said as he closed the door, doing that thing again where he emphasized my name like it was a clue. And when they had all left the room, I realized it was.
I had the power of the entire realm inside me, Mikhail’s most significant tool for naming, and enough love and faith to believe I could force the rules to bend to my will. No, my wishes.
Making a wish, I thought of my feathers, the ones Rumple had hammered into swords, now lost. I knew their shapes and sizes. I could visualize them perfectly. I brought three of them to mind. Then I held the naming chime and sang the definition of a mating feather, and then my name, to the small, clapperless bell.
It rang out merrily, not once, but three times.
I closed my eyes as I sang, and three new golden feathers began to form in my mind’s eye, the naming chime ringing louder and louder as I held my note. Using my voice, I channeled the power of Sanctuary inside me into the imagined feathers, and watched them glow brighter, until they were like miniature suns in my mind. No, in myhand.
