“Indeed,” she said warmly, offering me one. I ran to her, ignoring the chocolate and grabbing her in a hug. A gentle one, because my bones still felt strangely jelly-like, and my muscles wobbly and loose. I lost my footing, and began to slide to the ground. Maybe there was something to Gavriel’s assertion that I needed more bed rest. Without me even asking, he picked me back up and set me on the bench.
“Where’s Precious?” I asked, swiping the happy tears away from my cheeks.
Sunny smiled widely. “Probably over at the far edge of the Limen with Perception and Truth, mining more soulfire to make chocolate.”
“Mining… what?”
Her grin grew even wider. “Imriel was super worked up about all of us leaving the Celestial Realm. Said it was a sign of great changes—like that was a bad thing. He and Percy chat back and forth daily about all sorts of stuff. He’s teaching Percy how to fabricate things, apparently. It’s part of Maker training.”
“Maker training?” My mind was spinning.
“Yeah, we’ve all got jobs helping expand and build onto the Limen, although now that Mikhail’s here, I would think he’d take over the making part.” She hugged me close with one arm. “Or you could, once you’re… yourself again, right? Are you back to normal? Well,yournormal.”
While I pondered my answer, Gavriel stood, seeing a crowd of High Angeli in the distance. “What are they doing?”
“Why don’t you go see, Grumpy?”
“I can’t leave you,” he replied instantly. His eyes landed on me, and there was a lifetime of trauma and fear swirling there. I wasn’t the only one who’d been damaged by our adventures.
I cupped his chin in one hand and pressed a gentle kiss to his cheek, whispering, “I will be fine. I promise, I won’t go anywhere without you.” Threading his fingers through my hair, he gave me a desperate kiss.
Sunny cleared her throat. “Gavriel, I swear she’ll be protected. I won’t let her walk. We have a lot to catch up on. Precious is over there—go say hi. She’s grown since you saw her last.”
“Precious?” His eyes lit up then, but he didn’t move from my side. “Are you sure you’ll be okay without me, imp?”
My lip quivered at the endearment Rumple had called me, but I gave him a weak thumbs up, and waited until he was far enough away not to hear before I answered Sunny.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever be myself again, Sun,” I said, staring at the truffle that was melting in my fingers. “I left a part of me behind. Maybe forever.” I took a shaky breath. “It’s sort of becoming a habit, I guess.”
Sunny stroked my hair while I sent her my memories of what had happened in Sanctuary. By the time I was done, we were both crying.
“There has to be hope,” she insisted, wiping her face dry. “That’s the one thing I learned while I was here, waiting for you. There has to be a way.”
“I know,” I replied, feeling the exhaustion of the last few days overwhelming me. But when I admitted as much to Sunny, she sucked in a breath.
“Birch, you haven’t been gonedays.You’ve been gone formonths.”
“How?” I wondered, but then I realized. Gavriel had carried me while I was asleep through the Abyss for all that time. My heart melted a little more when I thought of how lonely he must have been. How frightened. Then the chocolate in my hand melted down my arm and I had to hurry to lick it offbefore it stained Mikhail’sHot Wingst-shirt. “Holy shizz, this is amazing!” I mumbled. “It’s the best chocolate I’ve ever tasted!”
Sunny folded her legs under her. “Yeah, the chefs from Sanctuary really hit their stride when the soulfire pools welled up at the base of the cloud wall.”
I blinked. “That made no sense. What’s going on?”
“You know what? You kind of have to see it. Give me a second; while you were knocking boots with your harem, some of our friends put together a little gift for ya. Gav told us you were still shaky.” She put two fingers to her lips and blew a sharp whistle. Before I knew what was happening, a group of High Angeli were racing toward us, carrying something.
“Is that apalanquin, birch?” I couldn’t believe it. They had some sort of carrier rigged up, and they were dressed in what looked like gold lamé mini-togas. I wholeheartedly approved of the style. “Where did you all get this stuff?” I asked, pushing myself to my feet, and trying not to show how much energy it took just to stand.
When they got close enough, I recognized one of the High Angeli as Truth. The others were some of his naked octet, and we did a round of group hugs that had me too exhausted to stand, so it was a good thing we had the palanquin. Truth helped me onto it, walking beside it while some of the others carried me and Sunny in the same direction Gavriel had gone, toward a long, seemingly never-ending cloud wall. A barrier? It had to be the one between the Limen and the Celestial Realm. The only other realm around us was the Abyss, and that was just void-colored.
“I know you probably can’t talk about it now,” Truth said quietly as he walked next to me. “But can you share what happened with us later?” He nodded to his octet members. “We’re trying to write a hymn cycle about the Great Redemption of Sanctuary.”
We’d gotten close enough to Gavriel for me to hear the High Angeli all around him. He hadn’t made it to Precious, I could tell; the crowd was hemming him in. Many of them were staring at his back with a mixture of awe and horror. I heard more than one mutter, “Great Sacrifice,” and “true leader,” with their heads bowed.
I rolled my eyes. “Why bother telling what really went down? They probably won’t believe I had anything to do with it. They’ll say Gavriel was the only one who fought, or sacrificed. That Rumple, Revel, Arabella, and I were the supporting cast.”
Sunny cursed softly next to me. “Want me to cut a birch? It won’t hurt ‘em, but it might make you feel better.”
I laughed. “Nah, it’s okay. I’m used to it.”
