“Of course,” he replied. “I know how much you loved your sheets.”
Sunny’s whisper barely registered. “The perfect mate. Who knew that underneath all that asshole, he was like this?”
I wasn’t paying any attention to her, or anyone else, now. I had my sheet, and was rubbing it against my face. “You are perfect. Oh, my sweet, I can’t imagine life without you,” I crooned. “There was only one thing I knew I couldn’t live without here. One part of my heart that could never be filled without you. I love you more than anyone. Want to feel you on my skin, wrap you around my body.”
“She’s not talking about me, is she?” Gavriel’s voice was flat and unamused.
I kissed my sheet and murmured an apology for the interruption, then glared up at him. “You only wish you were as perfect as my sheet.”
“She’s lost her mind entirely,” I heard Mikhail say as I lay the sheet on the ground and stretched sinuously on it, reintroducing my body to the pleasures that only came from million-thread-count cloth on skin.
Ry groaned. “She can’t love a sheet more than us, can she?” When no one answered, he repeated, his voice cracking, “Canshe?”
“Best not ask, young Righteous,” Mikhail grumbled. “It’s a bad idea to set yourself in a competition you might not win.”
Gavriel heaved a sigh. “Maybe I shouldn’t have given it to her. If we pitch it off the side of the Limen, we won’t have to compete for her attention.” I twisted my face around, teeth bared, and made a yowling noise I’d never made before. Itsounded like something from the Abyss. All three of my mates moved cautiously away from me.
I turned back to my sheet as Sunny shooed them all away. “Word to the wise, boys,” she called as they left, grumbling. “Never come between a girl and her high-quality thread count. I’ll bring her back to you when she’s done… um, with the sheet frottage.”
“I wonderwhat we’re supposed to do now,” I said to Sunny a few days later as we watched Precious and Shadow play on the newest fields of the rapidly expanding Limen. Shadow ran all the way up and down the dividing wall of clouds, stopping every so often to pee a stream of golden power onto it. When they were close enough to the edge of the Limen and the Abyss, he herded her back to us. His enormous feet left giant gray prints everywhere he stepped, and I could tell he still wasn’t grown, though he was close to pony sized. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had some Clydesdale in him.
“What do you mean, do?” Sunny mused, weaving some long pieces of thin grass into a strand of yarn. She was trying to collect enough to make a macramé towel holder. As if we even had towels. When I mentioned that, she scoffed. “Come on, Imriel keeps sending more and more wells of power through. Two more regular ones popped up last night, and Mikhail knows how to use the naming chime to remake the energy into all sorts of things. We’ll have everything we need.”
Not everything, I thought, and wandered over to the edge of the Abyss, sitting on the cloud and hanging my legs over the lip, kicking my feet into the darkness. This part of the Limen wasn’t as crowded as the rest, but even here, a few Angeli were watchingme, quasi-hovering. And Righteous, of course. At least one of my mates was always hanging around, as if I might vanish if they closed their eyes.
I’d caught a snippet of a private conversation the day before, between Gavriel and Mikhail, that revealed why. They were almost certain I was planning to go out into the Abyss and sing for Rumple.
Of course I wasn’t. I knew that would hurt my family, and I still didn’t have the energy to do much more than sit around, eat chocolate, and allow my mates to worship at the temple of my body. I’d spent some time examining the mating feather inside me and the void’s curlicues, though, and what I’d found there—or what I hadn’t found—was the real reason I wasn’t going looking for Rumple.
The connection between us was gone. When I meditated and listened to the quiet murmurs that came from the bits of the Abyss inside me, there was no sense of Rumple left in them. They kept asking the same thing:Who am I? Do you know who I am?They had no connection to Seraphiel now, no concept of who they were, or had been.
Righteous had caught me crying after my last attempt to establish some sort of internal link to Rumple, and all three of my mates had asked me to stop trying. “Be patient, Scrap,” Ry had said while he rocked me. “If there is any way he can come back to you, he will.”
I knew that was true, and so I tried to pack away my longing and sadness. But I couldn’t seem to keep away from the edge of the void. What if Rumple lived a very short blameless life as a human, and his soul was directed toward the human afterlife?
Everyone in the Limen saw the ascending humans, shooting past overhead every morning, like meteors across the void. If he was one of them, and called out to me, but I didn’t hear because I wasn’t listening… If I missed the chance to at least see himone more time before he went home to the Celestial Realm, or wherever he was destined…
I rubbed my eyes, tired of crying. But it was sort of normal for me these days.
“What do you mean, birch?” Sunny’s voice was gentle. ‘What is it you want to do?”
I shrugged and tried to sound casual. “It’s going to be so boring here. There aren’t any shadow beasts to fight, or Earth missions to go on, or baby pools full of jello to have orgies in…”Or Rumple.
“Birch, you must be joking. You’ve got three soulmates who look at you the way you look at your sheet. Also, you’re a mom. You probably want to build onto your house. Get Gavriel to make her a new nursery.” We both watched Precious and Shadow chasing a couple of High Angeli. “Don’t they know not to run from a predator?” Sunny mumbled.
“Shadow or Presh?” We both laughed as we watched the game of chase. “Let’s be honest, Sunny. You’re as much Presh’s mom as I am; she has a nursery there. And our clouds are close. We can ask Growly to build an adjoining backyard.”
“Really?” Her voice was weird and squeaky, and I rolled my eyes.
“One hundred percent. Come on, what kind of role model am I anyway? I’m like the ‘fun weekend theme park’ mom. You’re the ‘eat your veggies and do your homework’ mom.”
She glared at me. “I can be fun.”
“You don’t have to tell me. I meant, you’re a real mom in all the most important ways. She needs you. And so do I.” Her arms were warm as she snuggled in for a side hug. After a while, I had a thought. “You know, we might want to add onto our house. Right now, we have one room. I think the guys would like some other spaces.”
She nodded. “A Maker Hall, a room for Precious, and a music room for sure. Maybe a garden for Ry? I bet the other High Angeli would love to help you out. They’re always asking how they can help.”
“Yeah, they smile so much it’s borderline creepy. Are they really that happy?”
