Finally, I answered Rumple’s question.Mikhail is an artist. He makes baby guardian angels, although they’re called Novices.
“Mikhail makes Novices? How?” There was an urgency in his question I didn’t understand.
Well, he said he used to dip into the Well of Souls for the material, for their naming marks. But that got sealed up by his Apprentice Azazel four centuries ago, and…I remembered the moment when Mikhail had pulled off his robe and revealed the hundreds of scars that covered his body. He’d had no other choice, if he wanted to keep Sanctuary going, but to sacrifice his own soul energy to create new Novices, guardian angels to send to Earth to help keep the balance.
He didn’t have access to the Well, so he used that awful knife—the one I had to use to cut away my shadows—to give a tiny piece of himself to every Novice since the Well was ruined. For their naming marks. He carved each one out of his own flesh.
I felt rather than heard a dark curse that made my atoms swirl with suspicion. Rumple was far too interested in this story.
I think Mikhail’s the most beautiful person I’ve ever encountered, but I suppose some might not find him handsome,I hummed into the void.He’s scarred from sacrifice. All over.
“You believe sacrifice makes a soul more beautiful?” Something in Rumple’s voice was amused, but sad. He’d always refused to tell me what he looked like, and even if I’d felt his wings and muscles in our last dream-talk—and apparently, he’d never skipped ab day, wherever he spent most of his time—I had a suspicion that he didn’t consider himself attractive. It seemed strange to think of beings made up of mostly spiritual dough—or batter, in my case—focusing so much on how their shells looked. The Guides in Sanctuary had acted like the smut I wore on my exterior was who I was, and that I could never change. That I was less than them.
Which, to be fair, might have been true. I had killed a whole lot of pedophiles and bad guys in my lives on Earth, and I didn’t regret doing it one bit. I’d made it right in the end—I’d made sure none of their evil deeds left a mark anywhere except on my own skin. I wondered if Rumple had scars like Mikhail. Did he think if I ever saw them, I would be repulsed?
“Well?” Rumple murmured. “Does it? Do Mikhail’s scars make him more attractive to you?” His tone was so sad, I would have cried if I had tear ducts.
I teased instead,Sure, but it’s not just his smoking hot bod that does it for me. He’s a Maker, you know. He’s pretty dang good with his hands.
His laughter was like galaxies colliding—sparks of reds, golds, blues, greens, and dark, crystalline colors I’d never seen before shooting outward.
Whoa, that’s pretty.
When the fireworks finally settled down, he asked, “Did you merge with him?” There was something more than curiosity in his question. There was… hope. “It didn’t hurt you?”
I was glad I couldn’t blush. I had shared pretty much everything with Rumple in my life, even my hypotheses about how human-kraken sex could work in the real world, not just the novels I was addicted to, but this might be crossing a line.Well, he said we were just going to merge physically. But he got a little carried away, and… yeah. We merged. It felt amazing.I tried to stop thinking, stop picturing the fierce joy and release on Mikhail’s face as he’d hovered over me, our souls entwining.
A low whistle let me know I hadn’t succeeded. “If anyone could make Mikhail lose control, it would be you, Feather.”
Just as I suspected: Rumple did know Mikhail.
My Growly Bear’s scars didn’t make him even the tiniest bit less sexy,I thought after a while, waiting for Rumple’s laughter to stop before I went on.Of course, when he showed the otherProtectors what he’d done for them, some of them looked at him like he was hideous.
“The same way they looked at you and your soul smut, when you first arrived there?”
I didn’t answer; he’d held me often enough over the centuries while I learned to bear the crushing weight of the evil he’d taught me to take on, as penance for my first real crime. The only true murder I’d committed, but could never find it in my heart to regret. I only wished I had done it before that rat blastard had killed my earthly sister.
Rumple’s next question drew me back. “But Mikhail didn’t think you were ugly?” I was about to answer, when the whisper “Always was the most perceptive of the Angeli”intruded on my amoeba-thoughts.
I guessed your name, didn’t I?When he didn’t answer, I allowed myself to feel anger.You’re Seraphiel, the one they call Rafe. You were Mikhail’s and—I hesitated. The last time I’d mentioned Gavriel’s name, Rumple had said some angry word in an angelic language, almost bursting my eardrums, and stormed off across the universe or whatever. I tried not to think of him, but the pain of that moment washed over me like a tidal wave, and I was unwillingly drawn back into the memory.
Gavriel loomed over me in the room where his beloved mate Arabella slept. She was motionless, and felt almost like a supportive, silent presence. If she hadn’t been there, I might have fled.
“Useless. Trash. Nothing.” He spat the words—my name—and his lip twisted into that perfect, beautiful curl that reminded me silently that he was better than me. Literally. More perfect, more angelic, purer. He was beautiful to look at: tall, with sweeping, bright golden wings and skin, gleaming hair, and gold and blue eyes to match. But the glint in thoseeyes now was sharper than the soul knife I’d used to cut the stain off my body.
I was used to name-calling. I’d been called much worse in my years on Earth. But then his eyes closed for a moment, his long, golden lashes sweeping down like cruel butterflies, and he accused me of something I couldn’t live with.
“You’re destroying him,” Gavriel rasped, his voice thrumming with pain as he spoke of Mikhail. “He was already weak, apparently from centuries of carving new soul light out of his own flesh. With your burden of shadows on his shoulders, he’s fading. He knows, as well as I do, that he only has so much time now that he’s carrying weight for you as well.”
I could handle not deserving my mate. I knew I was trash. But I could never live with the knowledge that I had destroyed my Growly Bear. My undeserved soulmate.
I cried, and mourned, and prayed for courage to do what I knew I had to.
And then I kissed Arabella goodbye and went to sacrifice myself for her and for my best friend, Sunny. For Mikhail… and for the rest of a realm almost entirely populated by beings who detested me.
“Detested you?”
I tried to send a mental smile to Rumple, and a thought about my favorite Earth tattoo: NO REGERTS. But my mind flickered back to the mob in the Assembly Hall, shouting for me, Arabella, and even Mikhail to be sacrificed to shore up the fragile Great Gate. My fear, and Mikhail’s deep sadness, and the crowd’s currents of panic, anger, and judgment.
