“It was Feather,” he shouted, his golden face suddenly flushed. He tore his arm from my grasp. “I hurt her. And she’s gone, and can’t forgive me.”
I didn’t understand. “She healed you. She chose to take on that smut to save you.” When he swallowed convulsively, I sighed. “Mikhail told me. That’s why he’s so weak; she couldn’t bear the weight of it, and she was dying. So he?—”
“He mated her,” Righteous finished, his golden eyes flashing. “I saw the feather on her nape.”
I clenched my teeth. The idea of Mikhail mating Feather still rankled, though seeing her at the gate with wings, looking so much like a High Angelus, had made me question my judgment. She’d been no ordinary Novice. If Mikhail was correct, Feather had been pulled from the Well of Souls when my mate was. Possibly, she was made of the same material.
My heart thudded. Was that why she’d looked so like Arabella? Had Feather been a part of her? Did that mean… she had been mine as well?
I fought to control my wild imaginings. Arabella had been complete; she had walked and spoken. Mikhail hadn’t been able to find a place to put the small scrap of excess he’d pulled from the Well.
No, Arabella had been, and still was, mine. And Feather had been my best friend’s mate. Not mine, not in any part, though some unworthy, grasping part of my soul twisted and keened at the thought.
“He took your smut, and hers, to save her,” I said at last. “It was a sacrifice he made, and if anyone here judges him for it, they will answer to me.”
Righteous nodded. “But that’s not what I meant. When I hurt Feather—the first time—she wasn’t Feather. She was Tili.”
My skin prickled. We had spoken over the past few centuries about that mission in Italy. The two girls who had died, Dina and Tili, had haunted him. He’d been bound by the rules of engagement for Protectors—the chief of which was that humanshad free will, and we were not allowed to force them to choose what was right, only encourage them to righteous behavior.
So he’d watched while a very young woman was attacked and murdered, and refused to physically stop the assault. He’d followed his instructions, not his heart. But his heart had been broken because of that choice. He’d been friends with Tili, and after her disappearance, he’d scoured the area for her for decades, hoping to find her and apologize. Make it right, somehow.
I’d been partly to blame, though I’d never revealed that. I hadn’t known he had been assigned that mission. I could have told him of the countless times I’d done more than I was allowed to nudge the balance toward the good, bending the inflexible rules that the Guides loved to go on about. There were many ways to compel a charge to change their behavior, ways to manipulate time and souls, without consigning your own soul to the Abyss. You only had to be willing to accept the imbalance yourself.
I swallowed past a sudden lump in my throat. Feather had been dripping with smut, proof of her crimes, when I found her on Earth. She’d taken the imbalance from a pedophile. Had she been doing that for centuries? Stepping in and righting wrongs, and avoiding being dragged into the Abyss by accepting every scrap of imbalance?
A sudden wave of dizziness assaulted me. I had judged her, accused her of being a spy for the Abyss. What if she had only been doing the same work I had, but alone, with no guidance? That would explain why she was so beautiful when her smut was removed, as she’d entered the gate. She had been that way underneath all along.
No wonder Mikhail gave himself to her. He had always been the most perceptive of all of us; Seraphiel had said it so many times. “Mikhail sees the gemstone inside the mountain,” he’dtold me once. “And has the patience to mine it.” It was true. My mind hummed with regret and astonishment, and I missed what Righteous was saying.
“…moment when she stepped into the gate, she said the same thing Tili said. That the right thing is almost always the scary thing.”
“And you think this means she was your friend, Tili?” I knew before he answered that it had to be true.
“Yes. And that means I did a terrible wrong to one of us. To Feather. And now… I can’t make it right.”
We both stood in silence for a long moment as I fought the storm of shame and self-recrimination that raged in my soul. I had failed the weakest, smallest member of Sanctuary, and driven her to her own unmaking. I had betrayed my only true friend, and robbed him of the mate he had chosen, who had made him laugh for the first time in centuries.
At last, I murmured, “I don’t know how to make it right either.” I knew Righteous assumed I was speaking of his crime, but I meant my own. My own harsh, unforgivable judgment of Feather. I shook my head; there was no time for regret. “I must go and bid farewell to Arabella. While I’m gone, remember we are not a democracy, no matter what you’ve seen on Earth or what the Guides may try to tell you. You are the leader when I am not here, though I have given some authority to Tradition and the Head Guides. Tradition knows the rules far better than any other, and will help you if you have questions. But the final authority always rests with the leader of Sanctuary—or acting leader.”
“I still know I don’t deserve the title, even temporarily,” Righteous said, his voice subdued. “I will work to deserve your trust.”
“That’s all I ask. Make careful decisions, and care for the gate. Though Feather has made that part of our worksuperfluous, I suppose.” We bid each other farewell, and I flew to Arabella’s chamber.
For the first time in decades, I leaned over the glass-sided casket where she lay and touched her hair gently. For the first few years, when I wasn’t grieving on Earth, flying over natural disasters and wars that seemed to rage without ceasing, I’d slept next to her, begging her to wake and complete me. I’d stopped touching her when Mikhail noted that I had rubbed some of the shadows I’d attained in my missions onto her skin, and he’d struggled to remove them.
Now, though, I needed to feel her skin. It was warm, as it had been, and pulsed with a restrained power. She was alive, no matter what the Guides said, and I knew she would awaken. But for the very first time, I wasn’t certain what I would say to her if she did. She would see into the very center of my soul, and know that I had looked at another being with desire.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I didn’t mean to. She’s Mikhail’s mate, and you are mine, and I would never be unfaithful. But, Arabella, why did she look like you? Were you connected somehow?”
I waited for an answer, but felt nothing more than the humming of her power, trapped inside. Trapped, like we both were: her in her casket, and me in the thankless position that Seraphiel had burdened me with long ago.
“I hate him for it, sometimes,” I confessed. “I hate Seraphiel for leaving me.” For deserting me the moment the Celestial messenger came down to call him away. For being willing—no, forvolunteeringto step into the Abyss to address whatever mysterious disaster required the best of all the High Angeli to address it.
Except for Mikhail, I had no one here… especially after Arabella’s fall. I clenched my teeth but didn’t say the words thatwanted to spill out like bile. That I was bitter beyond reason at her condition.
That sometimes, I hated Arabella for leaving me, too.
Chapter 4
