“I have you,” I murmered. “I have you.”
Behind us, the air shifted.
The darkness gathered itself, bending the surrounding light. I felt him before I saw him, that particular pressure, that sense of something vast choosing to make itself small. I turned slowly.
He leaned against the trunk of the tree, arms crossed over his chest.
He was beautiful in a way that hurt to look at directly, the way the sun does—not because it is cruel but simply because it is more than the eye was built to hold. He was tall and dark-haired and his skin held that same warmth as Heinrich’s, the warmth of the earth, but deeper, older. His six wings, when they settled behind him, were pure light and moved with the same slow, breathing grace as the tree’s branches. They had not been broken or ripped off. They were whole and perfect and warped the world around their enormous power.
His eyes were red. And patient. And very, very old.Around his head, light glowed white-hot, circling his temples, and I felt that light watching me with those same ancient eyes.
“Here I am, my dove.” His voice was the low roll of distant thunder, was the sound of the first word ever spoken in the dark.
I could not describe what I felt, beholding him now. It wasn’t fear, nor awe, though it lived beside those things. It was the feeling of coming home after a long time away, as if his presence had always existed in me.
I held his gaze. “Come here.”
He crossed the distance between us without a sound, and when he stood before me, he was close enough that I could feel the heat that rolled off him, and I understood without being told that this was what the stars had learned it from.
I was aware of Heinrich just behind my shoulder, his breathing steadied now, his hand finding the small of my back.
The Morning Star looked at him over my head. Something passed between them, some negotiation conducted entirely without words. Then the corner of his mouth lifted.
“Well,” he said. “Here we are.”
We.
Yes, both of them.
I reached back for Heinrich, guiding his hand over my stomach, while I reached forward to our angel, pulling his mouth to mine. I was immediately crushed between them, and the heat of it, the realness of it, awoke me from whatever dream state I had been in. Light engulfed us all as his wings wrapped around us.
Warmth spread from behind my sternum, flowing out to the tips of my fingers and toes. It slowly filled me, flowing from my skin into Heinrich, who gasped softly against my ear.
“What is that?” Heinrich asked.
“That,” the angel replied, “is what you were always made of.”
Yes—light and power and love. His deep red gaze was filled with so much longing, but even now, I didn’t know if I would be able to give him what he truly desired. But I could give him this.
The angel leaned in, his lips finding that soft space beneath my ear, and I moaned as his teeth met flesh.
“Kneel,” I commanded.
He dropped to his knees without hesitation, his hands wrapping around my hips.
“My do—” I placed a finger over his lips.
Heinrich leaned over my shoulder, peering down at this immaterial creature, one he was very intimately acquainted with.
“You love her—not as I do, but just as completely,” Heinrich said, no doubt in his voice.
The angel nodded, eyes desperate as he looked up at us both.
“And you love me—not as she loves me, but in some ways, more intensely.”
He nodded again, his eyes only for Heinrich. Again, something passed between them that was not for me to know or understand. But love does not need complete understanding, only acceptance.
Heinrich reached forward, the backs of his fingers tracing down the angel’s cheek, and he leaned into it desperately.
