“Katharina.” Heinrich said my name once, just once, and the way he said it undid me completely.
And then there was nothing but rapture.
Starting in my chest—that same warmth I had felt before—but this time it did not spread slowly. It tore through me, violent in a place of peace. It was the crumbling of towers and the parting of the sea. It was vast beyond comprehensions, yet contained within me all at once.
I arched into it and could not have said which of them I was reaching for because in that moment there was no distinction. We were not three separate things. We were one soul in three bodies, one light shattering into infinite colors.
First, it came from our angel, from the place at his center the fall had never touched, that nothing had ever been able to extinguish, no matter how long the dark had lasted. It poured out of him and into us, flowing through Heinrich beside me, his whole body tightening as his fingers sank into the soft flesh of my thighs.
And then it came from me too.
I could see it through my closed eyelids as my mind went white-hot with pleasure, pulsing and cresting around them, as their adoration dripped down my legs.
Above us the tree blazed and we collapsed beneath it.
Heinrich’s arms surrounded me, his head against my chest while my fingers danced over the sharp lines of his nose.
Our angel lay on his back beside us, his hand tracing the curve of my stomach and the lines of Heinrich’s shoulders. His wings were folded beneath him, and he gazed up through the canopy with an expression I didn’t understand. But it was peaceful, like he had not rested in a very long time, and was resting now.
Surrounded by them both, I understood something.
My angel loved me the way a predator loves its chosen prey. With a desperation, a need that is fundamental to his being. He loved the parts of me that were difficult and sharp and dangerous,the parts that other people had asked me to hide. He’d never once asked me to be smaller. He wanted all of it—the hunger and the fury and the raw unfinished edges—and his wanting had no ceiling and no apology.
Heinrich’s love was different. It was the thing that stands between you and the cold, steady and warm and entirely without condition. He’d believed in my goodness when I had not believed in it myself, had seen the shape of what I was becoming and guarded it quietly, asking nothing, simply remaining. His devotion was the oldest kind, the kind that does not require reciprocation.
Between them, I was all the things I had always been and never been allowed to be at once, wanted for my wildness, cherished for my softness. Held so completely that for the first time in my life, I did not feel the need to choose which one was right.
I basked in their very different kinds of devotion, of love. I could have stayed in it forever.
My angel knew that. Perhaps that was why he asked.
“Stay.” His voice was quieter now, stripped of its thunder. “Both of you. Stay here with me. The garden is yours. It has always been yours. There is nothing out there that this place cannot give you.”
I looked away from him, and met Heinrich’s gaze. I saw it in his face before either of us said a word, the same thing I felt sitting in my own chest, certain and a little sad.
It was desire. Desire for the exquisite discomfort of the unknown. That whatever we were, whatever we had been built for, it required the friction of the real world—its difficulties and its ugliness and its magnificent uncertainty.
That you cannot become what you are meant to be in a place where nothing can hurt you.
Heinrich understood this as well as I. Our love had blossomed in darkness, so we did not need the garden’s light. We only needed each other.
“What do you think?” I asked.
He smiled. “I think you were never meant for a cage, no matter how beautiful.”
I reached out and grabbed my angel’s hand, lacing it with Heinrich’s and mine. He looked at me, his red eyes unreadable, but he did not pull away.
“You know we can’t,” I murmured
He was quiet for a long moment. The tree breathed above us.
“Yes,” he said finally. “I know.”
“You always knew.”
His face twitched, not quite a smile and not quite grief. “I had hoped, perhaps, that this time would be different.” He turned his head to look at me fully, the weight of lifetimes in his gaze. “It never is.”
He reached out, his hand trailing down my arm and then Heinrich’s.
