Page 122 of Baking and Angels

“So you won’t help her because you don’t want to give up a moment of your time here,” Rafferty sneered. He couldn’t help it, even though he understood the decision. He would have made the same one before he met Helena.

“It’s worse than that,” Éliott replied, keeping his patience, but his eyes narrowed a little more. “Anything we would give her would then go to you. It wouldn’thelp her.”

“You’re sure, then?” Honey asked.

Éliott nodded. “I wish I had been proven wrong, but yes, I am sure. She is giving up a portion of her energy, so that you can have this life.” He gestured at the whole of Rafferty, stripping away the anger he had felt. Now he felt like water, and he yielded to gravity, crouching down once more beside Helena. With a gentle hand, he brushed his fingers through her hair through the space between her horn and her ear.

“Is this true?”he asked.

Her eyelids tensed and a tear pooled on the bridge of her nose. “I didn’trealize…”

“Helena, stop it, please.”

Éliott shook his head. “It’s too late. She’s alreadyspent it.”

Helena whimpered. “If I go now, I don’t know what will happen to you.”

He leaned forward and kissed her cheek, before setting his forehead against hers. “Let go,” he whispered. “I’m ready to return.”

“No, youdidn’t…”

He could feel it inside himself from the place of understanding.

There was a choice he could make. A gift waiting for himto accept.

He embraced it…

Something that he held back floodsover him.

He accepts the price and pays it all.

The tie to Helenareleases.

Light fills him, joins the light he’s alreadyaccepted.

I wasn’t ready before, he thinks. I amready now.

He is filled with more. He returns what was given to him and even more returns back.

He gives back to Helena what she gave to him, and she opens her eyes. She is whole again. She is more than she was before. The cycle between them passes back and forth. They areinfinite.

She sees him as hetruly is.

Looking down at his hands, Rafferty sees the gray skin and the black nailsonce more.

I am a demon again, he thought, but then he turned his hand over. The skin seemed different this time. It was gray, but as it moved in the light, shots and reflections of rainbows danced over his form. Wings brush Rafferty’s shoulders. Brushed. Not scraped.

He turned his head toward them and saw instead of leathery, bat-like wings, beautiful black feathers with the same iridescence of his skin, dancing blues, greens, and purples in their sheen.

Amazed, he looked down at Helena, who had at last opened her golden eyes, and she smiled. Then she reached out and touched his face. “You’re beautiful,” shebreathed.

Rafferty kissed her fingers, then noticed that Éliott and Honey were both standing beside them in their true forms as well. Honey’s wings were the beautiful golden-brown of a hawk with equally honey skin, and Éliott’s wings were the layered grays and whites of mourning doves. Like Helena, their horns crested around their heads like halos.

Reaching up to touch his own, he discovered they hadn’t changed. They still pointed straight up.

A mark of who I have been, even if I am that no longer,he thought, the knowledge coming from the understanding. Heliked it.

“Are you alright?” Helena asked, sitting up on the bed.

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