Page 40 of Lost Feather
“Then what happened?” Sunny whispered.
“And then Dina was killed by a man named Julian, and I was left alone. And I’ve been on my own, mostly, ever since then.” Except for Rumple. I needed to talk to him again.
“You’re not alone now, Feather. And I don’t care what your name is. You’re not useless. And you’re not a scrap. I think you might be a whole lot more like your sister than you think.”
“I wish that were true.” I wished all of it was true. That I was like Dina. That I wasn’t what I had been named when I was made.
And that I wasn’t alone. For that night, at least, I wasn’t.
CHAPTER16
Righteous
It had been a week. Seven days, and I hadn’t been able to catch the little Novice alone, though I stalked her. High Angelus Mikhail had her in his Maker Hall almost every waking hour, and the Protector Sunny had been assigned to guard her. When I’d told her to let me walk Feather to the Maker Hall in her place, she’d had the nerve to refuse!
And then the Maker had sent word that Sunny only reported to him, not to me. Mikhail had lost his marbles at last, it seemed, overturning centuries of tradition. What right did he have to insert himself? I was still head of the Protectors, after all.
Every time I walked past the Maker’s workshop, I heard Feather weeping. Why would she be crying? Was Mikhail hurting her?
I almost hoped so. Hoped she was hurting as I was, burning up inside. Long ago, Mikhail had been in charge of unmaking unsalvageable Protectors. Maybe he would do that to her.
No. I would kill him if he unmade her. Hurting the scrap was my job. The only thought that kept me functioning at all now, my only goal, was revenge. I had to pay her back for taking over my thoughts, my life, my entire mind.
By the Gate, I was the one who’d lost my mind. That was the only explanation that made sense. There was precedent for losing one’s sanity in Sanctuary. The Maker’s Apprentice had done so, four hundred years ago.
Gavriel was reported to have gone temporarily insane for years after gaining and losing Arabella in the space of an hour. I believed he’d only gone to Earth to mourn, though. I’d seen him more than once during those years from a distance, flying above some of the worst battles and natural disasters the Earth experienced. Witnessing. Weeping.
Weeping, like the Great Gate did every night. I hadn’t slept in a week because of that persistent sound. Valor and Hope had begun guarding the gate as well, after I warned them that Feather had made a nighttime visit there. They both reported that the screaming was almost deafening, though no one but the Angeli, the Guides, and us three could hear it.
Except she had heard it, too. How?
But the weeping I kept hearing in the Maker’s hallway was worse than the gate, making my skull buzz like it was full of hornets. Similar sobbing emerged from her doorway each night as I waited for a chance to get her alone and show her what she had done. Make her take it back. But she was never alone; her little watchdog even slept in the room with her.
I didn’t even know what exactly I intended to do with the Novice once I had her in my hands. At the very least, I needed her to beg for my forgiveness. She had ruined me. But I had a terrible suspicion that if I had her in my arms again, I wouldn’t wring her neck. I might weaken and hold her instead. Feel the brush of her filthy lips on mine again. Lose myself in the snippet of that vast music, repeating in my mind ever since that moment.
I paced outside the Maker Hall now, pulling at my feathers. I’d started losing more and more, as the smut on my body grew worse.Her fault.I snarled, pacing faster.Feather.A hideously ugly, filth-encrusted, unworthy soul. A real Protector, even a Novice, would look like one. And have more respect for her betters. More dignity.
With a name like Feather, though, what would anyone expect? I knew Mikhail was attempting to unearth her true name. He probably couldn’t find it under all the filth.
I heard wings and voices approaching, and ducked into a small purification chamber. As I waited for them to pass, I stared into the mirror. The smut on my face almost obscured my skin now. I grabbed a rough cloth and rubbed it over the stains she’d left there when she had tainted me. My lips still burned with the memory, and tingled with… revulsion. That had to be what I was feeling.
I was Righteous—the Righteous Arm of Justice. It was unconscionable for me to bear this smut. It burned against my flesh, and I wondered how anyone could bear to be this impure for more than a moment. How had she been able to live with it?
When I’d caught glimpses of her this week, I’d seen her smut was growing less noticeable; some places on her skin actually seemed healthier. Her hands, delicate fingers with pink nails, were only freckled now. Her teeth were white, and her lips a blushing pink. She didn’t even smell as foul as she once had.
I rested my arms on the edge of the basin, my limbs heavy, my mind fluttering like the feathers that fell from my wings to the floor and, for some reason, did not vanish as they should. They hadn’t since I’d seen her, touched her, at the gate. Since the vision that had swept through me led me to do such a stupid thing. I knew I had a spiritual wound; I knew better than to touch a thing as filthy as her. But I had been distracted. Enthralled, somehow.
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to force the memory of that moment from my thoughts, but as usual, it only swept me away again.
“How can we help it?” the Novice pleaded, her strange green eyes shimmering as she glanced from me to the gate, obviously desperate to soothe it. It was the same feeling I’d had for four hundred years, since the weeping began. Every time I came back from a mission and entered Sanctuary, I was compelled to rush to the gate and comfort it, though nothing I did quieted it for long. Singing was the only thing that worked for more than a few hours.
It was agonizing to know that there was nothing more I could do. And incredible that this small soul felt the same way. I almost bit my tongue when I confessed that I sang to it, something I had never shared before. But instead of laughing at me, she pleaded, those hypnotic eyes brimming with tears. “Maybe sing now?”
She had no idea what she was asking. She’d never been to Sanctuary before, had never heard our history, and didn’t know the power that a voice could hold here. Never learned that singing for one another was one of the most intimate acts that could be performed. Here, alone in the night with her, it felt… forbidden. She was filthy and far too young for me. I had never even sung for Hope, and she’d been crooning into my ears every time we merged for centuries.
But Feather’s eyes entreated me, and the gate cried louder. I opened my mouth and sang.
“Lean on me, lay down your cares,
