Page 17 of Lost Feather
Not that she’d cowered beneath my harsh punishment. Her defiant green eyes flashed in my memories, as well as the stubborn set to her jaw and the tilt of her head as she sassed her superiors. She was annoying and enchanting in equal measures, and a part of me couldn’t believe she was evil enough to have earned all that smut. I suspected, once she was purified, her spirit would shine like a brilliant gemstone.
She still might be a spy, I reminded myself as I stood alone in a silent room, staring blankly at the wall. She was certainly disrespectful enough to make an ancient soul lose their temper.
Although she hadn’t affected Mikhail that way. He’d… laughed. For the first time in centuries. As we spied from the corner, my best friend had stifled his chuckles with his robed arm at her aggressive impertinence. I’d found myself smiling once or twice as well. She’d punched holes in the inflated egos of those Protectors who’d flaunted their faint smudges, pretending they’d done great, heroic acts to earn them.
The missions the Protectors were sent on now were the sort of trifles we never would have considered addressing even a century ago. Those small imbalances weighed almost nothing in the world’s greater balance, and up until recently, we’d strengthened our Protectors by giving them real work. Significant challenges.
But once we realized there was a limit to how many Protectors Mikhail could create, and after so many of our own had given their lives to shore up the Great Gate, we’d learned to guard the ones we had left. To care about every small imbalance that we could safely address, and jealously protect Sanctuary’s purity as well as all its inhabitants. We were so close to the end of everything. The Great Gate was fading, cold winds rushing through the cracks that appeared and disappeared in its material, chilling our corridors and Assembly Halls.
And now, this filth-covered stranger had found her way inside.
I had brought her here. Would I be the reason the balance inside Sanctuary was upset for good? My job was to care for every soul that belonged here, but was she even a Protector? The question nagged at me. None of them acted as she did. Spoke as she did. Was so filled with… fire.
I’d never met a Protector with that sort of spark. I knew it needed to be extinguished, but a part of me had been tempted to fan it into flames just to see what her reaction would be. Possibly that was why, instead of using a pinch of my own power to clean the mess she’d made of the Assembly Hall, I’d given her a bucket and rags. I chuckled aloud, remembering her angry response. The sound echoed in the sacred space, and I extended my wings to fly back to the Hall, remembering at the last moment where I was and what I was supposed to be doing.
Standing vigil for my mate.
“Arabella, I am so sorry,” I breathed, and strode across the floor to the crystalline casket Mikhail had built for the other half of my soul. I came here every day I was in Sanctuary, to pray and ponder how we might be reunited. For four hundred years, I’d visited every chance I had, to grieve, and try to wake her. But today I’d forgotten her, if only for an instant.
I’d been thinking of the other one. Feather. The exact opposite of Arabella in every way.
Arabella was tall for one of our kind, almost my height. She was golden and glowing like all High Angeli, even in the deathlike state she’d inhabited for four centuries. Her long, shimmering hair, fanned out on the pristine white pillow, matched the golden eyes that I’d only seen open for one hour.
I’d almost forgotten the sound of her voice. Had it been low and raspy? Sweet and bell-like? She had said my name, though she had never seemed to know who I was to her. She hadn’t welcomed my lips… although she had embraced me. I’d felt a kinship I’d never known with anyone before.
I stared at her sleeping form and fought to recall exactly what she’d said when we’d met.
“Gavriel!” Mikhail’s voice was bright with joy and humor as he called my name at last. I sprinted toward the great door of the Maker Hall where he stood. “Help me open this the rest of the way. If you want to meet your mate, that is?” He winked, then pounded my back. “She’s glorious, Gav.”
The hallway behind me was empty—my nervous pacing had driven off the other two dozen High Angeli who had been checking on me all day. They were my family, all of us responsible for shepherding the Protectors and Novices that Mikhail fashioned here to help keep balance on Earth. They were all almost as anxious as I was to meet the newest of our kind.
My mate.
Other than Mik, I was the last of the High Angeli to receive my other half. I knew why; my work on Earth kept me busier than most, and after a mating, it was expected that the two bonded Angeli would take at least a century to learn each other and cement the bond.
But the balance on Earth had been shifting precariously over the past few centuries, and I had agreed to wait. To be the last one to know the joy of having a whole soul. Except for Mikhail, that is.
I worried about him. He was the only Maker, and his Apprentice Azazel was, if not incompetent, then at least not gifted in the craft. Always talking to himself and dropping things. A clumsy Maker wouldn’t be good for anyone, especially the future Protectors he would create. Would clumsy Azazel be the one to build the Construct for Mikhail’s mate? I wasn’t sure he could make a being worthy of sharing my friend’s great soul.
Azazel had seemed almost unhinged recently, shaking and mumbling to himself at all hours. I’d wondered if he was having visions; his countenance had changed lately, fear and uncertainty leaving deep shadows in his once-bright eyes. He’d approached me more than once, fighting to share whatever tormented him, but his words were always garbled. If he didn’t shine brighter than almost any other High Angelus, I would have suspected his soul was injured somehow.
I shook away my thoughts as I ran to the wide door, pushing it open. Mikhail motioned me into his Hall—a place I had not been allowed to peek into for the past year while he worked solely on my mate—and waved to the golden figure in the cleared-away center of the space.
She stood on a small plinth, and I allowed my eyes to consume her, taking in every detail. Mik had known me for thousands of years, and knew exactly what would please me. I only hoped I would please her half as much when she awoke.
“Her name?” The words came out choked with tears. Mik nodded to her feet, and I saw it spelled out: Arabella. I said it aloud, and a bell on one of the distant tables rang faintly.
“Do you want to use my blade?” Mik offered, holding out the soul knife that was required for this part of the ceremony.
I shook my head, pulling my own free. “I’ll use my own.”
I gripped the knife my dearest friend Rafe had given me before he’d left to serve in the Abyss, keeping the evil there contained. I’d missed him with every ounce of my being for many centuries; using his blade felt like he was here in some small way.
I grabbed the tip of one wing, and set it to the base of a feather I’d selected months ago for this purpose. It had been so long since I’d shed my downy feathers that I couldn’t remember what losing one was like.
But this was a sacrifice. It wouldn’t be painless, as losing those had been. Mikhail had warned me it would be more like losing a finger. He was right; the agony that ignited had me gasping as I dug out the shaft of the feather. When I had it free, I stepped up to the edge of the dais. Mik had left a hollow in the center of her chest, exactly the right size and shape for the feather I’d chosen, and I wondered at his artistry.
Stepping close, I pressed my feather into the divot, saying, “Arabella. Arabella, awaken.”
