Page 57 of Lost Feather
“I-I can’t,” I rasped. “I haven’t sung in so long…”
“Please.” Mikhail’s plea was a broken, single word, but I couldn’t deny him. I took a breath and tried to shape the air into a note… and failed. The sound that emerged was reedy and thin. I tried again, and no sound came out at all. Mikhail’s eyes flared wide in shock. I felt my own mirror his. “You’ve lost your voice?”
I shrugged, fighting to control the panic that raced through me. I was the only one in Sanctuary who knew all the songs Seraphiel had written, and what they were for. If I could never sing them, pass them on… I remembered when the Great Library of Alexandria burned. This felt like an even greater loss.
“I suppose it doesn’t matter if I have. I’ve already lost everything else.” I rose and paced away from the suffering Novice, and the too-sharp gaze of my only friend. “Just… keep using the knife on Feather.”
“She needs more help than I can give her,” Mikhail said, as the heart-wrenching sound of Feather’s struggle to breathe echoed in the cavernous room. Sunny had gone to get more food, and Mikhail set down the knife. “I can’t cut too fast, or she’ll die. But the weight on her lungs is killing her slowly. It’s an excruciating end.”
“What are you planning?” If anyone knew how to save a Novice, it would be Mikhail. But his grave expression made me think he had something dire in mind. “You’re not going to unmake her.” The words came out unintentionally as a command. I softened my tone at Mikhail’s furrowed brow. “I meant to say, if you’re not going to unmake her, and you can’t heal her, what options are left?”
My eyes fell on the Well of Souls. Maybe long ago, he could have used the pure material from there to perform all sorts of miraculous cures. When Protectors had been assigned vital, yet terrible tasks, they’d often returned to Sanctuary damaged. Usually, Mik could save them. A small infusion, even a drop of pure soul from the ancient well, was enough. And that same material was what we had used to keep the gate strong, repairing it over the years. Azazel had stolen so much from us.
“I would cut out my own flesh and feed it to her, but it’s not powerful enough. She needs more than I can spare.” His gaze dropped, and I had a sick feeling in my gut. “I can only think of one way to save her.”
The silence in the room battered my ears. “Feather’s not breathing,” I whispered, almost glad for the distraction. Mikhail paused, then set the knife to his hand, adding another scar to the hundreds that littered his skin.
As he tended her, I stared at my best friend, the only friend I had left. His expression was a strange mixture of emotions I had grown unused to seeing. Regret and grief. Despair and acceptance. Longing, affection… and hope.
When he lifted his gaze from her, his eyes shone with a decision. “Will you stay while I complete the bond?” The blood rushed from my face, and I staggered, suddenly dizzy. I gasped as he reached for one of his wings and folded it around his front.
“Don’t do it, Mik. You can’t take it back.”
“I understand,” he said placidly, as if he wasn’t about to commit the worst sort of moral crime. “But I owe this small soul more than you know.”
I began pacing, running my hands through my hair. “What could you possibly— How could you? You’re going to tie yourself to her? For eternity? You’ll never be able to take a mate—”
“I was never going to have one anyway, friend,” he pointed out. His eyes shone even brighter, as if saying it aloud had eased the pain of his lonely life. “If I can sacrifice this unused part of me, and save this wonderful Novice—”
“You haven’t thought through the implications.” His raised eyebrows had me spelling out the heresy he was considering. “You will be drawn to her, Mik. Sexually, physically, as well as spiritually. She’s not one of us. You’d kill her, and… it’s wrong.”
A spark of turquoise flashed as he clenched his jaw in that familiar way. He had decided, and there was no moving him. But when he spoke softly, my gut churned. “There may be a way I can be with her if she wants me. There’s more to this woman than anyone else assumes.”
I tasted bile in my throat. “You can’t… You can’t be contemplating her in… that way.” I couldn’t get the words to come out. In the back of my mind, though, a perilous thought slithered. Hadn’t I been thinking of her in a similar fashion not a day ago? Not attracted to her body, but her indomitable spirit. Her core of strength that persisted, even when she was alone and broken. And her eyes, they had drawn me in, lured me closer… I, too, had been feeling things I should never have felt toward one so far beneath me.
No. “No, Mikhail, I can’t allow it.”
He laughed then, and the sound shook the rafters. “There is a lot you have control of in this place, dear friend. But this is not one of those things.” He stood, flexing his wings. “Leave. Or stand by me, as I save the soul who will be my mate.” His eyes welled up with boundless pain and an even deeper determination. “Though she will never know it.”
CHAPTER23
Feather
Iswam through layers of pain, waking more slowly than I ever had. Rumple’s angry departure had wounded some part of me on the inside, and I knew that my body would hurt a thousand times worse when I woke. I fought to create a dream, desperately throwing as many baked goods and loincloth-garbed Vikings onto my mental king-sized waterbed as I could… but consciousness had found me, and I was trapped in its pull.
I kept my eyes closed, though. I had no idea who was in the room with me. If it was Righteous, I would wait until he left. I was more than ticked off at him; once I’d felt the weight of his smut, I’d realized almost none of it had been caused by me. I mean, I’d felt a little bit of anger when I’d kissed him originally, but his rage about it was way out of proportion. It tasted and smelled like a combination of teenage boy body spray and skunk, and burned like acid.
Plus, this smut felt heavier than a lot of the murderers’ I’d had to take on, and I knew I was going to spend years more on the Torture Table because of it. I wondered if it was because he wasn’t human. Maybe the fancier your angel pants were, the harder it was to carry the spiritual skid marks.
While I lay there, mulling how to get my revenge on Righteous—but not in a way that would mean I had to wear more smut—and how to sneak out to the gate and have a midnight picnic, and maybe how to check in on Arabella while I was at it, something brushed the back of my neck. But not in a creepy, spider-on-my-bed kind of way.
It was warm, and felt like… a kiss? But one that didn’t fade. The rest of me hurt like I’d been run through a shredder, but that one spot on my nape was a gentle, loving pulse.
Maybe I did want to open my eyes. I tried, but they were glued shut. Fear shot through me. “Can’t… see,” I rasped. My lips were stuck as well, like I had a wad of paste holding them together, and my voice was gone. As if I’d been screaming for a long time while I was unconscious.
I felt something—a washcloth?—moving over my eyes. Smooth, small strokes. A whiff of salt, like ocean water, and then a rumbling voice. “Sweet soul, don’t fret. I have you.” To my shock, it was Mikhail, wiping my face and speaking in a low, tender rumble.
“I don’t go down to Earth often,” he said. “I’m the only one who can create new Novices, and I’m needed here now more than ever. But every hundred years or so, they send me so I can keep current on what’s happening. Breathe a bit, walk around. Sometimes, it helps me find names for my new Novices. I went to Scotland a while back. Met a young farmer in Ayrshire named Robbie. He wrote poetry. Songs.”
