Page 64 of Lost Feather
“Well, when a person wants a piece of pie, they want a real slice. A slice of pie can fill you up. It makes you feel, I don’t know, pie joy. But a mini pie, they just make you wish you had more pie, see? So getting a mini pie is like getting a single potato chip. It’s not bad; you get to taste what pie would be like. But it will leave you deeply unsatisfied.”
“Like this conversation,” he muttered, before clearing his throat. “So, pie was your favorite thing.”
“No.” I carefully placed sequins as I thought. “I would have to say hugs. Yes, definitely hugs.”
“Hugs? That was the best thing?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, a good long snuggle in bed with someone you love, falling asleep holding each other—that’s the very best kind of hug.”
“And you have experienced this sort of… hug. On Earth.” His voice sounded tight. I nodded, remembering Lily, and the long evenings we’d spent telling each other stories and planning our future combination bakery and toy store.
And long before that, the very best hugs had come from Dina. Always Dina.
“With someone you loved?”
“Yeah.” I caught a tear before it fell, then rubbed it over my hair, watching as it dislodged a chunk of smut that had really been bugging me.
Silence filled the workshop. “He was a very lucky man.”
I looked up, shocked. “A man?”
He blinked. “Oh, apologies. A woman, then.”
I fought back a smile. “Not a woman either. It was a little girl. My charge.” I watched as the expressions on Mikhail’s face flashed by like a disco ball at a roller rink. Relief, embarrassment, discomfort, hope? And about fourteen other things I didn’t quite have names for. Angel faces were hard to figure out. Especially his.
“Sooo,” I said when the silence got too awkward. “My turn. Now this is a hypothetical question.” He nodded, so I went on. “What if one of your new Protectors, the ones you’re making right now, went to Earth and got lost?”
“Lost? What do you mean?”
“I mean, what sort of system is there to make sure the Protectors go to Earth for one visit at a time? Is there some way that a Protector could end up cycling over and over down there?” I was afraid I was revealing too much, but he didn’t react. He merely shrugged.
“It would never happen.”
Demonstrably untrue, I wanted to shout. Instead, I hummed, “You know, it happens to foster kids all the time. They get shuffled around from one home to the next. They have case workers who are supposed to make sure they’re where they should be. But like, a case worker could lose a file, or misdirect one, if they were evil or something.” He shot me an odd look, and I went on. “You know, what if something went wrong with… with a name.”
I could feel his gaze on me, heating the back of my neck as I worked. I waved a hand across the room, toward the tray with four new Novices in a line, shining balls of soul energy. “Like, if one of those didn’t get a name like the others. One that gave them purpose. Then, maybe that one could… get lost.”
Mikhail’s voice was raspy when he answered. “Every Protector has a purpose.”
“Well, I’m the mini pie of Protectors, then. A scrap, right? And not all that useful.” I tried to laugh, but that seemed to make him mad.
“You are not useless, Feather,” he ground out. “No matter what your name turns out to be. That is not the core of what you are. You are a Protector.” My eyes flew wide when I heard the lie in his words. I could almost taste the sourness on my tongue.
“Mikhail?” I breathed. “I’m not a Protector, am I?” I stared at the fabric in front of me until two large hands picked me up and sat me on the table edge, facing him. He stepped in between my parted legs, his massive hands cradling my chin, tipping my face toward him.
“Feather, whatever you are. Whoever you are. You belong here. You belong in Sanctuary.”
“How can you be sure?”
Something burned in his eyes. A secret, a mystery. A promise of some kind. His fingertips moved gently over my face, over my hairline and behind my ears, caressing me. They came to rest on my nape, and I fought to control the rush of lust that tore through my whole body. My lips fell open in a silent gasp, his eyes fixed on them.
“Feather,” he crooned, one finger skating over my lips as if he were learning the shapes for a masterpiece he planned to create. “Feather,” he repeated in a broken voice.
“I like it when you call me that. I wish it really was my name.” I swallowed, my mouth inexplicably dry. “I wish… I wish…” I didn’t dare to say what I wanted out loud, but Mikhail’s eyes flared. He leaned down, his vast wings spread behind him, sheltering me, and placed his lips on mine.
The world exploded into ice and fire, pain and pleasure, life and death and every emotion I’d ever felt packed into the fleeting second when our lips fused. Brilliant sparks seemed to burst into firework displays behind my closed eyes and, for some reason, that spot at the back of my neck grew hot and pulsed with an intense, physical surge of bliss.
And then his lips were gone. His eyes were as wide, as I knew mine were, and we spoke on top of each other. “I should not have done that,” he rushed out at the same time that I said, “I think I just had a neck-gasm.”
