Page 18 of Seraph's Tears
She shivered, and I realized she huddled in her seat, a shawl wrapped tight around her shoulders. I cursed mentally. I’d forgotten how sensitive humans were to the cold.
I stood, making her flinch at the sudden movement. My eyes narrowed. She did that sometimes, at quick, unexpected movements. What is her community like, that made her learn this habit?
I turned as a gust of winter wind swept through the open balcony doors. Reflexively I half-spread my wings, creating a buffer between outside and the woman at my back.
She sucked in a gasp, and it went straight to my cock. Is she gasping from the cold or my wings? I shut my doors and paused, pretending to study the horizon at twilight. I was really waiting for my cock to soften. Once I wrestled it back under control, I stalked past her, a few feathers ruffling at her nearness, to the fireplace. She’d lit it earlier, but we’d both allowed it to nearly go out. Wood was expensive on the moors, and I didn’t need fire most of the time anyway. I uncovered one smoldering coal and blew life back into it, slowly adding firewood from the nearby stack.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
I grunted. Even seeing her shiver once made me uncomfortable. She deserved better. She deserved far more than being stuck in a damp, drafty house with a surly, failed seraph in the middle of the moors. “The ayim,” I told the growing flames, “absorbs the rays of the sun and makes us stronger. We cannot survive on sunlight and water alone. We are not plants, after all, but it helps.”
Silence, then a surprised laugh.
A smile curled one corner of my lips. Apparently I could still make jokes after all.
Chapter Eight
Eve
I crept into Gabriel’s bedchamber. It still felt wrong and a little wicked to have his given name on my tongue. Not Mr. Ser, not The Seraph, not Captain. Just Gabriel. A delicious secret that he had shared with me.
Entering his bedchamber felt like crossing a forbidden boundary. Like when I was a child and a friend had dared me to climb onto the church platform and stand behind the pulpit. Even though no adults had been in the sanctuary, I kept expecting to be caught and punished.
Today I was cleaning the seraph’s room. He’d left the balcony doors open for so long, every nook and cranny in the place held dirt and crumbled leaves. He was fastidious about his personal hygiene, thank goodness, but I’d noticed he seemed to care very little for what happened around him.
I caught him staring at the sky sometimes with a stark, ravaged expression that turned his eyes hollow. His wings slumped in those moments, a picture of defeat.
Gabriel was gone from Mirkwold, in the village to check on someone he knew. A friend, perhaps? Where was his sedge, and how badly did he miss them?
I repinned the cloth covering my hair to keep it clean from dust and leaned my broom against the wall by the door, surveying the space.
It was tidier than the first time I walked in. He was trying to make it a more hospitable environment. I smiled. No man had ever tidied after himself for me before. Gabriel put Zorababel and the other men in the church to shame.
I hummed a hymn as I moved around the room, straightening here and dusting there. After I’d cleaned one cobweb-heavy corner, I wiped my forehead and leaned back on my heels. Something snagged my attention. I squinted in the shadowed corner and pulled out something long, slender, and wrapped in canvas. It was heavier than I expected, and it wobbled in my hand as I drew it to my lap.
Thin leather cording wrapped around the canvas in a crisscross pattern, loosely tied as if the owner couldn’t be bothered with more effort. I turned the object over, untangling the cord. It fell to the wooden floor beside me with a nearly silent thunk, and I unwrapped the layers of canvas, curiosity getting the better of me.
Gabriel had shared some things about his past, but I was hungry for more.
Slowly, a long leather case emerged, soft as butter and supple despite its age. I blinked in surprise, holding it out. It was…a scabbard. A gold hilt rose from it, inlaid with stones that sparkled in the dim light. I’d never seen anything so ornate or beautiful. I didn’t even have names for the jewels and fine craftsmanship. Gabriel had told me he was nobility. I hadn’t truly comprehended what that entailed. He was a seraph: clearly he was far above a human like myself. But now I understood what he meant.
In Anglia there were wealthy families. Godless and hedonistic, I’d been told. They had titles and grand estates. Their sons never had to work, and they ruled our government. If Gabriel had been human, he would’ve been a duke’s son. Someone I’d be lucky to serve, let alone befriend.
Air rushed out of me with that revelation.
My hand went to the gold hilt as if I was enchanted. I slowly, carefully withdrew the sword. Metal gleamed despite the dim room, and my chest hurt to look at such a beautiful weapon. Precious metal made up the grip and pommel, twisting in beautiful scrollwork that resembled the wind—simple yet elegant. It fit Gabriel perfectly. I couldn’t imagine a more breathtaking sight than Gabriel descending like an avenging angel, sword aloft.
Why is this hidden in a corner like a dirty secret? Is he ashamed of the war?
Guilt suddenly stole over me as I realized what a personal thing I’d discovered—not so much the weapon itself, but how he’d treated it. I slid it back into the scabbard and hastily rolled it back up.
He’s not ashamed of the sword, I realized as I backed away from his secret. He’s ashamed of himself.
With one last look, I forced myself away from the evidence of the hurting angel and went back to my duties. I made the massive bed, leaning all the way over to reach the tangled sheets. I lay nearly flat on the bed, my breasts pressed into the mattress and one leg kicked up for balance.
I was a virgin, but I had a fertile imagination. A dirty image blossomed in my mind, of Gabriel coming across me and walking up behind, gripping my waist. Perhaps my skirt would fall back, exposing my thighs. Perhaps he would lean forward, to help me reach the sheet. He was taller than me. Perhaps we would lose our balance and fall the rest of the way onto the mattress. But he was a gentleman, despite his brooding, and he’d roll away from me before his body would crush me. And then—and then?—
My hand brushed something soft in the sheets. What’s this? My fingers curled around it and I withdrew, revealing a gleaming white feather just longer than the span of my hand from fingertip to wrist. Perhaps a secondary feather, from the middle of his wing? Or even a tertial, the inner part.
