Page 72 of Seraph's Tears
Her hand drew up to cup my face. Eve’s fingers trembled against my cheeks, and I could feel the strength leaving her. As her hand began to fall away, I caught it with my own and pressed it back. I turned to kiss her palm. “Eve, my beloved, my mate. Starlight.”
“I love you,” she breathed, her eyes rolling back. She sagged in my arms, and I could feel the life leaving her.
“No!” I roared. “You cannot die. Eve, you’re my mate. I just found you.” My voice cracked as grief overwhelmed my fear. It was a grief that surpassed all loss I had ever known before. I reached instinctively for magic, trying to harness the lightning. It slipped through my fingers again. Frantic, I grabbed again, and again it spun away from me.
A small smile graced her lips, even as her eyes closed. “Mate,” she murmured. Her chest barely rose anymore.
I raged inside my body, raged at the cruelty of life and fate and the frailty of the human body. A seraph could survive this. I didn’t have healing magic. Even if I could bend nature to my will here, I wouldn’t know what to do with it.
Magic wisped past me. I’d learned over the decades to ignore it, like the pain of a phantom limb, but this time I reached and wrenched. My mind caught on a little tail floating past, like a frayed string breaking from a tapestry. I pulled it toward me, toward Eve’s fading life force, and tried to shove it into place, to force the magic to heal. It evaporated into the aether, and it was like my soul faded, too. I had never felt so helpless in my hundreds of years.
My own tears burned my eyes, and buried my head against her chest. “Eve,” I wept. “Please don’t leave me. I beg of you, please don’t leave me.” My shoulders shook with sobs, and I slipped by torn and bleeding hand through the tear in her dress, covering her wound. She grunted, her brow creasing in pain.
My tears fell, streaming down my face and splashing on her face and body.
Her chest stilled, and I heard her breathing no longer.
I tilted my head up to the skies and screamed, grief and anger ripping out of my body, scalding my throat, and filling the moors. I screamed and screamed, pleading for relief, begging to be wrong. My voice turned hoarse, my throat shredded—and it was only a fraction of the pain I felt.
I cradled her body, letting her face roll into the crook of my neck. Her own tears and blood smeared against my skin. Her tears seared my flesh, and I welcomed the agony.
Rain hit my beck, sharp as needles.
Suddenly, I felt a puff of breath against my throat. I froze. Could it be? No, it was my imagination.
But then she moved in my arms, her hand coming up between us and pushing against my chest.
I drew back, staring down in shock.
“Gabriel?” she whispered. The blood at the corner of her mouth was drying now, sheltered from the rain by my body.
My mouth opened, but nothing came out. My mind raced, trying to make sense of it. “You’re alive?”
She smiled, though her face was pale and her body trembled against mine. “I think so.”
“Wh-wh-what happened?” I lay her on my legs and ripped open the tear in her bodice. The deep, gushing wound I’d seen was slowly disappearing, closing and growing smaller on its own. Healing at a speed inconceivable to a human. I blinked, shaking my head in disbelief.
“How is this happening?” Eve’s body warmed, and she moved restlessly. I glanced down at her legs to see the white bone protruding from her stocking shift back into her leg on its own.
“This is…this is how a seraph heals,” I told her. But my own arms still blazed with pain in the pattern of her tears, proof we didn’t always heal quickly. Saltwater could destroy us.
Rain fell around us, and I drew my wings up to shelter her from the cold water. It pattered against my slick feathers, wicking off my wings to stream down like a waterfall around us.
She reached up to cup my cheek, this time with strength I never thought I’d feel again. Her thumb brushed tears from the corner of my eyes. “Did you weep for me?”
A ragged laugh tore out of me. “Of course I did, my mate, of course I did.”
She drew her hand back and looked at her fingertips. “Like your wings.” At the confused expression on my face, she turned her hand so we could both see. My tears glistened against her skin. “Your tears.”
My eyes widened. “That’s how,” I breathed. “I didn’t know…I didn’t think—ayim is in them, too.” Seraphim so rarely wept. I’d never considered the ayim in tears because we always went to blood.
She pushed on my chest to balance as she struggled to her knees.
“Gently, gently,” I soothed, holding her shoulders and supporting her weight. “You’ve been grievously wounded.”
Eve grunted with pain and glanced down at her leg. “Did I break it?”
“You broke many things.” Unable to resist, I wrapped her in my arms and drew her back into my lap. “Let’s get you back to Mirkwold. We need to see what injuries remain.”
