“Wh… What?” Destiny scrunched her brow. A price? Since when did angels make deals? That was the devil’s department.
Gabriela waved her hand over the contract on her desk, and it morphed into a single sheet of parchment. “Michelle heard your suggestion of deceit, and she worries your time on Earth—in addition to your heredity—has corrupted you beyond repair. She feels you aren’t capable of functioning in the angelic realm anymore; therefore, reassignment is no longer an option.”
“But I’m an angel. I’m not corrupted.” How could they say such a thing? Just because her mother gave up her wings the moment Destiny was born, it didn’t mean she would follow in her freefall. Was that really what this was about? Her disgraced lineage?
A spark of anger ignited in her chest. “Have you spent any time earthbound? Do you know what it’s like to be down there in the trenches?”
“Yes, though I’ll admit it has been thousands of years.”
“Well, let me tell you, times have changed. Temptation is everywhere. You have to learn how to exist with humans and supes alike, and not a single one of them is perfect. In my centuries there, I have remained angelic. I have guided and advised troubled souls, and I haven’t once turned my back on my purpose or my duties.”
“Aside from the little miracle issue.”
“Aside from that.” She threw her arms into the air. “Yes, I let that duty slide off my radar. It takes so dang long for the office to process miracle requests, and most of them get denied. Sometimes the rejection gets to be too much, so I went about my way, doing everything else required of me. And I’m doing a heavenly job, too, so whatever price I have to pay if I fail, I’ll agree to it. Go ahead and name it, because I won’t fail. Not this time.”
Gabriela held her gaze for a beat, two, three, before she spoke, “The price is your wings.”
“My w…” Her stomach lurched, cutting off her words.
“It’s true you have done a heavenly job in New Orleans. No one is arguing otherwise. Get a miracle approved and perform it in three weeks’ time, and your clock will reset, giving you another hundred years to perform your next miracle.”
“And I’ll keep my wings?” She drew them tightly against her back, willing them to disappear inside her like they did on Earth, but the angelic realm forbade it.
“If you succeed, yes, you’ll keep them, but that is the extent of the grace being offered. If you fail, you will lose your wings, your halo, your magic, and your immortality.Youwill be the one to grow old and die while your immortal friends remain young.”
Holy hummingbird cake, they were threatening to turn her human. To force her to fall like her mother had. “What if I don’t accept the offer? What then?”
Gabriela sighed. “Then I say you should have accepted the repository position while it was on the table. You have no choice now. Mortality awaits you in three weeks’ time. The higher ups have spoken.” She offered Destiny a golden pen and turned the paper toward her. “Sign here, please.”
Destiny steadied her shaking hand and pressed the pen to the page. Ink pooled around the spot, the pressure nearly tearing it as she dragged the tip down and around to form the letter D. She swallowed hard and scribbled the rest of her name on the page. The moment she finished the final E in Monroe, the pen and parchment poofed into a cloud of glitter, sealing her fate in sparkling light.
CHAPTERTWO
“Let’s hop to it,elfen. Easter is in March this year, so there’s no time to slack off.” Pete Hasen, aka Peter Rabbit, aka Peter Cottontail—though no one better call him that to his face—stood on a wooden platform overlooking his studio. Dozens upon dozens ofelfen, the magical critters who helped him turn faery chicken eggs into works of art, scurried about, gathering paints and brushes before settling onto their stools, ready to decorate the shipment that would be arriving shortly.
The date of Easter was tied to the lunar cycle, always falling on the Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox. That meant it could land on any Sunday between March 22ndand April 25th.
The month-long window of possible Sundays would freak out any Type A fae, but it didn’t bother Pete. Rules, regulations, and order were never his strong suits, and how could they be? He was a fae rabbit shifter who used to be a robin. An anomaly.
Sure, he was anelfenrobin, so he’d always been a magical being, but when the goddess Eostre decided she needed a right-hand man to bring Easter to the masses, she’d chosen Pete to do the honors.
She’d first turned him into a rabbit because it was her sacred animal, but she quickly realized a fae bunny couldn’t command an army of artisticelfenany better than a robin could.So, she turned him into a shifter, allowing him to keep his new rabbit form to honor her while also having a human form so he could lay down the laws.
He squeezed a blob of blush pink paint onto his palette and chuckled at the memory. Laws, indeed.
Artists needed freedom for their creative juices to flow. If he gave them a bunch of rules to follow, they’d freeze up and Easter would die along with their imaginations. No Easter meant no Easter Bunny, which meant Pete would lose his job and the fluff he’d come to love.
That was why he gave hiselfenthe freedom to do as they pleased…as long as they met their quotas. He might’ve been the captain of this operation, but he ran a very loose ship.
He added a puddle of teal and another of lemon yellow before swirling his brush in a cup of water. The eggs always arrived like clockwork,on March 7th, giving him and his team anywhere from two to six weeks to paint, sort, and prepare them for distribution on Easter morning.
No, he did not lay the eggs himself.
Contrary to popular belief, Eostre did not give him the body parts required to attempt that feat. And thank the goddess for that. He couldn’t begin to imagine the pain women went through giving birth, whether passing a living being or an unfertilized egg through a passage that was way too narrow to make it easy. He shuddered at the thought.
As he swirled a second brush in the water cup, the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. The energy behind him shifted, vibrating and warming, and he rose to his feet, turning toward the disturbance.
Silver sparkles gathered in front of him, and a collective gasp sounded from theelfenbelow as Eostre appeared in the mist. Pete bowed, and hiselfenfollowed his lead, lowering their heads but peeking up to take in the goddess’s beauty.
