“Apparently.” She sat up and sniffed. “Come on, it was just a little love tap. You don’t go around telling a woman she stinks.”
“But you do stink.” For some reason, her eyes seemed almost green. Lighter, as if her name had brought some of her soul’s energy to the surface. Or maybe it had been the tears that had seeped out. A line of brightness marked their pathway down her face.
For reasons that eluded me, I itched to see what lay beneath the clumps of filth. Something about her called to me. She was as far from enticing as a creature could get, but I had to grip my hands into fists to keep from reaching out to comfort her.Caress her.
I shook the ridiculous thought away. “You must be purified.”
Those smut-gray and green eyes narrowed. “How? Sunny said the bath didn’t work.” She held out her fouled arms. “Obviously, the soap you have here isn’t up to the task.”
“If you aren’t purified, you will be—”
“Unmade, yeah, I heard you before. So, better soap? Or what?” She seemed unconcerned, but her eyes darted to the rim of the table, and the groove there. She might be dirty and brazen, but she wasn’t completely naïve.
“Or what.” I forced the words out, picking up a small knife. The blade wasn’t metal, it was smoke: an ever-moving, twisting, blade-shaped tendril taken from the Abyss itself. The only blade in the workshop that could cut deep enough to purge soul-deep stain, one of only two in Sanctuary. Gavriel possessed the other one. “You can’t be sent back until most of your smut has been removed physically. If the baths don’t work, I’m afraid the only thing I can offer...” My heart ached at the thought of what lay ahead.
Long ago, I’d had to show some young Protectors what was required to remove the sort of smut this young soul carried. Many of them had been unable to undertake the process… and almost all had begged to be unmade, rather than suffer such excruciating pain for so long. They had asked me instead to unmake them and use their energy to help protect Sanctuary. I had resisted at first, but when their efforts proved futile, when their pleading had scraped my eardrums raw, I had eventually agreed.
My thoughts grew bleak as I remembered their sorrow, and mine, when we said our final farewells. Before I was required to return them to the Creator of All Things. As if drawn by a magnet, my gaze darted to the crucible at the rear of my workshop, the vessel for unmaking, that I hadn’t used in many centuries. Even looking at it now filled me with foreboding.
I prayed this small Novice would find the strength to complete the task that lay ahead. I didn’t know if I was strong enough to survive the guilt of ruining her chance at a long life. Strong enough to place her in that vessel and lose her as I had lost those others. Especially now that I knew her weakness was of my making.
The Novice—Inutilia—sat up, smiling nervously, though fear shone from her gaze. “So, what are we trying? Really expensive soap? Goat milk and olive oil?”
“No,” I grunted, ignoring the way my guts churned as those unusual, expressive eyes focused on the knife in my hand. “Pain.”
CHAPTER6
Feather
“Feather?” Sunny bustled into the Maker Hall a few hours later, carrying a fresh toga and some fluffy white sandals. “You’ve been invited to Assembly…” She gasped. “What happened?”
“That basshole’s big idea happened,” I panted, wiping myself with the stained toga Mikhail had tossed on top of me at the end of what he had called my “first purification ritual of many.” But there was no way I was returning to this torture chamber. Not even if it was converted into a free, all-you-can-eat, 24-hour ice cream sundae buffet, and the waiters were all shirtless firefighters. “No group therapy for me today,” I groaned. “I’ll be busy finishing dying. Help?”
“Of course.” She helped me to the floor. I tried not to focus on the glimmering, greasy liquid that still filled the grooves and funnels at the edges of the table, slowly draining away. My tears, mixed with the clay they had dislodged. Agony in liquid form.
I’d thought I’d known what pain was, but I’d never imagined this. One last tear slipped down my cheek, burning like fire as it fell.
“Did the Maker hurt you?” Sunny whispered. I slipped on the fresh toga, trying not to remember the last hours. But I couldn’t forget.
At the beginning, I’d thought Mikhail was going to use the knife he’d shown me to cut off the greasy clay. What had happened had been far worse. I’d had to do it myself.
I could still feel each cut, each tiny stroke of the blade that seemed to pierce not just through the smut, but into my flesh, peeling away layer after layer all the way to the bone. If I hadn’t seen the smut coming off, if Mikhail hadn’t stayed right by my side, pushing me to keep going when I stopped to weep, I would have given up. As it was, I’d ended up begging him to go ahead and unmake me a dozen times. He’d refused, again and again.
I’d find a way out. As soon as I caught my breath, and my arms stopped burning like they were being eaten by acid, I was going to figure out how to get out of this awful place.
“You can’t leave.” Sunny’s voice was soothing as she wiped my face down with a cloth.
I side-eyed her. “What does that mean? There has to be some way in and out.”
“There is. You go down.” She put down the cloth and peered at my face. “You know, whatever you did here helped. Your eyes are stunning. I’ve never seen green eyes on a Protector before.”
I ignored the compliment as she helped me step into my new slippers. I panted for a moment, then began to walk. “The way out is down?” Did she mean the Abyss?
“Back down to Earth. There’s a corridor at the rear of the Maker Hall which connects to what we call the Flight Hall. Protectors’ souls are made here, and we travel between Sanctuary and Earth forever.”
“Like,foreverforever? With purification every time?” I shuddered when she shrugged. “There has to be another option.”Besides the obvious unmaking one.
Her wings dripped small feathers like magically vanishing glitter onto the white hallway floor. “You could ask in Assembly; that’s where we’re going now. Our Guide is very knowledgeable. They’ve been a Protector for over three thousand years!”
