“Apple, unfortunately.”
“Ah, a substandard imaginary pie. I’m glad I interrupted then.”
We were both silent. Finally, I whispered, “I wasn’t sure I’d ever hear you again, after Lily. I’m not on Earth now. You knew that, right?”
“Of course.” A low hum. His voice sounded clearer, closer than it ever had. “You’re in Sanctuary.”
“You know the place?”
“I might.” Ugh. I knew better than to ask. More information would come when and if he was ready to spill, which was unlikely. He never shared anything, any sort of hints or clues as to who he was, where he was located, or what he did with his time—other than chat in the in-between hours with one odd, murderous girl. So I was beyond surprised when he went on, “I didn’t think anyone did much creating there these days. They used to do macramé. Hideous things that hung on the walls in the Dining Hall.”
He had been here? That meant he was like me… or like Mikhail or Gavriel. Or Righteous. “Are you from Sanctuary? Wait, are you here now? Please come visit me. I’m on house arrest, more or less, and I don’t have any friends.” I thought of Sunny and what felt like her unspoken betrayal, and my heart panged. “If I had a friend, I could probably handle the pain I have to go through here. Although I’ve never felt anything so excruciating in all my years. I thought taking on smut was awful, but that knife! It’s so much worse, and no one helps me—”
“What are they doing to you?” His voice thrummed with tension. Or maybe anger? “Are they being cruel?” He muttered something that sounded like, “I knew they were criminally short-sighted, but torture of a shining soul is new.”
I blushed, for some reason. “Um, no. I… I’m really ugly here, Rumple. I mean, you know I didn’t really care how I looked on Earth. But I’m hideous, and I smell foul. I have to cut the smut off with this horrible soul knife.”
“Oh, that’s what it was,” he said, so softly it was almost impossible to hear. “You might need to cut more slowly, beautiful one. I sensed your pain; I wish I could bear it for you.Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.”
I hated it when he got moody in Latin. “Hey, at least I get to do arts and crafts. And they’re teaching me to whittle. Whittlemyself, that is.” I waited for him to laugh, but the silence thrummed with a deep emotion I couldn’t make out.
I thought he had gone, but then he asked, “Forgive me, little one?”
“For Mr. Wright?”
A hum of agreement filled my mind. “For all of it.”
“Nothing to forgive. I chose, every time.” I tried to picture a face to go with the voice. “Didn’t know I was picking my eternal wardrobe, though. Gray is a terrible color on me. What are you wearing, Rumple?”
“Nothing,” he teased. “Nothing that I’ll tell you, anyway.”
I blew a raspberry into the dark. I’d asked what he looked like dozens of times, nagged and wheedled for any small scrap of description. He never budged, insisting that I would be disappointed. I couldn’t imagine that being true. Even if he wasn’t much to look at, his nature was kind and compassionate. He’d held me so many times in the darkness while I suffered. Sure, sometimes he disappeared for months, even years at a stretch. But he always came back, singing to me with his rich baritone when I got really low. Whenever I was in pain. It was almost like he felt it.
“Forgive me anyway.”
“I do,” I told him. “Sing to me? It was a hell of a day in Heaven.”
“Heaven? Is that what they’re calling Sanctuary now?” Another silent laugh.
“Nah, that’s just me.” I giggled. “But can you believe they call the shadowssmut? I keep cracking up. I’m a smutty girl, Rumple.”
“That you are, Feather.” He hummed a little, then stopped, saying, “I’m sorry about the knife. That you must endure that.”
“That’s why you came tonight, though. You knew I was hurting. Thanks.”
He didn’t answer but began to sing a lullaby in Latin. It was the one he’d sung me the very first time he’d come to me, when I was eight years old in my very first life. My favorite song.
“Dina!” My older sister was going to make us late for our evening meal again, and I was so angry I could spit. The Sisters in the abbey would take it out of both our hides if we weren’t dressed and ready, and I’d already been slapped and sent away from the breakfast table for poor table manners that morning. I was starving. “Dina!” I yelled, running around the corner of the chapel.
Instead of Dina, though, I found a boy I knew, leaning on an oak tree near the front of the stables. “Ashtad!”
The dark-complexioned boy who had arrived with the mail soldier was one of my only friends. Letters and packages for the abbey came every two weeks or so, and Ashtad had helped bring it the last few times. He was twelve, but the first time we’d met, I’d been tangled up in the rose bushes, thorns stuck in my dress, and he’d helped untangle me and rinsed off my scratches.
The mail deliverer, Julian, had always given me a bad feeling, like invisible clouds covered the sun when he was near. He’d tried to drag me into the wellhouse the last time he’d come without Ashtad, and I’d only gotten away when Sister Filomena had called for me to help scrub the kitchen.
Dina had warned me not to go near any man without someone else close. But Ashtad was really a boy; he’d probably only been shaving for a year. And he gave me a warm, happy feeling. He made me want to smile for no reason at all. I ran up to him now, reaching into the pocket of my apron for a bag of rose petals. He’d told me he loved their perfume, so I’d collected and dried these to give to him the next time I saw him, so he could smell them as he traveled.
But he didn’t thank me, just stuffed the bag into his belt pouch. “What’s wrong, Ashtad?” I asked, worried for him.
