Could she hear lies? That was not a skill Novices had. And only a very mature Protector would be able to hear the tone a lie carried in the voice of one of the High Angeli. I glared back, holding the bell up. “What other names have you been called?”
Feather grimaced. “Well, that jerk Righteous called me a new one in the Dining Hall. He called me—get this—a scrap.”
On the last word, the naming bell rang out, slightly muted.
“No farking way,” she breathed. “Am I for real named… Useless Scrap?” The bell rang, clear and pure, louder than it had the day before. “Useless Scrap,” Feather repeated, making the chime sound again.
My heart raced so fast, I felt dizzy. “Stop!” I held up a hand, afraid she would say it again. “I am sorry the search for your name is… what it is.” And if I had some part in making it that way, I would be more than sorry. “I’m sorry, Feather.”
She tilted her mucky head and stared for a moment before nodding. Something settled in her gaze, as if she had seen and understood more than I’d meant to show. “Thanks. I won’t say it makes a girl feel good, but it’s sort of par for the course for me.” She shrugged, and set the knife to another finger, the smut curling away, leaving a stench of burned flesh, metal, and sour rot in the air. “At least now I can get laid.”
I sighed at her subdued tone. “It’s not that easy.”
“Of course not.” Feather let out a grunt of pain. “Of freaking course not. So what? I have three middle names?”
“When your full name is revealed, the chime rings like a thousand church bells.”
She sighed. “Fine. I know I have to get cleaner anyway. No one would want to merge with Useless Scrap McMuddy Britches anyway.” She smiled up at me, the tears streaking down her face causing her cheeks to glow slightly, a faint pulse of light that stayed. As if the skin beneath pulsed brightly before it subsided to a paler glow.
“I think you’d be surprised,” I said without thinking. “Your sort of courage and beauty is rare. You’re like a jewel buried deep in the rock, Feather. Just give it time.” I reached out a hand and stroked one large, scarred finger over her cheek, then picked up her hand, marveling at how small and perfectly she was shaped.
Smaller than any Protector I’d ever created. A Useless Scrap.
Something flashed in my thoughts, a memory of something, of saying those words. I pushed it aside. There was no way, in all the thousands of years I had been forming and naming Protectors, that I would have done such harm, even unconsciously.
“Um, Maker.” Her soft, small voice drew me back. “I need my hand. It’s not going to clean itself.”
I dropped her hand and rushed to the opposite end of the workshop. I spent the next few hours there, wondering at the strange feelings she had stirred up in me. Worried at what it might mean for me to feel… sympathy, I decided. Not attraction. Basic common decency required her story to touch me deeply. Still, for her to elicit such a response, when I’d never before been emotionally affected by such things, concerned me.
Gavriel suspected she was a tool of the Abyss. How was it possible I could feel such an instant, deep attract—sympathyfor such a filthy creature?
And why was it that, as she carved away at the smut she’d accumulated by committing what must have been grievous sins, it was all I could do to stop myself from returning to her side and throwing the bloody soul knife across the room?
CHAPTER15
Feather
My room might be lonely at night, but today it was filled—with sequins and glitter and fun. “I really thought this place was Hell in disguise,” I mused as I held up a bedazzled toga to show Sunny the new scalloped hemline that now sported sequins in a wave pattern. “But Hell would never have a crafting room.” I peeked around at the new furniture that had appeared since my last trip to the Maker Hall. I now had a small chest of drawers for my stuff, plus a low, narrow table to work on and a chair covered with some sort of vinyl stuff that made it easy to clean. I had a feeling Mikhail had sent them, but he hadn’t mentioned it.
Sunny scowled down at her shimmery hands. “This isn’t a crafting room. It’s your bedroom. And we have to stop with the glitter. I can’t get it off; it’s worse than smut!”
“Come on now,” I said soothingly, sticking a few extra sequins to the smut on my arms. Smut was actually sort of pretty when I decorated it. Like the rainbows on top of an oil spill. “Glitter and Smut can be our band name.”
“A band from the Abyss, maybe.” Sunny had declined to let me bedazzle her toga, but had supplied me with a few extras after we’d received word that, though I was allowed in the Dining Hall for lunch, I was not permitted to leave my room tonight. Something about an emergency gathering taking place in the Assembly Hall.
I had a feeling it was about me. Or possibly Righteous. Although Sunny had said it wasn’t. Not that she’d actually share what it was about, and when I pestered her, she got tight-lipped and as close to angry as I’d seen her. So I’d decided to distract myself with my fancy new hot glue guns. They didn’t need electricity to work, only these freaky glowing glue sticks that Sunny said were made of the same power as the food. I didn’t care; as long as it held the glitter on the new t-shirt I was making—which saidMaster Growlyin big glittery letters on the front, with slits in the back for his wings and Velcro closures to keep it on—and the bikini I was planning to wear the next time I had to report to his maker space, they could be powered by farts.
“So, can a Protector and a High Angelus do the dirty deed up here?” I finished the shirt and held up a bedazzled hot pink and turquoise sequined bikini I was making for my first merge, whenever that happened. “Want me to make you one?” I offered.
Sunny grimaced and made a vomiting sound as she looked up from her project. She was making some sort of weird macramé knotting project on the table. It looked like a vaguely heart-shaped towel holder, with a big metal loop.
I peered down at my bikini. I thought it was perfectly charming. “What’s with the face? It’s not that bad. I used too many rhinestones, didn’t I?”
“No, the underwear is fine, not that anyone will wear it. No one does.”
“Are you telling me everyone is going commando here? Not just me and Righteous?” I goggled my eyes at her. “There’s no underwear in Sanctuary… at all? I mean, I figured they just weren’t wasting any on me, what with my smut and all.”
“You peeked at Righteous?” She smirked when I stammered and covered my cheeks with my glittery hands. “Don’t act innocent. You’re the one who called it the Loch Ness monster.”
