“No,” he gasped. “No. I can do this. If a filthy scrap can do it, I can… Ahh!”
I had turned away in disgust when I heard a soft, silly curse. Feather had scrambled across the table and was staring in horror at the arrogant Protector’s hunched over form. Her eyes were almost glowing with a strange light... and with panic. Righteous screamed again, his voice strangled. I saw a dark gold and gray droplet splash on the pale stone floor.
“Crying already?” I stepped closer, and felt Feather’s hand on my wrist.
A small, infinitely soft, warm hand. And then, a shower of what felt like sparks, like brilliant shooting stars racing from her hand to mine, then up my arm, to my heart, starting something there. A glow, a strange, familiar… Iknewthat touch.
Shocked, I stared down into the brilliant green eyes that were filled with matching surprise, but also fear. Terror?
“Gavriel!” Feather’s panicky shouts broke through my amazement. “Gavriel, he’s dying.”
In an instant, I broke free of her hold, gently grasped the Protector’s shoulder to turn him toward me, and realized what had happened. The knife clattered to the floor, where a pool of soul energy was steadily widening, streaming from a deep gash in his thigh. He’d cut through veins and arteries both with a long sweep of the blade.
Feather scrambled to kneel next to Righteous, who was curled in on himself, his hands desperately moving to staunch the flow. “Can you heal it?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “He may have cut too deep. Move his hands.” She did, and I carefully sent some of my own soul’s energy to heal the wound.
But the wound wouldn’t heal, and I saw why. Some of the oily smut had moved from the outer skin of the Protector’s leg and into his veins. Horrified, I watched as the veins began to thicken and turn gray. He was being infected, corrupted internally.
I raced for the door. “Watch him, keep him still. Mikhail can fix this.” I cast a glance over my shoulder, wondering if I had just lied. Righteous was fading by the second. “I just need to find him in time.”
CHAPTER21
Feather
Isat on the floor with Righteous’s head on my lap, my hands pressed against the wound that would not stop bleeding, though the flow was more sluggish now. Which worried me even more.
I was terrified.I did this.My smut had gotten onto him and started whatever caused him to grow so weighted down with evil… and now that taint was inside him. He was dying; I could feel his energy slipping away.
“I’m so sorry, Righteous,” I whispered. “I’d take it back if I could.” My breath hitched as I realized what I’d said. A soft, chilly breeze blew past my ear, and I heard an echo of the gate’s song. And then, a sense of someone watching. Wings rustling silently all around me.
“Rumple?” I closed my eyes and concentrated on that presence. “Can I take it back?”
I waited for an answer, but none came. On Earth, Rumple had always told me when I had to do one of the difficult things. When to protect. Then when the moment had come where the only choice was to take the smut, the evil, into myself. But he wasn’t here; he wasn’t speaking now.
Righteous twitched and seized in my arms as I considered what to do now, with no guidance. No help was coming. Gavriel had been gone for too long, and there was still no sign of Mikhail. Even if they got back in time, the look in Gavriel’s eyes, the sour note in his voice as he’d lied about what Mikhail could do, told me the truth. It was up to me.
Righteous’s breathing was growing erratic, his heart thumping, almost stopping. I could see the greasy sludge moving through his veins. He didn’t have long.
I’d done this almost a hundred times on Earth for my charges. But I wasn’t sure it would work here. I could make him worse. “Rumple,” I called out in less than a whisper. A breath. “I need you.”
Feather?The voice moved through my mind as if from far away. I might have been imagining it.
“What should I do?”
When the word I expected came, it was whispered once, quietly. Strangely, it wasn’t a demand, as it always had been on Earth. It asked the word, framed it as a choice.Protect?
It had never been my choice before, not since Dina. Not since I made the vow to protect whenever I was called, no matter what the cost to myself. “Rumple?”
Still nothing. No one forcing me to do this. No vow holding me to fix what I’d broken. Only my own conscience.
Why wouldn’t he command me to protect? Possibly because this time, it would be too much. I glanced at the thick smut coating Righteous’s powerful body. It was at least as much as I’d managed to cut off since the first day I started up here, and I had been at my breaking point back then.
I sighed. I was pretty sure I was about to unmake myself, or whatever. But I couldn’t live with the shame of it, the guilt, if I didn’t try. “Ugh, and to think it all started with a kiss. Never gonna do that again,” I grumbled as I situated Righteous lower on my lap. “Might as well end it that way, too.” I laid my hands on either side of his face, lifting him up to my mouth. “I hope you can forgive me for stealing another kiss. It’s probably the last one I’ll ever get, and to be fair, if what Gavriel said is true, not all this smut was mine to begin with… so pucker up, Buttercup.” I squeezed his cheeks together, and pressed my lips delicately on top of his, relishing the short moment of sweetness that was the final beat before the agony I knew was coming.
And, boy, did it come.
It was like kissing razors. My lips, my face, my throat, all felt shredded and scissored into ribbons. My esophagus next, then lungs, heart, and stomach. I held him close, hot tears running down my face, salt slicing into the wounds that seared my skin there. I forced myself to hold on, to keep my lips on his, as I opened myself up to the evil. Called it into me.
