* * *
Iawoke alone, the joy that had consumed me gone, and a grim foreboding replacing it. I had gone too far. Lost my mind along with my heart.Oh, Great Soul.Somehow, even without knowing her full name, I had merged with my tiny, fragile mate. And I had done so before I’d shared everything she needed to know.
The realization made the already dark room seem positively forbidding. The sheets near me were cold and empty, and the guilt creeping back into my heart was joined by a frisson of fear. “Feather, where are you?” There was no answer. Had she thought better of her actions and left me? Or had I damaged her, and she’d gone to seek help?
Panicking, I raised a hand and lit the sconces with a thought, then called out again. Only a heartbeat later, before I could even unfold my wings to fly and find her, the hidden door creaked open and quick, light footsteps crossed the workshop floor.
“Hi, Growly Bear,” Feather chirped. She was wearing a golden-brown robe that swamped her—an older one of mine. In one hand she held a basket, and in the other, a bottle. “I was peckish. Thought you might be, too. Post-sexytimes snuggles and snacks.” She climbed up on the bed and gathered the blankets around her, sitting cross-legged in front of me, the basket by her side. Her silver hair had been tied back with a scrap of fabric.
“You’re… Are you…” I lifted her arms, examining all the parts of her I could see. “I didn’t hurt you?”
She laughed. “Well, I’m not going to lie, I’ll be walking funny for a good day or two. But I wouldn’t complain if you wanted to throw a few more quarters in and take the old bandersnatch out for another ride round the—”
I muffled her words with one hand. “That’s not what I meant.” My face blazed. “I meant… I lost control, and we merged. Fully. Or close to it. But—” I hesitated, looking at her carefully. If anything, she appeared even cleaner and healthier than she had before. “You’re fine.”
“You’re pretty fine yourself, hot stuff,” she agreed, crawling into my lap. I wrapped my arms and legs, and even my wings around her. It was ridiculous how I longed for every small touch she gave me. If she chose to stay with me after I shared what I had to with her, we would have the rest of eternity together. And we could have something I hadn’t dared dream until we’d merged, and she’d come away unscathed. We could be mates in truth, fully twining our souls to one another. We were nearly immortal, and I had her safely in my arms.
But something in me kept screaming to protect her. Hide her away.
That something dangerous to her was coming.
As if Sanctuary itself had heard me, a great tremor shook the room. It rolled on for almost a minute, shaking the walls themselves. A few small tools rolled across my tables; a small scroll fell to the floor. “I see why they recalled everyone for an Assembly,” I murmured when it had passed.
“Yeah, the whole place has been shaking like this since you left. And brrrrr…. It’s been cold.” She snuggled into my side, her silver hair falling over my bare, dark bronze arm.
“I should not have gone. My absence made the imbalance worse.”
“How’s that?” Her little nose wrinkled up. “Is it like a seesaw, where you or Gavriel have to stay sitting on this end to keep Sanctuary from tipping totally into the Abyss?”
It was an interesting analogy, and not too far off the mark. I nodded. “More or less.”
“Will it be fixed now that you’re back?”
I hesitated before answering. This was one of the greatest secrets of our realm, and only Gavriel and I knew how intricately tied our own personal energies were to Sanctuary. The Guides didn’t even suspect how deep the connection ran; if they had, they wouldn’t have been throwing tantrums about not having enough energy for their needs. It would terrify them if they knew that without the presence of a High Angelus in Sanctuary, every one of them might be unmade, slowly and painfully, after a few weeks at most. But I knew I could trust Feather with some of the knowledge.
“Sanctuary didn’t always exist,” I said, running my fingers through her silken strands. “It’s been here for a very long time. But I was taught when I was a Novice that it was built to give High Angeli a place to learn and grow—between Earth and the Celestial Realm. A safe place to consider our greater task, which is to keep all the realms in balance.”
She blinked up at me, and I fought not to lose myself in those innocent, perceptive eyes. “This whole place is a school?”
“At its heart, it was intended to be just that. It was made of pure energy from the Well of Souls, sung into existence by the—”
“The Singer of All Songs,” she interrupted. “Sunny told me about Her. She sang the realms into existence, right?”
“That’s one way to look at it.” I made a note to be certain Feather was taught the true creation story, not the shorthand, easy version I suspected the Guides had reverted to in recent days. “The Singer, or the Creator, hasn’t ever been seen by anyone. Not even Seraphiel had seen Her face when I asked him long ago about Her, and he was the First of the Celestial Children. The Creator is… a source of power that originates from somewhere beyond all the realms we know.”
Feather made a noncommittal sound and relaxed onto my shoulder, lost in thought. I lifted the wine bottle and poured out a glass for us to share, and we took small sips in the silence. Finally, she asked, “So why is Sanctuary so unbalanced now?”
“We don’t know. It began two thousand years ago, give or take, when Rafe left to address an imbalance in the Abyss. He never came back. No one ever had, but we’d hoped… We sent messages to the Celestial Realm with Angeli who were ready to ascend, but no word returned, so we don’t know if they’ve tried to help, or if they don’t care. After it became obvious that the shadows had infiltrated here, and the Well was blocked off, we were forced to seal our own gate, as permanently as possible. And we became less of a school, and more of a… military encampment.” I sighed. “We’re losing the battle. Gavriel and I have given all we can, but Sanctuary is running out of energy.” I was running out of energy, and some days Sanctuary’s pull on my soul felt like a pump drawing the last water from a dying well.
She sat quietly for a moment, playing with the feathers she could reach, absently touching a single fingertip to the one on her own nape from time to time. “Can I ask a few questions?”
“Anything.” I said immediately. “If I can tell you, I will.”
“Why didn’t it hurt me when we merged?” she said. “Everyone said it would, even you. But it didn’t. Why not?”
I closed my eyes. This was a more dangerous secret than the state of our realm. Because this truth might very well drive her away.
A soft hand traced my jawline. “You don’t have to tell me, Mik. I can see it makes you uncomfortable. I can wait.”
