The proud line of Jarod’s shoulders slumped and then his body began to tremble like my own. I wanted to be angry again, because anger beat misery.
Asher’s brow grooved, and I was glad for his guilt. Glad for his silence. I couldn’t stomach talking to him right now.
Maybe I’d stay mute until Jarod ascended to show how violated I felt that the archangel had acted against my wishes. Since when did archangels listen to the wishes of sinners?
The archangel curled an arm around my waist and sprang into the dead sky that contained no moon or stars tonight, just steel clouds and needles of rain. I closed my eyes as we soared over Paris, as the wind and rain flogged my hair, turning it into an orange squall.
When we reached the guild, he set me down and drew the door open. I didn’t look behind me as I entered. I neither possessed the will nor the desire to set my gaze on all I was leaving behind. As I forded through the Atrium, I pulled the scent of Jarod into my tender lungs—mineral, musky, and sweet. So very sweet. My heart—what was left of it—disintegrated further, the beats clattering to the floor like crumbs.
Crumbs to lead my sinner to me.
The Fletchings who’d been out and about stopped to watch, gazes wide with envy even though I felt like a prisoner being led to her execution. How I wished I could pull my wings off and offer them to one of my peers so I could run back out into the soaking streets.
When we approached the Channel, the Ophanim of Guild 7 were lined up. They congratulated me and wished me a good ascension. I didn’t say anything and would’ve kept my vow of silence had Celeste not come tearing down the quartz hallways like a bowling ball. She flung her arms around me, and my rickety heart dropped another crumb, one for her this time.
“Oh, Leigh, I’m going to miss you so much,” she wept.
I crushed her against me wishing I could take her with me at least. “Ditto, honey.”
Our system was cruel—casting us out, making us grow up without parents in a world that wasn’t always kind, and then, once we’d made a home for ourselves, once we’d woven bonds with humans and Fletchings, it called us back and expected us to sever the strings of our past so we could start braiding new ones.
“Leigh, we need to go,” Asher said softly, the first words he’d spoken since leaving Jarod’s study that morning when the world had still been a lustrous place.
“Grow those pretty purple feathers fast, okay?”
Celeste wiped her freckled cheeks.
I leaned toward her ear and whispered, “And watch over Jarod for me. Protect him until he gets to fifty.” As I straightened, I added, “And Muriel!”
I hadn’t even said goodbye to the woman who’d mothered me this past month. Hadn’t hugged her. Hadn’t expressed how grateful I was for her endless patience and tenderness.
Another crumb tumbled from my chest.
Celeste swallowed, her eyes so red her irises seemed more amber than brown.
“Love you, kiddo.” I stamped a long kiss onto her brow, then turned, and entered the Channel.
Asher stepped in after me, and the sparkling smoke thickened as it lapped at our bodies. He extended his hand, and even though the only one I wanted to hold had been ripped from my fingers, I placed my palm over his.
As we rocketed upward, I thought I heard the archangel mumble that he was sorry, but perhaps, it was the wind whooshing in my ears and dancing in my hair that created the illusion of an apology.
Chapter 61
Our childhood had been filled with stories about Elysium—the arch made of mother-of-pearl that welcomed angels and souls into the quartz capital, the seven glittery waterfalls that coursed down the white stone walls and crashed melodically into a fountain broad as a lake, the floors of abodes and shops and restaurants carved into the glossy rock, the rainbow-colored creatures that frolicked through the balmy air, their scales, fur, and feathers glinting in both sunlight and starlight.
My broken heart pumped with hollow joy as the stone beneath my feet began to glow, the veins of angel-fire flickering to life as the elysian day dimmed. The glittery lavender smoke twined around my feet as I stepped out of the Channel, a cavity built right into the rock façade, too symmetrical and smooth to be natural.
“The Canyon of Reckoning,” I whispered, spinning to take in the walls of solid white rock so tall they seemed to pierce the very sky.
Above me, a skein of birds—not birds . . . angels—flew around the arch, some swooping beneath it and others climbing higher before diving back down. I missed their landing because of the distance and the tall wall guarding the entrance to the fortified city.
I’d dreamed of this place; it outshone all of my dreams.
How I longed to hear Jarod carp about how everything was so tediously shiny and white, how I yearned to feel his fingers squeeze mine and twirl me so I could take everything in. But the man who stood beside me was blonde and winged and blue-eyed, not my dark sinner with his twisted sense of humor, ridiculously expensive suits, and smooth wingless shoulders.
“Is this how you imagined it?” Asher asked, and I sensed him trying to inject enthusiasm into his voice, enthusiasm he himself wasn’t feeling.
“It’s more beautiful.”
His eyebrows quirked, probably surprised I was capable of finding splendor in anything.
“I can’t wait for Jarod to see it,” I murmured. “That’s the Pearly Arch, isn’t it?”
“The one and only.” His timbre was low and gentle like the breeze that gusted through the square, carrying the scents of citrus and salt.
The arch’s pearlescent surface refracted light and dappled the stone surrounding it. Two rainbow-winged sparrows swooped around me, greeting me with a melodious aria before flocking down the opposite end of the canyon.
“The Nirvana Sea,” Asher explained even though I hadn’t asked what lay on that end.
“And where is Abaddon?”
He lifted his chin toward the opposite wall and the identical hollow that graced the rock wall. “The entrance is through that Channel.”
Dark, shimmery smoke slithered around the white rock, enticing and chilling.
“How long do you think it will take Jarod to get his score to fifty?” I asked, just as two Malakim materialized in the Channel behind us, golden orbs nestled in their palms—harvested souls.
“Evening, Seraph,” both intoned.
“Good evening,” Asher said.
“How long?” I asked again, one-track minded.
Asher cleared his throat. “Your parents are here.” He nodded to the Abaddon Channel.
“My . . . parents?”
Two winged figures emerged from the steel smoke, draped in black leather from neck to toe. They stopped in the middle of the canyon, shimmery wings tucked into their spines.
I pushed all thoughts of Jarod aside and concentrated on the angels who’d created me. I didn’t run to them, the same way they didn’t run to me—all of us strangers.
My mother’s golden hair snapped in the breeze, wavy and long like mine. My father’s was cut short but not short enough to hide the copper shade of it that shimmered in the glowing rocks confining us.
“Are you ready to meet them?” Asher asked, as another Malakim passed by us, leading his collected soul toward the dark entrance of purgatory.
Jarod’s face flashed behind my swollen lids, and my hand rose to my heart. “No. But I wasn’t ready for any of this.”
I pressed my palm to my chest and shut my eyes, and for a second, I could almost imagine it was his pulse I was feeling instead of my own. I’d started to know the rhythm of his blood better than my own.
Soon, I told myself, inhaling the lingering scent of him.
When I opened my lids, the two angels were watching me, patient or unhurried, I wasn’t sure. “What am I supposed to call them? Mom and Dad?”
“It’s up to you.”
“What do you call your parents, Seraph?”
“I call them by their names.”
&
nbsp; My gaze lingered on my father’s wings, entirely silver as though tipped in a vat of liquid metal. Like mine. “What are my parents’ names?”
“Raphael and Sofia.”
I studied their features as I loomed closer, trying to spot other similarities.
“Hello, child,” Raphael said.
Child? How old was my father? Since he was a pure Verity like myself, and I was the first to be born in several generations, I estimated he was quite ancient.
“How lovely you are,” Sofia said, her gaze running over me the same way mine had raced over her. She broke away from my father to move closer and lifted her hand but hesitated. “May I?”
May she what? Touch me? I nodded, and the pads of her fingers landed gently on my cheekbone.
“You have my eyes and mouth, but your wings”—she turned to Raphael, her pale pink feathers tipped in silver swaying from the abrupt movement—“they’re your father’s. Pure Verity wings.” She swung back around, green eyes glistening with amazement.
In the human world, she would’ve been considered my sister. Not my mother. Angels who remained in Elysium were untouched by time. Only those who traveled to Earth or lived in guilds aged, slowly but still their faces wrinkled and their skin softened.
“Why didn’t you ever come to see me?” I hated how juvenile I sounded, especially since most parents didn’t visit their offspring.
Sofia looked at Asher as though seeking help in how to answer my question. “It is hard to get away from Abaddon. Our workforce isn’t very consequent in the nether region of our dimension.”
Work had kept them away? “In twenty years, you couldn’t get a single day off?”
My mother flinched.
My father’s hand wrapped around her wrist and pulled her back toward him. “We could have traveled to Earth, but we chose not to make the trip, child.”
“Why?”
“You are our third offspring,” Raphael said.
Perhaps hearing that I had siblings should’ve been what stuck with me, but jealousy sprang up instead. “And what? You used all your vacation days on them?”
My father’s eyes narrowed. I’d known him all of a minute, and he already disliked me. We were off to a great start. “Our two other Fletchings never completed their wings.”
“And it destroyed us, because we’d traveled to the guilds, built relationships with them,” Sofia said. “We couldn’t go through that again, Leigh.” She smiled, her hand moving toward my cheek again.
I sucked in a breath but allowed her palm to bond with my skin.
“We are so happy to meet you and so proud.” My mother’s voice shook. “We heard you gave Seraph Claire’s husband a run for his money. A Triple. Well done, my beautiful girl.”
I bristled. Jarod wasn’t a Triple, not anymore. And lowering his rank wasn’t an achievement; it was justice.
“You’ll get to meet him soon.” I glanced toward Asher, who was staring at the Pearly Arch as though he’d never seen it before. “His rank’s dropping fast. He’ll reach Elysium in no time.”
My mother nodded. My father didn’t even twitch. Apparently, I hadn’t inherited my effusiveness from him.
Silence billowed around us like the smoke from the Channels.
“How wonderful,” my mother finally said.
The luminescent stone made Raphael’s silver feathers glitter. “We should let her get settled, Sofia.”
“But we just—”
“May we come visit you tomorrow, child?”
I wished he hadn’t felt the need to ask for my permission, but I was as much a stranger to him as my parents were to me.
I sighed, tabling my unduly chilliness. They’d lost two kids. Even though I wished they’d visited, I understood their reticence. “You can come to see me anytime.”
The set of my father’s shoulders relaxed, and a smile breached his stiff expression.
It was strange to think of them as my parents since they both looked so young. I wondered if that incongruity would ever change. What if my trips to Earth—once I became a Malakim—left more traces on my face than existed on theirs?
I stared around me again, at this home I’d need to apprehend, and it reminded me of the first time I’d entered Jarod’s realm. How lost I’d felt that night, and yet I would’ve given anything to turn the needles of time and go back to that day. I would’ve given anything for Jarod to find me all over again.
I glanced back at the lavender smoke curling from the portals and whispered, “Hurry.”
Chapter 62
Asher led me under the Pearly Arch that loomed breathtakingly high and glistened like the inside of an oyster shell in spite of the entrenching dusk. Did angel-fire also irrigate it or was some other magic making it glow?
I was about to ask Asher when I got distracted by a flock of angels gliding overhead, wings extended, feathers fluttering, voices crisscrossing the warm air. Their gazes arrowed to Asher, then to me, and their eyebrows rose, but they didn’t land to greet me or salute the archangel.
“You can do that too, now.” Asher’s voice made me jump. “Want to try?”
“Um.” The breeze tickled my feathers. No. Not the wind. They were twitching. “What if I fall?”
“Wings make you fly, Leigh. It is only their absence that make you fall.”
He smiled an encouraging smile, the sort of smile the Ophanim offered us Fletchings when we doubted ourselves. Us Fletchings . . . I was no longer a Fletching. I’d graduated from the guilds, but since there’d been no celebration, the promotion went unnoticed. I’d celebrate when Jarod arrived. My chest squeezed for the trillionth time, dropping another invisible crumb.
I tucked my wings into my back, deciding I would wait for Jarod. I had no desire to soar without him. “Some other time.”
Asher’s brow crinkled, and his wings, which had started to spread, retracted a little. “Don’t be scared, Leigh.”
“Scared? Oh, Seraph, flying doesn’t scare me.”
“Then why don’t you want to try?” His long golden hair frolicked around his face. He bound it with his fist to keep it out of his eyes.
“It’s a big milestone for angels. One I’d like to share with Jarod.”
Asher’s pupils shrank, and he released his hold on his hair. “By foot, the way is longer, so we should get going.”
His tone was edged with something . . . an emotion I couldn’t put my finger on. Annoyance? Frustration?
“You’re mad at me,” I said.
“You stopped living the day you met Jarod; you stopped dreaming!”
“No, Seraph, I never stopped living or dreaming. I merely redesigned my life and dreams to fit with Jarod’s. You can’t open your heart to someone and expect things not to fall out or to slip in.”
His turquoise eyes ground into mine, condemning. Just like Celeste, he thought I was crazy. I didn’t hold it against them. Love needed to be experienced to be understood.
He huffed as we crossed beneath the Arch and came to a stop at the top of a knoll. He jabbed at the air, gesturing to the sunken center where gilt-edged smoke curled off the surface of a body of water so wide and round it seemed ridiculous to call it a fountain even though seven colossal angel statues rose in the middle and spurted water from their raised hands.
“The Lev—it’s the heart of the city.” Asher’s tone was short.
He pointed to the horseshoe-shaped rock surrounding the fountain along which coursed the seven waterfalls. Openings were sculpted into the glowing rock, like bay windows. “Every layer of rock comprises a tier of elysian society. At the bottom you have the Neshamaya, where human souls reside and operate businesses open to all—restaurants, shops, clubs. Then the Hadashya, where the new angels live.”
“My stop.”
“Yes. Above that, there’s the Yashanya where older angels reside until they elect to retire to the Nirvana Mountains.”
“Where are the mountains?”
He pointed in the direction the sparrows h
ad flown earlier. “Beyond the sea. You can’t see them from down here.”
I squinted toward the cleft in the rock, trying to spot what lay beyond, but the miles and narrowness of the opening hid the landscape, so I refocused on the city. “What’s on the fourth tier?”
“The Emtsaya where you’ll be sorted by calling and taught everything you’ll need to know. And then at the top”—he pointed to the plateau from which flowed the waterfalls—“is where I live and work. The Shevaya. Angels and souls—or Neshamim in the celestial tongue—may wander everywhere. Erelim guard the capital and all the cities surrounding it but rarely have need to intervene.”
I followed him down a staircase carved into the rock. Since the Neshamim floated and the angels flew, I doubted the stairs were put to much use.
The Arch cast dabs of color on the molten spread that filled the fountain basin and undulated like water but swelled like smoke. I crouched by the edge and dipped my hand inside, the substance licking my fingers like warm clouds.
“Our water is called ayim.”
An iridescent water lily knocked gently into my knuckles, its petals falling open as though to welcome me, or was it the stars it welcomed? Did it bloom at night like the ones in the guilds?
As I rose from my crouch, I repeated the word, rolling it on my tongue, “Ayim.”
“It also fills the Nirvana Sea.”
“How very strange.”
“One day, you’ll find human water strange.” Asher untensed a fraction. “Keeping you here a hundred years isn’t simply to guard you from recognition in the human world. The law was primarily put in place to help you adjust to your new world.”
It was still a cruel law.
He led me around the belt of quartz, feeding me more words from the celestial tongue. Angels and humans—not humans . . . souls cloaked in the human flesh of their choosing—stared at us as we passed. Well, at the Seraphim. It wasn’t customary for new angels to be escorted into Elysium by one of the Seven. Usually, the Ophanim brought their students up. But not much about my ascension had been customary.
Feather (Angels of Elysium Book 1) Page 35