“Close your eyes and I’ll tell you the story of how Pierre and I started, and then of how we ended.”
Ended. How I loathed that word.
I forced my lids to lower as she started her story. As though my mind had made a secret pact with my heart about not wanting to hear the ending, it shut off while Muriel and Pierre were still blissful and together.
I startled awake when dawn crept around the edges of the thick burgundy damask, damning myself for having missed out on precious time with Mimi. Rubbing the shards of sleep out of my eyes, I rolled over.
When my gaze met a set of eyes I hadn’t seen in years, one I’d hoped never to look upon again, I sat up.
If the seraphim had come, then that meant only one thing: Mimi was gone.
5
“No!” I crawled toward Muriel, not paying Seraph Asher any mind.
Her face was smooth, free of the pain and melancholy she’d carried for decades. I pressed my cheek against hers.
“You left me without saying goodbye,” I croaked into her ear.
“Celeste . . .” Asher’s voice tossed me back to the darkest time in my life.
I pulled away from Mimi, palming my cheeks that dampened so fast the tears felt like they were bleeding from my very pores. “You, shut up.” My brow puckered as my wing bones tensed and expelled a feather. “Mother feather.” I shut my eyes until the ache subsided and then I reeled my lids up and fastened my gaze to the man who’d forced my friend to ascend before incinerating her wings.
Leigh was dead because of him.
“I didn’t know soul-collecting was among a seraphim’s tasks. Don’t the leaders of Elysium have better things to do than ferry around souls?” My spine jammed tight as another feather tumbled from my wing bones.
“I understand you’re in pain—”
“In pain? I’m not in pain. I. Am. Enraged, Seraph.” My voice was barely above a whisper, but it must’ve packed a punch, because Asher squared his broad shoulders and folded his arms, straining the brown suede ensconcing his torso. “First Leigh, now Muriel.” I gathered her hand between mine and pressed it to my cheek, begging her fingers to caress my skin one last time. “Can’t you bring her back? I know she can’t live forever but—” My voice caught. Wavered. I snapped my lips shut before the sob swelling inside me could rend the miserable air.
You promised me weeks.
And crêpes. You promised me crêpes!
My tears dripped around her knuckles, wetting the calluses left behind by her beloved whisks and wooden spoons.
Who am I supposed to go home to on weekends?
Who am I supposed to complain to on bad days? Or on good ones?
Oh . . . Mimi.
“You know, Seraph, she’s going to hate you once her soul takes its Elysium form and realizes what you did. Or rather what you didn’t do, which is save the boy she loved. A boy whose soul didn’t deserve to be erased.”
“Are you done?” Although the contours of Asher’s body were blurry, his cyan irises cinched by a stroke of bronze were in perfect focus.
“The day I’m done decrying the injustices committed by our kind is the day I’m dead, so no, I am not done. But one day, I will be. Could be in three months. Could be in seventy years. Who in Abaddon knows when this body of mine will fail? When death will finally silence me? What a celebration that’ll be throughout the guilds, huh?”
Asher’s jaw hardened while tendons and bones writhed in his tanned forearms, still folded and jammed against his chest. “Are you done now?”
“Wasn’t I speaking English? Oh wait . . . that wouldn’t matter since you’re fluent in all languages.” My shoulder blades struck each other. Another feather gone.
“Celeste, stop it.”
“Why? Am I hurting your feelings, Seraph? I didn’t think you had any.” The ishim plucked me again, and I gritted my teeth, until I realized that the hot slices of pain were muffling the one lancing in my chest. Then my jaw relaxed, and I welcomed the discomfort.
Asher growled low and long.
“Bet you’re regretting having volunteered to collect Muriel’s soul, huh?”
His lips thinned, amplifying the small lines bracketing them as well as the ones edging his eyes. Angels didn’t age when in Elysium or Abaddon and aged extremely slowly within guilds, and yet Asher seemed to have aged ten years since I’d last seen him in Paris.
I sat back on my heels and directed a vitriolic glare his way. “Why is it that you made the trip anyway?”
“To uphold a promise I made Leigh. One I failed to keep.”
“What promise was that, Seraph?”
“To help you.”
“Help me?” I almost laughed. No. I did laugh. And then I stopped laughing. “I hope it wasn’t to help me ascend because I have zero interest in channeling upward.”
We stared off. If he thought I’d avert my eyes first, he really didn’t know me at all. Then again, why would he know me? It wasn’t as though we’d spent hours together in the past. The most time we’d been in each other’s company was the rainy afternoon he’d collected me from the Demon Court to give Jarod time and space to explain what he’d done with Asher’s help.
Deep down, I knew Jarod was more to blame in Leigh’s forced ascension, but Asher should’ve refused to interfere. By accepting to sign Leigh off from Jarod, he’d doomed her. Had he done it hoping that once away from her lover, she’d change her mind and marry the archangel?
To think I’d encouraged her to seek out the seraphim’s favor. I should’ve kept my mouth shut the day he’d visited the guild. I should never have gone to Paris and encouraged her to complete her mission. If I’d just stayed out of her life, then maybe she’d be up in Elysium instead of buried under cold earth.
It struck me that the fault was mine, too.
My eagerness for change had doomed Leigh.
The realization made Mimi’s hand skid out of my grip and dent the thick duvet.
My stomach cramped with guilt, filling my throat with bile. I spun and scrambled off the bed, but I must’ve knocked into one of my fallen feathers because the bedroom vanished, replaced by a patch of sunburnt lawn fenced in by wooden spikes and wire.
“You can’t starve your dog because you’re mad at him.” I stroked the pudgy Rottweiler pup between his floppy ears and got a sloppy kiss in return. “He’s still a baby. He doesn’t understand what he’s done wrong.”
Monica yanked on his leash. “He’s my dog, not yours.”
“I’m not trying to steal him from you.”
“Then why the hell are you here?”
“I’m here to remind you that you need to go easy on him.”
“He’s a guard dog. At least, he’s supposed to be. I might have to ask for my money back if he keeps lickin’ snotty kids. How old are you anyway? Eight?”
I balled my hands. “Eleven.”
“Whatever. You’re a kid. A kid who’s gettin’ on my nerves, and I’m runnin’ all out of nerves between you and him.” She nodded toward her dog.
“What’s his name?”