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April.

“Gabriel.”

The ladder is unstable.

“It’s an old house. Everything is unstable.”

That is not a reassuring argument.

She laughs. And there it is again. That peculiar sensation in my chest. I have no chest, of course. Not at the moment. But I feel it nonetheless.

I’ve become distressingly accustomed to the sound of her laughter. To the sight of her pink hair. To the way she talks to herself while she works. To the fact that she leaves a mug of coffee beside me each morning, even when she knows I will not drink it. After that first morning she made me a cup, I was uncertain if I could actually eat or drink. I decided not to risk it and have merely allowed myself to inhale the rich aroma of the coffee. I’ve told her she doesn’t have to make me a separate cup.

She claims it’s so I won’t feel left out.

I have spent one hundred and forty-three years without company. I had forgotten what it was like to have someone consider my feelings. Even in the smallest, most ridiculous ways.

“Ha!” April gives the curtain rod a triumphant tug. One end comes loose, but the other does not.

Careful.

“I’ve got it.” She reaches farther. The ladder shifts. She stretches her arm.

The ladder tilts.

April.

“Almost—”

APRIL!

The ladder slips. She screams. And falls.

For a moment, the entire world seems to stop. I see her hand reach for the wall. I see the curtain rod tumble from her grasp. I see her body pitch backward toward the hardwood floor.

I know with a certainty that is absolute and terrifying that she is going to be hurt.

Perhaps badly. Perhaps⁠—

No. Absolutely not. Not April. Not my April.

Something surges through me.

It is not pain. I have known pain. It is something infinitely worse. Fear. Pure, unadulterated terror.

I can do nothing to prevent it, and I hate myself for it. But then the stone cracks. Heat floods my body. My wings vanish, and my arms are suddenly flesh.

I launch myself forward. I have no time to consider the impossibility of what is happening. No time to marvel at the fact that I am moving without April’s touch. I simply move, and somehow manage to catch her before she hits the floor.

The force of her fall sends us both stumbling backward, and I turn so that my shoulder takes the impact against the wall.

Something crashes beside us. The ladder, I presume.

I do not care. I have April in my arms. She is warm and alive and as best I can tell unharmed.

“April.” My voice sounds strange, hoarse and terrified.

Her eyes are squeezed shut.