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Absofuckinglutely,she agreed, and flew away.
Precious and I sat there, awkwardness setting in as usual. But when I held out a hand, she took it. “So, that was your first kiss, huh?”
“Yeah,” she muttered. “And I know I shouldn’t have done it, I do. But for, like, that one tiny moment, I felt like that part of me that hurts all the time, didn’t hurt so much.”
I let my other hand rise to rest on her wing, on the place where she had one missing feather. It had fallen out—or been plucked—years before, when we’d first left Sanctuary. We didn’t talk about it often, but all of her parents were worried about what it meant that she felt pain every day. Especially after she’d admitted to Hope a few months before that it was getting worse.
I was almost certain it was part of why she was always in a foul mood. It wasn’t like Protectors had hormones. Although, she was the only one of her kind, so who knew what was normal.
“It didn’t even last a second,” she said, slanting a glance at me. “It probably doesn’t even count as a first kiss.”
I smiled weakly. I wasn’t going to get into the ins and outs of non-consensual kissing. I already knew her Papa Gavriel would take point on that conversation. “I get it. You’re lonely. You want someone to love.”
“Yeah. Or even just Netflix and chill with.”I threw up in my mouth a little bit at that, but before I could ask where she’d heard that expression, she went on. “So if it wasn’t the thing with Perception, what were you coming to talk to me about?”
Oh boy.This was going to get ugly.
“You know the new building we’ve all been working on?” The senior Guides and Protectors had been pooling our energy for the past few months to work on the project. A little piece of Sanctuary in the Limen, and it was almost done. Only none of us had talked to Precious about what it was. She hadn’t paid much attention, and when she’d asked Mikhail what he was spending so much time on, he’d called it a “community hall.”
“Yeah, what about it?”
“Well, it’s almost finished, and…”Oh, fudge me sideways.She was going to hate me even more once I told her what her dads and moms had all agreed on. “It’s not really a, uh, community center. Precisely.”
“What is it?” Her eyes narrowed. “If it’s another school building, I swear I’ll burn it down.” Tiny sparks shot from her eyes.
“You said that was anaccident, Presh,” I growled. “Don’t tell me you wasted all that energy to get out of going to classes—” I gasped when her left eye twitched. It was her tell. We had questioned her very thoroughly the year before, when the school building had caught fire right before her Earth History from the Jurassic to the Present final exam. I’d been sure she’d done it on purpose. She was my daughter, after all, and I would have burned down the entire realm if I’d had to sit exams like that. She’d vowed that she hadn’t.
But Precious had a few traits that no one else in the Limen had. Perfect Devil as she was, she could lie very effectively, without anyone knowing. Anyone except… “Did Perception know?”
She shrugged, but her cheeks went even more glittery.
“Why, Presh?” She tried to pull her hand away, but I held on. “I won’t tell.” She sneered, and I squeezed her hand tighter. “I swear on all the glitter in the universe, I will not tell a soul.” I closed off my mental lines of communication with my mates and hoped they wouldn’t go probing around in these memories. “Why did you do it?”
“He was doing private tutoring with her,” she said after a long moment. “With Adoration.” Her chin trembled. “He had Tradition giving me all those tests, and I had to re-take them when I failed, and I was failingeverythingbecause I couldn’t focus when I kept hearing him in the next room over withher.Even when I asked him to help me study, he told me no.Shewas the one he wanted to be with.”
She held out her arm, turning it to catch the early morning light from the Celestial Realm. The smears of smut and glitter she’d carried around her entire life made patterns like an Impressionist masterpiece on her skin. “I’m evil, and ugly, and stupid, Mom. I didn’t mean to burn it down. I just got mad, and when I do, bad things happen.”
My heart broke into a million pieces as she dissolved into sobs again. I rocked her back and forth, even though she had been too big to hold on my lap for years now. When had she gotten so big? When had she lost sight of how perfect and unique she was?
“I think Adoration is a total skank, you know,” I whispered in her ear when she quieted down. “She’s desperate. She throws herself at a lot of Protectors, even some Guides. I saw her flirt withFidelity.”
We both said, “Ewwww!” at the same time, then laughed.
She sniffled, wiped her face on the front of her overalls, and tried to smile. “So, what about the community center?”
I sighed. “It’s not a community center.”
“Nice try, Mom. Dad can’t tell a lie.” She screwed up her nose. “Or at least, he wouldn’t. Baba Rumple would, maybe…”
I fidgeted. “Fine, it’ssort ofa community center. For special, um, groups. And group activities.” She was glaring at me again, and I let out a breath. “Precious, when a Protector, or even a Guide, and another Protector or Guide… or even a whole group of them… love each other, very, very much, and want to show that love in a physical and spiritual fashion—”
“It’s a sex club?” Her eyes went so big, I could see planets and distant suns moving inside them. “They’re building a new Merge?”
“Yes,” I said slowly, wondering who in the helter-skelter had told her about the old Merge back in Sanctuary. “But it’s for adults only. No one under two hundred is allowed to enter.”
She let out a string of curse words so filthy, I could see the smut accumulate on her face like someone was splattering her with a paintbrush. “Who madethatrule? You? Papa Gavriel? Tata Sunny?”
“We all did,” I told her as she wrenched away. Desperate, I rushed on, regretting my words even as they flooded out. “But if you’d like to take a peek inside… it’s not opening until tomorrow. We can sneak in?”
