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“She?” Something prickled in my soul. A premonition. I saw a young woman, dark winged and dark eyed, with shimmering skin, and evil surrounding her on all sides. Lost, trapped, crying for him. For Revel. “You don’t mean our Mother. You mean someone else.”
“Well, Mother, too,” he replied, stepping back into the clouded space we’d created, the final place that would separate Sanctuary, this place of learning and growth for all the children of our kind, from the gathering darkness of the Abyss. “I will be a bridge for as long as the Maker of Mysteries needs. And then… I’ll be something else. She hasn’t shared what, but I can tell it will be worth the wait.”
“I still don’t understand how,” I began, uncertain how to state my doubts. Revel had always been the least serious of all our siblings. The most likely to leave a task undone, to dance away from his work and fall into the lustful embrace of others. “How can you be certain you won’t move? Crumble? The pressure from the void, the strain of holding the realms apart… You’re strong, but—”
“Not the strongest of our siblings,” he laughed. Then he laughed again, as if he were savoring the sound. “No. The younger shouldn’t be, should he? But I can become as strong as I need to be. All it takes is a little sacrifice.” His breath caught, as if on a sob. “Remind me of that. Please. Sing it to me, later. That the little sacrifice will release me.”
Little sacrifice? Those two words sent me to my knees, though I had no understanding of why. “Remind you? Revel?”
His hands landed on my head, and he lifted my face to his. Tears streaked down his cheeks, the air around us suddenly filling with the scent of lilies. “I have to let my memory of the deepest mysteries go, if I am to change.”
I held up my hands and caught the tears as they fell, as he sang a Naming Song that stripped away his identity. Transformed it. When I could stop weeping, I sang along, harmonizing with him.
Eternal Bridge. Great Conduit. “Great Gate,” he rasped as we both stared down into my hands.
The tears I’d caught had formed a small, golden, bell-shaped lump in my hands. It was warm, soft, and infinitely precious.
“I take my strength into my new life,” my youngest brother who had been Revel said, as he stepped back and began to change. He grew taller and wider, and began to glow, as golden as the bell in my hands. He lifted his hands high, stretching his wings, which began to unfurl into golden arches and swirls, filling the one gap in the realm we’d spent so long forming together.
“I leave with you the joyful secrets of Her great plans. The dance of Her unfurling light. The melody of Her greatest truths. And my knowledge of the end of my own story, dearest Seraphiel.”
“I’ll miss dancing with you, Revel.”
“Will you sing to me?” he asked, his tone strained. “Sing to me, so I don’t forget myself entirely?”
“Of course I will. Every day. I will sing all our songs.” The songs of making and naming and joy.
He blinked, and his eyes grew troubled. “Seraphiel. What’s happening? I can’t see. It’s so cold. What have I done? I can’t—” His lips moved, but no sound emerged. His skin changed, losing its perfect dark hue, and turned paler, bleaching into a golden swath. An almost punishing heat emanated from the surface of it, and it took all my resolve not to step back from it.
But he had given up so much to play his part in the making of this realm. The least I could do was stand watch, to witness his sacrifice. And sing.
Let it not be forever, Mother,I prayed with my melody.Let him not be separated from us for long.The small bell grew cooler in my hands, and I felt a pang in the well of my soul.
It would be a very, very long time before I danced with my brother again.
He became a gate. I stood, weeping, watching, as the physical form my brother had worn for millennia altered entirely. At last, after what felt like an agonizing eternity, the metal surface—shimmering with movement as if a great wind blew behind it—grew cool enough to approach. There were fields there, wide and waving with grain. Mountains in the distance, and a sky filled with storm clouds.
And a small, winged form clutching his head in his hands, staring up at me, his mouth moving, no sounds emerging.
But each time the figure tried to speak, the small chime in my hand hummed.
“It was his voice?” Feather asked quietly, taking the ruined bell from Mik’s hand gently, as if she held a newborn chick.
“More than that, I think. It was his knowledge of Her divine mysteries. Or at least, many of them. I know that after Revel became the Great Gate, he didn’t understand… why he had done it. Not precisely. I explained as much as I knew, but he had never told me all of it. Revel was a joker, a trickster. He liked to keep secrets, and it was his nature to tease us with the very best ones.” I sighed deeply. “The first new souls I created in Sanctuary—with the help of Mikhail’s Master, the original Maker in that realm—were formed while we still didn’t understand how to use the chime. We experimented, and ended up having to rename a few of the earliest souls.”
Feather’s eyes grew wide. “You got their names wrong? And just… renamed them? And you gave me so much shizz about Precious!”
“You named her after the One Ring of Power, forged in secret in the fires of Mount Doom, you beautiful brat,” Mikhail grumbled. “I’m sure whatever mistakes Seraphiel made, they weren’t that bad.”
I laughed. “Not nearly.” We all grew silent, staring at the chime. “But that’s why I’m certain Precious was the one to do this.” Pain resonated through all our mating bonds, and the mating feathers in my flesh constricted slightly.
“But why?” Gavriel asked quietly, his hand on his chest. “What was she trying to make?”
“She wasn’t making anything, was she?” Feather whispered, her voice catching. She held up the chime, examining it closely. “She is the child of the Maker, after all.”
“I think she was trying to change something.”I shook my head. That would not have resulted in this much destruction. “Possibly she was attempting to remake something…” I didn’t want to finish my sentence, since I knew how terribly it would hurt our little mate. Feather’s heart was softer than ever, as if motherhood had altered her fundamentally.
Our daughter’s presence had changed all of us.
