Feather

Chapter 2

Ophan Mira's voice boomed through the guild, asking us all to make our way to the atrium.

I debated whether to even attend the celebration since I wasn't eligible—I was missing way too many feathers. Besides, I didn't even want to be an archangel's wife . . . if that was in fact the reason for Seraph Asher's visit.

Although archangel consorts were key social figures in Elysium, the equivalent of First Ladies, they couldn't travel to Earth. My ambition was to enter the malakim's ranks in order to shepherd souls from one body to the next.

Ophan Mira's voice reverberated again from the guild's intercom-system. "Fletchings who do not show up to greet our honored guest will lose a feather."

Groaning, I closed my book and rolled off my bed. I slid my feet into a pair of crimson stilettos, then strode through the starlit quartz maze. In the atrium, I sidled against the vines of honeysuckle racing up the quartz walls. The veins of angel-fire irrigating the stone made the tiny blooms glow as brightly as the girls smoldering Asher.

Like moths to a flame.

"You think they're attracted to him because of his status or his looks?" The voice belonged to Celeste, a fifteen-year-old wisp of a girl with hair the same chestnut brown as her tipped eyes and spray of freckles.

I studied our guest of honor as he threw his head back and laughed at something one of my peers had just told him. "Power makes people more attractive, doesn't it?"

Although five years separated me and Celeste, I sometimes found I had more in common with her than I did with Eve.

"Leigh, why are you standing back here?"

"Same reason you are."

"I doubt that."

I frowned.

"I'm standing back here because of these." She tipped her head to her purple winglets.

Although she'd gotten her wing bones at ten, a year or two younger than most girls in the guild, only a hundred and some feathers graced them. Celeste usually magicked them away, hating the pitying stares they garnered from the other fifteen-year-olds with much fuller wings.

I returned my gaze to the glittering, twittering crowd of fletchings. "I'm missing eighty-one feathers, Celeste. There's no way I'll earn them in time to be considered."

"You could pick a Triple."

I grunted. "First off, I'm not interested in spending time with a murderer." All Triples had blood on their hands. You didn't earn the worst sinner score by committing petty thefts. "And two, I want to be a malakim, not archangel arm candy."

She heaved a sigh. "I wish I could also be a soul shepherdess. Or a ranker."

I bit my lip, saddened that becoming a malakim or an ishim was outside of Celeste's reach.

"You know, if you were archangel arm candy, you could have that stupid, archaic rule changed."

Both my eyebrows shot up before I realized it was more pipe dream than attainable ambition. "Four out of the Seven would have to rule in favor of letting hybrids become malakim and ishim. When was the last time a law was amended? Two centuries ago?"

"Three hundred and sixty-one years ago. The law allowing angels to give up their wings."

And thus, their immortality. Before the law was amended, angels who wanted to forfeit their immortality were punished with menial jobs or locked in Abaddon for entertaining such blasphemous ideas.