Notes: Crossover with Vagrant Story. In other words, Mullenkamp doesn't belong to me. Neither does Raphael, but you already knew that. Beta by the fantabulous Harukami. This fic was two years coming, so here it is.
The prayer woke Ardouisur out of a sound sleep.
Please, God, he'll kill me, he'll kill her, oh please!
She leaned forward and took a few calming breaths. The prayer was a cold, fervent, terrified rush, making bile rise in her throat.
Oh God oh God oh God - please, I've never asked for much...please, I need to give him a son, or he'll kill me, kill my little girl - oh God, please!
The pleading, the taint of evil choking around the woman's future...
Ardousiur flipped the covers back and nearly made it to the washroom before becoming violently ill, falling to her knees on the cool stone floor.
She had rinsed out her mouth, and thrown a robe on, intent on flying to Raphael's abode - anything, anything to soothe her out of the chill of the desperate prayer, anything to answer it.
"Madam," a voice greeted quietly. "His Grace, the Voice, requires your presence."
Ardousiur jumped at the noise, shutting the door with more force than she had intended. "And you are?"
A female Guardian, her blond braids coiled on top of her head, saluted smartly. "Ehrengrad, madam. If you will allow me to escort you?"
Ardouisur shivered in the night air, her thin robe doing little to dispel the cold or her sense of urgency. "Give my regrets to his Grace. I have a prayer to answer, so if you don't mind - "
"Madam. It's about the prayer. If you would please follow me."
The Guardian looked like some nightmarish china doll in armor, except for eyes that burned like pale green fire. Ardouisur nodded slowly, and extended her wings to follow.
Ardouisur touched down on a window ledge of the Tower. A warm hand grasped her own and helped her down.
"Your Grace," she murmured politely.
"My dear Ardouisur," the Metatron replied, his voice soft, not disturbing the quiet of the night. "I apologize for the short notice - I was also taken rather unawares, as you can see." He gestured to himself, his body wrapped in a muted silver robe.
The prayer hit her again in a sickening wave.
"Easy," the Metatron murmured, guiding her to a chair "Breathe deep - do you want some water?"
She shook her head, and slowly her shaking eased, . "I can't stand it,"she rasped, her throat raw. "I can't stand it. I have to help her, please..." Her fingers closed over the knot that held the Metatron's robe closed.
Slender fingers removed her hand from his clothing. "It's not that easy this time. Think, dearest. Reach out to her and tell me if you think you can solve this by taking me inside you."
She closed her eyes, reached for the fragile, desperate soul. Normal, normal, nothing wrong with the woman, nothing wrong...but the man, her husband....
The man stank of evil. This one....had sold his soul.
Ardouisur opened her eyes and tried to catch her breath. "He'll kill her, I can't do anything with that - I can't superimpose with that, there's no connection. He'll kill her..."
Her throat felt tight as she reached out for the little girl. There was a sense of the ephemeral about the soul...this one was not destined to reside on Earth for long. But from what? So many children succumbed to illness in their early years - it wasn't proof that the man would kill both child and mother, was it?
"He will kill them both," the Metatron affirmed. "Unless she provides him with an heir."
"Why are you telling me this?" she raged, helpless tears spilling down her cheeks. "Why tell me if I can't help her?!"
Fingers stroked through her hair. "Because you can, if you don't think the price is too high."
"No price is too high," she said firmly, with unshakable faith.
The Metatron looked grave and sorrowful all at once. "Everything has a price and everyone has a limit. I wouldn't advise you to agree to the former without knowing the latter."
She looked deep into his eyes for a moment, then turned her head. "Just tell me. I'll do it."
The Metatron stood and walked some distance away. "Tell me something, my dear. Is Truth inherently good?"
She blinked, startled at the seeming non sequitor. "I suppose so," she ventured after a moment.
"Do you? Tell me, then, is Love also inherently good?"
"Love is the greatest grace of all," she said automatically.
A soft chuckle. "And you're only parroting a truism, without putting any thought into it. So. If the Truth hurts someone badly, sends them to madness and despair, is it still good?" He paused for a moment. "This child the woman begs for - this child could have the capacity to tell the Truth. It's important for people to hear it once in awhile. But you see, my dear, Truth is not inherently good or evil. It exists. Now, how it is presented is another matter entirely. The child would have the capacity for great good or great evil."
"With a father like that," she whispered, "I fear he'll have little choice."
"With a mother like you, he'd have more than you might think."
Ardouisur sat up in shock. "What...what are you talking about? Will the child die and become a student? Then..then what's the point? The husband will still kill his wife and her daughter if his son dies!"
"Shhhh," the Metatron soothed. "Nothing of the sort. I told you this had a price. Let me explain."
"Please do," she snapped, collapsing back into her chair.
He seated himself across from her, with admirable poise. "It's something of a trade, you see. The husband is a Duke of great power. And now that he has sold his soul, he's an instrument of great evil as well."
"Why permit that?" she asked, horrified that such a creature would be permitted to hold a position where he could do so much harm.
"The child," the Metatron said urgently. "The Duke may stay in power so long as he produces an heir. The Duke is of no use to the Court in Hell if he's not in power. They want him to have a child, and that will be both his and their undoing. Because they can't get a child without us, and if we provide them with one, the heir will be ours - by which I mean yours. Under your guidance, the child has the capacity to do truly wonderful, truly good things - to speak the Truth, and to act on it."
She took a moment to absorb it. "I don't see anything to quibble with. A small sacrifice for the greater good - a trade, as you said. The wife and daughter may live, the Duke gets an heir, and we get Truth. So if you don't wish to answer the prayer with me, find someone who will, already."
"There's only one who can do it. You said it yourself - you can't touch the father. You need someone to channel the power of the Court for you, to allow you to work your miracle."
"I would answer the prayer with the Morning Star to see this through," she said, defiant.
An assessing look. "You would, at that. He isn't the one, though. So tell me, is Love inherently good?"
She took a deep breath, and answered honestly. "Love is more painful than anything I've known."
The Metatron nodded slowly. "Likewise, the price of Truth."
"What do you mean?" she whispered after a moment.
"The Leviathan is the one. Give yourself to him, and the child is yours."
"Oh God," she said almost soundlessly, her lungs refusing to draw in air. "Oh God."
She felt herself start to topple forward. Arms caught her before she hit the floor, and alto voice said, "I'm here."
"Imriel," she thought she heard herself say. "God, not Imriel." The world looked grey and spotty, and there was an insistent buzz in her ears.
"You don't have to do it," alto tones soothed. "We would never think less of you, if the price is too dear."
"But I might," she said dully. "I might."
Where does a soul go when it rises neither to Heaven, nor falls to Hell?
Sometimes it stayed tethered to the earth, unable or unwilling to leave, howling out eternity among the living. Sometimes they were heard. More frequently, they were ignored.
But some, Ardouisur knew, became something quite different. Those whose souls touching and twined with the Truth became...
Snowflies.
The land she wandered now might not have existed physically. It was a sunken valley, steeped in twilight, trees arching and protecting the space. The moss was soft beneath her bare feet...the stream cool to the touch. Snowflies danced in the air around her.
But she could not say it was real.
The Truth (the Dark!) breathed here, calm and resonating like a chime just struck. Its power was noticeably different from the Most Holy and the Morning Star, though it derived from both, like the meeting shadow between day and night.
Ardouisur sank against the roots of gnarled oak. "How am I supposed to find you, anyway?" she muttered to herself. She pulled a parchment out of her pocket - a formal agreement, signed by the Metatron and the Leviathan. "'Find the Kildean Priestess,' he says - like she couldn't be just anywhere she wants, and I'd never know."
The sun didn't appear to be setting. Somehow, Ari wasn't surprised.
A jingle of bells made her eyes snap open. "Who's there?" she called warily.
Sitar and rhythm of drums, in the distance.
She stood up, and the valley had changed. Become darker somehow, firelight and snowflies flickering among the trees. Clinking of chimes....behind her?
Ari turned and began walking, though the source of sound was so indistinct. She had to find it.
Snowflies brushing her bare arms, so cold it burned. "Where are you?" she called, the darkness swallowing her voice.
Bells chiming in melodic counterpoint to the music. The snowflies swarmed in clouds, and Ardouisur felt light-headed, felt like she was flying and not walking, which was awfully strange because her wings were folded in...
"You're a long way from home, angel." Voice husky and sweet, with a little amusement, some curiosity.
Ardouisur whirled around to come face to face with the woman who had become a goddess.
"My Lady Mullenkamp," she said respectfully, curtseying. "I've come with a proposal for you."
Mullenkamp's skin glowed golden in the firelight, coins and bells burnished to a copper flame among her red veils and skirts. She smiled slowly. "Can you dance?"
Ardouisur gave her a measured look. "I suppose."
The goddess beckoned. "Dance first with me. Then we'll see."
There was a fire now, ringed with smooth stones. A slight smell of incense curled around the clearing, like the snowflies that flew above.
The music was hard not to dance to. Her hips had already wanted desperately to shift and rock in time. And so she gave in, her bare feet gliding over the grass, her pale green gown swirling around her.
And as she danced, her eyes met and held the dark depths of the goddess, flicked away only to meet once again. They danced opposite each other, the fire dividing them. Eyes meeting, turning away, meeting again. And then, Ardouisur spun once, her hands reaching toward the snowflies above. When she came to a stop, the goddess was right behind her.
"A long way from home," Mullenkamp murmured, her hands resting on Ardouisur's hips. "Why are you here?"
"You're a goddess - don't you know?" Ari replied, though her voice sounded more dreamy to her ears than waspish.
"I didn't say to stop dancing," Mullenkamp said, a pointed reminder in her purred words.
Ardouisur began to dance again, letting Mullenkamp guide them. It was strange to dance when she could not see her partner, yet the goddess managed to lead them with no seeming worry whatsoever, with deft pressure on Ari's hips, the occasional touch of sleekly muscled thigh to thigh.
"Solemn and desperate and terrified and resigned all at once. It sounds tiring," Mullenkamp said, having pulled herself up tight against Ardouisur, so that her lips were just behind the angel's ear.
Ari jerked in surprise, only to feel the grip on her hips tighten almost painfully.
"You're a sacrifice three - four, really - times over. For Heaven, Hell, the Dark....and for the ego of the one who still casts such a miserable shadow over you. And here I thought angels were more progressively minded. How cliché. Sacrifice the woman's virtue for the greater good, and never mind that she thinks, deep down, that she deserves it."
"I don't think..." Ardouisur began to protest, stilling.
"Don't you?" Mullenkamp purred. One hand, clad with bracelets, stole up Ardousiur's stomach to rest between her breasts. "And don't you feel that every time anyone's touched you like this, since him, that it's only duty, and don't you hate it, anyway?"
Ardouisur's blood felt like prickling shards of ice, burning her even as they coursed through her veins.
"You must be so pleased. You've been given the opportunity to lie in his arms once again, with nary a shred of guilt. Because you're being forced to do this, aren't you?"
Ari began to shake with belated anger. "I'm not pleased, I don't want to do this!"
Mullenkamp's arms tightened around her in a constraining embrace. "Why?"
"What why? Because he threw me away, because he doesn't love me!"
A sweet, dark chuckle. "Mmm. You're on the right track. But that's not what you're afraid of. Would you like a hint?"
"I want you to let go!" Ari cried, trying to struggle free.
"Here it is, free of charge: What you're afraid of, what you fear most, is this: that while he stakes a claim on your body once again, he will look no different than he did before, even while professing his supposedly undying love."
Ari did manage to pull free that time, or perhaps the goddess let her go. "You're wrong! He loved me then! I knew it, I felt it!"
"Oh? Then why are you here?"
"For this!" Ari held out the parchment like a shield.
"Tsk-tsk. You dance so well and lie so badly. In any case, I'm afraid I can't oblige you tonight. Come back tomorrow."
Snowflies swirled around them, obscuring Ardouisur's sight. And when they cleared, the goddess was gone and she was alone with her thoughts.
Ardouisur missed Yurkemi most days, but today especially.
Yurkemi had been girly gossip, confidante, sister confessor, and best friend rolled all into one. The Rebellion had taken the two people most dear to Ardouisur - one by choice, one by force.
Yurkemi had known what she was thinking, without words or telepathy - just a look, and they both shared the joke, the memory, the emotion.
And if Yurkemi had been here, she would have reassured Ardouisur - No, you loved each other - Ruah changed him, Ruah seduced him, Imriel loved you, he really loved you -
But Yurkemi was gone. Forever gone, eternal blossom crumbled to dust.
And Ardouisur was no longer able to reassure herself. Not since her words.
He will look no different...
Ardouisur's lips compressed to a thin, angry line. Imriel would of course look different, because he was Fallen now, and the Leviathan, really. Not her Imriel any longer.
She stopped in front of Raphael's home. Raphael, she called quietly.
The door opened after a moment. "Ari!" Raphael greeted her, smiling warmly. "Come in, come in, I must have cookies around here somewhere." He pulled her inside.
"Raphael," she said finally, interrupting his stream of chatter.
Something in her voice must have brought him up short - he closed his mouth mid-word.
"Could we sit down?" she asked, gesturing towards the window seat.
Raphael blinked once, but obediently ushered her over and they settled comfortably on the cushions. "So. What can I do for you, Ari?"
Once she was here, she realized she didn't know where to start. She turned her gaze outside the window, her fingers restlessly picking at the material of her dress. "Raphael...you remember when we were together?"
Raphael's eyes softened. "It's not something I'd forget, Ari...we weren't right for each other, but I still have good memories of us."
"Did you love me?" Ari asked suddenly, though it was not the question she wanted to ask.
Raphael looked sad, maybe a little wistful. "Enough to know that we were both seriously rebounding, and that we needed time to heal. I did love you, Ari - and I still love you. You're one of my dearest friends, you know that, don't you?"
She nodded slowly. "Do you think he loved me?" came a beat later, the words escaping almost without her knowledge.
Raphael's eyebrows rose. "I didn't see much of Imriel, Ari, but he always wanted you around. He was proud of you...he liked people to know that you were together."
"Yes," she said slowly. "That's true. But did he love me, Raphael?"
Raphael looked troubled. "You obviously felt strongly about one another. He was...very upset when you declined to Fall with him."
"If one could characterize a cold murderous rage as being 'upset' - then yes, I suppose that's true," she said thoughtfully.
will look no different, even while professing his supposedly undying love
She stood up abruptly. "Sorry, dear, I have a previous engagement this evening, but it was nice to see you."
Raphael showed her to the door, looking bewildered. "Likewise, darling, likewise."
The valley was drenched in sunlight. The snowflies looked like dandelion puffs, floating this way and that in the breeze.
The goddess was lying underneath a tree, lounging in the dappled shade. Her skirts and veils were a rather appealing shade of dark green.
"I wasn't sure this place had any other setting besides 'dark and mysterious'," Ardouisur called out.
Mullenkamp smiled. It looked friendly in the way that a lioness who has just stuffed herself from the most recent hunt looked friendly. Sleepy and satiated was all very well and good, but it would do well to remember that she had seriously dangerous claws and teeth. "Complacency is an expensive luxury, in my opinion."
Ardouisur sat down a few feet away. "And paranoia is better left to Omael."
A corner of the goddess' mouth quirked up. "Touché. Tell me, is there some sort of law against shoes in Heaven?"
Ardouisur blinked, then looked down at her bare feet. "The Metatron would never stand for it. But I just like to feel grass under my toes."
"The Lady of the Flowers," Mullenkamp murmured.
"I beg your pardon?" Ardouisur murmured, surprised.
Mullenkamp smiled again, the sleepy huntress look. "I like to know who comes knocking on my front door, as it were. And speaking of the utterly paranoid, your Recorder is a positive font of petty details."
Ardouisur narrowed her eyes. "You talked to Omael?"
"No law against it. And even if there was..." Mullenkamp flashed her another smile, this one with teeth. Her canines were a bit pointed, actually.
Ardouisur forced herself to relax. "Should have known that the Recorder was an incurable gossip," she replied casually.
They studied the forested valley around them for several moments. Ari stretched out on the ground, uncaring of possible grass stains on her white gown. There still was no guarantee that the foliage was real, anyway.
"If your soul were a bowl of water, yesterday you were soot black. But today..." the goddess trailed off, heaving a peaceful sigh. "Today, I'd have to upgrade your condition to muddy."
"Thanks ever so much," Ari retorted tartly. "As it happens, I did a lot of thinking yesterday."
"Oh?" Mullenkamp yawned. "Underrated pastime, in my opinion. More people ought to take it up."
Ardouisur narrowly managed to restrain herself from glaring. "That and tatting," she replied.
"Definitely. Good lace is so hard to come by."
They fell silent for a few more moments.
Ari rolled over onto her side. "How did you come by the design on your back?
Mullenkamp turned to face her, leaning forward as if to impart a secret. "Got really drunk and woke up with it."
Ardouisur laughed. "Oh, you did not."
The goddess grinned. "Why ask if you already knew?"
Ardouisur's smile faded. "Because you're branded with the Rood, not the Rood Inverse."
Mullenkamp closed her eyes and smiled. "The Dark works in mysterious ways," she said, in a remarkably good mockery of a fat little pious priest.
"Is that so?" Ari said. "It's quite striking on you, just the same."
Mullenkamp stretched. "Why, thank you. All the heretics are in it for the accessories, you know." She paused, a hint of teeth in her smile again. "How about the angels?"
Ardouisur touched one hand to her halo. "I don't think the gold goes well with my coloring, personally. I'd prefer silver. The wings are pretty all-occasion, though."
"You mind?" Mullenkamp asked, her fingers just brushing one of Ari's feathers.
Ardouisur stretched out one wing towards Mullenkamp. The goddess trailed gentle fingers through the feathers. "The human artists would have us believe that your wings were fluffy down, you know. But you have more layers than that, don't you." It was not a question.
Violet eyes met jade. "I wonder if we didn't used to be all soft. But the truth is, you can't endure rain or wind with wings like that."
"But can you keep warm?"
"I used to think so," Ardouisur said softly. "But recently, I find myself fearing frostbite."
"Among other things," Mullenkamp murmured. It was also not a question.
Ardouisur closed her eyes. "It sounds simple in theory. Hell gets the Duke, Heaven gets the wife, and you get the child. An equitable trade."
"To all but you," Mullenkamp hissed, and Ari's eyes flew open in shock. "Being coerced into allowing assault isn't much a step up from rape. How can you lie there, knowing millennia of abuse at a loved one's hands, and then turn around and agree to it with an enemy, all in the name of a woman you've never met and a child that hasn't been born?!"
The angel flinched and drew back. "A godddess, of all people, ought to understand the power of prayer. Gross ignorance doesn't become you."
"The same could be said for yourself in regard to self-sacrifice you can ill afford. Only a fool agrees to the price without knowing her limit." Mullenkamp glared hard at her.
"And only the heartless would place themselves above another's cry for help," Ardouisur shot back, rising to her feet angrily. She Keyed back to Heaven and stalked back to her home, utterly furious.
When she got there, she realized that her feet were, in fact, grass-stained.
Ardouisur tossed and turned, utterly unable to sleep. And so she found herself back in the valley, nightgown trailing behind her as she carefully picked her way through the woods. Finally, unable to see much past the front of her face, she came to a stop.
"What do you want me to do?" she said tiredly, quietly. "Yes, I'm afraid. I'm afraid of Imriel. I don't ever want to feel that helpless again, except this time it would be so much worse, because I don't love him. But I'm alone, and I don't know what else to do. If you have any suggestions as to how to not make this the second most traumatic experience of my life, I'm open to them."
She didn't really expect a response, and dragged her Key out of her pocket.
"Now, really, that's the most sensible thing you've said since we've met. As it happens, I do have a suggestion. Don't go alone," Mullenkamp breathed in her ear, arms clasping around the angel's middle. "Take me with you."
Ardouisur craned her head around to peer at the goddess through the darkness. "What do you get out of this?"
Mullenkamp's gaze was steady. "The pleasure of your company?"
Ardouisur shivered a bit, though it seemed that press of the goddess' body against her own was a warmth that verged on scalding.
It was raining on Earth, which was pathetically cliché.
Ehrengrad was escorting her once again, like a vicious china doll armed with a pike. And as they approached the meeting place, Ardouisur ducked into an alleyway.
"Madam?" Ehrengrad asked, surprise in her otherwise steady voice.
Ardouisur took a deep breath, and then looked deep into Ehrengrad's face, and brought her right hand up in between them. "Watch my fingers," she said. "Three, two, one."
Ehrengrad crumpled to the ground, and Ari draped a spare cloak over her to shield her from the weather.
At the entrance to the alley was Mullenkamp, enveloped in a dark cloak, the hood pulled down to hide her face. The goddess called the pike to her hand. "Ready?" she asked tersely.
Ardouisur nodded.
The Duke's manor lay just ahead. It looked suitably forbidding in the harsh rain, light spilling out the windows, yet unable to touch the darkness. They entered, passing by the servants unnoticed. The drawing room was not at all hard to find, and as promised, the Leviathan was waiting.
The firelight didn't lend a particularly attractive color to his features. Imriel had always been better served by pale lights, which made his pallor and blue ringlets coldly beautiful.
"That meddlesome bitch signed the contract, after all?" he asked, a study in indifference. "Suppose we'd best get this over with."
Ardouisur remained rooted where she was. She pushed back the hood on her cloak. "I have a few questions first, Imriel." Her voice had dropped to a gravelly alto. She felt curiously detached, as though she were merely looking at a photograph.
"Really?" Imriel cast her a sideways glance, which strongly suggested that any questions Ari had ever had weren't worth the air she used to ask him.
Her hands clenched into fists, because it hit her all of a sudden - that was not a new look.
"Yes. Tell me, did you ever love me, Imriel? Really love me?"
One pale blue eyebrow arched. "Sentimental as always. I suppose you can't ask for much more from a woman always on her knees in a flowerbed."
Ardouisur stared him straight in the eye. "You didn't answer my question."
A corner of his mouth pulled upwards, and Ardousiur's nails bit into her palms - not a new look, not a new look, Imriel had always used it when he was about to talk down to someone whom he thought intellectually inferior - and he as using it on her, had he always used it on her? "Tell me, Ari, what is Love, anyway? Can you define something like that for me?" he asked in a smooth, condescending drawl.
From just behind her, she felt Mullenkamp's finger trace the symbol of the Rood on her back. Ardouisur swallowed hard, once, before quietly responding. "Love is not possessive. Love is not jealous."
"Love is slow to anger and rich in kindness, yes we know, thank you very much," Imriel snipped. "How terribly original, Ari. I'm so impressed with your education. Could we get on with it, already?"
"Very well," Ari whispered, and her cloak slipped over her shoulders to puddle at her feet.
Mullenkamp had been terribly, horribly right.
The Leviathan looked no different from Imriel. And the revelation made her submission to him all the worse.
I swore I would do this, and I will, Ardouisur thought to herself. She took another step forward. And another. And another, until they were in the bedroom. Mullenkamp, still hooded, shut the door with herself on the inside.
The Leviathan stripped briskly, uncaring of his nudity, uncaring of hers. He looked at Mullenkamp. "Really, Ari. Whatever I think of you, I'm hardly going to savage you. Do you really need a guard?"
"Not a guard. A witness," Ari told him tersely. She could feel the symbol of the Rood on her back, burning on her otherwise clammy skin.
He didn't bother to conceal his impatience. "Come here." He stripped efficiently, uncaring of his own nudity, or hers. She joined him on the bed, and his skin and the sheets seemed equally cold.
I can't do this, she thought, the words coming to her slowly, inevitably. I can't do this...I can't do this...I can't do this. Repeated slowly, as if she were frozen on this inside.
And eventually, as the Leviathan rolled her onto her back, an anguished mental moan, like a wounded animal.
Mullenkamp, I can't do this!
The Rood flared to burning, desperate life on her back as the Leviathan sank in...
Imriel sank in...
And the face above her own was not that of a man at all.
"Hello, darling," the goddess of the Dark said.
Mullenkamp lay heavy and warm between Ardouisur's thighs. Dark strands of the goddess' hair pooled on Ardouisur's breasts, partially obscuring them from view.
Mullenkamp's golden eyes were serious, so solemn. "What do you have to do?"
Ardouisur felt dreamy and drugged, as though everything about her were taking an eternity to unfold, every detail perfect, quiet, serene. "I have to pray."
Mullenkamp's fingers smoothed down her side, over the swell of Ardouisur's hip and then under, stroking the back of her thigh. "You can feel him?"
She could. "How is this happening?" She could feel the gateway to that tainted power, waiting for her own to join with it. But around her, fingers stroking through her hair, wrapping purple strands around her fingers, was only Mullenkamp.
"You can feel what you want. If we two chose to dream together, who could tell us that his reality is the only right path?"
Mullenkamp's skin was soft, so soft, the curve of her backside giving way to the smooth trail up her spine. Ardouisur's hand pulled at the nape of the goddess' neck, pulling her down for a kiss.
Mullenkamp gave her one chaste kiss, a solemn covenant, one finger pressed at the top of the symbol of the Rood still warm on Ardouisur's back. "Pray then, angel. But will you pray only to your Most Holy?"
"To whom else should I pray?"
"He's not the only one who can hear the prayers of the hopeless. Won't you pray to me, angel?"
"I..."
Mullenkamp licked a trail between Ardouisur's breasts, her fingers dipping between the angel's thighs. "You will by the end."
Ardouisur understood in that moment that this, too, was a sacred promise.
And in the end, she whispered her prayers against the goddess' lips, so that she could not tell where she ended and the goddess began, with the words of the prayer mingling with soft cries and sweat and skin and a strangely fierce sort of tenderness.
Mullenkamp drank her in and held her through the shuddering end.
And when she opened her eyes once more, the Leviathan stood beside the bed, his expression dispassionate while redressing himself in his finery.
"It seems the years have sunk some sense into you, Ari. I thought for certain you'd wail some undignified nonsense."
Ardouisur pulled her robe on. "Sorry. You just weren't that good."
He looked momentarily disconcerted, but recovered. "Where did your 'witness' go to, I wonder?"
Where, indeed?
Ehrengrad was in the drawing room, giving no indication that her charge had ditched her in an alley. She ignored the Leviathan utterly, and took Ardouisur by the crook of her elbow. "If you please, madam."
Ardouisur allowed herself to be led out the door, and they Keyed back to Heaven simultaneously. She waited for the Guardian to turn on her with sputtering rage, to chastise her for recklessly endangering herself.
"Will you tell them?" Ardouisur asked finally.
"What have you done that needs explaining, madam? You completed your assignment. End of story," Ehrengrad said firmly.
Ardouisur stopped her. "We both know that that's not all that happened."
The Guardian's perfect bow lips compressed into an angry line. "Would you have me betray you, madam? You were resourceful, you were clever. You don't owe them an explanation." She stopped suddenly, as if such a flow of words had never escaped her all at once before.
Ardouisur raised her eyebrows at the unexpected venom in the Guardian's voice. "I think that's a slightly treasonous line of thought," she said mildly.
Ehrengrad looked like a winter day, but the fierceness in her voice burned. "Not at all. It's the sincerest form of loyalty."
"To whom?"
Ehrengrad looked away.
They walked in silence, through the streets of the City, souls and angels moving feverishly around them, but Ardouisur felt as if they were standing still.
"You'll think me forward," Ehrengrad said abruptly.
Ardouisur met her eyes. "If you can't be forward with me, then whom?"
"When I was at the School, you were the only one. I thought they had no use for more women, never mind that half the Earth is full of them. They told me they already had an angel for women, that they didn't think there was a place for me among the Guardians."
Ardouisur touched her fingers to the back of the Guardian's knuckles where they clenched around the pike. "And yet."
They walked in that same moving stillness for a few small eternities.
"I used to sit on the walls of your Garden, just to see you," Ehrengrad said. They were at the base of the Tower, and the Guardian seized one of Ardouisur's hands and clasped it between her own. "Don't be weak now, madam, not when you've been so strong all this time. You did your job, but they'll never understand Her, and they'll never understand you and I. Some things should stay a secret."
Ardouisur felt her eyes widen. "You know Her?"
Ehrengrad said nothing.
"I have to go up there," Ardouisur told her, with a nod of her head. Her hand was still cradled in Ehrengrad's own. "Perhaps...you'll come by tonight? There are some things I want to talk to you about."
"Is that an order, madam?"
Ardouisur looked pointedly at their joined hands. "Just a request."
Ehrengrad pressed a hurried kiss to the back of her hand, dry lips brushing a quick caress. "They're waiting for you."
Ardouisur started up the stairs, her back straight, her pace dignified.
The Metatron and the Most Holy were separate entities, no matter that the latter spoke through the former. And so Ardouisur was hardly surprised to see the Voice wringing his hands in distress.
He almost broke into a run when she walked through the door. "He told me it worked, but He wouldn't tell me if you were....do you want to sit down? What can I do? Do you need tea? A backrub? Are you...are you hurt?"
Ardouisur stepped toward him and wrapped her arms around him. He was shaking, but she felt the same sense of calm, motionless among chaos.
"I was so frightened for you," he whispered into her hair. "I could hear your words, but it was like you were barely there." He clutched her tight. "I don't know how you did it, Ari...I don't argue with His plans, but I was so worried. He had to know what it would do to you!"
Ardouisur froze.
He had to know.
And then she relaxed in the Metatron's arms. "It's okay, Koe. It's okay. But there's something I want."
"Anything," he swore fervently. "Anything you want, it's yours."
"I'd like to teach at the School. A few classes, of my own design."
He peered at her, grey eyes bewildered. "Yes, of course. If that's what you want." He paused. "Are you sure you're okay?"
"I'm fine, Koe," she reassured him.
I heard the Truth.
She was back in the valley. Winter had come in a day, apparently - Ardouisur could hardly tell the difference between snowflakes and snowflies.
Mullenkamp's cloak was trimmed in silver fur. Ardouisur had the uncomfortable feeling that it was still alive.
"The interesting thing about divine plans is that they aren't perfect," Mullenkamp began, breaking the silence. "You work with Rood-bearers enough, and you'll find out that fallible beings can fuck up the best-laid plans left and right."
"You made a deal with the Most Holy," Ardouisur said slowly, trying to piece it together. "You offered a child of the Truth for...what?"
Mullenkamp gave her a predatory grin. "Now you ask me. You knew what Hell was getting out of the deal, and you had part of Heaven's motivation, but you never asked why I would offer the powers of the Dark."
Ardouisur frowned. "I thought it was just a possibility that the child could be a Truth-bringer. I didn't know you could control it."
Mullenkamp snorted. "Well, it certainly doesn't happen by chance. I wanted the child, and I wanted to meet you...and He agreed."
"Why?" Ardouisur asked her, frustration sharpening her voice.
"I told you. He has plans. Sometimes, his angels aren't too adept at the follow-through. After the Rebellion, you were the only female angel for far too long. Heaven sometimes mirrors Earth in ways He didn't intend. He needed you to do something about it. But you were focused," and here Mullenkamp laid a hand against her chest, "in here, and so you couldn't realize that there were others who needed you, not just the human women who pray to you."
"Like who?" Ardouisur whispered, though she thought she already knew the answer.
"You came with her. You now. Blond, about yea high, reasonably scary. She called on me during her Trial, because they were angling to fail her since she had been a woman."
"That's cheating. Or treason. Possibly both."
"You don't have any room to talk. If you'd taken any sort of interest in your surroundings in Heaven, she wouldn't have been in that situation to begin with. So, I wanted to meet you."
"And knock some sense into me?" Ardouisur asked.
Mullenkamp leered. "Please. Sex is a much nicer method of persuasion than violence." She tugged back her hood, and the snowflakes began to dot her dark hair. "Besides, Ehrengrad was one of mine."
Ardouisur couldn't have kept the look of shock off her face if she'd tried. "That's impossible. She'd never have been tapped for the School if she'd been one of your priestesses."
Mullenkamp waved away her objection. "It wasn't anything formal. She never actually used the Dark. But it did give her an edge, which was helpful since the Guardians had the deck stacked against her."
Ardouisur struggled to take it all in. "I'm supposed to meet her later this evening to talk," she said.
Mullenkamp raised her eyebrows. "Well, doesn't she work quick. Do you know that she used to sit on your Garden walls just to watch you?"
"I heard," Ardouisur said dryly.
"Kildean is a sexy language, you know."
"I remember."
"Ehrengrad's fluent. Maybe if you ask nicely, she'll conjugate some verbs for you."
"I'll be sure to mention it. I should get going."
Mullenkamp stopped her with a hand on her arm. "Make sure you come up for air in about nine months - there will be someone I want you to meet. Now, granted, we'll have to wait until he learns how to talk before he can start telling the Truth, but it'll be worth the wait."
"I'm sure. I'll be here," Ardouisur promised.
She left the snowflies behind, and back in her garden, she noticed a familiar form gracing the top of one wall.
"Tell me, how do you take your tea?" Ardouisur called, making her way to the cottage.
Ehrengrad hopped off the wall and followed her through the front door.