Page 53 of The Gathering
Her hands clasped tightly at her chest as she nodded. “That’s right.”
“Are you praying that I’ll listen?”
Her blue eyes hit him dead on and it was the first full look of her he got. “I don’t pray about such silly things. Besides, I know you’ll listen.”
He angled his head at her, crossing his arms, sorting the unusual angel puzzle. She looked surreal enough to make him wonder if maybe shewasan angel or maybe he was in a coma, dreaming. He watched her face transform from impossible purity to a fierce pout.
“Are you laughing at me?”
Oh, now he was.
“It’s rude to laugh at people,” she said above his laugh, wrapping the rebuke in kindness.
“I will slay the spider,” he offered through chuckles. “And your soul will remain pure.”
He stepped back and she lunged and grabbed his coat. “You can’t!”
He stared down into her adamant face. One minute she was a soldier in the heavens, the next she was a little girl with an aversion to spiders that she was fully prepared to protect and despise. And yet through all her dark journeys she maintained a fierce grasp on her crayons and glitter. No wonder her god gave her whatever she wanted.
He shrugged, looking around. “Fine. We’ll go around.”
The explosion of radiance on her face for such a small compliance was the oddest thing he’d ever witnessed. And amusing.
She smiled right along with him, nodding and thanking him. “I will find a way to repay you for your trouble!”
Sinrik gestured to the path. “Lead the way, Sister.”
Her laughter flew out, a shower of glittering rainbows across the gloom as she spun and headed back the way they’d come. The wind-peep orchestra returned to full blast as shecaught him up to speed, all the way up to a civil swamp issue she was concerned about.
She stopped abruptly and turned, aiming all her sincere concern right at him. “It’s the males,” she said. “I don’t like the looks they give.”
Something pinged in his blood as he stopped a foot before her, needing to observe her up close while she confided her big problems to him.
“They don’t look at me as though I’m committed to…”
He watched as her stormy blue eyes and furrowed brows sorted the messy problem right in front of him. He got that strangedreamingsensation again as he focused on skin too fair, eyes too blue, mouth too… something. But if he was dreamingthisvividly it meant something critically wrong had happened to him.
“I think it’s the soldier arrangement,” she whispered, darting her gaze up at him.
“Soldier arrangement?”
She nodded a little, her fingers clasping at her chest again like the prayer formation was a form of comfort. “The marrying part,” she added in a whisper.
A door opened in his mind and in walked the details Beth had mentioned. “The nuns marrying cyborgs,” he realized.
“Not cyborgs,” she hurried quietly. “Synthetic… something made to evolve into… something like a….”
Seeing her cornered in her mind flipped a dark switch in him. “You don’t have to go through with it since you don’t want to. Who coerced you into such a thing?”
Her blue eyes plugged right into his, wide with worry. “I never said I didn’t want to go through with it, I’m—”
“You’re saying exactly that very plainly to me, minus the actual words, Sister.”
Her mouth opened then slowly shut as she considered. It opened again. “But I never said that,” she barely muttered, sounding curious how he managed that one.
“And there’s nothing to be ashamed about,” he added, addressing her guilt spilling out everywhere.
“You can see that too?” Her worried shock would’ve been amusing if he didn’t smell coercion all over her problem.
