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This was how Arriane and Tess spent their rare afternoons together: One girl braided, the other spun stories. Then they switched roles.
“Once there was an extraordinary angel,” Arriane began, turning her head to the side so Tess could sweep the hair up from her neck.
Tess was better at braiding than Arriane. She would sit beside Arriane with a basket of forest wildflowers in her lap. She’d lean over Arriane’s narrow back and weave tight plaits into the angel’s thick hair. She’d pin the braids so they zigzagged across Arriane’s scalp, until she looked like Medusa, which was Arriane’s favorite style.
Arriane, on the other hand, was lucky to get Tess’s wild red mop into a single crooked braid. She’d pull and tug and wrestle the comb through Tess’s locks until Tess yelped in pain. But Arriane was better at storytelling. And what would braiding be without a good story?
No fun at all.
Arriane closed her eyes and moaned as Tess’s fingernails swiveled up her scalp. Nothing felt so good as a lover’s touch.
“Arriane?”
“Yes. ” Her eyes opened, her gaze drifting over the pasture where dairy cows loafed on the farm’s two hundred acres. These were her favorite moments: quiet and uncomplicated, just the two of them. It was late in the afternoon; most of the milkmaids who worked on the farm where Arriane had taken her employment were already back at their cottages.
She’d chosen this job because it wasn’t far from Lucinda, who, in this lifetime, had grown up in an English fiefdom a few minutes’ fly north. Generally, Daniel felt stifled by the presence of Arriane and the other angels tasked with watching over him. But from the dairy, Arriane could give him space and still fly to him and Lucinda quickly if needed. Besides, Arriane enjoyed dipping into a mortal lifestyle every once in a while. It felt good to be given work on the dairy, to satisfy a boss. Tess never understood that urge, but then, Tess’s master was a little more demanding than the Throne.
It was rare to have a stolen moment with Tess. Her visits to the dairy—to this part of the world, in general—never came quickly or lasted long enough. Arriane didn’t like to imagine the darkness that awaited Tess as soon as they said goodbye, or the master who hated to see Tess straying from his realm.
Don’t think about him, Arriane chided herself. Not when Tess is by your side and there is no need to question your love!
Yes. Tess was by her side. And the grass beneath was so soft, the air of the farm so perfumed with wildflowers, that Arriane could have wafted into the nurturing bosom of a reassuring dream.
But the story. Tess loved her stories. “Where was I?” Arriane asked.
“Oh—I don’t remember. ” Tess sounded distracted. Her fingernail scraped Arriane’s neck as she scooped up a section of hair.
“Ouch. ” Arriane rubbed her neck. Tess didn’t remember? But Arriane was the one who got lost in her thoughts, not Tess. “Is something wrong, love?”
“No,” Tess said quickly. “You were starting some story. … An extraordinary … um—”
“Yes!” Arriane said happily. “An extraordinary angel. Her name was … Arriane. ”
Tess tugged her hair. “Another one about you?” She was laughing, but her laughter sounded distant, as if she had already flown far away.
“You’re in it, too! Just wait. ” Arriane rolled onto her side to face Tess. The arm Tess had been braiding with slid down across Arriane’s hip.
Tess wore a white cotton gown with a narrow bodice and short, ruffled white sleeves. She had bursts of freckles on her shoulders, which Arriane thought looked like galaxies of stars. Her eyes were barely darker than Arriane’s startling pale blue irises.
She was the most beautiful creature Arriane had ever met.
“And what was so extraordinary about this angel?” Tess asked after a moment, picking up her cue.
“Oh, where to begin? There were so many extraordinary things about her!” Arriane flicked her head, musing on an inspired direction in which to take her tale. She could feel the unbound braid scissoring loose on the side of her head.
“Oh, Arriane!” Tess said. “You’ve ruined it!”
“I can’t help it if my hair has other plans! And maybe yours does, too!” Arriane reached for the ribbon tied around Tess’s long red braid.
But the girl was too quick. She scrambled backward in the grass like a crab, laughing as Arriane rose to her feet and chased after her.
“This most extraordinary angel,” she called after Tess, who dashed through the high grass and the bracing February wind, “had the most disgusting nest of tangles in her hair. She was famous for it, far and wide. Tanglelocks, some called her. ” Arriane high-stepped, her hands raised, her fingers wiggling to evoke her hair. “Cities vanished in her mighty mane. Whole armies were swept up in her snarls! Grown men wept and were lost in the black abyss of her serpentine tresses. ”
Then Arriane tripped over the long hem of her shapeless milkmaid’s gown and went down hard onto the ground. On all fours, she looked up at Tess, who’d stopped between Arriane and the sun, a halo of light circling her red hair.
Tess leaned down to help Arriane up, her hands soft around Arriane’s wrists.
“Until one day”—Arriane went to rub her muddy palms on the front of her dress; Tess slapped them away and produced, from her stringed pocket, a cotton handkerchief. “One day, this angel met someone who changed her life. …”
Tess lifted her chin a bit. She was listening.
“This person was a little devil,” Arriane said. “She was rather serious, always thwarting Tangelocks’s pranks, always mocking her ingenuity, always reminding Tanglelocks that some things were more important than plain old hair. ”
Unexpectedly, Tess turned away. She sat down in the grass with her back to Arriane. Perhaps she’d found her character’s introduction unflattering? But there was more to come! Every story required a turning point, an element of surprise. Arriane sprawled across Tess’s stretched-out legs and propped herself up on one elbow in the grass. With her other hand, she reached to uncross the arms Tess had fixed firmly over her chest. But even with her hands clasped in her lover’s, Tess’s eyes would not be wrested from the pale yellow wildflower in the grass.
“Abandon this silly story, Arriane. ” She spoke as if in a trance. “I am not in the mood for it today. ”
“Oh, but wait! I’m just getting warmed up!” Arriane furrowed her brow. “In so many ways this seeming adversary was the dire opposite of Tanglelocks. Her hair was a red dandelion pouf. ” Arriane stroked Tess’s hair. “Her skin was a pale canvas that burned at the slightest touch of the sun. ” She ran her finger down Tess’s smooth, bare arm.
“Arriane—”
“But the creature was a demon with a comb, and in her hands were tamed the destructive locks. This person’s nature, unlike the angel’s, was—”
“Enough!” Tess snapped, jerking her gaze away and toward a shallow, pebble-lined stream at the edge of the pasture. “I’m tired of fairy tales. ”
She stood up and Arriane scrambled to join her.
“It’s not a fairy tale,” Arriane insisted, ignoring the goose bumps she felt rising on her skin. She sat up straight and tilted her head at Tess. “The fact that we’re here together—”
“Is only a sign that he wasn’t paying attention. ”
“Wasn’t?” A cold wind crept over the meadow.
“He has given me an ultimatum. ”
The blood drained from Arriane’s cheeks, and with it went the brilliant colors in the meadow. The blue sky dimmed, the grass lost its verve. Even Tess’s hair seemed pale. Arriane had known this moment was coming—had known it ever since the start—but still it took her breath away.
Tess bore the black starburst tattoo on the back of her neck, the one Lucifer branded on his innermost circle of demons.
“He knows. And now he wants me back. ” There was ice in Tess’s voice, ice that seemed to creep across Ar
riane’s soul.
“But you just got here!” Arriane felt like running to her love, falling at Tess’s feet and weeping, but she just stared down at her hands. “I don’t want you to leave. I hate it when you go away. ”
“Arriane—” Tess took a step toward her, but Arriane flinched, enraged.
“It’s not his business to say what we can and can’t do! What kind of monster boasts so incessantly about free will and yet won’t let you be free to follow your own heart?”
“I don’t have a choice about this. ”
“Yes, you do,” Arriane said. “You just won’t make it. ”
When Tess didn’t answer, Arriane’s chest heaved with the initial wave of a tsunami-sized sob. She felt so ashamed. She turned and ran across the pasture. She ran along the streambed and up the soft slope of grass at the western edge of the farm. She trampled through her mistress’s herb garden, unable to see the thyme through her tears. She could hear Tess running after her, her soft footsteps catching up. But Arriane did not stop until she’d reached the door of the old barn where tomorrow morning she would rise just before dawn to do the milking.
She threw herself against the rough wood wall of the barn and let the sobs come.
Tess hugged Arriane from behind, her red braid swinging over Arriane’s shoulder. She laid her head between Arriane’s shoulder blades and they stood like that, both of them crying, for a quiet moment.
When Arriane turned around, leaning her back against the sun-warm wall of the barn, Tess took her hand. Her fingers were long and pale and slender; Arriane’s were tiny, the nails chewed to the quick. Arriane drew Tess through the open rusty-hinged door inside the barn, where they would be safe from the eyes of the other milkmaids, who would be gathering for supper soon.
They stood among hay and horses, a few cows lying curled together in a corner. The scents of the animals were everywhere: the horses’ musk, the chickens’ downy sweetness, the dried sweat of the cows’ hides.
“There is a way for us to be together,” Tess said to Arriane in a low voice.
“How? You would defy him?”
“No, Arriane. ” The demon shook her head. “I took my oath. I am bound to Lucifer. ”
When Tess turned her head to gaze out the barn’s door and across the endless meadow, Arriane glimpsed the dark starburst tattoo that marred her lovely skin. It was the sole blemish that could adhere to angels’ bodies. Except for their wing scars, every other ink mark or wound or scar in time would fade away.
Lucifer’s mark was the only part of Tess that Arriane could say she did not love. She reached up to touch her own neck, pale and unblemished. Pure.
“There is another way,” Tess said, pressing close to Arriane so that their feet overlapped. Tess’s love smelled like jasmine, and she often said that Arriane smelled of sweet cream. “A way to stop living like this, with everything between us always a secret. ”
Tess extended her arms toward Arriane and reached around her shoulders. Arriane thought for a moment that they were going to embrace again. She felt her body drawing in, needing to be held—