Free Sins of the Son: The Grigori Legacy by Linda Poitevin

Could not tell them what was right.
    Dr. Riley looked at the clipboard she held. “You had another quiet night, I see. But you’re still not sleeping much. I think I might prescribe something to help you with that.”
    He watched her. Listened. Had no idea what she said.
    Her face changed to a frown. He knew that word from having been asked by a nurse this morning why he frowned; knew it meant Dr. Riley felt the same inside as he did.
    Didn’t know what to call the feeling.
    “Still not talking, either,
hmm
?” she asked. She put her pen on the paper and made some marks. “Have you remembered anything? A name? A place?”
    He turned back to the window. Behind him, Dr. Riley sighed.
    “Never mind,” she said. “I’m sure it will come in time. In the meantime, you have someone coming to see you this afternoon who may be able to help. A detective from Toronto thinks she may know you. I’m picking her up at the airport at three and then we’ll come by to visit, all right?”
    Toronto. Airport. Detective. More words without meaning. He watched a bird in the sky. The door behind him opened, closed. The key clicked in the lock once more.

NINE
    H e found her in the gardens, as Raphael said he would.
    For long minutes, Mika’el stood at the edge of the trees and watched the One, seated on a swing beneath a massive maple, gently moving back and forth with the breeze. His breath lodged in his throat, refusing to move further. Just as his feet refused to carry him forward, held captive by the memory of harsh words that still lingered after more than four thousand years.
    He closed his eyes against the agony of turning his back on her, as fresh now as if it had only just happened. An agony he carried with him every second of every day since leaving her presence.
    Preternatural awareness shuddered through him and, without looking, he knew the One had turned her gaze on him. He sensed her stillness, felt her ambivalence. It took every ounce of willpower he could summon to open his eyes and meet hers, and then to make himself walk across the lawn.
    “Mika’el,” she said as he stopped before her.
    The sound of her voice speaking his angelic namereached inside him and laid bare places he hardly knew anymore. He drew himself tall, against the urge to bow, afraid he might not be able to straighten again to face her. “One.”
    “You came,” she said.
    A quiver went through Mika’el’s wings, echoing the spasm in his heart. “You doubted me?”
    A tiny smile curved the One’s lips. “I have never doubted you, my Archangel. Myself, yes, but never you.”
    She studied him for a long moment, and then rose and brushed her fingers against his cheek. Her touch radiated through his body. His soul.
    “I have missed you,” she said.
    Mika’el’s breath snagged in his chest and for a moment, all of eternity stood still, centered in that one, feather-light touch. The first connection he’d had with his Creator since leaving her side.
    Countless times in his years among mortals, he had observed the bond between mortal mother and child; a love that drew them together fiercely, completely, sometimes to the exclusion of all around them. He had envied humans that bond, not for its strength but for its smallness, and would have given his soul to be able to reduce what he felt for his Creator to that level. To be free of the anguish caused by her rejection of him. His rejection of her.
    Now, with just a few words and a brush of hand against cheek, the One had renewed their connection and reminded him not just of the endurance of that bond, but its beauty, too. The all-consuming intensity that tied them to one another.
    His Creator’s gaze slid away and her hand dropped to her side. “Walk with me.”
    Mika’el fell into step beside her, hands clasped behind his back, and together they crossed the lawn to a path leading toward the rose garden. For a long time, silence sat between them, neither comfortable nor uncomfortable, just