24. Unusual Manifestations

Unusual Manifestations

" T hat's…" I stared at the clean cut. "That's got to be magic, right?"

Cass rumbled a laugh that made me shiver. "It is, though not a spell. It's inherent to the feathers themselves. They're whisper-sharp against all metals I've tried them on, save star-iron, and about as sharp as a belt-knife against everything else." He proffered his wing, spreading the feathers. "See for yourself, if you like," he added, with a mix of shyness and eager anticipation.

I wasn't about to turn down an invitation like that. I tapped the sconce against his wing and grinned when the arm of the sconce dropped off with only the smallest amount of resistance. It was like cutting through paper. I did it again, and a third time, starting to laugh. "Holy fuck, Cass," I said, tossing a coin-sized slice of sconce up and catching it again. "That's incredible."

"You can touch them," he offered, smiling down at me with warmth in his dark eyes and his dimple showing. "Since they're metal, I can't send my power down… them…"

His eyes went unfocused as my fingers brushed down along the ridged surface of his feathers. They were cool to the touch, exactly like metal, with no give at all.

"Oh," he whispered. "That's different."

"Oh?" I asked, the sconce dangling from my hand as I traced my fingertips along the curved shape of his wing. "Can you feel it? It doesn't feel any different for me."

"It's not… they're feathers ," Cass said in a daze. He let out a panting breath. "They're not supposed to have sensation. Just the slight pressure at the base, like feeling the wind stir my hair. But you, you…"

I traced F-E-E-L-T-H-I-S-? on his feather.

Cass jerked his head down in a nod. "Like phosphorescence on the sea."

"Sounds pretty," I said. A wicked impulse seized me. "What about this?" I asked, then leaned down and exhaled on his feathers.

He made a tight sound, jerking his wing forward. Pleasure shivered across the phantom of a wing behind me, the same sensation of having someone exhale their hot breath across your ear. "Yes," he said, the word guttural.

I filed that knowledge away for later wickedness. "Hm. Weird." I chucked the sliced-up sconce onto a chair and circled behind him, trailing my fingers along his dark feathers. The gleaming sharpness of his feathers stopped once you got past the outside set of feathers, which made sense, since the other ones would never be on a cutting edge. They were still metal, though, all of them perfect, like they'd been stamped out of a bronze sheet.

A sharp-tipped metal length right where his wing went under his clothing caught my attention. I followed it to the base with my finger, stopping just short of where it vanished underneath his skin. That was a fucking pinfeather , just like when my friend's cockatiel was growing in new feathers.

"You molt ?" I said, baffled. Were there rooms full of massive metal Cass-feathers? How did growing metal feathers even work ?

"No?" Cass said, sounding confused. He tried to crane his neck to look over his shoulder at where I had my fingers. "They're rather permanently attached."

I gave the pinfeather a gentle tug. "Well, you've got a new one coming in."

He went very still. The whole world seemed to hold its breath, a watchful sensation settling into me. "That's not good."

"It's not?" I looked up at the back of his head. "It doesn't look weird, or anything. Just young."

Cass folded his wings down slowly. "Being linked to the Court means that I'm channeling a great deal of wild magic. That sort of power tends to leave a mark, though for mages that generally means becoming a more powerful mage. It's a bit distressing to discover I'm becoming more monstrous." He paused, then turned and frowned down at me. "You were in the wilderness for weeks, and you're still simply human. Why didn't it affect you?"

"Fuck if I know. Maybe it all got directed into my link with the Court, or something." I looked up and pursed my lips, examining him, then tapped just below my left eye. "Is the gold new, too?" I asked. "I didn't remember it from when I was imagining your eyes that first day, but I figured I was mis-remembering."

His shoulders sagged. "Fuck." Cass walked over to a mirror and peered at himself, pulling his eyelid down with his breath fogging the glass. After a moment he growled and stood back up, raking his fingers over his hair and sending a jeweled hairpin flying. "Ruekh's mercy," he muttered. "I like my dark eyes."

"It's pretty," I said, smiling at him. "Way better than melting people, right?"

He turned to look at me, a wistful smile tugging back the corner of his mouth. "No guilt for things you can't control," Cass said, his voice gentle.

I knew he was talking to himself as much as to me. It had to be something he'd told himself, over and over again, so he could survive those centuries at the Academy, learning to protect the world from his touch. A six-year-old boy, plucking the wings off a dragonfly so he could put them back on. A newly-minted King, killing thousands in his reflexive need to heal his wounded Court. A seventeen-year-old, kissing someone he loved and finding death on the other end of desire.

For a moment, I imagined Cadeo kissing his girlfriend and putting her in the hospital—how awful that would be, for him and her and all of us. But we loved him, and we would have taken care of him. Cass' parents? The people who'd ignored his begging because his power was frightening?

Yeah. I could understand why Cass kept drowning in guilt, and why he was looking at me with such quiet sorrow, his concern wrapped around me like a blanket.

"Maybe we could go make a visit to the temple," I suggested, fumbling for something to ease that guilt. "Pay our respects to Ithronel to please Paloma and pals, put you under the goddess in the public's pantheon, say some prayers for the dead?"

There's so many dead.

The thought was mine, and wasn't, full of such devastation that my breath caught in my throat. My eyes widened. Did you just…? I thought at him.

"If you like," he said, apparently without hearing me at all. Cass flashed me an easy smile and got back to his feet. "Aftermorrow, maybe? It seems like the sort of thing to do on a rising day."

"Sure. It's a date." I smiled at him, feeling a bit spooked. Had I been wrong?

But, no. I knew how my mind worked, and though I felt sorrow for the people who had died at the mine and for the four bandits, I wasn't grieved over it to those depths. The only other person I could imagine being in my head was the one standing in front of me.

"A date?" Cass asked, raising one black brow. "I'm not certain it qualifies."

I set the idea of telepathy alongside the consideration of his emotional compartmentalization to cook on the mental backburner and hopped up onto the arm of one of the many easy chairs. "What does qualify?" I asked, raising a brow right back at him.

"Something where I don't have to act kingly," he said with a wicked grin. "Preferably a venue with nudity. Maybe refreshments."

I snorted at that. "So, the strip bar I worked at back home?" When his eyes widened, I realized how that sounded and waved my hands at him to cut off that line of thinking. "As a bartender !" I yelped. "Pouring drinks! Not taking my clothes off! "

"Ah." Cass laughed, a sound halfway between self-consciousness and amusement. "I see. Or rather, don't," he added with a cheeky wink.

"Tch!" I flicked my fingers at him, though I was grinning. "You men are all the same. Aren't you fae not supposed to give a shit about nudity?"

He turned towards the mirror again and started taking the pins out of his hair, setting them on the dresser. "Hardly. Nudity is acceptable, but it's not as if we're blind. If a woman comes to a revel dressed in nothing but jewelry and shimmer, she surely intends to make an impression." Cass shook out his mane with a sound of relief. His black hair tumbled down onto his shoulders in loose waves. "Men, too, of course. Vaddy certainly turns heads when he's clad in nothing but feathers and scales."

My brows shot up at the mental image. Vad probably did look spectacular naked, but Cass … "Have you?"

"Gods, no," he said with a laugh, combing his fingers through his hair to undo the braids. "I have a difficult enough time with casual touch, let alone casual touch when I'm stark naked and entirely self-conscious about it." He raked his fingers through his hair one last time before turning towards me. Cass flashed a lazy smile at me. "The only times I'm naked in the same room with someone, we're generally either showering or horizontal."

"Speaking of which, I'm gonna go get naked and wet," I said pertly. "Last call for the bathroom."

His predatory focus snapped onto me, eyes darkening and ears cocked forward. A moment later he relaxed again, but my heart kept beating with the regimented calm of his control. Cass might not be touching me, but he was definitely attracted to me.

I could work with that. "Toodle-oo," I said, turning and sauntering to the bathroom with some swish to my steps, the floor warm beneath my feet.

Cass didn't move until I shut the door, and I reveled in every second of my soulmate's gaze.