She blinks at me, those large doe eyes with long dark lashes. It casts a spell on me. “What would you like to be called?”
“Sweetheart in the morning, and darling in the evening,” I sigh, watching the wind pick up some loose curly wisps of her hair and dance with them. She looks like such an absolute dream tonight.
I don’t know what kind of reaction I was hoping for, but it’s not what she does. Her mouth tightens, lips pursed. Her reproachful eyes give me the once-over again, assessing.
Maybe I came on too strong. It’s fine, I can still recover, I just gotta be cool. If only I knew how.
Pushing to my feet, I leap down from the roof, wings outstretched momentarily to guide my descent, and this one at least goes smoothly.
I land next to her. Her pinched expression melts away into a wide-eyed stare as I stand up to my full height next to her. The top of her head could just graze my chin.
She blinks, stares, her kiss-shaped lips parted.
Standing this close to her makes heat creep up the back of my neck. I look away, trying not to let the smell of her hair fluster me, and run a hand through mine.
“Look...I’m really not here for me,” I say, hoping to steer the conversation away from anything my boss would get madat me for revealing. “I just wanted to check up on you, make sure you’re alright. I’d hate to, uh, have traumatized you or something. Or bruised, I mean, physically. Or psychologically. Either would be bad.”
Lacey nods but doesn’t say anything. I’m a little too caught up in the way that those little wisps of hair frame her heart-shaped face perfectly.
I slowly walk around her. For what her dress doesn’t cover, she seems fine. Nothing obviously broken. “Y’know, when people are in car accidents, they get checked out after. Whiplash is a killer.”
She swallows.
“Wasn’t my first rodeo,” she says, her voice a little breathier than before.
I bite back asking her if I’m her first rodeo clown, because that might be the dumbest thing I’ve ever said. The moment feels too fragile, too delicate for my bullshit.
It feels like I’m taking a liberty, as I trace a touch down her arm, picking up her wrist to better see, but she lets me. She has a scattering of freckles up and down her arms, too small to see from a distance. She doesn’t pull or shy away at all, even as her eyes track my hands, how different they must be from hers, all fuzzy, blue and clawed.
My heart is beating so hard I can feel it in my throat.
This night may well and truly haunt me. The fabric shimmers as she moves, snagging my attention to the round of her hips. God, they’re perfect. I already know when I go back to the hideout, in the privacy of my own bunk, I’m going to see if the online Goethal City Tribune has pictures of Lacey from tonight.
Out of the heat of the moment, I think I might be a coward. I’m terrified to breathe, and break whatever fairy tale wonder we’re standing in.
She shivers as I trace the tip of my finger up and across the length of her shoulders, gathering the fabric of her shawl aside. My breath catches in my throat as it reveals a blobby shape just under her shoulder blade, purple and a little swollen.
“This is either from me or that terrible couch,” I murmur, gingerly touching next to the bruise on her back.
She makes a little noise; I can’t quite place what it is. It’s softer than a squeak, a little hum that catches in her throat. I watch, maybe a little too intently as the hollow of her collarbone deepens with her breath, my other hand sliding down her arm.
Her fingers entangle ever so lightly with mine, and I swear I feel goddamn sparks. Like my heart is a lightbulb that flickers on when the tips of her fingers brush against my skin, and my pulse is alive with her electric current.
Her eyes widen the slightest bit, like I’ve startled her, and she tugs her hand out of mine. I watch as she wraps her shawl around herself again, running her hands up her arms to warm herself or maybe chase my touch away.
Lacey glances over her shoulder at me. “Did you...I don’t know, fall into the ooze? How did you become like this?”
I shrug, my wings flexing a little with the motion. “I’ve just kind of always been like this.”
Vin probably has more insight in the process of how we were made, seeing as he’s the older of us two, and was immediately parentified and Igor-ified. He’s not that much easier to talk to than Maestro, though. I don’t think I’d get very far asking if heremembers if either of us more closely resembled humans at one point.
“It’s not from the ooze?”
I shake my head, but now it’s my turn to frown at her. “Didn’t you nearly fall into a rain gutter full of the stuff just yesterday?”
“I—no, I didn’t,” she stammers, cheeks flushing.
“But you were getting awfully close to it.”
