His silver eyes blinked twice in rapid succession, and the corner of his mouth turned upward. “You are truly something else, little feather.” I smiled wide, finding the compliment in his words and glowing at the nickname. “Would you mind bringing the tea in here?” he asked, picking the quill up again. My heart galloped behind my ribs as I stood. “I’d like to do a bit more.”
“Of course.”
I dashed back to the kitchen and scrambled to collect the pot and cups. When I got back, I tucked myself into the cushion next to his, awed as he elaborated on the simple lines. It looked so effortless, but I was sure I couldn’t begin to fathom the number of hours he’d spent practicing this artform. It had taken months of careful practice and a heartbreaking amount of scrapped parchment before I produced something worth Father Morton keeping.
I sat silently to watch, Tap’s movements careful and controlled. The muscles in his forearm flexed and rolled as he worked, his strong, capable hands performing a measured dance with the quill and cloth.
The pot of tea slowly disappeared between the two of us, sips taken from mismatched cups during brief pauses in his concentration.
“Why do you use this room to tattoo?” I asked. “Why not another workshop?”
He shrugged. “There’s so little equipment required, it didn’t seem efficient to create a whole workshop honestly.” He glanced up, surveying the darker-toned wood walls. “This room originally started as a meditation room, but it turns out I’m terrible at clearing my mind. Unless, of course”—he lifted the magical quill”—I’m drawing on my own skin. Or putting holes in it.”
“Holes?” At my shocked tone, he chuckled and ran a finger along the hoops in his ears. “Oh. Are those the only ones?”
Tap’s lips parted, but he said nothing. I blushed hot when he only responded by very gently shaking his head. I wasn’t sure my imagination could be trusted, so I diverted my eyes back to his leg.
“It used to be, I had to sharpen a piece of wood down into a fine point and score my skin over and over again, then rub ground charcoal and ash into the wound left behind.”
“That sounds painful.”
“Mmm.” Tap’s thoughtful noise was nothing more than a rumble in his throat. My skin warmed at the sound. “Indeed. Tedious, as well. The methods have improved, but the idea is unchanged.” Tap ran his fingers through his hair, frowning at his leg as though waiting for inspiration before applying the sharp end of the tool to his skin once again. “It took ages for me to do even a simple design when I first started. I’ve used just about every kind of pigment and ink available over the years. I prefer to use only black now, but these here”—he gestured to a set of whorls and dots that looked a bit like flowers if I imagined the rounded parts as petals—“these were red once. The stems done in green. I even had some yellow over here, and purple.” His eyes drifted to me, like he was coming out of a daydream. “The purple in particular faded very quickly though, from a deep plum to violet, like your eyes.” I braced, his gaze intense as he studied me without blinking. “Very disappointing. The ink, I mean, not…”
“My eyes?” My throat was tight, the simple words strangled to barely more than a whisper on their way out. The fierce heat under my breastbone had returned, and I nearly gasped as it flared when he raised a hand, fingertips brushing along my jaw.
“Yes. They’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. They have haunted me mightily since my first glimpse of them through that apothecary’s shop window.” His admission came as a low rumble, his eyes boring straight to my soul after twice dropping to my mouth. My heart swooped and then squeezed painfully in my chest.
“I’m sorry.”
His palm settled warmly over my jaw, the pad of his thumb absently rubbing along my cheek. “Please don’t apologize. It’sbeen one of the sweetest tortures of my life. A gift.” His fingers lifted and threaded through a curl over my temple. My pulse thudded in my ears, breath splintered and painful as I stared at him in shock. He’d never behaved like this before, and I wasn’t sure how to respond. “Silver hair. Violet eyes. But I’d have known you anywhere even without those traits.” Tap paused, and I could see the seemingly disconnected thoughts coming together behind his eyes. “Charcoal and ash. Fair for use in tattoos as well as hair colorant.” He frowned. “What they had you doing to your hair was a paltry disguise at best. Your eyelashes looked all wrong. It was truly an awful ruse. Did anyone actually believe it?”
I choked out a harsh laugh. His thoughts seemed disordered sometimes, but there was a logic to them that I understood. “Between Father Morton’s insistence that I was a young man, the clothes, the hair, my name…” I shrugged. “Nobody said otherwise, even if they did suspect something was off. Though, to be fair, nobody said much of anything at all. It was better that way.” I parroted the words I’d been told a thousand times, words I accepted even when I wanted to rail against them.
His eyes raked over me again and I shivered. “You were there a significant amount of time.”
“Yes.” More than eleven years, if my tracking of the seasons was correct. Long enough for me to understand that the way humans grew and matured was different than how I did. Faster. My relatively privileged existence prior to that had done little to prepare me for the reality of living as an angel in hiding among humans.
“You must have been terribly lonely. Stuck in a life you weren’t allowed to actually live, a place you were forced to the edges of under a guise that hid your true self.” Melancholy weighed down his tone, and his gaze shuttered as he looked away from me and back to his leg.
“Yes.” I reached out and briefly squeezed his hand, seeing the same reflection of myself in him that I believed he saw in me. I might have been lonely everywhere I went, but he’d been buried here, suffocating alone. Fracturing under the weight of his responsibilities.
“It wouldn’t matter to me if you were a different version of yourself,” he added, head tilting one direction then the other as he plotted his next design. “I would have done the same, feel the same. I would still have recognized you. It is not your vessel that intrigues me, but rather the soul within it. Don’t misunderstand,” he added quickly, a flush to his cheeks. “This vessel is perfect. But there is far more to you than just that, Phin.”
I felt as though I’d been struck by lightning. The pressure in my chest shortened my breaths nearly to pants as my mind spun wildly with questions I wasn’t sure I was prepared for the answers to. He seemed far more confident in whatever he thought this was than I did. I held it gently, whereas he seemed sure it wasn’t that fragile.
“How… what…” I inhaled through my nose, forcing the words all meshing together in my mouth to settle before I tried to speak again. “What does that mean, exactly? How do you feel about me?”
His mouth tilted up on one side. “I can see your pulse pounding in your throat.” His eyes, had gone bright red and were fixated on that spot, his fingertips gliding over it so softly my skin tingled in the wake of his touch. His canines and the teeth next to them had sharpened, his tongue forked at the tip as he ran it over his bottom lip. “I can smell how you feel right now, see it in your face when your thoughts tangle around one another like mine do. Does your heart feel like it’s being crushed? Like it’s been set on fire right there in your chest? If so… I think you know.”
Chapter 23
Phin
Igasped a shallow breath at Tap’s brazen words, feeling the shape of every single one as they scratched and scraped their way through me. The unexpected appearance of his demonic features should have put me off, but I didn’t feel any fear or offense. He wasn’t wrong, and I wasn’t scared of him. Where fear should have been pulsed a heavy desire. A need I’d only felt once before, but this time it was untainted.Real.
I was drawn to him like he was a flame I needed to burn myself on before I’d truly accept it was dangerous.
He studied me as I hesitated, his thumb tracing over my throat as I swallowed, his fingers wrapped lightly around the side of my neck. His eyes tracked the movement, then landed back on my mouth. I was focused only on breathing, the crushing sensation in my chest bordering on pain. My hand lashed around his wrist, holding it in place.
