Baz sits up tall and reaches around my shoulder to where my wings are flattened against my back. He hasn’t touched me there since I walked in. “I thought these were bandages,” he says, patting them.
“No. Just my wings. They, like, pulled in super tight when the doctor was trying to clean them. Some sort of panic response, I think.”
“Could you do this on purpose?” He’s probing my back with his fingers, one eyebrow cocked. “If you could, you wouldn’t even need a spell to hide them—they’re hardly noticeable like this.”
“Pfft, I look like that Disney character with the droopy eye.”
He stares at me for a second. “Quasimodo?”
“Yeah, him.”
He rolls his eyes again. “All right, maybe, but you don’t look like a dragon.”
“They’re so bunched up, I’m afraid to move them. It hurts a bit.” I pull my hoodie and T-shirt up over my head and turn, so Baz can see my bare back.
“Circe . . .” he says.
He touches me there, and I wince.
“They’re folded up like origami, Snow. How is that possible?”
“How is any of it possible? Dragons are magic, I reckon.”
Baz runs his hand up one wing to the bony black talon that’s curled against my shoulder. “Is this where it hurts?”
“No, it’s more like a muscle cramp, in the wings themselves.”
“Maybe from clenching them so tight?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“You’re sticky,” he says. “There’s this orange film . . .”
“That’s the Betadine. The disinfectant.”
“So youdidgo in for the surgery?”
I glance at him over my shoulder. “Yeah. I went. And then . . . Well. I needed to come here. I’m still going to do it, have them off, but I—I needed to talk to you.”
I feel something against my wings and crank my head back. Baz is kissing me. Well, he’s kissing the wings. Down one side. Slowly. And . . . Up . . . The other.
It feels like he’s kissing the inside of my ear. Or the back of my throat.
I shudder.
Baz puts his arms around my waist, and holds me there.
“You’ll get Betadine on your mouth,” I say.
His voice is low: “Probably needs it.”
It’s too much. My skin is crawling, and my wings are flinching. I’m worried they’re going to fly out, like someone opening a spiked umbrella in his face. I pull his hands apart at my stomach and turn around. His lips really are orange; it makes me laugh.
“We should take a shower,” I say.
Baz raises an eyebrow.
My cheeks get hot. “I mean, we should both take showers. Like you said. Can I—I mean, this is your aunt’s place, right? Does she have a shower? Would she mind?”
