Wings.
As he watched, they creased and stretched, dripping with fluid at the curling, tailed ends. Gradually, they spread, undulating and wavering like silk sheets in a summer breeze,making the sound of soft cloth whipping against a strong wind. Nearly translucent, they were soft, lightly glistening, coated in a short fur.
They extended fully, stretching a bit wider than the length of her arms, and their full, colorful majesty was revealed. The edges were limned in dusky lilac; the curls of the tails faded to a rosy pink. Each wing had a painted eye in its center, eyes ringed by yellow crescent moons, staring into the dark beyond, daring it. All against a soft canvas of seafoam green, the same gorgeous green her eyes once were.
She gasped as she felt them, worked them with new muscles.
Her entire anatomy was rearranging, he realized; not only what he could see. Every muscle, every blood vessel, every organ. Since he’d known her, she’d been being silently altered, silently scraped clean of who and what she once was; what he could see was only the barest hint of it. This alteration wasn’t somethinghappening; it was something being done. A brutal exchange: for one transgression, a lifetime of pain, of unknowable terror, compressed into days.
His heart broke for her; it raged that anyone could do this to her,her, who deserved the world. It raged at himself, that he had not seen the depth of her suffering, not even in the dark, when she showed him everything.
But what he could see now was incredible; almost entrancing. No longer in pain, she released a shaking breath, relaxed her shoulders. Her wings folded inward, draped off her back like an elegant, tailored coat.
“I wondered,” she said, barely a whisper. An empty laugh sent them fluttering. “But I can’t even use them. They’re useless.”
“Anya,” he said, released from his stupor. “They’re beautiful.”
“Beautiful,” she repeated. Her voice was a husk. “Do you find me beautiful, Sylas?”
“Yes.” He heard the breathless, unhindered longing in his voice. He didn’t care. “I always have.”
What sounded like a gasp became a wretched laugh. “And what price must I pay? Whatfuckingprice?”
“Anya,” he said again, trying to capture all he felt flitting around his addled brain. He couldn’t begin to imagine what she was going through. What he was putting her through.
He felt the feather in his pocket. He felt his heart, heavy, in his chest.
She wouldn’t like it. But he must try. “Perhaps – I met your friend, Perrine. She mentioned – what I mean to say is, I am not unskilled in negotiating with tyrants. Perhaps, if I found the woman who cursed you, I–”
“No,” she snapped, swift and harsh as a snake bite. “You helped me. I’m grateful. Now go.”
“I don’t know–” He managed to stop himself, but he heard what he hadn’t said, plain as day, in his voice.I don’t know if I can leave you again.
Abruptly, she spun around, uncovered; let him see all the frightening, alien beauty of her new body. But he hardly noticed. She had said something, something odd.
“What?”
“Iliedto you, I said.”
He struggled to make sense of her words. “You…lied.”
“From the start.” She clamped a hand over her mouth, as if her words pained her.
Of course. The liar’s pigeon. It compelled her to confess. To speak only truth. And she was fighting it, fighting against revealing her secret self to him.
He was suddenlyverysure he didn’t want to see it.
But neither of them could stop it. “I was always going to betray you. I’m taking the phoenix straight to the king to make my name, then reclaim my inheritance, my rightful place as a baroness of Gescany.”
He had supposed as much, once, though he was sure he’d been mistaken. No matter; it changed nothing, now. “Be that as it may–”
“From the moment I saw you,” she went on, “I knew you were a soft-hearted, frivolous fool. Easy to use.” Her voice caught. “And you were. Like a well oiled gun.”
He felt each word as a stab. Each freely given desire, each shared fear, turned and aimed against him, an arrow to the chest. He deserved it; he had done the same to her, days before.
There was only one difference. He hadn’t meant it.
Though he’d expected her betrayal all along, now it felt unreal, like a dream. But even through the haze, something wasn’t adding up. “Your curse–”
