“Show me,” I said. “The rest of it. Show me what you’re becoming.”
“Wren…”
“Show me.”
Something in his face fractured. His hands were shaking where they cupped my jaw. His whole body was shaking. I could feel the vibration of it through my palms.
“I cannot.” He closed his eyes. “If I let go…”
“Then let go.”
“I will not be able to stop.”
“I’m not asking you to stop.”
His eyes flew open. Gold burning into me. And then his wings exploded from his back.
The sound of it. Massive. The displacement of air. They stretched behind him, bronze and black, the span of them filling the chamber. Fifteen feet at least. Each feather perfect.
I reached out and touched one.
The sound he made was not human.
A cry. A keen. Something broken and hungry and desperate. His hands tightened on my face. His wings folded forward, around us, blocking out the light.
“You should not touch me.” His voice was wrecked. “When you touch me I cannot. I cannot think.”
“Good.”
I slid my hand higher. Into the feathers at his shoulder. Felt the structure of them. The warmth. The way they moved under my palm like they were alive.
He pulled me against him. Hard. His mouth found mine.
The kiss was not gentle. It was not careful. It was centuries of restraint and the full force of whatever he was becoming and I drowned in it.
His hands in my hair. His wings wrapped around us. His body burning against mine like he would set me on fire from the inside out.
And then he stopped.
Wrenched himself back. His chest heaving. His eyes wild.
“I cannot…” He was shaking so hard I could hear his feathers rattling. “I cannot do this. Not now. Not when I am like this.”
“When you’re like what?”
“Losing myself.” The words tore out of him. “I am losing myself, Wren. Every day there is less of me and more of this. And if I lose myself with you, if I cannot control?—”
He pulled away. Wings folding. Body retreating. Putting distance between us like it was the only thing keeping him alive.
“I’ll join you for the evening meal.” The same words. The same escape. “I need, I need to…”
He left.
I stood there in the bathing chamber with wet hands and blood on the cloth and my lips still burning from his kiss.
I thought about his wings wrapped around me. About the sound he’d made when I touched his feathers. About the look in his eyes when he’d saidyours.
I thought about the fear in his tone when he spoke of losing himself.
And I realized, with a kind of terrible clarity, that I didn’t want him to find himself again.
I wanted him to lose himself with me.
I wanted to be what he was becoming for.
I pressed my fingers to my lips and counted my heartbeats and didn’t move until the sun had risen fully and the chamber had gone from rose to gold to the bright white of morning.
Then I went to find him.
