“Fading?” asked Sparrow.
He stopped and looked around at them, realizing something. They were all barefoot, in constant contact with the metal. He said, “You know how it works, don’t you? How it’s the mesarthium that makes you blue, and gives you your power, too?”
In fact, they didn’t know. The metal had always been there, and they had always been blue. They hadn’t guessed the one was a consequence of the other, and the notion was at once obvious and staggering. How had they never realized? Lazlo explained it as well as he was able, from what he knew of himself: As a baby, he had been gray. “Gray as rain,” a monk had said, thinking he was dying. But the color had faded long ago, and he hadn’t thought anything of it until last night, when he pressed his hands to the anchor and turned first gray, then blue.
“Do you mean to say,” Sparrow asked intently, “that if we were to stop touching it, we would become human?”
Ruby straightened up. “We could be human?” she asked. “We could live as humans? In the world?”
“I suppose you could, if that’s what you wanted.”
Sarai asked softly, “Would you want that?”
No one answered. It was too big a question. They’d all daydreamed about it, Sarai too. They’d looked at their reflections and pictured themselves brown, wearing human clothes, doing human things. Above all, they’d imagined meeting new people who didn’t look at them the way the ghosts did, with loathing that pierced their souls.
“You’d lose your gifts,” Lazlo pointed out.
“But they’d come back if we touched mesarthium again? Yours did,” said Sparrow.
“I guess so.”
It was a lot to take in. They made Minya a new bed on the floor, with a pillow under her head and a folded blanket under her body, leaving her legs and hands in contact with mesarthium. After some discussion, they made a kind of gruel by watering down the mashed kimril, and Sarai spooned dribbles of it between Minya’s lips while Lazlo held her semi-upright. The realities of caring for someone unconscious began to sink in, and it was all the clearer to Sarai that this was a short-term solution.
Ruby took the next watch, and held the green bottle between her knees, her eyes fixed on Minya’s for any flutter of lashes that might signal her waking. The others left them there. The sun was edging toward the horizon, and Sarai still didn’t know if she’d rather it speed up or stop.
She couldn’t shake the feeling that Minya was waiting for her, even in her dreams, perhaps perched in a too-big chair just like the one at the head of the table, with a quell board set up and a smile on her face, the game already in play.
Chapter 19
First Ghost Nightfall
Sarai led Lazlo out onto her terrace to watch the sun set behind the Cusp. With the ghost guards all inside, they had it to themselves: the whole open palm of the seraph.
“That’s where I fell.” Sarai pointed. She’d slid from the pad of the thumb, down the scoop of the palm, and right off the edge near the fifth finger. Lazlo’s jaw clenched as he looked around. He’d almost landed here in the silk sleigh. His first sight of Sarai—his only sight, he realized, of her both alive and real—had been here when she’d screamed from her doorway “Go!” and saved his life, and Eril-Fane’s, Azareen’s, and Soulzeren’s, too. Right in this spot, she’d both saved their lives and lost her own.
“There should be a railing,” he said.
Of course, now that seemed like a good idea. “I never felt unsafe here,” Sarai said. “I didn’t know the citadel would tip.”
She went to the edge to look out. It wasn’t an edge, per se. It curved up at the sides to form a low, sloping wall. Enough to keep one from walking off the side, but not enough to catch a person if it were to tip. And though Lazlo was determined that that wouldn’t happen again, still the sight of Sarai standing there raised the hairs on his arms. He willed a railing to sprout up before her.
“Silly,” she said, running a palm over it. “I can’t fall now. Haven’t you realized? I can fly.”
With that, she sprouted wings from her shoulders, like the ones from their wingsmith dream. Fox wings, they’d been, of all things, covered in soft orange fur. Those had been on a harness. These grew right from her shoulders. Why not? She spread them wide and fanned them down, and lifted into the air. She couldn’t go far. She couldn’t fly away. Minya’s tether held her here, but it was still a thrill. It felt as though she were really flying.
Lazlo reached up and caught her by the waist, and drew her down into his arms, and as fine as it was to fly, it was better to land like this—to moor against him and make herself fast. She settled in, arms around his neck, closed her eyes, and softly kissed him. She kissed the side she hadn’t bitten, and she was careful. She only brushed her lips against his, softly parted, playing. Lightly, she licked with the tip of her tongue. His met hers, just as lightly.
She told him what he’d told her a few nights before, when they’d had their first awed inkling of what a kiss could be. “You have ruined my tongue for all other tastes,” she whispered, and felt his mouth smile against hers. There was sound in their breathing, the softest of sighs. Their bodies remembered the heat from before, his lips closing warm on the tip of her breast, and their chests, skin to skin, so brief before the bite.
And the heat leapt alive—a fire licked by winds. Licked and sucked, deep and sweet. They kissed—not lightly, no, not now.
Lazlo winced. There was blood. They’d reopened the bite. He made no move to stop. He held Sarai close, and kissed her. Her feet were off the ground. Her fingers were in his hair. They were tangled in each other on the seraph’s open palm. Under her slip, her elilith pulsed silver. It wanted Lazlo’s lips, his hands, his skin, his fire, as she wanted his weight, rocking with her, his heat, filling her. He wanted to trace her tattoo’s shining lines and taste it, and feel it, and make it glow, and make her purr. Neither of them knew anything at all. But their bodies knew what bodies know, and wanted what bodies want.
They wanted, but they parted, with wildfires in them and blood on their tongues. “I want…” Sarai murmured.
“Me too,” Lazlo breathed.
They gazed at each other, awed that fires could kindle that fast, and frustrated that they couldn’t let them kindle. Sarai had only meant to kiss him, and now she wanted to climb him, consume him. She felt like a creature, fanged and hungry, and…she liked it. She let out a shaky laugh and loosened her hold on him, sliding down so her feet once again met the ground.
The friction made him close his eyes and take a steadying breath.
“Your lip,” said Sarai with a grimace of apology. “It’ll never heal at this rate.”
“I like this rate,” said Lazlo, his voice at its roughest—as it was, Sarai was learning, in moments of grief or desire. “I can always get another lip,” he said, “but I’ll never get this moment back.”
Sarai cocked her head. “There’s nothing at all wrong with that statement.”
“No, nothing. It’s perfectly true.”
“Lips probably grow on vines somewhere.”
“It’s a big world. Chances are good.”
Sarai smiled and felt like a silly girl, in the best possible way. “I like this lip, though. I’m appointing myself its protector. No kissing until further notice.”
Lazlo’s eyes narrowed. “That’s the worst idea you’ve ever had.”
“Think of it as a challenge. You can’t kiss, but you can be kissed. I should make that clear. Just not on the mouth.”
“Where, then?” he asked, intrigued.