Once Luke was asleep, Elliot sat up in the tent and his new nest of blankets, and looked down at Luke. He was sleeping curled up around his pillow, gold hair in his face, and even his sleeping face looked troubled and puzzled, the face of someone for whom trouble was new.
For a moment, Elliot thought that he would throw away the treaty and everything the treaty meant, if only he could make Luke feel better.
It was a ridiculous thing to think. Elliot was worried he was coming down with something.
When Elliot woke up that morning, he was comfortably warm, which was excellent. Luke was bothering him about something, which was not.
Luke kept yammering at him to wake up right now, but there didn’t seem to be a battle or a literary dispute or anything too urgent going on, so Elliot continued snoozing. He was really warm, for the one of the first times in the Borderlands, where the weather was worse than England and the heating situation was medieval. The blankets felt heavy and warm as down, and when Elliot cracked an eye open he saw the tent arched above him, gold and shining.
Except the tent was not gold.
Elliot opened his eyes.
There was no need for alarm. The tent had not magically transformed into a golden dome overnight. The tent was simply filled with wings. The idea sounded scary, as if Elliot had been enveloped in a storm of birds, but the reality was anything but. The moment was quiet, the wings motionless and serene, even the sounds of the outside world muffled. The wings, gold-touched pearl like those of Caroline the Fair from long ago, caught the light filtering in through the fabric of the tent. They turned into bright gilt arches which were, somehow, soft and warm and alive.
Elliot reached up a hand and ran his fingers lightly, very lightly, down the radiant row of feathers.
“Elliot,” Luke said, sounding as if he were holding onto the fraying edge of the robe of Patience. “Do not touch them!”
Which was when Elliot was forcibly reminded that these living wings belonged to a living person, and his behavior was completely terrible. He snatched his hand back and, in a move that would have surprised absolutely no one who had ever met him, began to babble.
He heard his own voice, bringing up Jase and the fact Jase’d had ginger in his goatee. He was stunned and dismayed by his own lack of subtlety. Really, he was bringing up his ex-boyfriend? Really? Elliot despaired of himself. He might as well have said ‘Whoa, Luke, buddy, enough of your personal feelings of self-doubt and trauma over body horror, because those wings are really working for me.’
Fortunately, Elliot babbling was normal enough behavior that it actually seemed to calm Luke down. Luke worked out how to fold his wings back up, and Elliot only made one joke containing the words “morning wing” which was restraint, because he’d thought of forty-seven.
“Shut up forever,” said Luke, trying to pull his shirt on. He had chosen a linen shirt rather than his usual leather, but the shirt still presented him with a certain amount of difficulty. For obvious reasons.
Moment with the wings aside, Elliot was a bigger person than to stand around checking out his friends when they were in trouble. It didn’t matter how shirtless they happened to be. Such things were totally irrelevant to him.
“Okay,” he said. “Let me help you.”
“No!” Luke snapped.
“Okay,” Elliot soothed. “Only someone has to. Do you want me to get Serene, or Da—”
“No,” said Luke, and his voice was terrible, cracking or turning into a croak like a raven’s, Elliot could not tell and it did not make any difference, because either way it meant Luke was totally freaked out.
“Okay,” Elliot said for a third time, voice as soft and consoling as he could make it. “Give me a knife.”
“What?” Luke asked. “Oh no. What are you planning to do with a knife?”
This was familiar alarm, alarm Elliot knew perfectly well how to deal with: alarm at what terrible thing Elliot might do next.
“Trust me,” Elliot said, almost laughing.
“Oh no,” Luke muttered again, and handed him the knife.
It was one of the knives Luke habitually carried, familiar enough to Elliot that it was not disturbing to handle. The bone handle was worn smooth in Elliot’s hand, and since the knife was owned by Luke, who took conscientious care of all his things, the blade was sharp enough to cut fabric with ease.
Elliot pulled the shirt out at the back so it billowed, slicing the material at the points where the shirt folded, so the material would still conceal the wings but there would be room for them to unfold.
Luke was obviously a long way from relaxed, the muscles of his shoulders knotted and the feathers in his wings trembling as if caught in an upward draft of wind. Elliot put a hand on the back of Luke’s neck absentmindedly as he did his extremely rough version of tailoring for wings.
“Shhh,” he said.
“You shouldn’t,” Luke said. “You shouldn’t have to touch—”
“I don’t mind,” Elliot said, calm and factual.
He stepped back and examined his handi-or-knifiwork critically. It really was not so bad.
And this was a good development, Elliot thought. Rachel Sunborn had said so, and the medics back at home and the harpies here had all agreed: it was time, and past time, for the wings to come out. This was always going to happen, and not the disaster Luke imagined.
Also wings were cool.
He did not express these feelings to Luke. It was not Elliot’s body. If it had been, Elliot might be considerably more disturbed. Luke did not have to agree that wings were cool, Elliot reminded himself. He just had to cope.
He was coping all right, Elliot thought. He was recovered enough to be cranky about Elliot’s clothing.
“What is that on your shirt?”
“It’s a rock band,” Elliot answered.
Luke gave him a look that clearly conveyed Luke’s disdain for the idea that stones could form a group.
“And what are those?”
“They’re jeans. Remember?”
“Oh, I remember. And they’re as awful as I remember,” Luke scolded. “And they’re contraband! You can’t wear contraband. The commander will be furious.”
Elliot was amused. “We’re on holiday. Besides, what’s she going to do about my contraband clothes? Execute me?” He fished one of his pens and a notebook out of the pocket of those jeans things, glanced up and saw Luke still looking disapproving. He stepped in and drew the pen over Luke’s throat, pretending to be the commander cutting it. “Confiscate them?” he said, and grinned. “Hardly. I have to go meet Podarge, she’s a very nice lady, she promised to show me how harpies garden.”