“Yeah,” he said. He opened his eyes, saw me looking, and hopped around, looking up at me. “You broke your wing.”
“Yeah. I can fix it. If I’d used the Hyena to cut it off, it would be another story.”
“Yeah.”
“How are Peter, Roxanne, and Green Eyes?”
“Warming their hands by the fire,” Evan said. “I could go get them. It’s okay so long as we stay beneath the tops of the trees.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Is that an okay I should go or an okay I understand?”
“I get it. I’m… not rushing, right now. There’s so much to do, but right this moment, I don’t think we’re going to get attacked and killed if we let our guard down. Just for the moment, maybe, let’s let our guard down.”
“Sounds good.”
I didn’t resume my previous position, face turned to the light, enjoying that it had no qualifiers, here. That it wasn’t flickering bulbs that only reminded me of how dark everything else was, a confusing strobe or angle to hide handholds, or something that filtered through from a world I didn’t belong to.
I did watch the others, semi-consciously sticking to the light in the center of the clearing.
The Behaims and Knights were seeing that Mara was confined, and were drawing a circle around her. If Mara had been talking, I would have wandered over to that end of the clearing, but her mouth was closed. The treeline blocked her view of the plume of smoke.
Only a matter of time. I wasn’t sure what her reaction would be to the burning of her house.
Rose watched over it, but didn’t participate, gloved hands clasped behind her back, holding the mirror. The satyr and maenad sat on the fallen trees, talking, the satyr drinking from a flask, handing it over for the maenad to sample.
A younger Knight wandered over, and the maenad offered up the flask. The guy drank, sputtered, and coughed.
Mara was forced to sit in the little circle they’d drawn, almost a parallel to the one she’d drawn around herself, to ward me off. They backed off, standing guard around her.
I saw Rose say something, holding up a hand, then she turned to spot me and head my way.
Old fashioned Rose, in old fashioned clothes, hair tied back into a short braid, with two lengths framing her face. Her expression was serious, unsmiling. She held her arms out to either side for balance as she made her way through the deeper patches of snow, mirror in one hand, her rifle slung over one shoulder with a strap.
I waited a few seconds, then moved forward. I still managed to meet her halfway, even though I’d given her the headstart.
We met each other’s eyes.
She shifted her hands so they were both in front of her, holding the mirror in both. I saw her glance at Evan, then meet my eyes again.
“Being around you is terrifying,” Rose broke the silence.
“I can imagine, knowing what you know now.”
“It’s not the ‘doomed to kill each other’ thing. I imagine you have that same sort of fear.”
“No,” I said. “Not exactly.”
She frowned at me.
“I don’t really feel afraid in the conventional sense, anymore,” I told her. “One of the first things that came with this transformation. I conquered my fears and they just… went away.”
“Went away.”
“Don’t have to worry about them anymore. I still worry, I have concerns for the welfare of Evan, and Green Eyes, and for… our friends. But I don’t succumb to the grip of terror and panic like I should.”
“How nice for you,” Rose said. She looked at the wing I was holding. “Is it fixable?”
“Yeah. Just need someone to stick it in place.”
“You could have asked me,” Evan said.
“You’re not strong enough,” I said.
Evan coughed. “You still could have asked. Some might feel insulted, being ignored like that.”
Rose stepped forward, putting her hands on the wing.
I flinched, but, after a moment’s delay, I let go.
She held the wing, maneuvering it as she brought the stump to the hole at my back.
Rose flinched as the wood at my back shifted, working to take in the wing. Where I’d been hesitant, even protective of the wing, her reaction was more one of fear.
“You were calling me terrifying,” I said. “I guess this is part of it?”
“Not like you’re thinking,” she said. “You’re hard to predict. Every time I look away, you’ve changed. A monster in the mirror, then by the next time I see you, I’ve done my research, I know you’re a threat to me, and you’re invading the house I’d warded you out of. Then, before I know it, you’re functioning, working despite the confines of the mirror world, striking down your enemies.”
“After which point I’m outside of the mirror, attacking the Behaims.”
She frowned. “Killing, not just attacking. It got rewound, but… very easy to imagine myself at the end of your blade, having seen that. Now it seems you’re transcending normal human limits.”
“He flies!” Evan said. “He transcends with style.”
I tested my wing, putting my hand into the available spot, stretching it to its full length, and then with drew my hand out, folding my wings. Lopsided as they were without my arm as part of it, I was most comfortable folding one in front of my body, touching the ‘hand’ of the larger wing to my right shoulder.
“Do you keep going?” Rose asked. “Is this one step in a journey to becoming something else altogether?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
She nodded.
“Is Mara ready to talk?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, echoing me.
“Okay,” I said.
She’d come here for a reason. I didn’t ask her what it was.
I had the sense that the both of us were being exceptionally careful about what we said.
I didn’t want to disturb this small peace I’d found here in the clearing and the sunlight, and Rose-
“Alister was bothered, I think, seeing how the two of us interacted,” Rose said.
“Bothered?”
“I’m marrying him. It’s not a game or a gimmick or anything of the sort. There’s strategy and power plays involved with it, but it’s not like I can or will back down or stab him in the back or anything.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“He made this quip, and it cut me pretty deep. Commented that he wondered if what he saw in our interaction was what he had to look forward to in the marriage.”
“Ah,” I said.
“Ouch,” Evan said.
Rose shrugged, looking away. “If I can show that I can function like a decent human being in the company of the vestige-cum-bogeyman that’s destined to destroy or be destroyed by me, well, maybe that counts for something.”
I bristled a little at the emphasis on my being a monster, but grit my teeth. I managed to sound civil as I said, “Yeah. I can respect that.”
“I’ve got to lay groundwork. It makes no sense if we survive the remainder of the night, save the city from the abyss, and the consequences of everything we’ve done catch up with us and destroy us all the same.”
“Laying the groundwork for the future.”
“I’m trying to.”
“I’m glad,” I said. “For too much of tonight, especially since I found out about where we really come from, from Russel, I haven’t felt like I’ve had much of a future.”