The Key

Chapter 6

Curiously, Prince Dan laughs again. He turns away slightly and says, “Yeah… About that.” He looks back to Casper, smiling. “He’s got a nose for trouble. Especially near me. That’s his way of breaking up fights. Preemptively.”

Casper narrows his eyes at the implication.

Prince Dan laughs louder. He claps Casper on the shoulder. “I told you, I like rude.”

“Are you telling me that at any sign of confrontation, I can expect your brother to take notice?” Casper asks.

“Are you planning on confrontation?”

Casper checks the state of the prince’s smile before answering. “Debates can grow heated.”

Having been trailing away, the prince’s hand squeezes tight, now at the corner between Casper’s shoulder and upper arm. Prince Dan leans closer. “I think I’d like to see that.”

“And your brother would interrupt?”

Prince Dan tilts his head from side to side, presumably a motion of consideration. “Not necessarily.”

“But if I refrained from causing a scene?”

“I don’t think he’d jump in, then,” Prince Dan assures him. “So, you know. You can relax. If that’s something you do.”

“It isn’t,” Casper replies, and Prince Dan’s face takes the shape it makes before laughter. Instead of laughing, however, he softens. Casper isn’t sure why.

Palm still on Casper’s shoulder, Prince Dan lifts his fingers, fingertips brushing against the undersides of Casper’s folded wing. His eyes remain on Casper’s, as if Casper might not notice the touch if he can’t see it. The prince smiles with only his lips. “I could help you with that.”

Although his logical mind knows it won’t prevent Prince Samuel from having visions, Casper keeps his voice low. The quiet tone turns his words rough and deep. “Would it be too bold, to request your help for something else?”

In response, Prince Dan’s hand rides down Casper’s arm, a downward slide of warmth. For the second time this night, Prince Dan takes hold of Casper’s fingers and lifts both their hands before his face. For the first time, this night or any night, he presses his lips against Casper’s knuckles. Like the touch of his hand, the touch of his mouth is warm and soft. It’s much drier than the frequent licking of his lips would imply.

“I like bold, too,” Prince Dan says.

“Then I will be bold,” Casper replies.

Gently, he frees his hand but does not retract it. Instead, he returns it to the crook of the prince’s elbow. “If you would indulge me,” Casper says, “I would very much appreciate a tour.”

Prince Dan smiles.

The tour is fruitless. There are areas they don’t approach, and there is nothing useful on display. If mentioning the tablet earlier sparked any recognition in Prince Dan, the human refuses to show it. Instead, Prince Dan speaks of human history and human battles. He calls upon knowledge from deep within his family line, and while this is very informative, it is not very useful.

Fortunately, Prince Dan seems content with a quiet audience. When presented with information potentially relevant to his mission – which is infrequent – Casper directs his gaze where indicated. When presented with irrelevant information, Casper resumes his study of human mannerisms.

He watches the way Prince Dan’s hands move, the gestures varying greatly by subject matter. He inspects Prince Dan’s stance when others crowd in or weigh in, and he inspects it when they are as close to alone as the party will allow. He watches Prince Dan’s eyes and the tilt of his head. He wonders at the increasing frequency with which he licks his lips.

When the licking becomes almost incessant and Prince Dan’s voice grows rough, Casper realizes what’s wrong. In a moment of social grace worth taking pride in, he releases Prince Dan’s arm to snag a pair of fluted glasses off a passing servant with a tray. He offers one to Prince Dan and receives another mouth smile in exchange. Casper even remembers to hold out his own glass as well, slightly tilted, for Prince Dan to tap his glass against.

Prince Dan does so. He sips quietly, nevertheless draining half the glass in a few moments. This done, he transfers the glass to his other hand, opposite from Casper. He lowers his closer arm, elbow slightly extended. “Cas,” he murmurs, the horns of his mask tilting overhead, “you’re letting my arm get cold.”

This is very likely a joke. Regardless, Casper returns his hand to its previous position. “My apologies.”

The night grows later. Even knowing that leaving the castle half an hour before midnight will see him back to the portal, he doesn’t have enough time. He has more information, a great deal of it, but nothing to bring him closer to his goal.

“Sir Dan, is there a library?” Casper asks as the circuit of the ground floor draws to a close.

Downstairs, he knows there are the inner workings of the castle: kitchens and cellars, the armory and a dungeon. There are also vaults, a holdover from when the Royal Treasury could fit inside the castle itself, prior to the founding of the Royal Bank. If the tablet were in the vault, the royal family would have to know what it was, and everything he’s observed about Prince Dan indicates otherwise. Therefore, the library.

“I was waiting for the ulterior motive,” Prince Dan tells him.

Casper, to his credit, doesn’t waver. As long as Prince Dan is still smiling, Casper has not been found out. “You did say you wished to help me relax.”

“That’s upstairs a different way,” Prince Dan replies.

He guides Casper to a door flanked by two guards. Around the door handle is a golden rope, the length tied below the thumb latch, preventing the use of both latch and door. This arrangement has been a common sight this evening, clearly marking the limits of the masquerade. Without so much as Prince Dan gesturing, the guard closest to the handle unties the rope. His partner opposite opens the door for them, swinging the wood inward. Inside, an unwavering magelight illuminates the base of a narrow stone stairway, twisting upward to the right.

“We’re going up this way tonight,” Prince Dan tells him.

“Where are we going?” Casper asks.

“Trust me,” Prince Dan bids him. He gestures to the cramped space, indicating that Casper is to climb first. “If you don’t like it once we’re up there, I’ll show you the library instead.”

This human cannot harm him, Casper reminds himself. It’s strange, unnerving, to need this reminder. Prince Dan doesn’t believe in angels, as much of an oversight as it is an insult. He has no warding symbols. He knows no banishment sigil. He carries no angel blade. Clearly, constantly carrying his wings in an anxious position is making Casper needlessly afraid.

The only risk is being discovered, and the greatest threat is attracting Prince Samuel’s visions.

Casper swallows his misgivings and steps into the stairwell. His bound wings impede his balance on the stairs, even as they remain neatly contained within the narrow stone confines. Behind him, he hears Prince Dan’s footsteps and the closing of the door. The light shifts as Prince Dan lifts a portable magelight from its holder.

Though Casper’s eyes are as well-suited to darkness as they are to light, he has to wonder what a human would see. Would a human only be able to see one step ahead of themselves? Would the shadows of his own legs block his view of where next to put his feet? Should he stumble? He keeps his hands on both walls as a compromise, and his balance needs the help too much for comfort.

They climb.

They keep climbing.

This is not the stairway to a higher floor. This is not an oddly placed servants’ entrance to an attic. This is a tower, and Casper still doesn’t see what Prince Dan is planning. What he’s planned well in advance, if the motions of those guards are any indicators.

They climb even higher, a distance that takes feet an eon and wings a moment. The stone steps curve underfoot, worn with age, repetition, and human weariness.

At last, the stairs stop. Casper stops with them.

There is a small landing. There is a closed door. There is an empty magelight bracket.

“It’s unlocked,” Prince Dan tells him. His arm brushes against the edge of Casper’s wing, the side of Casper’s arm, as he sets the magelight into place. His breath is hot against Casper’s feathers.

Casper opens the door, and there is the sky.

It’s there. In front of him. Overhead. Around him.

The sky.

Casper walks into it, and there is stone under his feet. There is glass before him. There are vague impressions of metal: the shape of a tube, a glimpse of a stool.

He walks to the edge, to what should be the edge. A parapet rises to his waist. Set into that parapet is a glass dome, a half-sphere segmented by sheets of glass and lines of metal.

There are the stars and the moon and the sky holding them all. There is no wind, not within this glass bubble, and that still, unmoving air is all that saves him. Unnerves him. This sky is real and he still cannot feel it. Every fiber of his being calls to leap through the glass, to soar, to plummet and swoop away from the ground at the last possible moment.

He needs to fly.

Somehow, he remains standing.

The light dims. A latch catches. One footfall follows another.

“I guess you like it,” Prince Dan says, his voice the softness that comes above a whisper.

Unable to speak, Casper nods.

With the deliberate footsteps of a hunter, Prince Dan moves to stand beside him. They look into the sky. They look across the courtyard at the other towers, a clock tower and spires for living within. They look across the barracks and the training grounds. The gardens, faint with starlight. The outer border of the palatial complex, and the capital city beyond. He sees so much. Not from the right angle, not yet, but from less of the wrong one.

A hand touches the small of his back. A faint touch to the back flap of his shirt, the cloth covering the base of his wings at his shoulder blades. Reflexively, Casper turns, and Prince Dan’s hand drags across his feathers. Rather, Casper drags his wing across Prince Dan’s hand. His breath catches.

“Sorry,” Prince Dan tells him softly. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

Casper shakes his head. Words don’t come, won’t come.

Prince Dan doesn’t drop his hand, not immediately. Both the touch and subsequent absence of it stretch, infinite.

“Mom used to bring me up here a lot,” Prince Dan says, still in those low tones, as if Casper is some wild, skittish animal. “Before Sam was born, when it was just her and me. Too hard to herd two kids up those stairs, I guess. But we’d come up here and she’d tell me about how weather works. And when I got bored, she’d, uh.” He looks out the window, out the walls of windows. “She’d tell me about angels, actually. She’d be up here, taking notes in every direction, a full month of forecasts at a time, but she’d stop to make up these little stories.”

Standing shock still, Casper flounders his way back to his mission. “Does… Does she still come up here? To check for weather and omens.”

“She doesn’t actually need to be up here to predict anything,” Prince Dan replies. “So she doesn’t, anymore. Too many stairs.”

“Have there been many, of late?”

“Stairs?”

“Omens.”

Prince Dan looks at him in the moonlight, and his mask turns his face strange. The silver of the horns glitters like two comets fixed in space. “You worried about something, Cas?”

“If something were to happen, you would be sent after it.”

His lips shift. “I’m staying put here until Sam’s wedding next week.”

“Then you’d be preoccupied instead.”

“No omens, Cas,” Prince Dan promises. Then: “Are you staying that long?”

“How long?”

“Until Sam’s wedding. Chuck’s invite is to both.”

“Oh.” Casper shakes his head. “I only have leave for the masquerade.” Only these five nights provide an excuse for his wings, but to have the luxury of so much time…

The sound is strange through the glass as the clock tower across from them tolls eleven. Half an hour before he must finish taking his leave. Half an hour more to press forward.

“They really can’t spare you any longer?” Prince Dan asks, unwittingly accurate in his questioning.

“Not with the travel time involved,” Casper replies, honest in a different way. He seems to be doing a great deal of that.

“So just three more nights, huh.” Body still facing toward the night sky, Prince Dan keeps his eyes on Casper.

Casper nods. “I’d like to make the most of that time.”

Prince Dan nods back. Slowly. Lingering in the motion the same way his eyes linger on Casper’s face. “Yeah. Me too.”

“Are you certain there’s nothing to call you away?” Casper asks a second time.

Prince Dan shifts to face him fully. In some indecipherable answer, he lifts both hands. Again, he moves too slowly, so needlessly gentle. Are humans truly so fragile? Or does Prince Dan expect to be so much stronger than other humans?

These are the questions Casper wonders as one hand brushes the edge of his mask, the side of his face. The other hand reaches farther back, carefully running down through Casper’s hair until the fastening band of the mask is found. The band comes up and over. Standing still, uncertain but calm, Casper permits Prince Dan to unmask him.

After an almost imperceptible pause of holding it between their faces, Prince Dan lowers the mask.

Prince Dan stops breathing.

Casper gazes back levelly. Waiting.

Before Casper can decide whether he is meant to repeat this act upon the prince, Prince Dan unmasks himself as well. For the first time, Casper can see the strength of his brow and the true slope of his nose. The shadows of the night sky suit his eyes better than the shadows of his mask. To see the plushness of his mouth was lovely, but to have the whole of his face to study is abruptly too much.

Prince Dan turns away, hooking both masks on a nearby telescope. Casper had barely noticed the equipment against the temptation of the sky. The horns clang against the telescope like poorly cast bells. Before the sound has an instant to fade, Prince Dan returns.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Casper reminds him, struggling to return to a steady wind. Something is happening here, something Casper didn’t intend and can’t seem to stop. Something is about to descend upon him, and the only thing Casper can do is proceed forward.

“Nothing’s gonna call me away, Cas,” Prince Dan tells him. “And even after Sam’s wedding, when I’m back out there, I’m not defenseless. I’ve been training since I was a child, and I’ve been hunting for over a decade. I can exorcise demons with the best of them, and I’m constantly warded against possession. It’s fine. I’m fine. All right?”

Questions. He has to keep asking questions. The tablet, demon activity, the Mage Prince’s visions: ask the questions. He seizes the nearest one. “You’re constantly warded? Even outside the castle?”

“Here,” Prince Dan says, and he takes Casper’s hand. He moves Casper’s hand, not to his elbow or to his lips, but to his chest. He guides Casper to trace a circle and a shape within, their fingertips sliding together over thick, lush fabric. “It’s in my skin. Here.”

And he presses Casper’s palm over the covered tattoo, over his heart. He presses his own palm to the back of Casper’s hand. Prince Dan’s heart is pounding. Harder and harder, Prince Dan’s heart beats against Casper’s palm as if knocking upon a door.

Casper looks at their joined hands. He looks at Prince Dan’s unmasked face. He looks at their every interaction and the conclusion looms, inescapable.

“You’re flirting with me,” Casper realizes.

Prince Dan stares back. His heart races faster beneath Casper’s palm before he releases Casper entirely and pulls away.

“I’m flirting with you?” Prince Dan echoes. “I’m, I’m flirting with you? You–”

“I mean,” Casper interrupts. Interrupts a prince. “I mean.” What does he mean? “Are you?”

Prince Dan takes another step back. Then he rushes back in. “You are not this oblivious,” he snaps, sticking a finger in front of Casper’s nose. “No one is this oblivious.”

“Are you serious?”

“Of course I’m f*****g serious. Don’t you dare tell me you somehow just didn’t notice– ”

“Are you serious about the flirting?” Casper repeats, his voice as calm and level as he feels the situation allows. It’s the first piece of information he needs.

“Do I look like I was joking?” Prince Dan demands, which is close enough to an answer to cement Casper’s improvised ad hoc strategy.

“Your Highness, I have no surname,” Casper tells him, committing. “I have no title and no parents. I am an expert in a subject you disdain.”

The protector inside Prince Dan stops him short. “You really thought I was joking.”

“It seemed the more likely option,” Casper replies. He holds the prince’s gaze steadily in the moonlight. “Worse pranks have been played upon orphans.”

“That’s…” Prince Dan rubs a hand across his face. He takes a deep breath. He points at Casper again, though with less force than before. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“In my defense,” Casper says, “I’ve never met you before.”

Prince Dan paces away. He drags a stool away from a telescope, its metal feet grating against the stone floor. He sits, stands, and sits again. “You were flirting back.”

Apparently. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Casper replies, carefully picking words he’s heard out of Prince Dan’s own mouth, “people want to believe in good things.”

Prince Dan looks at him long and hard before rubbing at his face again. He makes a noise that is definitely not a positive one. “This is not how this was supposed to go.”

“I’m sorry,” Casper says. His flight feathers brush against the backs of his thighs, but he forces them still and holds back the curves of apology.

Prince Dan shakes his head emphatically. “You don’t apologize. The person who taught you to expect this bullshit, you point them out and they apologize.”

“Is that really how it works?” Casper asks.

“It is when I’m involved,” Prince Dan swears. “Look, I know. I get it. This?” He gestures between them. “This is unbalanced.”

“Is it sincere?”

Prince Dan looks up at him. “On my end, yeah.”

Casper approaches. Prince Dan hadn’t retreated far, not in a room fifteen feet in diameter. In only a few feet, with only a few moments for thought, he stands before the prince and he offers his hand. “I am not adept at human interaction,” Casper confesses, because he needs to sound honest.

His eyes on Casper’s hand, Prince Dan neglects to take it. He looks back up to Casper’s face. Casper doesn’t risk making a facial expression. Whatever Prince Dan is searching for, he will have to find it in Casper’s eyes or not at all.

At last, Prince Dan takes his hand. His palm is sweaty and rough with sword callouses. The texture is relentlessly, undeniably human, the alienness of skin that can be altered by mere habits.

“I’d like to continue as we were,” Casper tells him quietly, because a low volume can indicate uncertainty. The more vulnerability he can project, the more Prince Dan will seek to protect him. Casper is almost certain of this. “Unless you’ve reconsidered. It wasn’t my intention to insult you with doubts, merely to doubt my own fortune.”

“Look, I get it,” Prince Dan repeats. “People are assholes. But it’s a hell of a thing to ask when a guy’s about to kiss you.”

Oh.

“Sir Dan, I cannot emphasize enough how bad I am at human interaction,” Casper swears to him.

Prince Dan laughs. It sounds sincere and his teeth flash in the moonlight. His thumb rubs against the back of Casper’s hand. “Take you outside of an academic debate and you’re lost?”

“That isn’t inaccurate.”

His face at once immensely expressive and infuriatingly unreadable, Prince Dan gazes up at Casper. A long, silent moment passes.

“You know,” Prince Dan says, his tone jarringly casual, “a lot of people are afraid of getting anti-possession tattoos. Or any protective tattoos, really.”

The abrupt turn sends Casper’s head spinning. He needs to extract himself, needs to go down the long stairway and leave, but he needs to secure the prince’s favor first. Needs to secure it again. It occurs to him that if he errs badly enough, he could be banned the subsequent nights. He cannot leave now. “Why is that?” he asks, as this seems to be expected of him.

“Because of blood sigils,” Prince Dan answers. “What powers a blood sigil?”

“The energy in the blood used.”

“And what powers a blood sigil cut into a living thing?” Prince Dan asks.

“All of the blood within that living thing, killing it.”

“That’s pretty common knowledge, right?”

Casper nods, confused at so many of Prince Dan’s actions. “I’ve always thought so.”

“So if everyone knows a blood sigil cut into you can kill you when activated, how do you think your regular person responds to the idea of getting a sigil tattooed onto them?”

“But a tattoo is made of ink.”

“But getting one, you bleed,” Prince Dan explains.

“I see,” Casper says as understanding incrementally dawns.

“Yeah. People know just enough to screw themselves over.”

“Is this a metaphor?” Casper asks. “Or are you merely trying to distract me?”

“Distract,” Prince Dan says. He holds Casper’s hand with both of his own now. “What can I say, man, you’re really tense.”

Casper is standing in a tower he cannot fly from. His time to return to the portal is dwindling, and his time to uncover and retrieve the tablet is already two-fifths exhausted with no real leads. He has insinuated himself into a dynamic he has no idea how to navigate and cannot risk severing. Not without losing access to much of the castle or, perhaps worse, drawing the visions of the other prince.

“I need some time to think,” he replies. “Is that acceptable?”

“Is that…? Yes.” Prince Dan rises. It puts their faces close, but Casper decides against stepping back. Even the faint wind of Prince Dan’s breath is a comfort in the unrelenting stillness of this room. “Of course that’s acceptable.”

“Thank you,” Casper says, squeezing Prince Dan’s hand.

Prince Dan turns his face away, but he doesn’t let go. After two breaths, he looks back to Casper without turning his head. “I like you. You get that, right?”

“I do now.” When Prince Dan seems to expect more, Casper adds, “I haven’t felt this overwhelmed in a very long time.”

“It’s possible to be overwhelmed in a good way,” Prince Dan reminds him.

“I’m not good at this,” Casper repeats. He thinks to pull his hand away but doesn’t know if that will make it worse. “Is it because I stared too much? I know I stare too much.”

“You stare just right,” Prince Dan tells him. “I like the way you look at me.”

“I find you very confusing,” Casper confesses.

His thumb still stroking Casper’s hand, Prince Dan says, in that same casual tone as before, “Y’know, some of the latest legislation for ghost prevention is in favor of wig oversight. How’s that for confusing?”

“That doesn’t seem strange. I’d imagine that even if the hair was taken from the living, the original owner would have to be documented. Otherwise, dispelling a harmful spirit after that person’s death would require burning any number of wigs their hair might be in.”

“That’s… Yeah, that’s exactly it. You’re not easily distracted, are you?”

“I’m not,” Casper agrees.

“You’re one of the smartest people I’ve ever met,” Prince Dan says. “I mean that.”

“Perhaps in some ways,” Casper allows, trapped as he is by his own ignorance.

“Smart enough to figure me out,” Prince Dan continues. “That is, if you want to.”

“I want to,” Casper says. It would solve half of this problem.

Prince Dan’s shoulders lower with an exhale. “Good.” He keeps brushing their fingers together. He shifts closer. He inspects Casper’s face, oblivious to all the emotions flattened into his tense wings. “Cas?”

“I still need to think.” He needs to leave.

“Right,” Prince Dan says. “Right.” He steps back, their arms stretching between them. He relinquishes Casper’s hand and retrieves his mask. “I’ll leave you to it.”

“I’d rather not be alone up here,” Casper says.

“I can stargaze while you think,” Prince Dan offers. “Or send someone else up. That was Sir Victor by the door. If you ever want to talk tracking spells with someone, he’s your man.” It’s almost alarming, how well Prince Dan realizes Casper can be bribed with information.

Casper shakes his head. “I’ll go down.”

“Are you sure?”

He nods. “I am. And I’ll see you tomorrow evening.”

Prince Dan passes him back his mask.

“Thank you,” Casper tells him. He fastens it to his face and guides the band back beneath his hair. All the while, Prince Dan watches him.

There’s more he could say. There’s more he could ask.

There’s simply no time.

“Good night, Sir Dan.”

“Good night, Cas.”

He slips through the door to the stairway and closes it behind himself. Uncertain of the protocol, he takes the single magelight from its bracket and descends the stairs as if constrained by human concerns for light. Although the stone stairs strike at his flight feathers with every step, the trip down is far quicker than the journey up.

At the bottom, he opens the door. Immediately, to the male guard standing outside, he asks, “Sir Victor? Would you kindly return this to the Knight Prince, please?” He hands over the stick of the magelight.

Some sort of analysis occurs behind the knight’s brown eyes, but for all Sir Victor’s face remains unmasked in the manner of all the guards here, he is no easier to read. His skin is nearly the same deep brown that Uriel’s has faded to in the centuries without sunlight, and though almost familiar hue catches the part of Casper’s mind that is continually looking for wing colors, it tells him nothing, save that he wishes his brother were here. The depths of Casper’s ignorance make themselves keenly felt.

“Does His Highness wish for me to join him?” Sir Victor asks in a level voice.

“He didn’t say,” Casper replies. “But he did insinuate you were a man worth speaking to.”

Sir Victor takes the magelight. “I’ll go up.”

“Thank you,” Casper replies. He nods to the other guard and takes his leave.

The way out of the castle stretches. The path through the hedge maze winds. Casper arrives before the portal the very moment it opens and he knows, deeper than the ache of his tense, unmoving wings, that his task is too much for him.

He steadies himself for the passage through and presses on nonetheless.