The Key

Chapter 17

“What about gloves?” Prince Dan asks, blinking.

“Handling artifacts without gloves, it’s – you don’t do it,” Casper hastens to explain. “It can damage them.”

“Oh,” Prince Dan says. His face falls somewhat, but only for an instant. “Right, yeah, I should have thought of that.” He makes an aborted gesture at the blank paper and writing kit. “Is there anything else you need? I can send someone.”

Prince Dan begins to draw away, and so Casper pulls him back. His touch is light, merely a hand palming Prince Dan’s side above his hip, but the grip works as well here as it does while dancing. In an obvious show of muscle memory, Prince Dan’s hand returns to Casper’s shoulder on the same side, and their feet align in a starting position. Realizing what he’s done, Prince Dan removes his hand.

Willing his feathers still, Casper makes do smiling with his mouth instead. He pulls with his fingers, stepping backward, and they move together, one step, two, three, with Casper’s hand as their sole point of contact. Their footsteps are their music. Casper turns them, and he stops when his wings brush against the edge of the table.

Having kept his arms at his side throughout their impromptu dance, Prince Dan raises them now. His fingertips brush up Casper’s cheeks before he removes the mask of feathers. Reaching past Casper, Prince Dan sets the mask on the table behind him. After, his hands return to Casper’s sides, his forearm a caress of cloth across Casper’s. His eyes are full and deep, a thin border of green separating black from white.

There is half a step between them. With complete certainty, Casper knows Prince Dan will not close it until Casper pulls him closer. If Casper pulls, they will be chest against chest, thighs bracketing thighs, knees framing knees.

Casper’s hand falls from waist to hip, and that slight curve fills his palm. Prince Dan licks his lips, staring at Casper’s.

“Very distracting,” Casper murmurs, staring in return.

“You’re the one who started with the dancing, Cas,” Prince Dan answers, voice equally deep, equally low. It’s a whispered accusation better suited to a veil of feathers than a cold storeroom. This is the way people talk with their wings held high against each other, a tactile shield of privacy about their heads and upper bodies. Though Casper has never done so, he is irrevocably convinced of it.

“You began it,” Casper tells him. “I merely touched you.”

“And then kept going,” Prince Dan says, not quite leaning in. There isn’t much space in which to lean.

“As I said,” Casper repeats, “you’re very distracting.”

Prince Dan’s eyes lift to where the removal of the mask ruffled Casper’s hair. They fall to Casper’s mouth and daringly plummet to where Casper still palms his hip. He looks back up to Casper’s face in a long, slow drag of half-hooded eyes.

“I’m distracting,” Prince Dan says.

“Yes,” Casper replies. “You are.”

Again, Prince Dan licks his lips. “Maybe we should take the edge off. Just a little. So you can focus.”

Casper inhales deeply before shaking his head. He presses back against the table, intentionally pinning his wings.

Prince Dan shifts back the slightest amount, as far as Casper will let him. “Can I ask why not?”

“I want to keep feeling like this,” Casper says, which is not the correct answer. He cannot think of the correct answer, because it wouldn’t involve the human in front of him, and he can think of nothing else.

“Feeling like what?” In the small space between them, Prince Dan reaches. His hand brushes against the front of Casper’s shirts before settling against the side of his face. A warm thumb hidden behind leather touches the corner of his mouth, and Casper’s eyes close. Casper does not close his eyes; they close themselves.

“Like what, Cas?” Prince Dan repeats. His thumb brushes over Casper’s lips until Casper stills it with a kiss.

“Dizzy,” Casper says. Far beyond what his compromised balance could ever inflict.

“Dizzy’s good,” Prince Dan tells him. “Means you can hold onto me.”

“Oh,” Casper says, and it does make its own kind of sense. That his body wants to hold so strongly, his center of gravity has preemptively moved, ready to be shared. He grips Dan’s hip tighter.

“You can, you know,” Prince Dan continues, his face close when Casper wrests open his eyes. “Hold onto me. If you want.” His breath hot, his scent strange and human and familiar, he seems to fill the air itself without moving. “s**t, Cas. You look…”

“Yes?” He drags the word from his own throat, its edges rough and hastily crafted.

“So f*****g overwhelmed,” Prince Dan murmurs, and there is praise in this. His hand cups Casper’s face, and Casper leans in hard.

“I feel like a lodestone,” Casper tells him.

“Am I iron?” Prince Dan asks.

Casper nods against his hand, eyes again falling shut.

“I know it’s f*****g scary, Cas, but you’re doing so well,” Prince Dan promises. “It’s all right. You’re all right.”

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Casper confesses. “With you. I didn’t plan for this. I couldn’t have.”

“It’s not something you plan for,” Prince Dan tells him. “It’s something you plan around, all right? And we’re gonna. I got you, I swear, I’ve got you. I’m right there with you, you know that, right?”

“Are you?” Casper asks as something shatters and something mends. Apology wells up and Casper bites it down.

“Yeah. Yeah, Cas, I’m here.” He cups Casper’s face with both hands. He presses closer, setting forehead against forehead. “Just breathe, man.”

Casper obeys, pulling Prince Dan’s breath into his own lungs. It is the pinnacle of breathing.

“We’re gonna take a step back,” Prince Dan tells him. “Calm down a little, look at some cool s**t, all that. I’m not gonna push you.”

“I’m fine,” Casper says, eyes again closed, the recollection of closing them again missing.

“Dude, you’re bruising the s**t out of my hip right now,” Prince Dan says.

Casper releases him in an instant. “My apologies.” Carelessness. So much carelessness. He needs to remember that. Moreover, he needs to remember to care. He places both hands behind him on the table, his wings pressed between its edge and his back.

Relinquishing his touch as well, Prince Dan looks down the length of Casper’s body and swallows. Prince Dan clears his throat and turns his head. “Getting into this underground, in a small room? Probably not my best decision.”

“I’m fine,” Casper repeats.

“You have some water,” Prince Dan instructs, pointing to the jug. Presumably. Casper doesn’t look. “I’m gonna ask about gloves.”

Casper reaches out, just as before, and nearly sets the cycle off anew. “I was going to say,” Casper tells him, “that you have gloves.”

Prince Dan pauses. “I do have gloves.”

Casper nods.

“Not sure they’d fit you, though.” His eyes flick to Casper’s hands on the table. “Your hands are, uh.” His already flushed cheeks brighten further, a soft change Casper can’t help but stare at.

“I thought I might ask your indulgence,” Casper explains, “and have you assist me.”

“I can do that,” Prince Dan answers immediately. “Yeah, we can – yeah. Yeah. Water first? Water first.” He steps to the side before approaching the table fully, as if merely brushing against Casper is too much to risk. He pours each of them a glass, and Casper keeps his wings pinched against the table.

They drink quietly. This water tastes differently from the water in the library last night. He distantly wonders if the variation in flavor is from the container, if there is some influence exerted by glass or silver upon the taste of water. He presumes there is.

“I wasn’t kidding about taking the edge off,” Prince Dan says after a few more moments of near silence. “I get that academic s**t calms you down, but. If that would help, too.”

“I want to kiss you very much,” Casper admits, both to himself and to Dan. “But I think I need to work up to it.”

Prince Dan stares at him with dark eyes before clearing his throat again. “If we work up to it any more, I think one of us is gonna pass out.”

“Even so,” Casper says. He sets his glass down.

Prince Dan copies and moves around Casper toward the boxes. Casper leans harder back against the table as he passes. Only with Prince Dan securely in place at his side does Casper permit himself to turn. He is calmer, marginally, and his wings will not betray him.

“This one first,” Prince Dan decides, reaching for the long, thin box. He flips open the clasp before gently lifting the lid, a hand on either side of the clasp. The small hinges give a tiny creek. “Any idea what this one is?”

A shining length of silver lies on green velvet. Magelight gleams off the edges, from the razor-sharp tip.

Casper knows exactly what it is. It would be impossible for him not to.

“That’s,” Casper begins to say.

Prince Dan looks at him, eyebrows raised.

“I think,” Casper corrects himself, “that’s an angel blade.”

The only question is whose. It must belong to an angel who died in combat, for it to have been manifested at the time of their death. Every angel Casper knows – every living angel – still has their own blade. Though there are minute differences from blade to blade, the true test of identity is in the grace, and that would require a touch to determine. The curve of the hilt is almost familiar, but Casper isn’t sure.

Prince Dan releases the lid and quietly laughs.

Casper tears his eyes away from the blade to look at him in question.

“Sorry,” Prince Dan says. “You just-” he snaps his fingers “-focused like that.”

“It’s a skill,” Casper agrees.

“So,” Prince Dan says, looking back down into the box. “Angel blade. Self-explanatory name.” He shifts to the side, indicating that Casper ought to come closer and look, which he does. Then Prince Dan shifts back, and Casper feels a slow petting on his wings which the prince must believe he can’t feel. “Why do you think that’s what it is?”

“The markings on the boxes are the first hint,” Casper says. “They’re warding against angels.” As long as Casper himself doesn’t touch either box, there is no harm in revealing this, especially to a human who doesn’t believe in his species.

“Definitely on the right track, then,” Prince Dan says. There’s still doubt in his voice, but Casper is hardly going to chide him now. “What else? The metal’s weird, I’ll give you that. Looks like silver but it can’t be. You don’t get an edge like that on silver. Believe me, we’ve tried.”

“They’re said to be a physical manifestation of an angel’s grace,” Casper explains.

“Grace?”

“A combination of magic and life force. Not entwined like a chimera’s or linked like your brother’s, but one and the same.”

“Would that work like Sam?” Prince Dan asks, his expression moving from bemused to serious. Casper’s still guessing based on Dan’s tones, but it’s much easier than it was mere days ago. “Use the magic, drain the life?”

“Your brother would have to drain all of his magic before he began to drain his life,” Casper corrects. “But yes, that’s the essence of it.”

“So let’s say this is the blade of a banished angel,” Prince Dan supposes.

“Or perhaps a slain angel,” Casper interjects.

“Nuh-uh,” Prince Dan says. “I was listening to you and Sammy having your angel chat. Angel dies, the magic goes, the wings burn off, right? And you were talking about that vessel artificer whose stuff crapped out when he died. You put your life force in an item, it snuffs it when you do.”

“Life force is different from grace.”

“Assuming it is,” Prince Dan says, “and that’s a great big assumption in the first place, there’s still the question of why the wings would burn off but a blade would stick around.”

Because the main force of an angel’s grace is centered in the wings, and the final release of this has immense, incinerating power.

Because grace can stabilize outside of the body, which is how angels form their blades in the first place.

Because of too many reasons Casper can’t admit to knowing.

“Dan, if I knew everything, I wouldn’t need to research,” Casper says instead.

“Just want to make sure you’re not theorizing without evidence,” Prince Dan says, his smirk implying otherwise. He stops stroking Casper’s wings only as long as Casper looks at him.

“There are secondary sources,” Casper says. “Mentions of angels fighting with the blades of fallen comrades.”

Hannah kept Anna’s. Balthazar had been the one to recover it in the aftermath of her attack and subsequent slaying, but he hadn’t wanted it. He’d claimed it clashed too strongly with his own grace for him to keep it inside his arm. Uriel hadn’t wanted it either, and Casper believes Uriel’s reasons are the same as his own. The constant reminder would be too much.

“As a supplemental weapon?” Prince Dan asks.

“A second blade could serve as such, yes.”

Prince Dan shakes his head. “No, I mean, it’s pretty short for a primary weapon.”

It’s the perfect range when fighting with one’s wings. Casper does not say this.

“Perhaps,” he says instead.

“Back to my point,” Prince Dan continues, resuming the slow petting as well. “If it is a real angel blade made of real angel grace, do you know how you could prove that?”

“A fake could be destroyed,” Casper answers. He does not lean back into Prince Dan’s touch, and he does not adjust his stance to guide that hand to a better spot. He stands still and pretends all of his attention is on the item before him, as it should be. “A real one would never rust, tarnish, or dull. Heat wouldn’t melt it, and no degree of cold would turn it brittle.”

“Because it wouldn’t be metal,” Prince Dan reasons. “It’d be a shaped spell and would just keep holding that shape.”

Casper looks to him in surprise. “Exactly.” He’s never considered manifesting his blade as spellwork, but the accuracy of it is undeniable.

“You don’t have to look so surprised,” Prince Dan chides. “If I know a thing or two about anything, it’s weapons.”

“No, I…” Casper shakes his head and moves the conversation toward safety. “Thank you for indulging me. I know you don’t believe in angels.”

“You do,” Prince Dan says, shrugging. “That’s enough.”

Casper makes a smile with his mouth. If he leaned just a little to the side, his shoulder would press against Prince Dan’s chest, and their faces would be very close. Prince Dan would be able to pet his far wing.

They look at each other too long.

Prince Dan looks away first. “Would it be okay if I picked it up?”

In a somewhat surreal moment, Casper nods permission to the prince of the castle.

Prince Dan abandons his petting and turns fully toward the table. His hand wraps around the hilt and he hefts it with ease. “The balance is good,” he says immediately. “A little heavier than I would have thought, though.” He shifts, turning back to Casper and showing him the blade. “Don’t see any markings on it.” He turns it over in his hands. “Looks like the blade and the hilt are all one piece, too. Huh.”

“A single piece would be a simpler spell,” Casper says, a piece of conversational filler. He’s observed that this is a very human way of speaking.

“All right, so,” Prince Dan says, “if this is real, there’s nothing I could do that would hurt it.”

“Yes?”

“And if it’s a replica or something, how much do you care?”

“A fair amount, but not as much.”

Prince Dan shifts the hilt into his left hand and brings his right hand to his mouth. He bites the middle fingertip of his glove and pulls. With a grin and a waggle of his eyebrows, he switches to his index finger for another tug, his eyes on Casper’s the entire time as he bites and tugs. Once it’s off, he drops the glove onto the table. Then he touches his finger to the flat of the blade. He pulls the touch away and looks. “No fingerprint.” He tries again. “Definitely enchanted, I’ll give you that.”

“That’s how you test?”

Prince Dan shrugs. “I could draw up a spell or two, but that’s just faster.” Looking intently at the blade, he touches the edge of it before Casper can tell him not to. A bead of red joins the silver, but no light shines out from beneath his skin. “Wow.”

Casper finds himself holding Prince Dan’s hand, drawing it away from the blade.

“That didn’t even hurt,” Prince Dan reassures him. “Stinging a little after, though.”

“It’s very sharp,” Casper says needlessly, inspecting the tiny wound. The lack of light is peculiar, but Prince Dan doesn’t seem alarmed. Humans must not shine when cut.

“You gonna heal me up, Cas?” Prince Dan asks, watching him with what Casper recognizes as amusement.

The words take a moment to sink in. He looks up into green eyes that are once again so very close to his own. “What?”

“You’re a healer mage, right?” Prince Dan says, clearly expecting an answer in the affirmative. Why, Casper has no idea.

He settles on replying, “I don’t recall mentioning that to you.”

“Sam told me,” Prince Dan answers, as if this is a true explanation.

“I definitely didn’t tell him,” Casper says, and then the thought occurs. “Did he have a vision of me?” A second thought: “Is someone going to be hurt?”

Prince Dan shakes his head. “No and no.” He pauses, just fractionally, before shaking his head again. “No. Sammy was talking with his new best friend Nick – that doctor in the wolf mask last night – and they were chatting about new touch healing techniques. That’s Nick’s big thing, it’s why the Royal Hospital was so desperate to snatch him up. Anyway, Sam explained how you’re keeping these on.” He rakes his eyes over Casper’s shoulders, across his wings. “Pretty awesome, gotta say.”

“What was his guess?” Casper asks.

“Minor necromancy, based on reattaching severed limbs,” Prince Dan says. “Didn’t know touch healing was advancing so far in that direction.”

That… is not what Casper would have expected to hear, had he thought to expect anything at all.

“Most people disapprove of necromancy, minor or not,” he says diplomatically. It’s a reason for hesitance, which is a reason for not explaining the “spell” sooner.

Prince Dan shrugs again. “It’s not like you’re trying to raise the dead to make slaves. Besides, if you guys do figure out how to permanently re-attach legs and s**t, that’d be huge. And it’s not like you’ve got any other way of practicing without losing bits of your own.” Again, he eyes Casper’s wings. “Pretty dramatic way to practice, too.”

Seeking a distraction from the subject, Casper wraps his hand around Prince Dan’s index finger. If Prince Dan thinks him a touch healer, a touch healer he will be. Borrowing a human gesture, Casper brings their hands before his mouth. He presses his lips against his first knuckle as he slips a thread of grace beneath Prince Dan’s skin. It’s the slightest nudge to coax the life force he finds there back to its full dimensions. His hand around the tiny cut is enough to conceal the light of it closing, and even if it weren’t, he holds Dan’s gaze the entire time. It is a very pleasant feeling, to press his grace against Dan’s life.

“...That’s a pretty dramatic way to practice, too,” Prince Dan says after a pause, his voice abruptly deeper, the way Casper likes it best. Then he blinks and pulls his hand back to look at his healed finger. “Wait, did you just dual cast?”

If his wings are meant to be a spell, the answer is clear. “Yes?”

Prince Dan blinks at him again. “Seriously? Two different spells at once?”

“Is it that surprising?” He could have sworn humans could do that.

“You’re that powerful of a mage, and you’ve never even mentioned,” Prince Dan says, somewhere between question and accusation.

“I… Should I have?” Casper asks. He narrows his eyes naturally and pulls down his brow intentionally for a more human rendition of confusion. “It didn’t seem relevant.”

“Most people make it relevant,” Prince Dan says, still unnervingly unreadable. “Nothing more interesting than magic and all.”

“I don’t see why,” Casper answers, and something in Prince Dan’s expression changes. “This is far more interesting.” He gestures to the boxes, because if Prince Dan seeks to please him, it’s best he know for certain which way Casper’s pleasure lies.

Prince Dan merely stares at him. “Seriously, Cas,” he says. “How are you even real?”

Casper has no idea what to make of this. Assuming some sort of joke, he jests in return. “I’m not,” he says, and nods toward his wings. “I’m an angel.”

A laugh bursts out of Prince Dan, brightening his features immeasurably. “Sure you are,” he says, and he runs his bare hand over the wrist of Casper’s left wing. “What are they, griffin wings?”

“Angel wings,” Casper corrects.

Prince Dan laughs again, though much more softly than before. “Uh-huh. Sure.” With his gloved hand, he offers the blade’s hilt. “Care to complete the ensemble?”

Casper nods. He uses both hands, his right around the hilt, his left beneath the flat of the blade. The sensation of grace against his skin is more recognizable than any touch of the hand.

He knows this blade.

He knows this grace.

Michael.

“You all right, Cas?”

Casper can’t move. He stares down at the blade in his hands. At the last trace of Archangel Michael, lying across his palms.

How did it get here?

Casper remembers that day, as much as he might wish otherwise. The last blast of Gabriel’s horn. Wind and arrows ripping against his wings as their ranks plummeted down onto the demons below. Lucifer’s bellows of pain in the distance, shaking the ground as his wings were severed.

He remembers the retreating waves of demonic forces, after. Raphael kneeling in blood and dust, the ash of two brothers’ wings burned across him, the ruins of a third bloody and rent before him. Gabriel’s broken horn, his blade in Raphael’s hand.

Michael, lifeless and unmoving, his wounds red and dim, flickering until they no longer shone at all. Gabriel, already dark. Both almost unrecognizable without their wings.

“Cas?” Prince Dan asks again, his hand light on Casper’s elbow. “You wanna breathe there, buddy?”

Casper breathes. He looks up into Dan’s eyes and back down at the blade. He wonders what is reasonable to say.

“It feels like a person,” Casper tells him.

“What, are you trying to heal it?” Prince Dan asks.

Assuming human touch healing works the same way as grace healing, the comparison is not inapt. “I wanted to see what would happen.”

“Because it’s made out of angel life force?”

Casper nods. “It’s definitely made out of life force.”

Prince Dan looks at the blade with new respect, the respect it deserves. An archangel’s blade. “Huh.”

Loathe to relinquish the last touch of his old commander’s grace, Casper hands it back slowly. Sentimentality aside, they’ve wasted too much time on this one box. They’ve a second to look through, and then Casper will have a long night scanning through the immense logbook in search of more leads.

Gently, Prince Dan lays the blade back in its box. He doesn’t shut the lid, for which Casper is grateful. He reaches for the second box.

“Dan.”

Hands outstretched, Prince Dan freezes.

Casper passes him his discarded glove. As his excuse for not touching the boxes himself, he has to commit to it.

“Right, sorry,” Prince Dan says. He holds out his hand. “Put it on?”

It’s not the smoothest process – Casper has never dressed anyone besides himself before – but he manages fairly quickly. It’s essentially the opposite of preening someone.

“Someone’s eager,” Prince Dan says with a low chuckle.

Casper looks up from straightening the glove and into dark eyes. “Yes,” he says plainly, making no attempt to dissemble. Even if it can’t be the right tablet, it will serve as a template for Prince Dan should Casper convince him to further aid in his search.

His eyes dropping to Casper’s mouth, Prince Dan licks his own lips. He sways forward all of an inch before turning his head away sharply, exhaling hard. It would be easy to pull him back. Very easy.

Containing his wants the same way he prevents the motions of his wings, Casper releases Prince Dan’s hand. “You said it was a tablet?” he prompts.