The Key

Chapter 9

Grateful for the excuse to stop wearing his own feathers on his face, Casper unmasks as well. He suppresses his initial urge to tuck the mask beneath his left alula and instead sets it upon the closest table.

Prince Dan watches him and says nothing. He simply looks at Casper for what feels like a very long time, which Casper objectively knows lasts only seconds.

“How should I stand?” Casper asks beneath this scrutiny.

“You, right,” Prince Dan says. “Right.” He moves forward, hands reaching, and Casper allows himself to be molded like so much clay. “That’s your basic frame for joined dances. Those are the two main types, joined and interchanging. We don’t exactly have people to swap out with up here, so I’m starting you with joined. Think we’re gonna have to adjust a little, too. Normally, the taller person gets their hand on the other person’s back, but I don’t think I can fit my hand under there. So we switch positions. Unless you’re okay with me pressing down on those wings.”

“I’d rather you avoid it.”

“Then your hand goes here–” He places Casper’s hand on his side. “–or farther back if you want. And that means my hand goes here.” He presses down on Casper’s shoulder, his hand a firm weight despite his insubstantial human strength.

A lesson follows with hands upon hips and shoulders and hands. The adjustments Prince Dan makes to his stance are quick and light and easily memorized. The steps begin simply and grow complicated by increments. Casper follows well enough until turns are introduced, and then his balance fails him.

“Whoa, gotcha,” Prince Dan reassures him, hands sliding to Casper’s elbows as he slows Casper’s stagger. “Got you. Hold on tighter, that’ll help.” He positions Casper again, his arm twisting as he brings Casper’s hand to the small of his own back. “Yeah, there. Really hold on. I’ve got you.” He lays his arm across Casper’s shoulders, his palm hotly cupping the back of Casper’s neck. The unexpected scrape of his hand makes Casper shiver despite the heat, and Prince Dan grins. “We can compensate.”

“Can we try it again more slowly?” Casper asks.

“Yeah,” Prince Dan says, and they do. They move at half-speed against the music playing outside. The closer positioning narrows the gap between their bodies all the way down to their feet. Between one long step and another, the outside of his thigh brushes against the inside of Prince Dan’s, and then vice versa.

They move faster, more smoothly. Prince Dan warns him with the pressure of his hands, and this time, they spin instead of stumbling. Casper holds on as tightly as he dares, and Dan keeps him balanced, keeps him moving, elation plain on his face.

When the song gives way to another, Prince Dan shows him another variation on the dance, and another. Between murmuring instructions, Prince Dan asks, “Why am I not surprised you’re a quick learner?”

“Because you have high expectations for me,” Casper replies.

Fingers curl against his nape. “Hey.” Prince Dan guides him to a stop. “This isn’t a test. This is a party. We’re getting ready to head out there and have fun. If I thought you wouldn’t mind stumbling around in front of people, we’d already be out there. Plus, I figured you’d want to learn something new, night off from research or not.”

“Oh.” The lessons take on a new significance. “Thank you.”

“I’m not doing this to embarrass you, Cas,” Prince Dan tells him, face close, head gently bowed. “I mean that. Gonna make it a great night for you.”

“And for you?”

Prince Dan keeps brushing his fingertips across the back of Casper’s neck. Touching his hair. Curling over the line of his spine. His arm has sunk somewhat behind Casper’s shoulders, lightly nestled between Casper’s shoulders and wings. “I’m good,” he says.

Once more, the music changes, this shift more drastic than each of the previous transitions.

“I don’t know what to do for this rhythm,” Casper tells him.

“This is for an interchanging dance,” Prince Dan says. “Swapping partners, making patterns, those. I’m, uh. Yeah, I’m gonna keep it simple there. We’re sticking with demi-quadrilles. That’s four people, not four couples. That’s three switches: your partner, next person, their partner, your partner again. So, four people, four parts. Got it?”

Casper nods.

Prince Dan releases him, stepping back. Unthinkingly, Casper follows, matching each step. Not unkindly, Prince Dan laughs. “Yeah, you’ve got this,” Prince Dan praises, reflexively holding him. Now that Casper’s experienced it, it feels a more natural way to stand. “It’s a different frame, though, for what I’ve got in mind.” He releases Casper a second time, and this time, Casper stays.

Prince Dan names the individual gestures and motions. The ways to extend the arm, to offer the hand. When palm meets palm, versus when the backs of the hands meet instead. Once Casper can mirror each motion competently, Prince Dan drills him up and down the list without providing an example. At last, Prince Dan nods approvingly.

“Good. Let’s put that together.”

Instead of serving as a mirror, Prince Dan takes up the position of the primary partner this time. Their hands touch before they turn apart. They circle. The music outside changes back to the style of a joined dance, but they persist, Prince Dan keeping a steady count above it all. Dan shows him how the first exchange of partner would work, first playing the role of the leaving partner, then hopping quickly to the side to return as the arriving partner.

The greeting motion is meant to be a meeting of the backs of the hands, laid against each other at eye level, palms open and fingers pointing to the ceiling. It’s meant to be this, but Prince Dan’s hurried hop between the parts is amusing, the competing rhythms are distracting, and muscle memory is strong. In minding his wings, Casper has forgotten his arms.

Instead of the appropriate motion, his hand rises in a gentle block. His arm crosses Prince Dan’s at the wrist.

Prince Dan pauses. His eyes flick down to where Casper’s other hand has risen into an unarmed guarding position.

Casper corrects his lapse, but only once his martial stance has been thoroughly seen.

They continue as if uninterrupted. They perform the switch again, and this time, Casper handles it correctly. This time, however, Prince Dan comments.

“I was wondering about that,” he says. “Your muscle control. Where does a scholar get trained to fight?”

“I had to learn when I was younger,” Casper replies.

“That was a formal stance.”

“I learned from a soldier. We all did.”

“‘We’?” Prince Dan asks. “Were you in an orphanage or a barracks?”

“My siblings,” Casper says, answering only the first question.

“You have siblings?”

“Why are you surprised?”

Even with the distraction of conversation, Prince Dan never wavers or hesitates through the motions of the dance. His words themselves are subsumed into the rhythm his body dictates. “Are they blood siblings?”

“We have the same parents,” Casper allows, “in the sense that we have none.” Perhaps an angel who cracks open an egg of grace could be considered a contributor, but certainly not a parent, not when the eggs form on their own. There must be at least three in the Kingdom of Heaven by now, each quietly growing without another angel to deem them ready and release the fledglings inside. Casper’s own egg had hatched five. These next, after so long incubating, may contain upward of a dozen each. “As far as these relations go, they are my siblings.”

“And you all learned how to fight?”

Casper nods against the beat. They make the final “switch” back to the original partner, and Dan stops him there. He takes Casper’s hands and inspects them, his touch perfunctory, his permission assumed. He strokes his thumbs across Casper’s palms before inspecting his knuckles.

“You haven’t had to fight in a long time,” Prince Dan observes, still holding his hands as if there might be proof within Casper's skin. Casper fights the urge to inspect the prince’s in turn.

“It was half a lifetime ago. More.” No matter how the tensions rise in their banishment, drills are not the same as true combat.

“Not long enough,” Prince Dan says, strangely offended by the idea. “Are they all right? Your family.”

Casper doesn’t intend to hesitate, but that is precisely what hesitation is.

Holding their hands between them, Prince Dan steps close, a motion they’ve danced with. Unlike in their dancing, he doesn’t turn or step to the side. “Cas?”

“Anna is dead,” he says, the simplest phrasing of it. “The rest of us are fine.”

There is something behind Prince Dan’s face. In his face, there are the resting features any angel would consider normal, but behind it, there is something human which Casper does not understand. The removal of Prince Dan’s mask has revealed nothing more than beauty.

“I’m sorry,” Prince Dan says.

“It was a long time ago,” Casper tells him, as if that matters.

“If something happened to Sam,” Prince Dan begins. “I mean, putting aside the kingdom going to my cousins, and that is putting aside a lot, I…” He trails off, shaking his head. “You don’t want to talk about this.”

“I do find it strange the crown wouldn’t go to you,” Casper says, eagerly taking hold of this tangent.

Prince Dan looks at him oddly. “Not a mage, Cas.”

“The world used to be a very different place.”

For whatever reason, this earns a faint smile. “Yeah?”

“There once were Knight Kings.”

The faint smile disappears. Prince Dan doesn’t tense beneath Casper’s hands, but he certainly isn’t relaxed. “This is what you were talking about last night. Primogeniture ignoring magehood.” He pauses. “How was that only last night?”

“It does seem longer,” Casper agrees. Though the two nights ahead appear infinitesimal, the two behind stretch beyond belief. The subjectivity is bothersome, as if Prince Dan’s presence transcends time itself. “It’s strange to think this halfway over.”

At that, Prince Dan draws him in close and places Casper’s hands back upon his body. “Let’s, uh. Check how well you remember the first part. The joined dances. And if you’re still good with the interchanging one I showed you, we can head down.”

“Can we talk while we dance?” Casper asks.

“Distraction’s always a good way to test ability,” Prince Dan replies. He guides Casper into motion, keeping at a half-speed. “We run distraction drills, you know. Me and the knights. How fast can you draw a ward while having things thrown at you, can you recite an exorcism with everyone yelling, that kind of thing.”

Before Casper was selected for this mission, there had been trials. All of the angels young enough to bend their magic through the small portal had been tested on both their knowledge of humanity and the speed at which they could learn from reports on the subject. Combat was an important feature, as it ought to have been while seeking a tablet demons also pursue.

Above all else, however, had been stealth. To reveal themselves as angels would be to announce to the humans that they possessed an item of infinite value. In a realm fashioned of illusion, containing only the personal effects of the angels at their time of banishment, they have nothing with which to bargain. They cannot trade, and so their best candidate must steal back what was stolen.

When Uriel had brought them word of Seer Shurley’s prophecy, Uriel had thought himself the obvious choice for the role of infiltrator. Privately, Casper had agreed. Uriel’s illusions were the most practiced, his knowledge the most complete, but Raphael had decided differently. Why risk a human reaching through an illusion and touching invisible wings when the party was to be a masquerade?

The tests of stealth had begun simply. They kept their wings tightly folded for hours, enduring aches and boredom in equal measure. Later, there were physical feats to be performed. Rather than catch his balance, Casper kept his wings closed and allowed himself to fall. Again and again, he fell, but he never broke. When he caught himself, if he caught himself, he used his hands alone.

The final feat had been the hardest, as socialization has never been Casper’s strong point. Each of his rejected rivals became themselves part of the test. They brandished their wings in anger, feathers flared. They ruffled and arched and flapped, and at no point did Casper mirror them in the slightest way. They wheedled and insulted and yelled, and Casper did not move.

Before this test began, Balthazar had taken him aside. Before the barrage began, Balthazar held his shoulder and asked forgiveness for what he was about to do. Casper had granted it, and thanked him. Balthazar’s wings had screeched with guilt, and even before the test began, Casper had not moved.

Here and now, Prince Dan speaks of distraction drills, and Casper asks, “Is that effective?”

“Oh yeah,” Prince Dan says. “Nothing can compare to experience in the field, but it’s good prep.”

“You train with your knights yourself?” Michael once had. Raphael would never.

“Every morning,” Prince Dan confirms with a nod. “Unless we’re out on a hunt. Then you gotta conserve energy. Get your basic warm-up in, but don’t push it.”

Casper studies him, considering both the human and the legacy stretching behind him. They move through the rest of that particular dance without speaking. Despite the music and the hubbub of festivities below, it remains quiet in the library. There is breathing, and footsteps, and the slide of hands upon cloth. A glut of sensations.

“Full-speed,” Prince Dan tells him, and they begin anew without stopping. Their turns grow tighter, their bodies closer. Prince Dan guides him lightly and holds him firmly. “Watch my eyes, not your feet.” Casper obeys, and the threat of falling slowly dissipates.

Incrementally, Casper relaxes into trust.

“What are you thinking about?” Prince Dan asks. His voice is low and rough, as if with disuse.

“You,” Casper summarizes.

For the first time, there is a misstep in Prince Dan’s footwork. He recovers quickly from the attempted tangle of feet and legs, and he pulls Casper along with him. “Well,” he says. “In that case. Carry on.”

Casper does.

They finish this dance and Prince Dan says, “Again.”

They do it again, smoother, more showy. They add embellishments, Casper first spinning Prince Dan, then in turn being spun out. He uses his momentum to keep himself upright before falling back into the support of Prince Dan’s arms. “Just like that,” Prince Dan praises. “I got you. You got this. Ready for the next one?”

Casper nods. They slow themselves once more, starting over.

“Still gotta distract you,” Prince Dan says. “C’mon, talk to me, Cas. What’re you thinking about me?”

“The dichotomy between person and position,” Casper replies.

Prince Dan blinks at him but does not falter. “Sexy.”

Unsure of what to make of that comment, Casper chooses to ignore it. “You’re extremely informal. You are the fourth highest ranking individual of this kingdom, and yet you would invite an orphan to call you by name. The only pretenses at aristocratic speech you make are performed when surrounded by nobility. Rather than solely direct your troops from above, you train and fight alongside your personal division. Your hands are calloused and scarred. You’re aware of the problems of the kingdom from the ground-up.”

“I’m also not sure where you’re going with this,” Prince Dan adds, and there is no smile in his mouth.

“The demarcations of Knight Prince and Mage Prince once solely referred to whether an heir’s might was primarily in military or magical force,” Casper explains. “There were Knight Princes who were mages. A thousand years ago, His Majesty your father would have been considered a Knight King.”

Prince Dan’s eyebrows take an abrupt leap higher on his face.

“There were Knight Kings and Mage Kings,” Casper continues, “but when the bias toward mages grew too pronounced, certain practicalities changed to ensure the ascendancy of a Mage King, even over an older brother.”

“You’re only saying princes and kings,” Prince Dan says.

“Yes?”

“Why are you only saying princes and kings?”

Casper c***s his head. “Because a woman couldn’t claim the throne then.”

Prince Dan laughs. “Wish I could have seen you tell my grandmother that.”

“The bias toward men was eventually usurped by the bias toward mages,” Casper explains, condensing centuries of reports. Uriel has long amused them with word of what he refers to as human idiocy. “Perhaps the official tipping point was four hundred years ago, when a Knight Prince first stepped down for a younger Mage Princess.”

“Stepped down?” Prince Dan echoes.

“Is this really so strange to you?” Casper asks. “Surely someone of your station would be better taught his own history.”

“Demons might not be able to get into our buildings, but they still find ways of setting our libraries on fire,” Prince Dan replies. “Besides, Sam’s the one who got the in-depth education. They didn’t bother wasting the full thing on me. I mean, I can recite the royal line back all the way to Colt off the top of my head, but I always just assumed the long run of kings was some kind of birth order fluke.”

“It wasn’t,” Casper says. “Also, the transition between Knight Princes serving as generals and serving as soldiers was a deliberate one. That would be… Five hundred and eighty years ago, roughly.” Uriel had made a particularly memorable joke about it, one best not repeated to any human. “When one heir was seen as too dangerous to take the throne, he might be sent on a mission, ostensibly for glory, but in reality, to die.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Prince Dan asks, never pausing in their dance. If anything, he moves them faster, whirls Casper harder. His hand drags against Casper’s wings as he recovers Casper from a particularly strong spin.

“Because I’m curious how a tradition of disposing of an heir turned into the position you hold.”

“No one’s disposing of me,” Prince Dan tells him, his body harder than it should be. “And I do a lot of good out there, Cas, this isn’t that prideful bullshit of sticking some noble armchair general out in the field.”

“Exactly,” Casper agrees. “It’s changed into something crucial. I understand that, as an only child, His Majesty your father had to fill both roles before he took the throne.”

Prince Dan’s eyebrows pull down as they dance. Even as the prince stares, they remain there, furrowed and low over his eyes.

“Last night,” Casper says, “you were speaking of the public’s fear of anti-possession tattoos, in the mistaken belief they could serve as blood sigils.”

“It’s not mistaken, that’s the thing,” Prince Dan says. “There was a bastard who pulled that back in my grandmother’s reign. People thought they were protected and then they started dropping like flies. That’s not the kind of thing you forget.”

“You’ve spoken to the people affected,” Casper assumes. “Relatives of the victims. Years after the fact.”

“Yeah? I wanted to know why everyone was so scared. So?”

“Who were they?”

“The kind of people you’d expect to get preyed on. Not enough money to afford the real thing, low down enough not to be missed.”

“But you spoke with them,” Casper persists. “The fourth most important person in the entire country, and this is normal now.”

“Yeah?” Prince Dan says. Without warning, he introduces a new piece of footwork, but Casper suffers little more than the need for two ungainly hops. “And?”

“And I don’t think you understand how extraordinary you are,” Casper concludes.

Prince Dan stops dancing. Casper stumbles into him, and the prince’s arms try to close around his back. Casper catches himself against Prince Dan’s chest, his hands on the prince’s shoulders, his arms as tightly folded between them as his wings are against his back.

Warm hands stroke up his wings, ruffling him terribly, before gripping his shoulders in turn. Prince Dan eases him away a step. He stares down at Casper and he licks his lips and he says, “That’s gotta be the most roundabout compliment I’ve ever heard.”

“It was an observation, not a compliment,” Casper corrects, and Prince Dan’s face makes another one of his strange non-motions.

“Y’know,” Prince Dan says, “every time I wonder how come nobody’s snatched you up yet, you do something that kinda spells out why.”

“I’ve been reliably informed it’s my personality,” Casper answers plainly.

Prince Dan’s mouth twitches, but judging from his eyes, it’s in a good way.

“Should I begin again?” Casper asks.

“You can give it a shot.”

“I think your role as a hunter is a credit to your family, and your actions as a hunter are a credit to you,” Casper states. “I think it’s unexpected that a force for good could come out of such roots, but it evidently has.”

“Look, I just kill s**t and protect Sam,” Prince Dan says. “Not in that order.”

“You do more,” Casper replies.

Outside, the musicians pause in their playing, and there is the noise of hands hitting hands.

Without the music tethering him, Prince Dan pulls away. “You want a water break? We should have a water break.” He strides to the nearest table, past their discarded masks to where a pitcher and two glasses wait upon a folded white cloth. None of the other tables sport such a pitcher. He pours for them both, a prince for an alleged orphan, and he seems to see nothing strange when he offers Casper a glass. “How long have we been at this?”

“It struck eight some time ago, but I haven’t heard the toll for nine,” Casper says.

“Probably soon, though,” Prince Dan says, wandering farther away. He cranes his neck, inspecting an item on one of the bookshelves. “Yeah, it’s five minutes until the hour.” He returns at a brisk pace but stops with the table between them. Their long proximity turns the distance strange.

As Prince Dan drinks, apparently needing the water, Casper reflects on the state of the human. A lightly flushed face is something Casper can match, but the sweat dotting Prince Dan’s brow will be harder to replicate. Turning toward the balcony, he walks forward as if looking out. In reality, he dips his fingers into his glass and rubs them across his forehead, moving his arm as if wiping away sweat, not placing it. The rest of the water, he drinks slowly. The clock tower tolls the hour and, soon after, the musicians resume their playing.

Wiping at his forehead again, Casper turns back to Prince Dan. No longer standing with the table between them, Prince Dan sits on the near edge of that table, knees spread wide. He watches Casper steadily and makes no effort to pretend otherwise.

Casper approaches. He stops before the prince, standing not quite between his knees. He leans in to set his glass back upon the table, and he makes sure the motion keeps his head lower than Prince Dan’s. Throughout, they watch each other.

“What are you thinking about?” Casper asks him.

Prince Dan quirks his lips. “You.”

Casper moves his lips into a smile, slow at the edges. He keeps it there, a small thing, but it seems to please.

“Is it an astronomy thing?” Prince Dan asks. “Meteorology? What?”

Casper tilts his head.

“You’re always staring at the sky,” Prince Dan says. “Every chance you get.”

“Oh,” Casper says.

“Oh?”

“I’d hoped not to be so obvious,” Casper replies.

Prince Dan turns his head slightly, as if trying to listen harder. “About…?”

“I’m mildly claustrophobic,” he confesses. It’s the best word for what he has. He hadn’t realized it until he’d forced himself back through the portal, that first night, but it’s true. He imagines it’s true for his entire species by now.

“Oh,” Prince Dan says.

Casper steps back and offers Prince Dan his hand.

Prince Dan takes it and hops off the table. “I think we should run through the interchanging dance, just to be sure, and then we can head down. Courtyard first.”

“You needn’t indulge me,” Casper tells him.

“So you can indulge me instead,” Prince Dan counters. “Because as it so happens, our first dance would have been in the courtyard, the first night. And it would have been in the great hall, last night. You see what I’m getting at here?”

“We’re publicly dancing three times tonight, ending in the throne room?” Casper extrapolates.

“You got it,” Prince Dan says. He tilts his head slightly and closes just one of his eyes, smiling with teeth. “Gotta get up to speed, Cas.”

If there is a significance to this nightly allotment, Casper should already know it, and so he does not ask.

Although the music doesn’t fit this dance, they take their positions and work through the motions at half-speed. This time, Casper matches the back of Prince Dan’s hand with the back of his own, rather than greet him with a block, but by the loose grin on Prince Dan’s face, it’s clear he recalls the slip.

They work through the pattern four times, Casper slowly working around in a circle. He orbits Prince Dan as the moon does a planet, and Prince Dan guides them in turn around an invisible sun.

“Full speed with a distraction,” Prince Dan tells him. “Ready?”

Casper nods.

As they begin again, Prince Dan says, “I asked Sam what he interrupted last night. Turns out, it wasn’t a question about, what was it, the rise of demons coinciding with the disappearance of angels. Not exactly, anyway.”

Casper recalls the woman with the shining purple mask from the previous night. “What was it instead?” Casper asks, focusing on the motions of his arms and the placement of his feet.

“She was going to say there aren’t any angels because they all turned into demons.”

In Casper’s preparation for this mission, there were trials. In these trials, there was the final test of motionless wings.

Beforehand, Balthazar came to him, held onto him, and apologized in advance. He did the same for Hannah.

During, Balthazar came to them, stood before them, and let loose with seven hundred years of grief. Hannah stood at Casper’s side, similarly tested. Behind Balthazar, Uriel stood in support for them both, wings flattened hard against his back.

Balthazar ranted at Uriel’s capture, at Anna’s foolhardy rescue mission. At Casper for not stopping her, for not going with her, for not reporting her immediately. At himself for never knowing she was gone until Uriel returned without her, hands sticky from holding in his own blood and grace.

He raged against the twisted wreckage of their sister that had returned in her stead. Her blank eyes and flat voice, the murder lurking beneath her every motion, broken and shattered and beyond their hope of healing.

“Michael put her down, and it was our fault ,” Balthazar told him, told all of them, and he was crying. He was sobbing as Casper had never before seen him. Uriel turned away, wings arched high in the anger born of guilt. Hannah stood and watched and shuddered and at last broke, wrapping her wings around herself.

Not once, not a single time, did Casper move.

Anna wouldn’t have wanted him to.