R crouched in front of her and helped her to her feet. They patted her robes down and guided her to a chair to sit. Then they poured a glass of water and held it out.

  The music still played its tune with Elise’s droning voice in the background, as if reading scripture from a book only she could see. A whine rose from Veaer’s throat.

  “You need water.”

  “Why do you keep telling me I need water!” Veaer forced the glass out of R’s hand and threw it to the ground. The shards of glass burned into the ground. Then, when she blinked, a broom leaned against the wall with a small pile of glass behind it. “Patrons above, please. I just—I don’t….”

  The voices, the smells, Elise, the grass, the butterflies, and angels. She couldn’t understand, no matter how hard she tried. She needed answers to something, and she had failed on all accounts today as well.

  R took a seat next to her, their short red hair appearing so fluffy. She confirmed her thought by bringing her hand to their head and stroking. The angel flinched but didn’t make an effort to move away, their mask staring back at Veaer.

  “I want to make sure you’re okay,” they said, voice cracking in a strange way. Like a chick trying to get out of an egg so it wouldn’t be forcefully broken by large, fleshy hands. A light like a fire, full of red, orange and yellow, pulsed from the outline of R’s being. It was nice.

  “Well, I wish I could be more okay,” Veaer managed as she closed and opened her hands. She also wished for that glass of water to come back.

  Then it appeared again in R’s hand. “Here you go.”

  They must have heard, or the angelus told them.

  “Can I ask you a question, Veaer? It’s very off-topic.”

  Veaer looked through the bottom of her empty glass and towards R’s face. Sort of face.

  “Maybe off-topic is good.”

  She watched R’s mask move up and down, but with no mouth to see, there were no words to put together. After a few moments, R was completely still. Then they placed a hand on her shoulder and shook her back to reality.

  “Were you listening? What do you think of what I said?”

  She could’ve cried then, knowing that she hated it when others didn’t pay attention to her words as if they didn’t matter. How could she have done it to someone else? And with every second that ticked by, she was getting further and further away from a sincere apology. Even as she thought this, she watched R move their hands back to their lap, their back turning ridged, distant.

  Veaer reached a hand out to R’s knee. It was half covered in robes, half revealing light smooth skin.

  “Please repeat… maybe you can take your mask off?” Veaer asked, but she had a feeling that was a futile request.

  “The mask will stay on.” The expected answer. “Until… it’s safe.” The unexpected addition. Yet they continued with no elaboration, “I have a friend, someone I’m close to and really care about. I’ve only known them for so long, yet I know them in many ways.” Somehow this sounded like a riddle more than a question. “And they know me in many ways. But there is something I haven’t been able to reveal, in that… not that I’m embarrassed at all about this but it’s new and my friend hasn’t known me as anything else. What do I do?”

  Veaer’s mind drifted to eight years ago, a time when she considered Kitt to be that person. They hadn’t known each other long but knew there was a future that would change that. Going to school, walking home, asking her mother if she could have her friend over and when her mother said no, she asked her father. They made plans and she remembered something about a Tuesday and two weeks. She knew Kitt as the girl who sat behind her in the classroom. She would twist herself around to say hi, but only after she threw a pencil at the girl for kicking her chair too many times. She also wondered about a specific memory, where she watched Kitt hold her hands together and a small glowing creature emerged from the depths of her palms. Magic, but different. They were both caemi, Veaer: a red wolf, Kitt: a purple cat, but what Kitt did that day was supposed to be something wonderful for the present.

  “It sounds like you have a nice person in your life.” What was known about their life, at least. “Does this person care about you in the same way you do for them?” Veaer leaned back in her chair and played with the glass in her hand, trying her best not to drop it.

  “Sometimes it’s hard to tell, because when we do spend time together, it’s entirely thrilling and wonderful. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, and it seems the same for her as well. But when we aren’t together, there’s an absence and I don’t know if I want to get… whatever it is back to fill in the gaps. There’s a lot in me to give, but I fear that she doesn’t want to take. That she is afraid of taking as I am afraid to give, but I am willing to because that’s how much it means to me.”

  Veaer held a hand to her chest and scrunched the material that bunched there. She related to the feeling so well that she wanted to run away from this conversation. She wasn’t the right person to advise on this. But if it was for someone else then maybe it was okay. Maybe she could help R and their friend and that would be enough.

  “How about you practise with me?” Veaer suggested.

  “Tell you my secret?”

  “Calling it a secret might make it scarier. Maybe you want your friend to get to know you even more because you care about each other.” She straightened up and placed the glass on a nearby table. “I think I know how your friend feels. I’m scared to hurt someone, and so why should I take from them? They have better people to go to.”

  “I don’t want to go to anyone else,” R said with whole certainty. “It’s her. I want it to be her.”

  Veaer nodded slowly and attempted a discreet look over at Elise. The princess and the leader laughed and danced together, and she could see colourful mist surrounding them, a sign of strong magic being manifested. A beautiful mix of orange and gold that reminded Veaer of home, where magic was convenient and not seen as a hindrance.

  Her gaze followed the leader as he ran to the door and called out to the darkness. The protectors burst into the room and joined the dance and feast. Some of them rushed up to Elise and questioned her to no end, sitting at her feet and eagerly consuming what she had to say. Veaer couldn’t tell what was being said, somehow the intangible magic and energy of the room prevented her from doing so. She tried to read her lips, but only got distracted in the thoughts of them against her skin again.

  “For Elise, are you afraid of taking from her?” R asked. She hadn’t hidden her longing look very well. “She has a lot that you may not. After all, she’s an Excava. She is the daughter of the headmaster.”

  I know that. “She is beautiful.” The protectors held Elise’s arms and hands and spoke to her in hushed tones. Just like the past, when she would stand in the hallway and watch Elise and her court.

  Girls like you have secrets. I’m going to peel you apart and reveal every part of you. I will consume you.

  She swallowed and needed more water, again. “She makes me excited more than anything. The way she speaks and moves. The way she thinks. There’s so much to learn, I feel like it will never end. She doesn’t only land in my lap at my command, she is something to continue exploring. Like the quest for knowledge personified.”

  You’re my blossom and I am the only one who can stroke your bud and become the creator of springtime.

  She ran her tongue between her lips and sighed. “I think I love her.”

  Her gaze ripped away from the scene of draping arms, mixed fabrics, pomegranate juice, and grapes brought to lips. She stared at the mask of R and listened to the silence that hung between them.

  “Okay,” R said after several moments, an edge to the word. “I’ll tell you. It’ll be good to get it out.”

  Veaer nodded though suddenly wanted to wear the mask once again. She sat naked as R inched closer to her and she had a feeling that they didn’t register her confession about Elise too well. Maybe this was jealousy. That they were unable to feel or express their thoughts to the one they admired so much.

  “Veaer,” R began, taking her hands. The room shrunk away, and the walls became silent as they watched. “There’s something I want to tell you.” A pause, a breath. “But it requires some context, so please let me explain.” Small winged angels flying in circles around their heads, soft bottoms on soft clouds. “Angels have always meant a lot to me, even though we haven’t talked about it a lot. As caemi, we usually reserve our faith to the dragon saints, and they have served me well. But there’s something else inside me that I can’t describe in an easy way. Like a bundle of wings flapping in my chest because they don’t have a name and without a name, they just exist in limbo.” They tilted to the side but then quickly straightened up, not allowing their words to teeter away from them. “Angels are more than winged creatures. They are divine creations. Ter and Mian moulded them without a template. They are more energy than they are formed, yet they still chose to create many images for themselves. Like… a piece of art. Where you must trust the process and while your piece may begin as strange shapes on a canvas, they eventually form something. Sometimes we are born knowing what shapes we become, but I’ve always known that I wasn’t one of those people. Just as an angel would be unsure of appearing in one way forever.”

  Compassion lined their words and Veaer had the urge to be sucked away into the void R produced with their gentle words, revealing something so dear to them as if they were slicing themself through the middle for her to crawl into and make a home. She was enlightened with flashes and visions of angels appearing as blinding light to caemi-like figures to dragons to animals to leaves to butterflies to something impossible for her to comprehend but she knew it was beautiful.

  “When I found Tychon,” R continued, squeezing Veaer’s hands tighter. “He showed me something that gave a name to the feathers. The privilege of self-creation. To create is to be alive. We love art. We are art. Why shouldn’t we go further? Those were his words. That’s why I am here.”

  Feathers sprouted on Veaer’s tongue and she lurched forward as if to expel them from her body, but nothing happened. She kept still in the position she ended up in with R’s voice wrapping around her and the fiery glow grew stronger and warmer. She whined against the thorns at the back of her throat and grasped R tighter. The glow felt so nice, so familiar.

  “He cut his hair, scarred his chest, took supplements concocted by some of the best alchemists and herbalists in Syriphia. He took what Ter and Mian made of him and changed it, created himself so that he was the same outside as he was inside. In a sense, he had become an angel, just without the magic his ancestors held. And I am to follow a similar path.”

  Tychon was transgender. The words echoed in and around her. She had known it to be so; Tychon was happy to share the fact and welcome a safer world for others like him. She just hadn’t realised to this extent.

  Their bodies grew apart from the circular ritual room, leaving them in a new abyss. Their robes provided sufficient hope and light. The trust and care R exhibited was heavy and full of promise, to have shared this intimate discovery with her. But now more than ever did she feel like an intruder. As if R’s friend should’ve taken her place instead so that she didn’t end up the primary holder of this holy revelation. She was not R’s her.

  “I’m non-binary, Veaer. And I’ve been afraid to tell you because you’ve only known me as something else that was only a small part of me. And I’m afraid that this will undo everything between us. I didn’t know if you—”

  “It’s okay, R.” Veaer swallowed the feathers and flowers—dry and prickly down her throat and into her blood—and reached her hand out to hold the side of their cold mask. “Tell me more.”

  “I— are you sure?” Their voice cracked again, and she sensed the cracks being sealed by tears. “I’m not neither, and I’m not both. Not both male and female. But I… it’s different at different times. This doesn’t make sense.”

  “It’s like the angels, like you said,” Veaer said quietly, leaning in and lifting her second hand to hold their face up. In a way she wanted to do her very best to understand, for the feathers that tickled the inside of her chest.

  “Yes, like the angels. And I can be more of a boy one day, and a girl another day. And sometimes it could be neither or both. But my inability to choose, I fear that will betray me one day. That I may not be an angel like I wish.”

  “But you are an angel.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I can feel it, lovely. And you don’t need to prove it to anyone.”

  “But I can’t prove it to myself, and that matters to me.”

  Veaer pulled R towards her and wrapped her arms tight around their torso. She pressed her hands into their shoulder blades and tucked her face into the crook of R’s neck.

  “Maybe you can’t now, but you will. You will keep going and sharpen your edges and trace your outlines and shade in the light and dark that makes you. Just like Tychon and the rest of the angels. You have Q, and Elise, and me, and your friend. We can help you.”

  R exhaled deeply and slowly against Veaer’s hair and tightened their grip on her back, balling fabric between their fingers. They hiccupped against their own words that came out in a mess of mumbles and pleas.

  “I love you,” Veaer whispered. She couldn’t help the words tumbling out, familiar in her mind and bursting to be said, as if the angels moved every muscle in her mouth and tongue.

  “Don’t say that. Don’t say what you don’t mean.”

  “I mean it.”

  “But you love Elise.”

  “And I can love you too.”

  They basked in the fire and let it play along their skin and robes. They spoke to each other with hesitant touches and meaningful looks. Veaer knew this to be something like habit but was unable to fathom how that could be so.

  The next morning, Veaer woke up in her dorm dressed in clean pyjamas and without the warm body she spent the night next to.

  CHAPTER 35

  ATTUNEMENT

  “It’s been four days since we spoke.”

  Veaer had opened her dorm room door, reluctantly dressed for the school day and just about to leave, to Adair pacing in front of her room with hands in hair.

  Her friend wasn’t even dressed in uniform which only brought concern to the forefront. If Veaer had been able to get out of bed after the night she had to go to class, Adair surely should’ve been able to as any other student.

  “What? You and Hai?” Veaer stepped out of the doorway and locked the door behind her, slipping the key into her skirt pocket. It clinked against something else and Veaer paused with her hand on her satchel’s handle before she remembered the master key she took from Adair. This didn’t seem like the best time to return it.

  “Yes. He’s been holed up in his dorm room and isn’t even attending class. I haven’t seen him in homeroom and his director caught me between classes yesterday to ask about it. I tried talking to him last night, but he didn’t answer. I tried this morning and—”

  Adair pounded her fists against the side of her head and Veaer reached out to stop it. Patrons above, she hadn’t realised Haiwrin’s absence, and it made her want to run her head against the wall too.

  Adair shivered from a breeze that caught them from down the hall and wrapped her arms around herself. Veaer slid her blazer off and brought it to Adair’s shoulders.

  “Okay, okay. Let’s go up together and see?” Veaer played with her lip between her teeth. She hoped that Adair and herself only missed when Haiwrin left his room. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have had water or food for days—and with how well the academy looked after students, no one would feel good after that. She knew just as well from fasting for just more than a day.

  Adair gave her a silent nod and started leading the way. The students who liked to guard the staircase to floor two, three and four must have already gone to class, so they only needed permission by intention to get Veaer through the invisible field. She still remained cautious while crossing the threshold in the carpet, remembering the times in her first year when she learnt her lesson about trying to brute through the fields. She found it highly contradictory for faculty to use magic to keep students out of the floors of their own dorm building, while students had to wait until graduation to cast again. If there was ever a reason to change schools, if she did follow Haiwrin’s plan considering his condition now, it’d be to a school that loved to expand on caemi magic instead of restricting it.

  They arrived in front of Haiwrin’s room, a foreboding atmosphere prickling Veaer’s arms. Shadows stretched from under his door, and everything was awfully quiet.

  With a quick glance at Adair that didn’t offer much of a suggestion, Veaer stepped forward and knocked in the way she established as unique to her when they first met. When nothing came of it, she tried the doorknob which confirmed what was most reasonable; the door was locked.

  “Haiwrin, hey!” She knocked again. “It’s me, Ve. I wanted to—I just hope you’re… I haven’t seen you in class. Do you want to talk?”

  Not even a snore came through which would’ve reassured them of something, anything.

  “I don’t know what to do.” Adair’s words quivered. She backed up against the wall next to the door and sat on the carpet. “I don’t have a way to get through to him.”

  The master key weighed heavy in Veaer’s pocket. “Like, actually… physically? Or, in a twin-sibling sort of sense?” She opened and closed her hands behind her so that Adair wouldn’t see and so she wasn’t tempted to take the key from her pocket.

  “Both? I’ve been distracted with other things.”

  “Like what?” She dropped next to Adair and placed a hand on her thigh. She also let her gaze wander across the walls, searching for a clock. She didn’t know how long she had before class.