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Turning to Aiden I effortlessly extend and retract my wings several times perfectly. Aiden gets that manic look of happiness he always gets whenever I accomplish something, and I can't help but smile about his happiness. He's a fierce man, but when he gets practically giddy like this he softens up and seems so much more relatable.
"You'll begin flying lessons tomorrow?" he asks Lexington. Lexington nods in affirmation.
"Good," says Aiden with a clap.
The two of them have clapped a lot today.
"Ready to eat, My Queen?" he asks.
My stomach gives a growl at that moment and I realize that Lexington and I really have worked all day. Which then leads me to the question of whether gargoyles actually eat. I turn to say goodbye to Lexington but the words choke in my throat as he gives me a dashing wink and then launches out the window where I watch him fly out of sight.
"You'll be able to do that soon," Aiden says quietly, watching me watch Lexington's flight. It seems impossible that I'll be able to do that, but it also seemed impossible that I would be able to pull my wings out without falling over so obviously Lexington can work miracles.
"Was it a good surprise?" he asks, his voice almost tentative.
I give him a tired smile. "A very good one."
After I stuff myself at dinner, Aiden walks me to my room. There's a steaming mug of the sleeping elixir waiting for me on the nightstand next to my bed. I turn at the door, trying to nonchalantly stop his entry into my room.
"It's been a long day," I tell him with a yawn.
Aiden gives a look behind me where the elixir is waiting, and I know he wants to say something to remind me to take it.
"I'm just going to take my sleeping potion and go right to sleep," I say in hopefully a convincing tone. Aiden perks up at my mention of it.
"It will refresh you for another hard day of flying lessons," he tells me. He brushes his lips over my cheek, lingering for a second. "Goodnight, My Princess," he whispers before walking away. Just like the other day when he called me "Princess", for some reason it irrationally annoys me.
I take a quick shower, letting the warm water wash off my annoyance and the sweat of the day. As I get into bed I look over at the elixir, which creepily never stops steaming by the way, and I'm tempted to drink it. Reminding myself how weird everyone is about it I quickly grab it and throw it down the sink in my bathroom. Getting back in bed the exhaustion from the day sinks into me and I know that it's not going to be an issue falling asleep.
My wings appeared one night when He and I were fighting over a servant boy. He had ordered his head to be cut off for looking at me wrong. My incubus has been seated on the far side of the room and I had been carefully keeping my eyes averted from him. The fact that both women and men are pawing at him is making me want to fire lightning bolts at them, a little trick I discovered I was capable of the other day when a fox frightened me while on a rare walk in the gardens.
A few months filled with stolen moments when he's snuck into my room have solidified that he is in fact 'my incubus'. I'm gripping my napkin as tight as I can in my lap, but when He flies off the handle about the poor young man who had the misfortune to have to serve me dinner that night, I lose the control I've put so much effort into holding onto. I stand up and scream at Him, slapping Him across the face. I'm so overcome with anger that I don't even realize when they first burst out of my skin. My whole skin feels like it's on fire with how much emotion I'm feeling anyway that it's hard to differentiate the tearing in my back from the overall feeling I have that my skin is going to burst into flames.
The fact that the whole banquet hall full of fairies are currently in uproar is the first sign I have that something is amiss. Rolling heads barely garner a look in this castle, but wings...wings are apparently cause for attention. My husband's awe-filled face is the next clue I have. It snaps me out of the haze of rage I've been caught up in, and I look around to see what has caused it. Much to my surprise a pair of beautiful, feathered, ebony black wings are fluttering behind me. I don't even know what to think. I may not know a lot right now, but I do know that my people do not have wings.
He circles me, like a predator stalking his prey.
"Now isn't this a surprise," He murmurs, his index finger softly stroking one of my feathers.
My feathers flutter faster, almost like they are in distress, and a shiver goes down my spine. Out of the corner of my eye, I see my incubus take a step towards me and I send up a silent prayer that he will control himself. I give a small sigh of relief when he sits back down, but I still remain on high alert, because He is still breathing down my neck.
"Just when I think you can't get any more magnificent," He whispers in my ear. "There's always something about you that's hiding from view isn't there."
I give Him a glare and put all of my effort into snapping my wings into place, holding on to the front of my dress as I do so since my dress is quite literally holding onto me by nothing but a few threads. After I feel my wings retract, I summon all the dignity I can and walk out of the banquet hall, carefully stepping over the separated head rolling around on the floor, what feels like a million eyes on my back as I do so.
I use magic to bolt the door behind me once I get to my room, hoping that He will think a guard did it for Him. I collapse into my bed with a sob, the stress of the night's events too much for me at the moment. I've been practicing my magic so much every chance I can get, but without an instructor it's been a slow process and I'm not strong enough to be able to fight Him. I'll only get one chance to confront Him and defeat Him. I know He would find a way to lock me up forever and kill my magic somehow if I fought Him too early and lost. Despite His promise that He would stop the curse He inflicted on the land, the fact that the line of black in the horizon continues to press forward lets me know that His curse got out of hand.
I tell myself positive reaffirmations in an attempt to put myself back together. I just have to continue to get as strong as possible so I can save Fairie. Lexi will appear any day now with some spell she has found in one of the millions of books in my old palace's library. Beckham will still be waiting for me after this is over. My incubus…my trail of thinking dissolves when I feel the arms of the creature I had just been thinking about wrap around me. Somehow this only makes me cry harder. Thinking of the risk he has taken with so many people around, to sneak out of the banquet hall and climb up to my room to comfort me. He shouldn't be risking his life for me. Images of his head also rolling on the ground drift through my mind.
The sarcastic wall that was firmly wrapped around him when I first met him has slowly chipped away piece by piece as we've spent time together. We haven't gone any further than frantic kisses and tender touches, but he must have felt something genuine in my emotions for him because his sarcasm has faded. What's left behind his walls is a complicated, fragile creature that captures a piece of my heart more and more every day. I had thought that Beckham possessed all of it, but instead of taking pieces of my heart away from Beckham, my heart has grown, and my incubus has come to live firmly in those new, unexplored places.
When I finally get control of my tears so that they aren't pouring down my face, I pull away from where I've drenched his neck, still sniffling some.
"So, you're some kind of bird now?" he asks, wiggling his eyebrows. "I can call you my 'flying forbidden queen' now," he says, joking in an unexpectedly corny way. He's not much of a joker, in fact most of the time he is a bit melancholy, so the fact that he is trying to make light of a very confusing development is very charming.
"I guess," I tell him. "I'm not sure what that means. Maybe it's a trait in my mother's bloodline that has just been hidden?"
"Maybe so," he says agreeably, his eyes illustrating just how much he doesn't believe that's the case.
