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I was no longer the ungraceful creature I spent most of my time as on two spindly legs, incapable of flight, and weak, and pathetic. I was a beautiful swan, covered in iridescent feathers.I felt agile, precise, and glorious, winding my long neck around, feeling my feathers cover me.
I finally was as I was meant to be—no wonder some swans left their feathers on all the time, and gave up on being human.
“All right, bird, you had your chance. Now take ’em off,” the hyena said, snapping at me with his fingers. I hissed at him, trying to flutter my wings forward. My clothes were lost in my transition, like always, but the stupid tape I was bound with was still around my wrists for some reason.
“Magic,” he said with a snort, as I realized my predicament. “Couldn’t risk you getting free. So come out of your skin now,” he said, before reaching for a knife from a sheath in his pocket. “Or I’ll cut you out of it, and we’ll sell your feathers as a novelty.”
I stepped away from him and shifted back, keeping my feathers out of reach, becoming a whole and naked human beneath them.
“I’m sorry—thank you—I’m sorry,” I started apologizing as he crept forward.
But he made the mistake of letting his knife down, and I launched myself at him, changing halfway through, knocking him back with my swan’s weight and shoving my hard beak, with all the strength of my elegant neck, directly into his unprotected eye socket.
He screamed, and started shuddering, trying to stab me with his knife, and one blow landed, but I didn’t give a shit; I kept going until he was dead.
I fell off of him, and started shredding the tape around my wings with my blood-covered beak, thinking only of how I was going to escape, when the room rattled, and I heard gunshots up above. I got my wings free—I changed back to human, clutching my feathers to my chest, and then the door to the room opened and someone threw something in.
Namir.
And whatever he’d thrown in exploded. I screamed, falling backwards, and if I hadn’t had my feathers in front of me like a shield, I would’ve died, I was sure. As it was now, I was scrabbling in the rubble of the room—I’d let them go mid-flight; I needed them—I couldn’t let anyone else—
A cloud of plaster and smoke drifted by and a man came out of it.
“Namir!” I said, shouting his name, but he didn’t hear me—and I didn’t hear myself shout it, my ears were ringing so badly. “Namir!” I tried again, as I watched him bend down. He was in the same suit he’d left this morning in, picking something up off of the ground—
My feathers.
My heart fell through my chest and stomach and hips and down into the earth’s molten core.
I wasn’t safe, and I’d been a fool to ever think I could be.I waited for my life to end, but all he did was pick them up. He brought them to his face to scent, breathing them in. Was he tempted? I couldn’t tell, there was too much dust, and I was breathing so fast that I was dizzy.
“Namir, don’t,” I whispered, willing him to be the man I needed.
And, as if he heard me, he carefully folded them up, holding them over one arm—and then reached for his ears to pull protective earplugs out.
“Namir?” I squeaked after that, and his head whipped my direction.
“Lily?” he asked, taking me in in sudden horror. “What the fuck!”
I was reading his lips and his attitude more than I could hear him. I paddled my hands near my ears, to show him I couldn’t hear, while he took me in again, handing me my feathers while he pulled off his sportscoat, to also hand over. I took it fromhim and put it on. It hit me the top of my thigh, like the world’s shortest mini-dress. “I can’t hear you.”
Namir nodded, taking my face into his hands so I was looking at him. “Concussive grenades,” he mouthed slowly. “Because you weren’t supposed to be here,” he went on, and I could tell he was pissed off at me.
“Be mad later?” I asked him.
He nodded, briefly setting his forehead to mine, before picking me up, to carry me out.
Chapter 9
I would’ve fought, only my shoes were lost, and the room was full of rubble...and then the staircase we were in next was full of bodies. I gasped, and tensed, and Namir pulled me close, using one hand to shield my face from what he’d done for me.
The lobby at the top of the stairs wasn’t much better—some people’s faces had been clawed off—and I knew that the stains on Namir’s suit jacket, the one that I was wearing, were from other people’s blood. I twisted into him protectively, deciding to just not look at anything else, until we were out of the building entirely, where a man I recognized was waiting: Rax, our dragon-shifter boss from the casino. He was tall as Namir, slightly more built, but with wavier hair, and he looked entirely nonplussed. He began talking at the sight of me, but I couldn’t hear him—and I felt the rumble of Namir’s chest, probably telling him that. Then he came up to us both, gave me an apologetic gesture, and reached for the feathers I was cradling to my chest.
Too little, too late.I hissed at him, just like I would’ve were I still a swan, and he stepped back.
“I am sorry,” he mouthed, clear enough for me to read it, but I shook him off, and let Namir carry me to his sports car.
Chapter 10
