Chapter Eight

Ana

Dating wasn’t easy when you were in the middle of an escalating blood feud.

And when you were hoping you might sprout swan wings every time a boy kissed you. Edward was probably starting to think I had serious problems. I was either focused a little too intently on him, or completely distracted. And I couldn’t exactly explain myself. Again.

Pierce was never around at lunch and he took off for the café right after school. I didn’t know if he was mad at me; I just knew things were different.

And I didn’t like it.

At all.

I tried to focus on my homework. My essay wasn’t going to write itself. And unfortunately, magic wouldn’t, either. And, after living my own family feud, I was starting to really, really hate Romeo and Juliet.

Love story, my ass.

“Oh, I love Romeo and Juliet,” Edward said, glancing over my shoulder as he sat next to me. I was studying in the cafeteria instead of the library. I didn’t want to date right under Pierce’s nose like that. It seemed rude. But I hated the smell of French fries, and the clatter of trays, and the flickering fluorescent lights. I missed Pierce.

I pushed that aside and listened to Edward talk about the set of a production of Romeo and Juliet his mother had worked on when he was little. It was the reason he’d decided he wanted to study set design. We leaned toward each other as he doodled in the margins of my book. When he turned his face, our foreheads brushed against each other. The chaos of the hundreds of students around us faded away.

He kissed me and I kissed him back. It took a moment for me to stop feeling so self-conscious, so aware of my spine and the feathers not growing there. He tasted like sugar. My lower lip tingled when his tongue brushed over it. His fingertips brushed along my jaw. The pressure between my shoulders faded. I slid my palms up his arms as the kiss deepened. The side of the table dug into my ribs, but I didn’t care. I wanted to feel the kiss everywhere. I wanted our tongues to slide against each other and steal all thoughts out of my brain. I wanted. When we finally broke apart, his eyes smoldered.

The kiss was pleasant, like a cupcake.

I liked cupcakes.

But Pierce’s kiss was dark chocolate; it was cinnamon and the unexpected bite of chili pepper in the sweetness.

And I probably shouldn’t be thinking about it right now.

As if I’d conjured him by thinking about it, I spotted him by the vending machine. He was half turned away from us, shoulders tensed. I didn’t know if he’d noticed us, only that joy immediately bloomed and heated like sunshine on my spine when I saw him.

Edward left for class, and Pierce walked away from the vending machine empty-handed. I stayed where I was, suddenly sick of swans.

“Sing him a song,” Rosalita suggested from behind me. “He’ll love you then. They both will.”

The fact that I was tempted was scarier than anything. Scarier than kidnappers and stolen cloaks and tornados. Scarier even than Pierce not loving me anymore.

I didn’t see Pierce again until the next day when I was gathering more feathers by our wish-tree. It was tangled with memories: the length of pop can tabs on a blue ribbon from the summer Pierce was obsessed with ginger ale, the painted chopsticks my mother used to wear in her hair, the wishbones from countless Kent poached turkeys. It wasn’t really magic, of course, not like the songs or the swans. But I liked to think it had its own kind of power. Today, though, I couldn’t bring myself to wish at all. I had the uneasy feeling I needed to save my wishes. That I would need them soon enough.

Pierce came out of the autumn woods, striding through tall goldenrod that glowed with pollen. He was the same Pierce: tall, handsome, with that quiet, mischievous smile, and yet he was so much more. I couldn’t help but stare. He wasn’t just Pierce. He was my Pierce.

He paused, looking at me quietly. He didn’t come any closer.

“Please don’t go,” I blurted out. “I hate it when you’re mad at me.”

“I’m not mad at you,” he replied quietly.

“You are so. You’re barely talking to me.” I felt like I might cry and that was too embarrassing for words. “I miss you, damn it. I miss us.”

He sighed and crossed to the edge of the pond beside me. Our reflections touched in the water. “I miss us, too.”

“Can’t we go back to normal?” Everything else was too confusing. If I could just get a few quiet days with no crisis of any kind, I might finally get my feather cloak. I could deal with everything else after that. “Please?”

“Come on,” he said finally, plucking a small feather out of the weeds near his boot. “I’ll help you look.”

I dropped my basket and hugged him as hard as I could. His arms went around me, warm and steady on my back. I inhaled coffee and paper and Pierce, and I could breathe again. Warmth rushed through me, followed by adrenaline. Everything was going to be okay now. I might not feel for him exactly what he thought he felt for me, but I did love him. There were lots of ways to love someone. And the magic should have worn off by now. There was no reason for him to be embarrassed, or to avoid me. I stepped back, feeling chilled when his hands dropped away.

“I’ll even eat your vinegar hate-cupcakes.”

I smiled in spite of myself. He could always do that to me. “They’re not hate-cupcakes.”

“Well, either way I want chocolate caramel.” He dropped the feather into my basket.

He was helping me collect feathers for wings I was going to find with another boy. It should have made me happy.

So why did I feel like crying all over again?

Pierce

I went running until the only thing I could think about was my lungs and their desperate need for air. I’d told Ana I loved her and she hadn’t believed me. There was nothing I could say to persuade her. She was convinced it was some kind of magical side effect, and I didn’t understand how she couldn’t see that I’d always loved her. And there was nothing I could do about it. Even now, when I didn’t particularly want to love her this way. I was going to have to go on pretending.

She still spent so much time looking everywhere else but at me.

She sat with Edward at lunch and he held her hand, and I wanted to toss him into the school pool.

I spent most of my time in the library with the books. And running.

The only reason I caught the glint of the cage was because I was bent over, trying not to cough a lung out of my nose. The trap was set at the edge of a small pond, half covered in water weeds.

A swan trap.

My fists clenched at the thought of Ana trapped inside it. I searched the area but I couldn’t find any tracks or any evidence that swans had come this way at all. I found a white feather, but I wasn’t even sure it was from a swan. I tucked it into my pocket anyway. Then I dragged the netting out of the mud and sawed through it with my pocket knife.

I dismantled the trap, ripping and pulling it into pieces until my hands bled.

Ana

Edward and I finally went out on our first real date. We went for dinner and then a long walk by the river, near where Sonnet and I had first seen the van and the cages. There were swans floating in the water, but they barely glanced our way. I probably wasn’t related to them. I nearly made a joke about it before catching myself. I wasn’t with Pierce. I had to be careful how much of my real self I revealed.

We stopped to sit on a bench and hold hands. There were no swan feathers on the ground, just mangled French fry containers. I was full of nervous energy. Surely, tonight would be the night Edward helped me obtain my feather cloak. It was a perfect romantic night: all moonlight and the soft sounds of water and the lingering scent of leaf fires. And I liked Edward. He was nice and cute and creative. I’d imagined it was quick as lightning, but maybe it was slow, like a building thunderstorm. Still, shouldn’t I be in love already? What if something was wrong with me?

Romantic night, I reminded myself. Stop stressing.

Edward was humming along to music pouring out of a nearby pub. I caught myself joining him, the words like candy on my tongue. He turned his head to smile at me. His eyes were faintly glassy, as if he was dazzled by me. I stopped singing. He blinked.

Even with my chopped hair, I had some magic left. Something forbidden rose inside me, like a lazy serpent testing the air. My spine felt naked and cold. Surely a tiny song wouldn’t hurt? Just a little push in the right direction.

“Here’s a health to all lovers that are loyal and just; Here’s confusion to the rival that lives in distrust.”

The swans in the river flapped their wings, agitated. I kept singing, feeling the wind rise around us and tingles of eagerness in my fingertips.

“But I’ll be as constant as a true turtle dove, For I never will, at no time, prove false to my love.”

“You have such a pretty voice,” Edward said, sounding slightly drunk. “I think I might be falling in love with you.”

The swell of power and anticipation died abruptly.

Shit. Shit.

What the hell was I doing?

I drew back so quickly I nearly fell off the bench. I knew better than this. The way Edward was looking at me wasn’t love. It was infatuation and awe and it had nothing to do with me. It was the song.

I leaped to my feet. “I have to go.”

He scrambled up. “What? Why? Did I do something wrong?”

“No.” I shook my head vehemently and tried to smile reassuringly at the same time. “It’s me. I’m sorry. I can’t see you anymore. I’m so sorry.”

“Ana, wait!” He chased after me, but the wind tossed branches in his way and I kept running.

I was a horrible person.

I ran straight out of town and into the dark farmlands and I was still a horrible person. I couldn’t outrun what I’d almost done. I’d always thought myself secretly better than my cousins because I refused to use magic to find love. But I was no different. I was worse, actually. I’d been so right to warn Pierce that what he was feeling wasn’t real. But then I’d gone and messed with Edward’s brain. He’d be fine by morning, but I couldn’t see him again. I couldn’t see anyone. Not like this. How would I ever know if someone actually loved me and not my swan?

My feet hurt by the time I reached Cygnet House, and the pain between my shoulders was sharp and hungry, like teeth. I went straight into the woods. Morag charged at me from the trees and I let her shove me into the dirt. I didn’t stop her.

Aunt Aisha nudged her back, then crouched beside me, frowning. “What’s wrong?”

I hugged my knees to my chest. “I’m a horrible person.”

She shrugged. “No more horrible and no less horrible than anyone else.”

“I used a song on Edward,” I admitted miserably.

She raised an eyebrow. “And?”

“And then I ran away.”

She sighed. “Ana, you’re not exactly the first Vila to have this problem. A little snippet of a song is nothing. He’ll get over it.”

“How am I supposed to get my feather cloak now? How do I know if someone likes me or if it’s just Vila magic?”

She sat next to me. “You’ll figure it out. Everyone does, even regular folk. You can’t ever truly know what’s in someone else’s heart. At some point you just have to trust, I guess.”

I wiped my face. “But what if I can’t trust myself? What if I never get my cloak?”

“Sometimes it’s so simple we can’t see it for ourselves. Do you know why we need to fall in love to get our totem shapes?” Aunt Aisha asked. “Or more specifically, why platonic love or familial love, or even loving yourself isn’t enough?” When I shook my head, she continued. “Because we have to prove that we can love something more than the swan, more than ourselves. That’s how we earn our feather cloaks. It’s not about someone loving us, but about us loving them.” She kissed my hair. “Try not to think so hard. Love, like the swan, is all instinct. It’s in your gut, not your head. You just have to be brave. There are lots of ways to fly.”

Late that night, I dreamt of Pierce.

Heat bloomed between us, burning away everything but the feel of his body touching mine. His hands were everywhere and it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. His skin was hot when I slipped my fingertips over his back, the muscles moving under my touch. We fell into a hot, desperate kiss. His fingers slipped under my hair, digging into the back of my neck. His tongue stroked into my mouth and I shivered, heat pulsing up the back of my legs. I strained against him. He kissed across my cheek, breath tickling my ear. I kissed him back so eagerly he made a delicious, strangled sound in the back of his throat. I couldn’t get close enough.

He was pulling me closer, until our legs tangled and our tongues and our thoughts; until we were so entwined I wasn’t even sure where I began and he ended because surely his breath was my breath, his body my body. He nipped at my lower lip and my bones turned liquid. He was the spark and I was the fuse leading to the dynamite.

I hoped I didn’t blow us both up.

I woke up when he lifted his head, confused. “Do you hear singing?”

I opened my eyes just as the last of my song faded. The curtains at the window fluttered in a wind called by my voice. In that way of dreams, I remembered that Edward had been there too, just as I woke up, shouting that he loved me.

I kicked off my covers, my skin clammy and cold. My heart was racing and my legs prickled, the way they always did after a nightmare.

I snuck out behind our cabin and lit a small fire. In the morning I would bake two dozen cupcakes; one batch for Edward and another batch for Pierce, so we could start from scratch. I’d make sure they were chocolate caramel.

Tonight, though, I would protect us in another way.

Once the fire had caught, I added all of the feathers I’d been gathering since I was a little girl.

The flames crackled, shooting sparks. The smell of burning feathers was oddly sweet.

I stayed up all night, until the last of the embers turned white, but the ache between my shoulder blades remained.