Chapter Fourteen

Ana

The swans came from everywhere.

My aunts stood in a circle around the cabin, singing a song that had the wind chasing itself over the roof. It pounded at the shingles and they soothed it away. It howled, trying to find its way inside the house, and they pulled it back like a naughty child. The song was soft but insistent, like water on the shore of a troubled lake.

Aunt Aisha wrapped my blue cloak around my shoulders and all I could focus on was the length of my spine and how best to twist it around a pair of wings. My body scrambled to catch up but there were songs to be sung, ceremonies to perform. Tradition.

Each of my aunts and the cousins who’d already shifted plucked one of their own feathers for my new cloak. Aunt Aisha presented me with spools of white thread and long silver antique needles.

“I don’t have any feathers,” I admitted. There was a hysterical edge to my voice. “I burned them.”

Aunt Aisha went gray. “You did what?”

“You said there were lots of ways to fly.”

She didn’t look mad, just shocked enough to fall over. I had my aunts’ donated feathers in my hand. It wasn’t enough. Not nearly. I’d done this to myself.

“Ana.” She sat down hard on the garden wall. “No.”

“We’ll find more,” one of my aunts declared.

“There’s no time,” Aisha said. “Look at her.”

“No one told me this could even happen,” I said in a small voice. I had wings for crying out loud. Actual wings. So much for graduating high school.

“Because no one ever fights the swan so hard that it has to take over,” she pointed out. “Except for you.”

“No offense, but I’m not going to give up and let my girlfriend eat fish heads in the woods.”

Morag hissed at that, but I barely heard her.

Pierce.

Pierce was here.

Holding a basket of swan feathers.

Mei Lin stood beside him, grinning. “I let him in,” she said. “He wouldn’t stop calling my cell.”

He stepped closer to me, half smiling. “I have feathers for you.”

There was still blood on his hands and rips in his clothes from being locked in a cage. He didn’t seem to notice.

“How did you even find this many?” I whispered.

“I started collecting them the day you told me you burned your cloak feathers.”

I swallowed, too many emotions clogging up my throat. He pushed the basket into my hands. “I ate your cupcakes,” he said. “And I still love you. I’ve always loved you.”

It was as if there was something frozen inside me and now it was melting. He loved me. After everything. I wasn’t too late, after all.

I was very sure that I could fly now, even without wings. I’d never felt full of light like this before. Was I glowing, like you do when you hold your hand up to the sun? If I kissed him now, would brightness pour out of me?

“Hurry,” Aisha interrupted. “Before the moon sets and it’s too late.”

I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to wrap myself around Pierce and not let go.

Instead, I sat on the floor of my bedroom and sewed long white feathers to the blue cloak of my girlhood. It was soft and worn, the hem torn in one spot from catching on a thorn tree, a smear of Renard blood on the hood. The spines of the feathers were surprisingly strong. The needle caught, and I tugged hard and blood welled on my fingertips. I began to wrap them instead, adding beads and pendants from my jewelry box. I snipped and knotted and bled some more until I was left with a strange cloak of blue bristling with feathers over the shoulders and around the hood.

I finally had my swan cloak.

And Pierce.

The aunts were waiting for me outside.

The sun had set and the fields trembled with crickets and mice and the solitary hunt of owls. Women in white dresses led me into the shadows, still singing. The pond behind the house glimmered with moonlight. I was aware of everything, the scratch of grass against my ankles, the smell of wood smoke from a far-off farm, the first star emerging.

The water lapped at my toes. The pond was meant to cushion my fall if I plummeted to my death. Aisha assured me that had never happened. I assured her I was developing a fear of heights.

Swans drifted nearby, silent and serene. I didn’t know who they were, but I knew the black swan who took off, splashing us. Her wingspan was enormous, her feet skimming the water as she gained momentum. Aunt Sarafina had worked for a bird sanctuary once, gathering feathers from a black swan for her own cloak. The city sometimes released black swans now, too, and the little cousins fought over the rare feathers.

Aisha slipped a silver chain around my neck. “It’s family tradition that we are linked together. In the old stories, swan siblings are connected by silver chains.”

I touched the clear quartz shaped like an arrowhead.

“It’s easier if you don’t fight it,” Aisha added. “It’s instinct.”

The cloak was heavy in my hands, quivering with feathers. I flung it over my shoulders the way I’d seen Sasha do on the same night Jackson and Eric had found us. It was a lifetime ago. The cloak lightened as it settled over my shoulders, as if it was melting into me.

I ran into the pond, alarm fluttering in the back of my throat. Needles pierced my back. My neck stretched. I was running into the water now and stumbled, but it was too late, something else already had hold of me. Nature, magic; call it what you will, it was stronger than I was. I opened my mouth, but it was a beak and I didn’t recognize the sound coming out of me. My wings were heavy and I flapped them, but it just knocked me sideways.

I heard Aisha sigh. “They always fight it.”

My aunts were singing again, but it wasn’t soothing. I didn’t realize until later that they were controlling the winds to help me. I was still trapped in between Ana and the swan. I flapped with such alarm that I rose a few inches into the air. It was thrilling and just distracting enough that I let go and lifted higher. My neck stretched out impossibly long and impossibly straight, turning me into a feathered arrow. Sarafina was on my right and Aisha dove into flight on my left. They kept me steady, nudging under my belly when I dipped too fast.

The world was a beautiful dizzying spin of shadows and moonlight and a pull in my center that I knew would always keep me on course. Pierce was right. It was both biology and magic. Just like me.

Liv and I owed each other so much money that first week that I seriously considered getting an after school job.

But we tried.

And if we could do it, our families could do it.

The Renards were embarrassed that Henry had taken part, that they had blamed us when he was attacking them for his own revenge. The Vila were ashamed that Aunt Felicity had betrayed us, hiding Henry and Pritchard and the barn from us all—just to get her cloak back. Henry had been the one to steal it in the first place, but she didn’t care. She had her wings now and she lived in her totem shape. She never came back to Cygnet House. Rosalita went through her laptop and found receipts for seven blenders, three basinets, and eighteen lace tablecloths, as well as emails from Pritchard.

My dad and the other fathers had managed to put out the fire before it ate too much of the house. The front windows were a mess and the porch was gone, as well as the front sitting room, but other than that the damage was mostly cosmetic.

Jackson didn’t remember his part in all of this. He barely remembered anything after the age of twelve. He was nicer, but the arrows had taken their toll. Pierce’s grandmother took Jackson to the doctor and after many tests they decided he’d had such a bad bout of flu that it had damaged him. He didn’t recognize Rosalita anymore. Or me.

I didn’t know how long I flew in circles around the fields; I just knew I didn’t want it to end. Not until I saw the gleam of the pond and the glitter of the tokens hanging in our wish tree.

And Pierce.

He waited for me on the edge of the water, staring up into the sky. He’d always waited for me.

I flew over him once, just because I could. He smiled up at me as I navigated the currents, landing with a less than graceful splash. I stretched and shifted, feathers into flesh, swan into girl. I hesitated, pushing wet hair off my face. What if Pierce was weirded out? It was one thing to know about swans, another to see your girlfriend turn in and out of one. What if he was grossed out now? What if—?

Also, I was naked.

Well, I was wearing water. Same thing.

He was already striding through the waves I’d churned up as I reached for my wet cloak. He dragged me close and covered my mouth with his, tasting me, breathing me, until I hated any tiny space that came between us. His fingers brushed the back of my neck as our tongues tangled. Air was unnecessary; there was only Pierce. I might possibly die, but I’d die happy. He nibbled at my earlobe until I squirmed, breath catching. Laughing softly, he tugged gently with his teeth. A hot thrill went through me.

“Oh, it’s like that, is it?” I returned, tracing the line of skin above his jeans. We were suddenly in the very best kind of competition. I wanted to see his eyes flare, wanted him to hear my sharp gasp when he dragged his tongue along the line of my throat. We were entering dangerous and delicious territory. I pulled back slightly.

His wet shirt molded to his muscles. My feather cloak trailed behind me in the pond. He touched the tiny frown between my eyes. “Why so worried?”

“I’m a swan now.”

“And?” He nibbled on the side of my jaw until my bones went soft.

“And…I don’t know.” It was hard to make sense when he was kissing me like that.

“Are you still Ana?” His tongue stroked into my mouth, teasing.

“Of course.” The kiss went from languid to fiery again.

“That’s all I care about.” He pulled me up against his chest when the water tried to slide between us. “That’s all I’ve ever cared about.”

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