Spite creeps into my words. “Is that humility, I hear?”
“You might say you’re rubbing off on me. You’ve made inspiring arguments to that end.”
“You’re not forgiven.”
“No, I didn’t expect it would be that easy. Still, I could have rationed slivers of time to search for you. The problem was I dreaded our reunion—discovering you had changed, or we both had changed, to the point where we wouldn’t feel the same connection. It’s not farfetched, given how young we were. I’d never been afraid of looking for you, but I was afraid of finding you.
“Hence, I let it go. I believed I’d never see you again and convinced myself it was better that way—safer for you, too. After that, the only things that gave me solace were Moth, this park, and my wild family.”
“So have I changed?”
“Yes and no. Have I?”
“Yes.”
He laughs. “Yet you’re still in my arms. How devious of me.”
“I’m a glutton for punishment.”
And I’ve got an inexplicable link with him. I’m not sure how to start that conversation, and I’m even less sure I want to know his reaction, and if I’ll be able to handle it.
Also, I’m still puzzling over why the mask’s enchantment didn’t work on him and if he’s questioning that, too. I’m still harping on whether he’d care about me as much if I weren’t the girl from his past, and if I’d care about him the same way.
“When did you know?” he broaches, and I confess about the Horizon and the blue feather, omitting the part about our bond.
“What about you?” I ask, sketching the plait of hair attached to the quill.
Cerulean brushes his fingers through my white locks. “You know when I knew. You saw the transformation as we danced. You saw my reaction to your mask.”
Yeah, I did. “You were horrified.”
“That loose plume was all it took. It kindled a memory of you as a girl, wearing a visor of mismatched, haphazardly assembled feathers. At once, I was undone. I feared it wasn’t true, and I feared itwastrue. After what I’ve done to you, I couldn’t fathom what you thought of me. Mostly, I feared my kin would see the evidence on my face and target you for that.”
“I wasn’t planning on telling you there. That’s not why I went.”
“Strictly speaking, I suspected you would infiltrate the revels, intent on spying despite having the tower’s haven to yourself. I found the notion enticing. Perhaps my anticipation rendered the enchanted mask ineffective—yes, Lark, I surmised the art of enchantment. Moth’s handiwork, no doubt.”
“I caught her in a rare, generous mood,” I say.
“The way the revelers treated you…I wanted to rip them to shreds. I wanted to attack my own kin,” Cerulean admits. “That was yet another impulse I couldn’t justify to myself. As a precaution, I played along to confirm the act for everyone. Though I confess, I enjoyed seeing what you’re made of. I liked feeling you hunt me down, and I liked prolonging your quest, if only to tease and frustrate you. It felt very much like a mating dance.”
My lips mash together, preventing the truth from spilling out. “So…”
“Although I didn’t know you were that girl, I began to speculate as much. With every interaction, my suspicions increased, yet I didn’t allow myself to accept that.”
“Neither did I.”
We tally the hints and snippets along the way. Then Cerulean tells me the humans who captured him wanted to cut out his tongue, to safeguard themselves against riddles, but he couldn’t talk anyway. Every time he thought about trying, he feared a bellow would surface and didn’t want anybody to steal his ability to speak. So he pretended to be a mute. That’s why he didn’t talk to me until the end.
Afterward, Cerulean destroyed his childhood mask, intending to bury his feelings—loving me, missing me. It’s dramatic, but I tell him I did the same thing when I was little, believing he was killed by the villagers, that my freeing him led to his recapture.
That’s when I cry. That’s when he slings his arms around me. That’s when I feel safest.
It takes Cerulean a while to absorb that I thought him dead. It takes him even longer to recover from the news.
To cheer me up, he rotates his wrist. A plume appears, hovering midair. He uses his hands to conduct the wind and juggle the quill across the enclosure, then sends the feather through the trees and far into the sky.
At some point, I roll on top of him, flattening my crossed arms over his chest, my limbs cranked upward and hooked at the ankles.
