I had the sense that he very much expected my awe and adoration when he revealed them.
Tascius crowded in next to me, ducking to avoid an axe swinging from the ceiling. “What are we looking at, exactly?”
“Something of great interest to you,” the smith breathed, his ruby eye gleaming, and he pulled the cloth away.
My hand rose to cover my open mouth as I took them in.
They were flawless.
He’d used the ebonite to create a web of metal so fine it was no thicker than a spiderweb, but stronger than steel. Thousands of snowy-white pinions had been melded into it, creating a perfect pair of wings worthy of any archangel.
The ebonite was still visible where the wings would be melded to the scars along his shoulder blades. Wayland lifted one of them, folding and unfolding the ebonite structure, demonstrating how it looked and moved exactly like a real wing.
“You’re speechless,” he said, peering at me. “That’s to be expected. No one could create wings as fine as these unless they were born with my inherent talents.”
Tascius was squeezing my hand so tightly it hurt. I looked up at him, unable to hold back the wide smile spreading across my face. “Do you like them?”
He slowly pulled his eyes from the wings to my face. “You had him make me wings? Little friend-” He cut himself off, and grabbed my face, kissing me so hard he stole my breath away.
“Ick,” Wayland muttered.
“This is what you gave up the sword for?” Tascius asked when he finally let me breathe again.
I cupped his face in my hands, ignoring the smith. “It was worth it. A sword is just a sword, but a feather is more than a feather. He used one of mine to give the ebonite the essence of flight.”
Tascius closed his eyes, his face drained of color.
“And you have to take them,” I said firmly. “The ebonite’s already been forged with magic. There’s no going back now.”
I worried my lip when he didn’t respond. What if he’d be furious too, that I’d made this instead of the sword?
He finally opened his eyes, the midnight tones glittering with the light of the molten gold. “There is nothing I could do for you that would ever match this.”
Relief shook me to the core. “Now we can fly together.”
“So do you want to stop smooching and put these on or not?” Wayland glared at us. “Do you need a room? There’s one right over there.”
He pointed in the direction of the lake of lava.
“He does want them.” I grinned up at Tascius.
“Then get out of the way and lay the big fellow on this table.” Wayland plucked up the white feathers and deposited them in a basket, and Tascius slowly climbed onto it. The wood creaked beneath his substantial weight but didn’t break.
“This is going to be extraordinarily painful,” the smith said. “The worst pain you’ve ever felt in your life. You will probably pray to every god out there to smite me down and wipe you from the mortal coil before this is over. You will find all torture after this to feel like nothing but gentle tickles. The agony will be blinding, soul-wrenching-”
“Can you just do it before he changes his mind?” I hissed.
Tascius turned his head to face me and pillowed it on his forearm with a faint smile. “I wouldn’t change my mind. No agony could compare to losing them.”
“Mental fortitude,” Wayland said, brushing Tascius’s long hair aside to reveal his scarred back. “Good man.”
I grabbed a dusty stool from a corner and pulled it up the table, sitting next to Tascius’s head and brushing his silky hair comfortingly.
He reached out to tangle his fingers with mine, until the smith uncorked a bottle, soaked a cloth in whatever substance it contained, and ran it over the scars on his back.
Tascius’s entire body tightened as stiff as a board and his hand clamped down on mine, almost grinding my bones together.
Before I could protest, the smith had pulled out a gleaming steel knife that was sharp as a razor.
“Hold him still,” he snapped, but Tascius was locked in place, drawing in a hissing breath as the scars bubbled under the liquid.
The razor was drawn carefully over the scars, opening up his back and revealing where his bones had been sawn neatly away. Wayland dropped the bloodied knife on the table and picked up the first wing, aligning the raw edge of the ebonite with the open wound. “Hold this.”
I found myself releasing Tascius and supporting the weight of the wing as the smith poked around inside his back, pulling out tools I had no name for and muttering words that had an oddly incantatory quality.
With the heat, the coppery scent of blood, and the smith’s chanting, the room started to seem fuzzy at the edges, like something was blurring the edges of my sight. I peered closer and saw dark threads growing from the ebonite, weaving into Tascius’s glistening red muscles and fusing to the bone at the smith’s prodding.
It felt like hours before the ebonite stopped moving, seemingly inert and woven into Tascius’s back as though he’d been born with it.
But the work wasn’t over.
“Next one,” Wayland said, wiping sweat off his forehead and leaving a smear of blood instead. “Keep it steady, woman.”
He pushed the wound open and took up the second wing. I held it against my stomach, keeping it steady as the smith began the long work of bringing them together for a second time. My head was pounding, my breath shallow, and I blinked when I realized the smith had stopped chanting.
He pinched the skin together around the wings, reaching for a needle and thread.
“No, wait,” I said, my voice sounding like it came from a thousand miles away.
