Page 61 of Ballad of Sea and Sky

Iawokesurroundedinwarmth, a wall of white feathers forming a sort of cage around me in my sleep.

They were so beautiful, even in the darkness of the windowless hut, and I reached out a hand to stroke the edge of a wing.

“That is sensitive,” the warm male behind me grunted, pressing himself into me so I could feel exactly how sensitive it was. “Cruel Urchin.”

“They’re beautiful,” I said, smiling as I traced another line of feathers and felt Caspian twitch against me. Perhaps therewasa way to convince him to consummate this desire after all. “Are sirens born with them like this, or do they grow in?”

“These are flight feathers,” Caspian replied, stretching out a wing experimentally. “Fledglings start with downy wings, then moult until their blood feathers grow in. Those eventually develop into flight feathers.”

“So you really are just an overgrown seagull then,” I teased, earning a laugh and a kiss on the neck as Caspian rolled away from me to stand.

I turned, shamelessly admiring his gloriously naked form.

“I may be able to test them out today,” he mused, flexing the wings so they took up the entire cabin, several of the bindings snapping off in the process.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” I protested, scrambling out of bed to stop him from rebreaking his wings.

“I won’t, Urchin,” Caspian laughed, catching me around the waist as I went to retrieve my makeshift splints. “You did an excellent job setting them.”

“It’s been less than a week,” I pointed out skeptically as he released me and threw on his ragged trousers, tossing me my discarded sailcloth attire. “What if you rebreak them?”

“Then it wouldn’t be the first time,” Caspian said in a tone that told me he thought this a joke. He opened the door to the hut, letting light stream in as he continued to flex his wings. “The braces stopped me from moving them as the bones healed, but the muscles will atrophy without exercise. I need to fly to complete the healing.”

I frowned at Caspian’s back, at the long scars running down between the wings, which sprouted from his shoulder blades and curved in white arcs to joints well above his head before folding back down on themselves.

To think it was my fascination with these very wings that got me into this mess in the first place.

When we had first awoken on the island, I had been too panicked and disoriented to really appreciate the wings as I bound them. But now I had time to examine each feather, and I ran them through my fingers as I reached to undo the bindings.

Caspian shuddered a little as I trailed a finger down his spine, and he caught my hand in a firm grip. It reminded me unsettlingly of the moment in the keep when he had hurt my wrist, and he must have felt the same.

“Are you ticklish, Siren King?” I teased, as he placed a kiss to the wrist and dropped it.

“Your hands are cold,” he grumbled, giving me a haughty look before striding out into the wind.

I sighed, following and trying to imagine the pattern of bones I had clumsily set.

“Are you sure these are healed?” I asked, watching Caspian warily as he gauged the wind. His feathers were different sizes, I noticed, with shorter, stubbier feathers near the top of each wing and longer, sleeker feathers tapering outward. “What if I ruined you?”

Caspian chuckled, pulling me in for a quick kiss. “I have some experience with broken wings, Urchin. I’d know if you had done it wrong.”

I frowned, remembering again the sight of him in the cell, bloodied and defiant as he told me not to touch him.

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly, looking up at him. “For what Vitulus did to you. For my father’s threat to cut them off.”

“You don’t need to apologize for them,” Caspian said bitterly, snaking an arm around my waist as he looked down at me. “History makes monsters of us all.”

“They hurt you,” I said, feeling a sudden flood of rage about this.

“Marina,” Caspian chuckled. “You don’t need to feel sorrow for me. I’ve had worse.”

“When?” I asked, feeling a fresh wave of rage for whoever else had hurt him. “Who?”

“Someone who is long gone,” he murmured, amusement leaving his face. “And who is not your concern.”

“Is that why you reacted as you did?” I asked, bringing a hand to his chest and running a finger down the deep scar that bisected his pectoral. “When I touched you.”

“No,” he confessed, watching my finger with predatory stillness. “I reacted that way because I was afraid I might hurt you.”