Chapter 28 Busting Out
Busting Out
“What in the gods are you wearing?” he asked, his brow furrowed.
He must have realized how his words sounded, because he looked up at my eyes, his own a little wider, then looked quickly away. I watched him bite his tongue, literally, I’m reasonably sure. I tried not to react to what he’d said, or even to try and interpret what he’d meant by it exactly.
Bones glanced at Nyx, Alaric, and Luc, who were all gaping at him, then he averted his gaze from the three of them, as well.
He cleared his throat.
“I only meant,” he said next, stepping closer to me. He went back to avoiding meeting my eyes as his voice dropped to a murmur. “I thought we’d agreed it would be better if we weren’t overly conspicuous, Leda.”
Luc snorted, glancing at me. “Is that your boyfriend’s idea of a compliment?”
I felt my face flush, and my own jaw tightened.
Golly, this was going to be fun.
Bones and I hadn’t even gotten around to talking about what I’d found in that book about Konstantin “The Dragon” Petrov and his wife, Antonia, yet.
I didn’t even know if he’d read what I sent him the day before.
I hadn’t heard a single word from him after I had that drakai bring him the book.
He also hadn’t joined me, Luc, Nyx, and Alaric for dinner.
It was eleven in the morning now, and we’d just left the foyer of Valarian. We stood on the snow just past its wide porch, not far from the bone-colored, ionic columns.
I looked down at myself, frowned, and genuinely tried to see what Bones might be taking issue with.
I wore a black dress and stockings under a thick wool coat I hadn’t yet buttoned up, with tall, laced boots that were flat and worked well in the snow.
I had a shawl that matched the dress, and that I was currently using more as a scarf.
I thought it was a pretty good balance of dressy and weather-appropriate, something I could wear to a nice dinner but was also comfortable and would also work at the market and for fireworks, but maybe I’d wildly misinterpreted his insistence on calling the dinner portion of our outing a date?
I finished looking at myself, then glanced up.
“Do I need to change?” I kept my voice and expression neutral as I studied his eyes.
When he didn’t answer, I lifted an eyebrow, watching him stare off in the direction of the Promenade.
“Does whatever you had in mind require trousers? Or is there some other problem with my conspicuous outfit of all black, when I don’t even look like myself? ”
Nyx, who’d made herself a fiery redhead with violet eyes for our outing, and gave herself hair down to her waist, burst out in a hysterical laugh.
She scooped up a snowball and lobbed it at Alaric, who let out a shriek and used a spell to explode it into liquid that splattered over all of us.
Alaric, who also very much didn’t look like himself, had made himself a much lighter-skinned mage with long, layered, and mostly dark-blue hair, a much larger nose, a larger mouth, and a rounder face.
He wore an embroidered winter coat, a dark red jacket, matching pants, and a cream shirt with ruffles.
When I’d first seen him, I’d honestly thought I was underdressed.
I looked back at Bones, who I’d recognized at once by his black crystal primal, even though he didn’t look at all like himself, either.
He’d gone with dark brown hair, which he also made long, and changed his eyes to dark blue.
His face I could almost see under the disguise, although his eyes appeared smaller and rounder, his mouth smaller, and his jaw somewhat less defined.
He’d also made his complexion darker, and given himself a sharper nose.
Honestly, with him, changing his hair and eye color alone would have caused most people to look right past him, especially once he’d disguised his magic.
He’d changed his primal to a light blue polar bear, which kept batting at my feet and calves with its flat paws. The green snake primal I’d made for myself that morning hissed at it in response, and occasionally slithered down my leg to stare at it.
As for me, I’d changed my hair to make it light blonde and curly, gave it a few streaks of green, and left it long. From what my friends had told me, the blonde hair immediately made me look like someone else, so I decided to go with the simplest thing I already knew worked.
My eyes, I’d darkened to near-black and given emerald green rings to match the streaks I’d put in my hair.
The rest had just been little tweaks, like what I’d seen Bones do to me on the night of the bonfire by the Eyrie. I made my face rounder, my eyes a little closer together, my neck a little shorter, and my skin a touch more pale. I made my cheekbones a little plumper and lower.
My overall face looked more heart-shaped than normal.
I didn’t mess with my figure too much, since I’d wanted the dress to fit and I still hadn’t mastered fabric-alteration spells.
Nyx assured me that absolutely no one would recognize me.
When Bones didn’t answer other than to shake some of the water out of his hair, I walked up to him, and touched his arm. That time, I spoke lower, so the others wouldn’t hear.
“Do I look too much like myself?” I asked him, quiet.
“No.” He glanced at me, but still managed to avoid my eyes.
“No. You’re fine. I just…” He hesitated, and glanced up, finally giving me a direct look.
“You look nice, Leda. Your clothes are fine. I’m sorry I reacted.
” He shook his head, mouth hard, and I was shocked to see color rise to his cheeks.
“I’ll probably just never get used to you like this. ”
“Like what?”
“Not you but feeling like you. When you dress like that, it just makes it worse.”
I let go of his arm, still a little puzzled, and tried to smile.
“What should we call one another?” I asked him.
Luc, who’d circled closer to us while joining in on the snowball fight with Nyx and Alaric, overheard me.
“How about Beauty and the Dumbass?” Luc scoffed, throwing a snowball at Alaric. “Or maybe Beauty and No-Wonder-I-Never-See-You-With-Any-Witch-More-Than-Once?”
Luc threw another snowball which made Alaric shriek a second time, even louder. Nyx snort-laughed right as Alaric used magic to explode that one, too. Then Nyx ran away from him down the path, laughing harder.
“You look beautiful by the way, Leda,” Luc added pointedly, giving Bones a look. “Although you’d look a lot prettier if you were yourself.”
When I glanced at Bones, his mouth had hardened.
He looked very much like he wanted to say something back to Luc, but he didn’t.
I watched the three of them run further down the path towards the Promenade.
Luc was wearing green trousers and a sky blue jumper under his winter coat, his long legs flashing over the snow.
Like Nyx, he wore what amounted to casual winter clothes and calf-high, furred boots.
Luc also agreed to change himself when I asked.
He’d given himself much darker skin, straight black hair, and dark brown eyes. He’d made his features sharper, his mouth smaller and narrower. He’d even made himself a few inches shorter. His primal was now a cormorant with iridescent feathers.
We’d all agreed to follow Bones’s plan of changing everyone’s appearance, not just ours and Alaric’s, so none of us looked like anyone we knew at school.
Bones watched the others chase one another around for a few seconds more.
He’d still made no move to follow them.
They were now making snowballs with their hands and their magic as they made their way to the main road through the middle of the school grounds. It mostly seemed like Nyx and Luc pelting snow at Alaric because he was the funniest when he got hit.
Bones looked at me, saw me watching him, and quirked an eyebrow.
“I’m fucking this up already, aren’t I?” he asked dryly.
I laughed. I couldn’t help it.
When I smiled at him that time, it was a more genuine smile.
“Depends on what you’re going for,” I teased, quirking an eyebrow back.
His mouth twitched, right before he gave me a faux-stern look.
“You wearing my present, Shadow?” he asked.
I snorted, then pulled up my coat sleeve enough to show him the gold snake coiled around my wrist several times. I nudged him with my arm.
“And you?” I prompted. When I looked at his hands, I realized he wasn’t wearing it, and tried not to look disappointed. “Ah. Okay,” I said.
He grunted, and knocked into me with his shoulder.
“I’m wearing it,” he said. “I haven’t taken it off since the night you gave it to me.”
I frowned, looking up at him quizzically. Was he messing with me?
“Rubbish,” I said. “You aren’t wearing it. Not unless you’ve made it invisible. And you haven’t been wearing it, either, by the way. I looked. You weren’t wearing it yesterday. Or the day before––”
“I was, though,” he said. “I’m wearing it now. And it’s not invisible,” he added. “Or illusioned in any way.”
I frowned, and he smiled back.
I looked back at his hands. He held them up for me. I recognized every one of his rings. Not one of them was the dragon ring I’d given him the night of Yule.
“Not on any of your fingers, you’re not,” I said finally.
“Not on any of my fingers,” he agreed.
When I gave him a questioning look, he smiled. It was one of his rare, real smiles, not a smirk or a faintly smug one, but an actual smile with no guile whatsoever.
“You seemed worried I’d forget to wear it when I went out, so I altered it a little,” he said. “So I wouldn’t forget. I want my witch to be able to find me if I’m lost.”
I stared at him, not at all sure I knew what he meant, or if I wanted to know.
He nudged me again, leaning his mouth down to my ear.
“If I don’t fuck things up too badly on our first date,” he murmured quietly. “You’ll definitely be seeing it later tonight, sweetheart.”
As he finished speaking, an image flashed sharply in my mind, crystal clear, and most definitely coming from him. Realizing what I was looking at, I flushed hotly.