Chapter 22
Phin
The mystery room’s door was open.
I hesitated, but I’d checked everywhere else, and Tap was nowhere to be found. I called out but got no response. Curiosity overwhelming sense, I pushed the door all the way open and stepped inside, finding a space that was much like my bedroom but smaller.
As I processed what I was seeing on the floor in front of me, I froze. I breathed slowly through my nose as I took in the sight, each bit I looked at more stunning than the last. He was made beautifully, to be certain, but he was also an artist’s canvas.
Tap was seated on one of the many cushions thrown around the space, his hair mussed like he’d run his hands through it over and over again.
His muscular back was bare, save the tattoos in the old language that stretched across his upper back and disappeared over his shoulders.
He wore loose linen pajama pants, but one side was pulled up as high as it could possibly go.
That long leg was stretched out in front of his body and the other one was folded with the foot under the opposite knee.
His lean stomach muscles bunched as he leaned over, using some kind of writing tool on his thigh.
Nearly all of the exposed leg was covered in ink, from thigh to toes, The arm on that side was the same, from shoulder to wrist; his long sleeves and cuffs had hidden it.
Black whorls and dots decorated his skin, a complex network of curves, lines and shadows.
The varying patterns all fit nicely together but it was clear innumerable little sections, most no bigger than a large silver coin, had been done separately over a broad span of time.
The lettering from his back was a continuous mantle running across his chest, right under his collarbone and down his breastbone.
“Is this what you bought the ink for?” I kept my voice low and quiet so I wouldn’t surprise him, unable to contain the inquiry any longer. “Did I use too much drawing on the parchment?”
Tap’s head came up slowly, his silver eyes focusing as he took me in. It was like I was seeing him for the first time, and it took me a moment to figure out why he looked so different. It dawned on me as I noticed his thick eyelashes that he wasn’t wearing his spectacles. “No, I still have plenty.”
“Can you see clearly?” I blurted as I stepped forward, encouraged when he didn’t flinch at the movement or order me to leave. It was odd seeing his bare face—the round wire spectacles were a part of what made him … him.
“I do fine with this kind of close-up work,” he said quietly. “I actually find it easier to do it without them. They tend to slip down my nose too much to be of much use otherwise.”
“You could have them adjusted,” I suggested. “Perhaps put them on a chain.”
He shrugged one shoulder lightly. “Hardly seems worth the effort when I could just leave them off. Is everything alright?” He moved as though he might set the tool down, which provoked an odd twinge of sadness in my chest.
“Yes, everything is fine.” His hand relaxed.
“Oh! The tea is ready.” The words felt almost silly once I said them aloud given what was in front of me.
“I called for you but you never answered. So I came looking …” I flushed hot, realizing that I’d hunted him down in a room I’d never been invited into while he was doing something private. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come in—”
“It’s alright.” He seemed far calmer than usual. His motions and speech which were normally quiet and easy were even more gentled, and slow. “If I were adamant about avoiding interruptions, I wouldn’t have asked for tea. And I would have closed the door all the way.”
Those words settled over me as I leaned a little closer. “This door is always closed.”
“Exactly. You have an aversion to going into rooms with doors that are completely shut. You’ve never once asked about this one, nor tried to come in. You never, ever close yourself in a room if you can avoid it.”
I blinked at him for several heartbeats, too stunned to even address how he’d pinned down and accommodated my subconscious habit.
“One day, perhaps you’ll tell me why that is. Until then …” He shrugged. “I’ve no complaint about leaving doors cracked. There’s nothing here that needs to be hidden from you. Similarly, I can only assume that locked doors would be an absolute no for you. So, there are none here.”
My pulse beat loudly in my ears as I absorbed what he’d said. Finally, I found my voice again. “You even made sure the doors were propped open when we visited the glade.”
“Yes.” Tap’s brow creased.
“The classroom doors at d’Arcan were left open as well.”
“I can’t claim credit for that, but I was very happy to see it. Were you anxious at d’Arcan? Or in the city?”
“A little in the carriage, only because it was so full. I don’t … It’s not on purpose, the doors. I don’t even realize I’m doing it. But you noticed.”
He blinked slowly, hair falling across his eyes as he nodded. “Yes.”
Tears burned in my eyes. I’d spent most of my life hiding, but Tap saw me. From the first moment, he’d been able to see past all of the layers faster and more clearly than anyone else in my life ever had.
I pulled a cushion next to his, trying to get my throat to work properly again as I blinked away the tears. I rubbed a hand over my chest as my heart squeezed and blood roared in my head. I breathed slowly, counting in sets of four and eight to try to settle myself. “How does it work?”
He fidgeted, rolling what looked like a modified quill between his fingers.
“It’s not much different than writing, though it requires more pressure.
Plus a bit of enchantment, in truth. Vassago’s talent is dreadfully convenient for such things.
” Tap resumed drawing the S shape he was working on when I interrupted, then made dots in the middle of the loops and drew a couple of complementary lines to tie it in with the art around it.
After setting down the quill, he ran a damp, soapy cloth across the skin, removing the excess ink and tiny droplets of blood that had welled up.
“They’re beautiful.” I stopped myself just short of touching the fresh line.
His silver eyes blinked twice in rapid succession, and the corner of his mouth turned upward.
“You are truly something else, little feather.” I smiled wide, finding the compliment in his words and glowing at the nickname.
“Would you mind bringing the tea in here?” he asked, picking the quill up again.
My heart galloped behind my ribs as I stood. “I’d like to do a bit more.”
“Of course.”
I dashed back to the kitchen and scrambled to collect the pot and cups.
When I got back, I tucked myself into the cushion next to his, awed as he elaborated on the simple lines.
It looked so effortless, but I was sure I couldn’t begin to fathom the number of hours he’d spent practicing this artform.
It had taken months of careful practice and a heartbreaking amount of scrapped parchment before I produced something worth Father Morton keeping.
I sat silently to watch, Tap’s movements careful and controlled. The muscles in his forearm flexed and rolled as he worked, his strong, capable hands performing a measured dance with the quill and cloth.
The pot of tea slowly disappeared between the two of us, sips taken from mismatched cups during brief pauses in his concentration.
“Why do you use this room to tattoo?” I asked. “Why not another workshop?”
He shrugged. “There’s so little equipment required, it didn’t seem efficient to create a whole workshop honestly.
” He glanced up, surveying the darker-toned wood walls.
“This room originally started as a meditation room, but it turns out I’m terrible at clearing my mind.
Unless, of course”—he lifted the magical quill”—I’m drawing on my own skin. Or putting holes in it.”
“Holes?” At my shocked tone, he chuckled and ran a finger along the hoops in his ears. “Oh. Are those the only ones?”
Tap’s lips parted, but he said nothing. I blushed hot when he only responded by very gently shaking his head. I wasn’t sure my imagination could be trusted, so I diverted my eyes back to his leg.
“It used to be, I had to sharpen a piece of wood down into a fine point and score my skin over and over again, then rub ground charcoal and ash into the wound left behind.”
“That sounds painful.”
“Mmm.” Tap’s thoughtful noise was nothing more than a rumble in his throat.
My skin warmed at the sound. “Indeed. Tedious, as well. The methods have improved, but the idea is unchanged.” Tap ran his fingers through his hair, frowning at his leg as though waiting for inspiration before applying the sharp end of the tool to his skin once again.
“It took ages for me to do even a simple design when I first started. I’ve used just about every kind of pigment and ink available over the years.
I prefer to use only black now, but these here”—he gestured to a set of whorls and dots that looked a bit like flowers if I imagined the rounded parts as petals—“these were red once. The stems done in green. I even had some yellow over here, and purple.” His eyes drifted to me, like he was coming out of a daydream.
“The purple in particular faded very quickly though, from a deep plum to violet, like your eyes.” I braced, his gaze intense as he studied me without blinking.
“Very disappointing. The ink, I mean, not …”
“My eyes?” My throat was tight, the simple words strangled to barely more than a whisper on their way out. The fierce heat under my breastbone had returned, and I nearly gasped as it flared when he raised a hand, fingertips brushing along my jaw.
“Yes. They’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
They have haunted me mightily since my first glimpse of them through that apothecary’s shop window.
” His admission came as a low rumble, his eyes boring straight to my soul after twice dropping to my mouth.
My heart swooped and then squeezed painfully in my chest.
“I’m sorry.”
His palm settled warmly over my jaw, the pad of his thumb absently rubbing along my cheek.
“Please don’t apologize. It’s been one of the sweetest tortures of my life.
A gift.” His fingers lifted and threaded through a curl over my temple.
My pulse thudded in my ears, breath splintered and painful as I stared at him in shock.
He’d never behaved like this before, and I wasn’t sure how to respond.
“Silver hair. Violet eyes. But I’d have known you anywhere even without those traits.
” Tap paused, and I could see the seemingly disconnected thoughts coming together behind his eyes.
“Charcoal and ash. Fair for use in tattoos as well as hair colorant.” He frowned.
“What they had you doing to your hair was a paltry disguise at best. Your eyelashes looked all wrong. It was truly an awful ruse. Did anyone actually believe it?”
I choked out a harsh laugh. His thoughts seemed disordered sometimes, but there was a logic to them that I understood.
“Between Father Morton’s insistence that I was a young man, the clothes, the hair, my name …
” I shrugged. “Nobody said otherwise, even if they did suspect something was off. Though, to be fair, nobody said much of anything at all. It was better that way.” I parroted the words I’d been told a thousand times, words I accepted even when I wanted to rail against them.
His eyes raked over me again and I shivered. “You were there a significant amount of time.”
“Yes.” More than eleven years, if my tracking of the seasons was correct.
Long enough for me to understand that the way humans grew and matured was different than how I did.
Faster. My relatively privileged existence prior to that had done little to prepare me for the reality of living as an angel in hiding among humans.
“You must have been terribly lonely. Stuck in a life you weren’t allowed to actually live, a place you were forced to the edges of under a guise that hid your true self.” Melancholy weighed down his tone, and his gaze shuttered as he looked away from me and back to his leg.
“Yes.” I reached out and briefly squeezed his hand, seeing the same reflection of myself in him that I believed he saw in me. I might have been lonely everywhere I went, but he’d been buried here, suffocating alone. Fracturing under the weight of his responsibilities.
“It wouldn’t matter to me if you were a different version of yourself,” he added, head tilting one direction then the other as he plotted his next design.
“I would have done the same, feel the same. I would still have recognized you. It is not your vessel that intrigues me, but rather the soul within it. Don’t misunderstand,” he added quickly, a flush to his cheeks.
“This vessel is perfect. But there is far more to you than just that, Phin.”
I felt as though I’d been struck by lightning.
The pressure in my chest shortened my breaths nearly to pants as my mind spun wildly with questions I wasn’t sure I was prepared for the answers to.
He seemed far more confident in whatever he thought this was than I did.
I held it gently, whereas he seemed sure it wasn’t that fragile.
“How … what …” I inhaled through my nose, forcing the words all meshing together in my mouth to settle before I tried to speak again. “What does that mean, exactly? How do you feel about me?”
His mouth tilted up on one side. “I can see your pulse pounding in your throat.” His eyes, had gone bright red and were fixated on that spot, his fingertips gliding over it so softly my skin tingled in the wake of his touch.
His canines and the teeth next to them had sharpened, his tongue forked at the tip as he ran it over his bottom lip.
“I can smell how you feel right now, see it in your face when your thoughts tangle around one another like mine do. Does your heart feel like it’s being crushed?
Like it’s been set on fire right there in your chest? If so … I think you know.”