The Key

Chapter 22

“Shut up.” They sit for a moment, side-by-side, watching tiny birds flit from one hedge to another. “What did I say, anyway?”

“I don’t know, a lot of stuff,” Sam says. “Just… a lot of stuff. Kid problems. How to get around Dad without going against him. I don’t think I realized how much you and Mom tag-teamed him until you were out on patrols.”

“It’s easier than butting heads,” Dan says. “Surprised neither one of you has cracked a skull by now.”

Sam shakes his head. “It’s just hard, y’know? I’m training up to do his job and he’s not going to delegate a single piece of it he actually cares about, not until he’s on his deathbed. You know he won’t. Maybe not even then. Anything important I’ve ever started, he’s grabbed up to finish.” He sighs. “It doesn’t help that he, well. I think it’s why Jess doesn’t like you. I know it’s not your fault, but it’s probably one of the reasons.”

“What is?” Dan asks. “Dad does a lot of s**t, Sam, you gotta be more specific.”

“When he talks about you, it’s like you’re his only son,” Sam says. “‘My son slew a wyvern. My son exorcised half a village. My son’s beloved by the people and always does as he’s told.’ Sometimes, I just… What?”

“You know he does that about you too, right?” Dan asks, staring.

Sam stares at him in return. “Seriously?”

“Seriously,” Dan says. “Last night, he was doing it so much, Cas had no idea which one of us he was talking about. It went from ‘tell me about my son’s powers’ to ‘what are your intentions toward my son’ and, yeah, Cas rolled with it, but it was pretty confusing.”

“Huh,” Sam says.

They stare at each other a bit longer.

“Do you think that’s just how he talks?” Sam asks.

“It might be,” Dan says.

They keep on staring, years of baggage mirrored in each other’s faces.

“Do you ever think he wants us to be one person?” Sam asks.

“All the time,” Dan answers immediately.

“Just because he was an only child and had do all the Knight Prince stuff while being a mage,” Sam starts to say.

“Yeah,” Dan says. “That. All that.”

They stare at each other some more.

“Huh,” Sam repeats.

“Huh,” Dan agrees.

Thinking, they go back to watching the birds.

“I don’t want us to be one person,” Sam says. “But I… You know I can’t do this without you, right? All the things you do, finding out that people were rejecting the anti-possession tattoos because of blood sigil scares… You’re how I know what’s really happening out there. Maybe I’m not going to be the king you would have been–”

“You’re going to be better,” Dan tells him, and he tries to look like admitting that doesn’t gut him wide open. “What? You are. If I didn’t know that, I wouldn’t be cool with it. Because it’s not about me. It’s about the job, and getting it done. Besides, you love all of that law s**t and policy debates. I’d go nuts, dealing with that.”

“After Dad, Parliament is easy,” Sam says. “You’d be fine.”

“Yeah, well, you’ll be great,” Dan says, not looking at him.

Slowly, beside him, he can hear Sam start to grin.

“Yeah?” Sam says.

“Yeah,” Dan says.

Sam keeps on grinning and, eventually, Dan starts to smile too. Far behind them, the clock tower begins to toll, signifying a morning more than half gone.

“You don’t have anywhere to be?” Dan asks.

“I’ve got here,” Sam says. “I mean, once I’m married, you’re back on patrol. I have to fit in the time somewhere.”

“It’s your birthday,” Dan says. “Spend it how you want, I guess.”

Sam snorts, very unbecomingly. “If I really got to do that, I wouldn’t be having the fifth consecutive night of the same party.”

“Yeah, you’re way too boring.”

Sam elbows him.

Dan elbows him back. “What’s the schedule for tonight, anyway?”

“Speeches start around eleven,” Sam says. “I’m meant to give my Last Unwed Kiss to Nick around eleven-thirty.”

“Which means eleven-forty.”

“Pretty much. I’m set on kissing Jess at midnight, though.”

“Sorry I’ll miss it,” Dan says, thinking of his apparent appointment in the observatory tower and smiling.

“You’ve got something more important,” Sam says. “I can feel that, y’know, sometimes. When something really important is going to happen to you.”

For something that’ll keep Cas overnight, he doesn’t need to ask. He asks it anyway. “And this is big?”

“Huge,” Sam says. “Most important thing I’ve ever felt for you. So. No pressure.”

“Cas leaves around eleven-forty, usually,” Dan says. “The place he’s staying locks up early and he doesn’t have a key.”

“After midnight isn’t that early,” Sam says, missing the point. Then: “Oh. Oh.”

“You’re sure about him being there at midnight?” Dan asks.

“Positive,” Sam says.

Dan can’t stop grinning. There’s no reason in the world to ever stop grinning, not when Cas is his and spending the night. “Awesome. Seriously, Sammy, the mouth on that man. The way he kisses?”

“I don’t need to know this.”

“Kinda clumsy, but really forceful.”

“Please stop talking. We used to watch the stars up there, and I don’t need to hear about you defiling it.”

Dan laughs.

“Jerk,” Sam calls him.

With no one to overhear him except the birds, Dan answers, “Bitch.”

They talk a bit more, Sam about the more interesting bits of the party Dan’s missed, Dan about Cas. Even with Cas leaving early each night, he’s still been the main event, as far as Dan’s concerned. The first two nights, he’d danced with other people. Loads of other people, that second night, after Cas had bid for time to think, because Dan has never handled rejection well.

The third night had been Cas and Cas alone, all night. And then the rest of it spent watching Sam like a hawk, effectively stationed in the throne room as an impromptu guard.

Last night, he’d kissed Cas goodbye before heading back down to the vault and retrieving the blade. He’d stood in the vault and looked too hard at everything in it. And he’d started to think too hard as well.

That’s not what Dan talks about, though. No, he talks about the rest of it. Sam wants to hear about the tablet, so it’s not just Dan running his mouth like a love-struck fool. Sam fixates on every single angel detail like the consummate nerd he is, but if Dan can give the guy a heart-to-heart on his birthday, he can give him this, too.

They talk longer than they have in ages, uninterrupted, just the two of them. It’s downright idyllic, with the breeze and the sunshine. Birds sing in the hedges and more than one butterfly flutters amid the flowers. It’s calm and strange and more than a little too perfect.

The clock tower tolls again, the hour chime followed by eleven long, resounding rings.

“What are you doing for lunch?” Sam asks.

“Whatever you’re doing, apparently.”

The grin he gets in response is almost enough to make up for whatever Sam’s menu of choice is. “Great.” Sam stands and Dan stands with him. “Jess and I are heading out into the city. There’s this restaurant she likes that I’ve never been able to go to.”

“Now I get it,” Dan says, taking his way out of the hedge maze and forcing Sam to follow. “You just want to get away with one fewer guard.”

Sam laughs a little, thumbs hooked into his belt. “That obvious?”

“Just a lot,” Dan says.

They walk out, Dan more unerring in the twists and turns on this side of the maze than Sam is. “Did Cas tell you where he was staying?” Sam asks. “Maybe we could drop in, take him out with us.”

“Yeah, that wouldn’t scare the crap out of him or anything. ‘Hey, man, it’s the future king and queen come to bring you to lunch, hope you’ve got a decent shirt you didn’t cut wing-holes in.’”

Sam laughs like that isn’t an actual concern Dan’s only just thought to have. “Maybe that would be a little overwhelming.”

“We can do that once he moves,” Dan decides. “When he’s living in the city, he can find all of those little places no one would ever expect you to show up at.”

“That’ll be fun,” Sam says, using the same tone he uses for his visions, for things that are definitely going to happen. They turn the final corner, away from a path toward a dead end, and Sam says, “Oh, hey, look.” He stops to stoop down and straightens with a finger-length black feather in hand. “You should stick this in a locket.”

“f**k you,” Dan says, accepting the crow’s feather only to drop it. It’s a long one, for a crow, and on the fluffy side; the bird must’ve gotten attacked by something else nesting in the hedges.

“I’m telling Cas you spurned his love.”

“Yeah, you tell him that after I kiss him.”

Slightly more seriously, Sam says, “I don’t think our schedules match up enough for that.”

“Yeah,” Dan says, already decided in his course of action. “If speeches start at eleven, that’s everyone filtering into the throne room. Might be able to get a little privacy in the courtyard with that going on.” Cas’ll be more comfortable if Dan does this outside. Give the guy a little bit of fresh air, and he perks up like nobody’s business.

Not for the first time, Dan wonders what Cas’ living conditions must be like back home. He’ll find out. After all, he still has to get Cas’ address to send him letters, and Dan has to write to him first, if his plan to send Cas paper is going to happen.

He’s gotta get that guy out of there, wherever he is. Cas clearly isn’t happy, and Dan’s going to change that.

Dan’s gonna change a whole lot of things.

Casper has located the tablet: the news travels through the illusion of walls, from one mouth to another, throughout their entire empty realm.

There is joy and fear and confusion. There is rejoicing and tension and relief so acute as to be almost crippling. For the first time in a very long time, there is singing. They stretch their grace far between themselves, and though the sound is thin and flat, it is still jubilant.

In Casper’s more direct experience, there are explanations and questions and more explanations. He shows Raphael one of his pages of notes, depicting one side of the tablet. He does not show the other page and makes no mention of it. To admit that he saw the other side of the tablet would be to admit that it was turned over, and thus taken out of its angel-warded case. To admit this would be to admit a failure to act, and now, returned to their realm of banishment, Casper can no longer justify his hesitation.

Returned once more into their cage, the consequences of escaping it fade away.

And so he covers his true failure with partial facts and signs of progress. First and foremost, he speaks of the warded boxes. He speaks of Prince Dan’s invitation for Casper to remove the objects himself and the necessity of not revealing his own nature to the human. He speaks of securing the transfer of the tablet – and warded box – to the university where Seer Shurley works. The seer’s prophecies have already led him to align himself with the angels; he will remove the tablet from its case and give it to them once they open a portal there.

Casper speaks of having arranged the beginnings of a delivery plan with Prince Dan. As the human prince does not think Casper a warrior, he fears for Casper’s safety and will not entrust the box to him. For a human, it is two days’ hard travel from the castle to the university, and the transfer of the tablet will not occur until after the younger prince is wed. They have ten days until freedom, perhaps as many as twelve.

Days.

That word takes flight as if having wings of its own.

After six and a half centuries: days.

Raphael condescends to give Casper an approving nod. Once having pressed Casper for all the details Casper finds safe to give him, Raphael pronounces the plan acceptable. He cautions Casper against any missteps tonight and urges him to speed the delivery.

Casper explains that a speedier delivery would result in knights accompanying Casper to the university. They would expect him to travel wingless, and, out of loyalty to Prince Dan, they would likely not allow Casper out of their sight for safekeeping on the road.

That explanation only earns further questions. Here, Casper holds his wings more naturally, but he keeps them just as still as he would in the human castle as he explains. Prince Dan has grown very fond of him. Prince Dan thinks him a human researcher and has offered him a support position behind the kingdom’s knight hunters, which Casper has feigned to accept. Prince Dan has offered resources in order to hasten Casper’s installation at this post.

As he listens, Raphael’s feathers ruffle in amusement, and inside Casper’s chest, a centuries-old dislike abruptly boils into hatred.

He keeps it down. He keeps it contained. But he does keep it.

Casper turns his report away from Dan and to more troubling implications. He reminds Raphael that they doubted this tablet would be the one they sought, due to the location where it was found. The tablet had been in demon hands. It is, unquestionably, the correct tablet. The demons ought to have sent it to their brethren’s realm of banishment to unleash them, but they hadn’t.

Raphael dismisses this as a concern for Casper’s superiors to ruminate upon. It is Casper’s duty to retrieve the tablet, not dwell upon the inaction of their enemies.

Casper insists. Having chosen his timing, he reveals that there was a second box, also warded against them, which contained an angel’s blade. He does not say to whom the blade belonged; his story is consistent and leaves out all mentions of any item being removed from the warded boxes. He simply states that there was a blade, also unused by demons.

Two powerful tools in demon hands, neither put to use. Even supposing that all the demons capable of opening portals had been banished, even supposing these weaker dregs have no ability to transfer the tablet to their fellows, surely an angel blade would have been a prized weapon. They certainly had been during the war.

This gives Raphael pause. They review Seer Shurley’s prophecy and summon Uriel for further confirmation.

The prophecy remains absurdly straightforward. In Winter Castle lies the key to the return of angels, and to the return of Lucifer’s might; beware, for demons know.

They have found the key. They have begun to secure it to unlock their own cage, denying Lucifer his own return and the return of his greater demons. Having lost it themselves, the demons clearly know where the tablet is. Casper had thought the extensive warding built into the very structure of the castle had kept them from pursuit, but perhaps their own inability to use the tablet had halted the effort before it had even begun.

It’s the inability that nags at Casper. He remembers well the havoc the demons wreaked upon them during the war through the use of portals – they all do. Was that ability only possessed by the strongest among them? It’s the only explanation Casper can think of, but it doesn’t explain why the banished demons haven’t discovered a means to do exactly what Casper is doing. Lucifer had some knowledge of portals, and he is, after all, with his greater demons. Surely, with his knowledge, they could have made something by now.

Yes, the portal Casper is using is extremely limited. It’s a cramp fit and allows passage for one and only one. When he passes through, the spell ties itself to him, and he is the only one who may return through the portal. No new portals may be opened with the same spell until he returns, and it is the only spell they have. The strain of opening it has to be spread across many angels at a time.

It’s a difficult spell, one Uriel himself pieced together in their first century of banishment. Perhaps one of the older angels specializing in portals would have made something simpler, but as they’d been killed in the war, the point is moot.

With this in mind, Casper bears out the rest of his debriefing and stays to listen to Uriel’s much repeated reports of his information network. Uriel has no knowledge of the demons using portals during the span of their banishment, which is hardly evidence against that use. The entire problem with portals is their difficulty in being tracked or detected after the fact.

When Uriel is dismissed, Casper leaves with him. Using their grace to thicken the space around them, they fly through airless space to a recreation of a park Joshua had once tended. They stand there, watching leaves soundlessly blow, watching shadows dapple the ground in a realm with no sun. But time is short, and they also ask each other questions. Uriel looks at him sharply whenever Casper speaks of Prince Dan, and so Casper quiets on the subject. He asks about the creation of portals instead and wishes to hear Uriel’s thoughts on the demons’ behavior.

Uriel has few answers. He responds with his typical dismissive reassurance, an attitude that Balthazar has been trying to replicate for centuries.

When Casper asks his brother if he’s certain Lucifer was banished with his demons, Uriel’s dismissiveness drops. Not for the first time – not even the first time this week – Uriel explains the banishment spell used to bring about their current situation. Though the banishing tablet was consumed upon the moment of its use, the symbols are clearly etched inside his mind. The subsection of the incantation tying Lucifer to his demons and archdemons had to be precise in the extreme, which Uriel well knows as one of its composers.

Casper listens to the flow of his brother’s deep voice, each word a reassurance that fails to soothe.

There’s something they’re missing. Casper is certain of it, and he says as much.

Uriel asks if it’s enough to interfere with the retrieval of the tablet, this illusive something of Casper’s.

Logically, Casper knows it isn’t. This conundrum of demons and portals is a side note at best. The only thing that can prevent their freedom now is the discovery of Casper’s deception, and all Casper must do is hold it for one more night. Soon, they will be free.

As Casper has never been skilled in reassurances, dismissive or otherwise, Uriel’s feathers lie flat all the same. Casper permits his to follow.

Regardless of Uriel’s doubts or Casper’s strain, in the distance, they hear singing. Different songs in multiple directions: many are singing. The sheer amount of grace required to thicken that much space is wasteful, immense. Festive. In thoughts that feel even more distant than those voices, Casper supposes there is much to rejoice over.

But he does not sing, and neither does Uriel.

Later, when he finds Balthazar, his brother is already singing. Hannah chimes in for absent-minded refrains before catching sight of Casper. She pulls him in, then, and Balthazar changes his tune to something they can dance to. The motions feel heavy for all Hannah leaps into them with ease.

Today, there are no briefings other than the one he himself gave Raphael. There is no last-minute research, and Balthazar has already finished alterations for Casper’s outfit tonight. Casper is to layer his shirt with a light blue vest, onto which Balthazar has woven the semblance of sleeves with borrowed, dark blue ribbon. The ribbons are communal and have been for centuries; they’re lucky a newly mated couple was sentimental enough to have them in their belt pouches at the time of the banishing. The same two sets have been used in every joining ceremony since. Giving them up to Casper is an act of collective faith.

Despite the lack of new materials, the overall effect of Casper’s outfit is reasonably refined. Certainly, it looks delicate, which is perhaps the same thing. For tonight, it will have to be close enough.

The remainder of the ribbon serves its original use as a nesting display. When the hour of his final departure draws near, Casper folds his wings into that unnatural posture for the last time. He has to consciously fluff his feathers to allow the ribbon to be woven through them, and even then, Hannah has difficulty with the task. She teases the ribbon into place while Balthazar simply teases.

It looks good, Balthazar assures him. He adds that it’s a pity dear Prince Dan won’t know the significance, and Casper pointedly ignores him. Hannah does not.

She and Balthazar discuss Dan. They discuss him plainly and frankly, and they edge toward Casper’s thoughts on the subject without the slightest hint of subtlety. Casper says nothing. His mouth is a strangely empty thing, containing only teeth and tongue and not a trace of breath. The same texture they’ve always been, his lips press together and feel as wrong and useless as holding his own hand. At last tired of Casper’s silence, Balthazar accuses him of affection.

When Casper cannot answer, his siblings know something is wrong.

Balthazar rolls his eyes before tugging Casper close with his wings. With his own already bound by the ribbons, Casper has to endure the indignity of being completely enveloped by his brother’s wings.

Hannah takes a harsher approach in her concern.

Very deliberately, very carefully, she looks Casper in the eyes. She pushes on his shoulder until he looks back. She tells him, in no uncertain terms, that he isn’t to falter now, not for the sake of a single human man.

Casper agrees, and wishes he didn’t.

For the last time, he steps through the portal and into the hedge maze. For the last time, he makes a quick escape from the garden, posing as just another guest waiting for the entry line to abate. For the second and last time, Casper watches that line part before him.

He enters the castle proper and makes his way to the tapestry. The costumes of those around him are grand and shimmering with enchantments, each a statement of wealth, power, or both. Here, a woman in the guise of a dragon, scales gleaming, a light smoke unfurling from the flared nostrils of her mask. There, a man endeavoring to become an edifice, his outfit no doubt an impression of a building another human would recognize. More than one guest wears a small waterfall as a jacket, the streams falling down the back and rising up the front; it seems a popular spell.

None of these are important. None of these people sport silver-tipped horns.

He stops before the tapestry and waits. He stops scanning the crowd and bids himself calm. He studies the tapestry that brought him and Dan together, and he bids himself calm once more.

The colors are still wrong, he notes. The clothing is in a human style that makes no allowances for the wings, as if the longest limbs of the body could simply be expected to phase through the back of a shirt. The woven rendition of Michael wears his sword on his hip, as if an angel blade has ever been worn . And Lucifer himself, positioned wrong, colored wrong, the twist of his face passable.

Though most works of angelic art are vague at facial features, favoring depictions of the wings for identification, humans seem to value the face highly. At this masquerade, humans hide their faces as if that is enough to conceal who they are from each other. Without wings, perhaps it is. Casper certainly can’t tell most of them apart without checking the costumes for reference.

With that thought, Casper scans the crowd again. No, none of these people are Dan in a different costume. He’s almost sure of it.

He turns back to the tapestry and waits. Should he be searching? Had he said something last night that would alienate Dan? Even through the filter of a fear-fueled analysis, he can’t think of anything. He forces his mind back to their parting kiss at the gates and, no, Dan hadn’t wanted him to go. Casper’s eyes slide shut at the memory of Dan not wanting him to go. The softness of his mouth, the firm grip of his hand. No, Dan still wants him, for now.

Perhaps Casper should be searching. Dame Joanna didn’t give him instructions tonight. Was it presumed they would meet here? Casper had assumed so. He stares up at the tapestry, weighing the benefits of searching or staying, and then he hears the crowd shift behind him.

Voices quiet, or they move away. Directly behind him, there are fewer footsteps, quickly dwindling until there are none at all. There’s the telltale shift of air that indicates empty space.

Casper turns around.

His face masked beneath entirely silver horns, Dan smiles. Through the mask, through the empty distance between them, the warmth of his eyes reaches out. His jacket is different, the silver embroidery heavier, the buttons more ornate. A brown leather sheath rides at his hip, and the hilt is one Casper knows well. Dan turns the absurd regal, the seeming-silver of Michael’s blade a fitting match for him.

Casper should bow in greeting. With so many eyes upon them – upon him – this is the expected gesture. But what comes out instead is a gesture of his own people, translated into human terms. Palms up, wrists bared, his arms gently lift in supplication, mimicking the motions of a kneeling angel’s wings: curved forward, the more vulnerable undersides displayed.

Grin widening, Dan strides forward through that immense, inconsequential distance to take both of Casper’s hands in his. Leather slides across Casper’s palms and between his fingers, and Dan smiles into his face all the while.

“Hey,” Dan says.

“Hello, Dan,” Casper replies.

Dan’s grin flashes brighter, the first sign of Casper’s misstep. The murmuring around them is the second sign.

“Sir Dan, I meant,” Casper corrects, too late.

“I know what you meant,” Dan says, releasing one of Casper’s hands to lift the other to his mouth. Their fingers woven, his nose against his own knuckles, Dan presses a kiss to the back of Casper’s hand. Before Dan can lower their hands, Casper pulls lightly, drawing Dan’s hand to his mouth and replicating the gesture.