The Key

Chapter 31

Jo draws herself up and looks him in the eyes. She looks him through the eyes. She looks him in the heart. “Looking to be your knight,” she says. “I heard you screaming on that door, Dan, and I won’t let you face him alone. Even if I’m just carrying extra warded shields.”

Dan looks at the earnestness of her face and the small target of her body. He looks at vengeance, and then he looks at practicality, because revenge isn’t important. Sam is.

“You should practice with this too,” Dan says, and he hands the archangel blade over.

Jo takes it with the reverence it deserves. “I won’t let you down again,” she vows.

“We won’t let us down again,” Dan says. “We’ll be prepared this time.”

“For what it’s worth,” Jo says, “for not knowing what you were doing, you did really well.”

Dan shakes his head.

Jo sighs at him. “Well, I tried. But I’m not going to argue with you when you’re out to kick your own ass. Just don’t kick it too hard, all right?”

Dan sighs back. “Yeah, that’s still your job.”

She gives him a smile, but he can’t give her one back.

“C’mon,” Jo says, passing him back the archangel blade. “Better get cleaned up before your queen friend gets here.”

Dan honestly doubts Charlie will care—she might want the opportunity to tease—but his shirt is sticking to him and the drying sweat is starting to stink. “Yeah, yeah,” Dan says as they head back in, and there’s something to be said for indulging in normalcy.

Charlie vacillates between horrified and thrilled, and that’s without telling her half of it. Mostly, she’s horrified. Which is fair. Between Sam’s thwarted k********g, Dan almost being turned into a demon by an angry archangel, and that archangel still being alive, there’s a lot to be horrified about.

Maybe they shouldn’t have mentioned the almost being turned into a demon thing, but Sam spilled the beans on that one when Charlie was getting too worried over his broken leg and the asshole wanted a distraction.

Really, the only part she’s thrilled about is entirely based in rumor.

“So what’s this about you getting engaged to an angel?” she asks, leaning forward in Sam’s sitting room. “Is this something I should start looking into? I’ve got a couple cousins who need marrying off.”

“I’m not engaged,” Dan snaps. “No one’s getting engaged.”

Charlie leans back, eyebrows raised high. “Uh, rude,” she points out, like she’s trying to joke around it, like it’s something that can be joked about.

“It was on the table,” Sam explains, because this is the new official story, and even Charlie gets the official story. Especially Charlie. Friend or not, little sister or not, she’s a monarch in her own right, and they’ve shown enough weakness already. “But with Cas gone, it’s just not going to stick.”

Charlie looks at Dan, then. Really looks in the way everyone’s been doing, the way that makes Dan want to go around stabbing eyeballs. “Oh,” she says.

“So Gilda’s talking to Jess about queen stuff?” Sam asks. “How is the Princess Consort, anyway? I mean, I saw her in the receiving hall with Mom and Dad, but that’s not the same.”

“Right, yes,” Charlie says, still looking at Dan, but the conversation moves on.

Sometime later, after Sam has to go down for his afternoon nap but before Charlie finishes drafting a letter to the angels with the greetings of Moondoor, Charlie grabs Dan by the arm before he can leave her guest chambers.

“I demand a tour of your fair city,” she informs him. “Tomorrow.”

“You’ve already had the tour,” he tells the queen of their neighboring country.

“Ages ago,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Look, tomorrow is your last chance for a day off until… I don’t even know when, and I don’t think you do either. You’re heading out on a hunt after Sam’s wedding, I can tell. So, we’re going to do something fun.”

“Don’t want to.”

“Too bad,” she tells him. “Somebody’s got to entertain the diplomats, and I’m picking you. You grab some of your guards, Gilda and I grab some of ours, and we’ll make a day of it.”

“Charlie.”

“Let me distract you,” she says. “I’m good at that. If you don’t want Gilda there, it can be just us.”

“Just us and an entire platoon of guards,” Dan corrects.

“Eh,” Charlie says, waving a faux-dismissive hand. “You get used to it. What do you say?”

“Do I have a choice?” Dan asks, already knowing the answer.

“Nope,” Charlie says. “I’ll put in a request all formal-like with your dad, even.”

“Fine,” Dan says, even though it really isn’t.

“Do I get to hug you now, or…?”

“I’m fine,” Dan says.

“Good,” Charlie says, getting up from her borrowed desk, her letter still only half-drafted. “Then you won’t mind a hug.” And she looks up at him with those puppy dog eyes, the effect only compounded by the waves in her red hair mimicking a spaniel’s ears.

Dan heaves a put-upon sigh and holds his arms out.

Charlie tucks herself in.

After a long moment, Dan tucks himself down.

She holds on tight, so of course he has to match. She squeezes like it’s a contest, so Dan squeezes back as hard as he can without breaking her. When something starts to shift inside his chest, he tries to pull back, but then she says, “I’m so glad you’re safe.”

Dan bites his lip and says nothing. He breathes through his nose, as steady as he can, and they’re still like that, holding each other, when the door opens and Gilda enters with Jess. The women’s light, happy conversation cuts short as Dan pulls away from Charlie, blinking hard.

“It’s good to see you, Sir Dan,” Gilda says, as if they hadn’t exchanged even stuffier greetings only a few hours ago.

“And you as well, princess,” Dan replies with a slight bow. “I’m afraid your wife has been making plans without you.”

“Did you demand the tour, dear?” Gilda asks, making her and Charlie sound like a couple married for a couple of decades, and not a couple of years. “We really don’t need the tour again.”

“But I want the tour,” says a twenty-two year old queen.

Dan rolls his eyes but dutifully says, “Don’t be a baby.”

“No, because then you’d drop me,” Charlie shoots back, because these are the things they say to each other.

Dan smiles without meaning to. He catches himself immediately and puts a stop to it, but Charlie beams at him in victory all the same.

“So get this,” Sam says the moment Dan opens his door. Or rather, the moment the hallway guard opens the door after Dan shouts “Yeah, come in!” at the sound of Sam’s signature knock. But in the castle, that’s basically the same thing.

Sam and his crutches enter, but they don’t stop in Dan’s sitting room. Dan gets the door to his bedroom himself, and watches Sam perch his ass on the corner of his desk.

“Couldn’t sleep?” Dan asks, eyeing Sam’s clothes pointedly. Dan’s dressed for bed and has been since well before midnight, but trying to sleep is somehow more awful than staying awake.

“I wanted to check tonight’s angel mail,” Sam says. “Things have gotten a little bit more interesting since Chuck joined in.”

Dan bristles, purposefully not thinking of shields. He can’t have that connection in his head, not if he’s ever going to be able to fight again. Standing between his desk and his bed, he forces his hands open before they can fully become fists. “So?”

“So,” Sam says, shifting farther back on the desk and crossing his arms over the crutches, “the angels have been circling around a couple questions for a while. Chuck didn’t tell them anything about ‘cups’ or ‘pouring bowls’ because he doesn’t know what it means, and Dad made sure his first letter didn’t explicitly connect Lucifer regrowing his wings with me. Heavy emphasis on the seer k********g angle and all.”

“Meaning what?” Dan asks, now very much aware of the mistake of letting Sam in. It’s too f*****g late for this.

“Either they think I don’t know I’m a vessel, or they’re not sure I am,” Sam says. “It’s a lot of sideways, probing questions. It means they don’t know.” He spreads his hands and looks to Dan expectantly, as if this is amazing news.

Dan stares back. Finally, he says, “Look, Sammy, I’m tired. Just spell it out.”

“Cas didn’t tell them,” Sam says, grinning softly, like this is meant to make Dan happy.

“And?” Dan says.

Sam’s grin fades, a frown coming over his face from the top down, pressing on his eyebrows long before it hits his mouth. “Dan, that’s huge intel. And he educated us instead of telling his archangel. You said the first thing he told you was that he promised to keep it secret, right? And he did!” Sam gestures again, hands spread, palms up, as if demanding Dan place some sort of satisfactory reaction into them.

Tired and numb and done beyond belief, Dan just stands there. “And?” he repeats.

Sam stares at him like Dan’s speaking another language. “That was only the third night.” He waits, so damn expectant for a response. “Dan, three nights of knowing you, and he valued a promise to you over reporting to his archangel.”

Raphael isn’t Cas’ archangel. Wasn’t. Dan knows it, was told it in a myriad of tiny ways, and holds that truth in his mouth without letting it go. The night they met, Cas describing the tapestry. The battle where Michael and Gabriel fell, and Raphael alone survived to finish cutting off Lucifer’s wings. The distance there. Cas talking about vessels, about the artificer vessel Raphael took.

Cas talking about Michael. Not an archangel, no. A soldier. A warrior, if Michael really had trained the sheer onslaught of power that Cas became. Not a father, not true family, but something.

No, when it came to Raphael, Cas’ loyalties were already split, and the ease of knowing this burns inside Dan’s chest.

“What?” Sam asks, like Dan’s the one being difficult here. “Don’t you get it? He made a promise and kept it. It wasn’t all lies, Dan. He really did care for–”

“And how,” Dan says, voice as tight as his fists, “is that supposed to help?”

Sam’s frown deepens. “I’ve seen how betrayed you’ve been feeling. I know this doesn’t change everything, but–”

“Yeah,” Dan interrupts. “You’re right. It doesn’t change anything. He’s still dead, Sam.”

“...Oh,” Sam says, because this is apparently some kind of revelation.

“What, did you forget that part?” Dan demands.

“No,” Sam says, hard. “I’m never going to forget that,” he says, like Cas mattered to him, like Sam had actually known and cared for the guy. “But I thought hearing this might help with the betrayal part.”

“Someone can’t betray you unless they’re on your side,” Dan tells him. “That’s how betrayal works.”

Sam shakes his head with the soft emphasis of exhaustion. “I’m not here to argue semantics, Dan. If I thought it would help you, I would, but-”

“I’m fine, ” Dan snaps. “He’s been dead now for longer than I knew him, I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine if you’re counting,” Sam says, much too calm.

“Get out of my room,” Dan tells him.

Sam doesn’t. “I’m the only person you can talk to about this, Dan. I mean, Jess’ll listen, but I don’t think you’d want to tell her. Or Bobby. And Jo isn’t supposed to know. You’re not talking to Mom or Dad, so it has to be me.”

“It doesn’t have to be anybody,” Dan says. “I got nothing to talk about.”

“Then I do.” Sitting on Dan’s desk, crutches balanced against his knees, Sam somehow stands tall. His gaze as unwavering as his voice, he says, “Thank you.”

Dan’s entire mind pauses. Eventually, he says, “What?”

“You were ready to let Nick kill you, just to make sure he couldn’t touch me,” Sam says, like this is some remarkable thing. “You were ready to let him kill you and Cas, and I…”

“I wasn’t ready to,” Dan corrects in one harsh bite. “I let him kill Cas.”

“Cas killed himself,” Sam reminds him gently, as gently as anyone can ever be reminded of such a thing.

“I still let him,” Dan insists. “I don’t know what kind of a vantage point you get with the whole ‘visions while unconscious’ thing, but the entire safety plan was to get you behind a warded door. I was gonna leave Cas up there to get torn apart, Sam. I didn’t even have to think about it.”

For just an instant, Sam looks down. Then he matches Dan’s gaze as firmly as ever. “It’s not your fault he’s dead.”

“I told him to bring you back,” Dan says. “And you know what he told me?” With Sam’s visions, it’s almost a real question, not merely rhetorical. When Sam shakes his head, Dan continues, “He told me to send his body home. I told him to get you, he said he was going to die, and I didn’t even shout after him when he flew away.” And now, they don’t even have his corpse.

Cas had succeeded against an archangel. Dan can’t even arrange a funeral.

Sam shifts the crutches, pulling Dan’s attention to the motion. “When he came flying into the throne room with your sword, did you tell him to do that?”

Recognizing a trap when he sees one, Dan says nothing.

“Because it seems to me,” Sam continues, undeterred, “like Cas was going to go after Lucifer whether or not you asked him to.”

Hands fisted, arms taut, Dan looks away.

“Lucifer was taunting Cas, up in the observatory,” Sam adds. “Trying to get Cas to attack so he could push him aside, I think. He said something about a ‘flamewing,’ so I asked Hannah and Balthazar. I can show you the letter, but the point is, their sister Anna had red wings. She’s… She was how they learned Lucifer couldn’t turn angels into demons.”

Cas had said she’d been possessed, but unturned. Dan’s stomach turns for her. A minute’s worth of a failed demonic transformation up on that tower will haunt him for years, he’s certain. “I don’t need to know this.”

“I think you do,” Sam says. “Because it was personal for him. Maybe Cas died for us, but I think it was for himself, too. For Anna and Michael.”

“Sam,” Dan says as patiently as he can. “That doesn’t matter. I let him die. I let him get tortured in front of me, and I didn’t do a thing to stop it. Never even occurred to me to try.” He doesn’t need to wipe at his face, his eyes too dry for such a gesture, but the urge is there. He forces it down. “That’s what I gotta live with.”

Sam’s mouth twists. “And what about when you die?” he asks. “The next time something happens, if you do die for me, is that going to be my fault?”

“Shut up,” Dan tells him. “That’s not the same.”

“All you could do was watch,” Sam says, echoing every last one of Dan’s recent nightmares. “All I ever do is watch. That’s my entire life, do you realize that? I watch as things happen, and the only thing I can ever do about it, is tell my big brother. So when I tell you I know how much it sucks to be a helpless observer, believe me, all right?”

“And I’m telling you to shut up,” Dan repeats. “Get out. I’m done.”

Taking his time about it, Sam doesn’t simply make a show of not obeying. No, Sam visibly thinks through conversational strategies and known possibilities, and when he pushes off the desk, it’s clearly because this is what he thinks is best. Unhurried, Sam readies his crutches and puts them back into position beneath his arms.

“Thank you for listening to me,” says the diplomat who is his brother. “Thank you for my life. I’m sorry I can’t help you better, and I’m sorry how much I made things worse. I want you to know, I’m going to keep Dad off your back as long as I can. I’ve been tag-teaming with Mom, the way you taught me.”

“There’s only so much he can yell at me,” Dan says, “now he has to act like he was planning on me and Cas tying the knot.”

Sam shakes his head. “Dan, you got taken in by Cas. Me and Jess, Mom and Dad? We got taken in by Lucifer No matter how much Dad wants to deflect and pile it all onto you, we’re the ones who f****d up the most. I’m the one who f****d up the most. After I learned about being a vessel, I should have picked someone ungifted, but I decided it would be still be safe to kiss a mage I barely knew. I was too afraid of making a controversy by kissing someone ungifted, and I nearly got all of us killed.”

“Don’t do this,” Dan half-orders, half-begs. “Not right now.”

“Do what?” Sam asks.

“Don’t ask me to comfort you.”

Not when it hurts this much.

Not when Dan will try anyway.

Strangely bewildered, Sam stares at him. “I wasn’t asking you to. I’m saying I made a mistake, Dad made it right alongside me, and I’m not going to let either of us forget that. If we’re going to hold the Royal Hospital accountable for letting him slip through, we can’t hold ourselves to a lower standard.”

Dan looks anywhere else. Everywhere else.

“I’m going to bed now,” Sam continues. “If you want to talk tomorrow—well, today—let me know. Tomorrow—actual tomorrow—I can’t promise anything, what with the wedding, but I can try. I talked to Jess, and she understands. She, uh. She finally sees the big brother I’ve been telling her about all these years. So. Let me know.”

“I’m not gonna bother you on your wedding day,” Dan says to Sam’s knees, to the cast peeking out beneath the hem of his sleep pants.

“Then you’ll have to bother me today,” Sam says. “Preferably after sunrise.”

“Yeah, yeah, get your beauty sleep,” Dan tells him, waving his hand too jerkily to be truly dismissive. “You got a lot of catching up to do.”

Sam smiles faintly. “I’m not going to catch up to Jess anyway.”

“I meant to me, b***h,” Dan says, and he manages to look his little brother in the eyes.

Sam’s smile says he already knew. “Jerk.”

They pause. Crutches in the way, they hug. They part.

They go to bed in their respective rooms, in the way of adults, not frightened children.

Eventually, perhaps, they even sleep.

The tracking spell still isn’t working. It’s been three days, and the mask has not once budged, let alone dragged itself off the table in pursuit. The longest it has ever taken Victor before—six and a half mind-numbing hours—now seems an instant.

Victor’s jaw is so set in determination, he may have stopped eating again out of lock-jawed inability. Ash is doggedly delighted by the challenge. Between the two of them, they’ve dragged in every available Man or Woman of Letters who has ever researched anything involving magical creatures, ancient life, tracking spells, angels, or any number of things. A few of those researchers are so unused to Dan that they even stop what they’re doing to stand and bow to him as he enters the work space.

Supplies even Dan has never heard of have been requisitioned from across the myriad of shops in the capital and even beyond. Some of those might take as long as two weeks to arrive, and others a month to prepare. Dan doesn’t bother reminding them that this is time they don’t have.

Half of the tables in the work space have grids traced on them in chalk, an interactive diagram of spell ingredients. A list grows on the wall, every failed combination entered in a carefully cataloged order to prevent wasteful repetition. The rest of the tables look ready to snap under the weight of books piled upon them.

When Dan inspects their progress, Victor intercepts him en route to the mask with an apology.

“I know you’re working as quickly as you can,” Dan says, which is not the same as forgiveness.

Victor shakes his head. “We are, Prince, but that’s not what I was referring to. We’ve removed some of the feathers from the mask. You did say the angel’s wings would be ash, so we’re trying with a small vial of ash, now. We’ve found cremated bodies through burnt hair before. It’s the same, in theory.”

“You burned Casper’s feathers,” Dan says, half in question. The concept sits so poorly in his mind that it doesn’t so much as touch his heart.

“A few of them,” Victor says, and he steps aside.

Dan looks at the mask, at Cas’ sole remains. From the left eye to the edge, the cloth of the mask is bare and pockmarked. The rest of the feathers still gleam in the light with a dark sheen.

“Do whatever you have to,” Dan says. But he takes a feather from the mask himself, pocketing this before it too is gone. It joins the scrap of ribbon.

“Prince,” Victor says, which means even worse news.

Dan holds up a hand. “Whatever you’re about to say, are you sure enough to say it?”

“No,” Victor says, “but it’s a possibility that would only grow worse over time.”

Dan lowers his hand. “All right. Tell me.”

“If the feathers can’t be enchanted to seek because the angel’s wings have turned to ash,” Victor says, “then the ash vial can only work while the ashes of the wings are in the same area. The more those ashes disperse, the less effective the spell will be, if it can even take at all.”

“You’re saying the spell might be failing because it’s been six days,” Dan summarizes, voice flat.

“If he landed anywhere outdoors, that’s more than enough time for the ash to blow away,” Victor says.

And if he landed indoors somehow, someone would have raised a stink about it.

He’s somewhere outside, probably. Rotting in the sun, animals chewing on him in the dark. With enough damage, the sigil carved into his chest will be obscured and no one will report the corpse as anything other than a murder, or maybe someone dying of exposure.

“Does Ash have any ideas?” Dan asks, because Ash is absent, presumably in pursuit of something.

“None that have worked for the mask or vial,” Victor says. “We did get a leaf to track a five hundred year old tree.”

“Sounds like a short hunt.”

“It was,” Victor agrees, just as humorless as Dan’s joke. “Adapting for the age of the subject might be the main obstacle.”

If it isn’t, they’re screwed.

“Keep at it,” Dan orders. “And now if you’ll excuse me, I need to give Queen Charlene a tour of our fine city.”

“Didn’t you do that two years ago?” Victor asks.

“Three,” Dan says. “And Her Majesty wants another one.”

“If you want me to send word of any breakthrough, I’ll need your itinerary or for you to leave some of your hair,” Victor says.

It says a lot about Victor’s assembled team that no one bats an eye at Dan unbuttoning his top shirt, pulling down the neck of his undershirt, and taking a pair of borrowed scissors to his armpit hair. The hair on his head has to look good for Sam’s wedding tomorrow, and he’s not about to trim from anywhere else with an audience. He drops the few tufts in the small vial Victor offers for that purpose.

“The second it moves, you come get me,” Dan tells him.

“That’s the idea, Prince,” Victor says, taking the vial with him as he returns to his appointed task. Everyone else stands and bows to Dan again on his way out, but not Victor, who merely nods. Victor wastes no time, which is the truest courtesy of all.

The tour is a pretense for relaxation, and Dan does not relax. The areas they visit teem with possibilities for mishap. The areas they neglect seethe with the insult. When every step is a misstep, the only thing to do is to move confidently.

They stroll arm-in-arm, flanked by guards. Dan wears the archangel blade and keeps Charlie on his left, forever ready to draw with his right. They chat about what has changed in the past three years, all of it public works and public knowledge. Anyone fighting to eavesdrop in the streets only hears about state funded improvements. They keep to walking streets only, the better to keep their feet clean and the better to be overheard.

A carriage awaits them where appropriate, combustion rather than horse-drawn. Though the combustion carriage was originally invented as a demonstration piece for then-Prince John’s much lauded magical control, this variation is one of the newer, trickier ones that doesn’t rely on a mage. Considered less safe than the mage-operated transport, the use of this carriage is a deliberate choice. As always, everything they do in the public eye is to draw that eye.

Even once Dan and Charlie are safely ensconced at the restaurant Sam took him and Jess to on his birthday, their conversation is still performative. Sincere in her questions about the angels, Charlie might not realize it, but Dan is very much aware.

He tells her what is safe for him to say. He tells her some of what is true and most of what they’re claiming to be true. He tells her all sorts of things, and the table between them becomes a vast and twisted distance, a stand-in for the border between their countries.

Twenty-two years ago, he held her as an infant, thinking her his future wife. Eleven years ago, he mocked her for zapping his brother too hard, thinking her his sister. Today and every day for the rest of their lives, he knows her as a foreign monarch, and they will never be fully honest with each other again.

“We missed you at Sam’s party,” he says instead of so much more. “Though I am glad you missed that last night.”

“Scheduling around the fae can be a boon in disguise,” Charlie agrees, as formal as their audience of servers demands. The private room can only help so much. “I am sorry I couldn’t meet Cas. He sounds…”

“He was,” Dan says. He drains his glass to make the server come near, and then he pulls the feather from his shirt pocket. Aware that every pair of eyes in the room is upon that small puff of black, he holds it out while the luncheon wine pours. He twirls it by the quill, the downy barbs at the base tickling his thumb and forefinger.

“You wouldn’t think it,” Dan continues, as if just to that feather, “but his wings were longer than he was tall. He had to keep them folded up so he wouldn’t frighten the other guests. They wanted to see humanity before committing to us, you know, and he did fit in pretty well at a masquerade.”