The Key

Chapter 36

“A different collateral,” King John states, and Casper attempts to bend his mind around a very foreign manner of thought.

At last, he reports his one concrete finding: “I don’t understand.”

King John merely looks at him as if increased staring will lead Casper to a better conclusion.

Casper looks at Sir Robert instead.

Sir Robert lifts his eyes to the ceiling before asking, “You know what a political marriage is?”

“A human union to reconcile and bind two parties,” Casper answers, a memorized definition relayed with foreboding.

“Any union, purely human or not,” King John corrects.

It occurs to Casper that, perhaps, if he stretches out his left wing from its bindings, he might be able to free it. The majority of his clipped feathers have regrown on his right wing. When he’d looked to Dan earlier, he’d been unable to hold the man’s gaze and had instead let his eyes slip sideways, toward the windows. The glass itself hadn’t been warded.

If Casper is very careful about it, he could, possibly, jump out the closer window and fly a limping distance. The mismatching length of his flight feathers will be an issue, but if he can muster the energy to manifest his blade, he can trim the left side to match. With wind to help him, he’d still be able to fly away.

...But to what end?

The humans must have the portal protected. While the other angels can change the location of the portal’s opening, Casper has no means of telling them where and when.

Most damning of all, the only way to gain the tablet is now through gaining trust, and Casper has already clipped his own wings severely in that regard.

Casper reins himself in. He lowers himself from a standing to a sitting kneel, uncertain of when he’d risen, and he pulls in his wings to match. He will be calm. He will be reasonable, and thereby make them see reason.

“If Your Majesty might state your goals explicitly, I might better answer them,” he says.

“If we are to be allies, it must be seen that you came here honorably,” King John tells him. “Before I can agree with Archangel Raphael that you are an emissary, not an infiltrator, you must comply with that role.”

“I fail to see how that role includes marriage,” Casper replies.

“If we are to say you courted my son honorably, we are to expect an honorable outcome. Whatever happened between you, half the kingdom is convinced the marriage is already arranged.”

What a strange thing, to be thought a creature of seduction. In the back of his mind, Casper can hear Balthazar laughing. See the tilt and curl of Hannah’s wings, and observe the way Uriel-

No.

He will not think of Uriel.

Forcing, ever forcing his straining mind to the task before him, Casper questions, “You truly intend to barter your son’s happiness to save face?”

“To secure the safety and trust of my people,” King John corrects. “This is how we secure alliances in our world, angel. Surely that can’t have changed since you left it.”

“If you seek my services as a soldier or bodyguard, I am sure Archangel Raphael will offer them to you,” Casper replies. It would serve as a convenient means of exiling him for his failure. “But until I see an order written in his blood, so I may touch his grace and know the words to be his own, I will not comply with your demand.”

There will be no such order. It’s ludicrous, impossible for an unwilling angel to wed.

Something in King John’s face shifts, but, more importantly, Sir Robert shifts where he stands.

“You’ve already asked him,” Casper guesses. “He’s already refused.”

“You are permitted to accept,” King John informs him. “He specified that you would wed in the human fashion.”

“Then I am permitted to refuse,” Casper says. “If you wish to save face so badly, I sacrifice my standing. Was-” he mustn’t falter “-was Uriel killed for treason?”

Sir Robert nods.

“Then,” Casper says, voice steady, “it would be improper for a prince to wed the brother of a traitor. Let that be known. Any supposed arrangement between us was reached before Uriel’s deceit was discovered. I am now disqualified.”

Too late, Casper sees the clash between reason and obstinacy. There is no debate with King John, only perceived disrespect.

“If I cannot trust you to do as you are told, how can I trust you,” says King John.

“I am telling you, you can have what you want without sacrificing Dan,” Casper insists.

King John looks at him with cold anger. “How convenient, that you now begin to care.”

His flight feathers flare. He does not permit his wings to arch, too constrained by will and bandages and the room itself, but though the motion may be hidden by the position of his body, he cannot stop his feathers from flaring in his exhausted agitation. “Would Your Majesty prefer I never begin?”

“I would prefer you obey. Unless you would prefer Archangel Raphael to know you concealed my son’s status as a vessel from him.”

A threat against his heir is an empty threat against Casper. Unless Raphael has already pieced it together on his own, of course, giving King John nothing to lose. Accordingly, Casper smooths his wings and holds his head high against either possibility. “Tell him what you will. When Lucifer awakens, you will need our aid. You will send the tablet through. When my people are free, I will face whatever fate is in store for me.”

“Shall we test that?” King John asks, and though his hand is not on the hilt of Dan’s sword, it hints at the motion from where it rests upon his belt.

Sir Robert clears his throat.

Casper looks to him, and rather than wait for the king’s permission, he prompts, “Sir Robert?”

Arms crossed, Sir Robert asks, “You still want to apologize to Dan?”

“I would need a larger apology, to do as you ask,” Casper says.

“If he asked you himself,” Sir Robert says, “would you consider that?”

“A proposal under duress is no proposal at all,” Casper replies. “He would do as His Majesty orders.”

“Because he is a loyal son,” King John states, “and I will not see him mocked by our enemies for the fool you’ve made of him.”

“I will not marry an unwilling man,” Casper tells him. “I cannot. Archangel Raphael insisted on a human ceremony because in an angelic one, Dan would not be able to take my blade without being stabbed.”

“Your concern for my son comes far too late,” King John says. “Do not claim loyalty to him. I have many conditions regarding that tablet, but this is the only one I lay upon you, and you refuse for some other reason. What is it?”

“Your willingness to deny the truth does not obligate me to lie,” Casper answers. “I have given you my reasons.”

“You have given us your reasons before, under the guise of a human scholar,” King John tells him. “I see no cause to trust them now.”

“You would bind someone you do not trust to your son?”

“I would trust my son to contain you,” King John says, a boast that would be laughable if Casper didn’t know it to be true.

“Find another leash, and I will be leashed,” Casper promises. “But not that one.”

Before King John can speak, Sir Robert touches his shoulder. The touch is light, barely a fingertip, and clearly a liberty taken. Sir Robert keeps a lowered head, perfunctory deference. The tense formality is at odds with the familiar way Sir Robert merely has to raise his eyebrows and tilt his head at Casper to be understood by the king.

King John nods in return. To Casper, he says, “I will excuse your lack of manners today. You are disoriented and clearly need time to recover.”

“You owe me your life,” Casper says. “Yours, the queen’s, and Prince Samuel’s. Renege on this one matter, and you will owe me nothing.”

“As an emissary sent to secure an alliance, you were of course under orders to protect us,” King John informs him. “Remember that.” He gestures to Sir Robert, who opens the door for him. “We’ll speak again after you’ve had time to understand your situation.”

King John steps outside and continues beyond Casper’s sight without breaking stride. Sir Robert, however, is slower. Keeping an eye on Casper the entire time he has the door opened, he turns to face Casper as he exits.

His human face, already difficult to read, is further obscured by his facial hair. But his mustache rustles in a way strangely similar to the joy of wings, and he doesn’t look upon Casper with the hatred one would assume for the knight who had once taken Dan as his squire.

Instead, in a motion Casper knows only on another face, Sir Robert closes one of his eyes, only the one.

Then he shuts the door and leaves, trapping Casper alone with his thoughts, the wards, and far too many questions.

If Casper rests his head on the foot of the bed, he can see the sky through the window over the desk. The window is between a curiously empty bookshelf and a presumably empty wardrobe. When he sits up, it shows him only the sides of two buildings. Occasionally, he wonders whose room he’s in. Largely, he tries not to wonder at all.

The sky is a thin blue. A wave of stratocumulus clouds crawls across it. Low and lumpy, they stretch apart under a slow wind Casper can observe but not feel.

The thin blue pales further. Distantly, the clock tower chimes yet another hour. Exhaustion weighing him down, Casper lies with his cheek on folded arms, his left wing bound, his right wing stretched over the bed as far as the warding on the walls and floor will permit. His flight feathers rest on the desk and long to reach through the wall. The blanket of the bed feels strange against his bare chest. Perhaps being left without a shirt was meant to unnerve him.

Again, he tries not to wonder.

There are sounds from outside the door, the light footsteps of a guard stationed a full room away. If Casper called for them, they might come. They might view the warding with surprise, or they might already know Casper as a prisoner. He does not call.

His eyes fight to close. Each time they succeed, his mind tilts away from his body. Each time he falls within himself, he jerks back to a higher level of awareness, but only barely. He hasn’t felt this since the aftermath of his dealings with the Archdemon Alistair: he’s falling asleep.

He looks at the sky instead, and it keeps him conscious. His wings itch as new feathers fledge, pushing out the older, damaged ones. His muscles ache as his grace knits them back together. His face felt tender upon his arms when he’d first laid down, but it has long since stopped.

The room grows dim, the magelights set into sconces on the walls only partially illuminated, set for a much earlier hour. The sky grows dim. The clock tower tolls. The portal must be open now. Minutes later, the portal must be closed. The thin blue fades through white to orange, tinged with red.

More sounds come from outside the door. New, heavier footsteps that make Casper close his eyes tight. They come up a staircase. A hint of lowered voices. The lighter footsteps recede down that staircase. A door opens, and the heavier footsteps cross the room next to Casper’s.

Casper would pull his right wing up to cover his head as a fledgling might, but that would only block his own view of the sky, not shield him from the door. He would pull his left wing up, but he hasn’t bothered to free it from its bindings and he won’t risk making a display of force now.

Ultimately, cowardice takes refuge in the excuse of exhaustion. He lies where he is, head turned away from the door, his cheek upon his bare forearms.

The door opens. Air shifts. Cloth scrapes against cloth.

A footstep. Another.

The door closes, and they are alone.

For a moment, there is silence. And then it begins, acerbic and sharp. “There a reason you’re lying upside-down? Angels orient to the west? You like to put your boots on pillows? What?”

In reply, Casper lifts his first two flight feathers from the desk, pointing to the window.

More silence. What a pathetic sight Casper must make, half bound, half sprawling, lying on his stomach with the down of his back exposed. He retracts his wing from its half-stretch on the desk, the better to cover himself. He does not lift his head. He does not look.

The red of the sky is lighter now, the gray blue above it turning darker. Footsteps pass by Casper’s head, and his view is blocked. Dan sits on the desk, his legs splayed as if the missing chair is still an obstacle. He sets a thick, metal cylinder to the side, standing it on its end. His eyes are cast downward, focused on the bag he slings off his shoulder.

“The word is that you’re resting,” Dan says, now looking inside the bag. He reaches inside and pulls out a thick codex. This goes on the desk beside him. Two more codices follow. “Sam sends reading material,” he explains. “Our history as we know it.”

Dan looks at him then. The dim lighting of the room turns his features sharp, or perhaps that’s due to the unsheathed daggers of his eyes.

Already lying on his stomach, Casper flattens further. Dan’s eyes rove across him in a way they’ve never done before, clinical and analyzing, the investigation of a hunter. Should Dan equate humanity with personhood, Casper is a person no longer.

“You look like s**t,” Dan tells him.

Dan looks tired. He wears exhaustion the way Casper wishes he himself could wear it; like a light covering, something to be wrapped in without becoming encumbered by it. The banked embers of Dan’s sustained anger crackle beneath that layer, visible each time that covering pulls away.

He is very beautiful.

“You gonna talk to me?” Dan asks. For now, he is still asking.

Trusting his voice even less than his heart, Casper nods his head against his arms.

Rolling his eyes, Dan snatches the metal canister off the desk and holds it out. “Here.”

Using only his arms, Casper pushes himself up. Aching, turning, he lets his left wing hang off the end of the bed. His right is more difficult to place, and he settles for folding it high at an angle, flight feathers slanted across his feet where he kneels. Trapped on a piece of furniture designed for another species, he sways too much. He is very aware of the skin of his chest, his arms, his neck.

All this, Dan watches. His face grows harder and harder, the comfort of his mouth vanishing almost entirely.

“What is it?” Casper asks, not yet reaching for the canister. His voice rasps up his throat.

“Chicken broth with rice,” Dan says. “Figured Dad may have ‘forgotten’ to feed you.”

Casper tilts his head, and not merely to help keep his balance. “Is this a test?”

Dan’s expression does something Casper cannot track. “Cas, this is a thermos.”

“You bring me a liquid, and the wards are in chalk,” Casper states. “Is this a test?”

An even faster, more complex motion crosses Dan’s face. He withdraws the thermos. “It wasn’t.”

“If angels needed to eat, we would have starved to death by now,” Casper tells him.

Slowly, Dan nods. He places the thermos behind the books. Then he leans forward, elbows on knees, and stares Casper down.

“You lied to my dad,” Dan states.

In clear demonstration of the severity of the situation, Casper replies, “I’m afraid Your Highness will need to be more specific.”

Dan’s face darkens. “Don’t you f*****g call me that.”

“Then-”

“Don’t call me anything,” Dan orders, somehow enraged by words of respect. “You lied to the king. He asked you if I’d proposed, and you lied to his face. Why?”

Casper frowns so deeply it nearly throws him off balance. He schools his wings back with his faltering control, but Dan has already thoroughly seen, his eyes round and staring. “If the king knew I’d lied, he’d be here. How does Sir Robert know what your father does not?”

“You’re not asking the questions here,” Dan snaps. “You’re in a pile of s**t, and we’ve already caught you out lying again. Why?”

“Only you and Sir Robert know,” Casper reasons. “Sir Robert could have reported me immediately. You could have told the king, but you’re here instead. Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Dan says. “Maybe to ask you the same damn question three times in a row? Why did you lie to him?”

“I feigned confusion,” Casper answers, speaking to Dan’s left knee. “I presumed you hadn’t told him and felt our stories should match. Had you told him, I thought the excuse of cultural differences should serve to cover my ignorance.”

“So you spew some bullshit about swords,” Dan says.

At this, Casper manages to face him. “It wasn’t ‘bullshit.’ The exchange of blades, taking another angel’s grace inside your body, it’s how we marry.” He runs a finger down the inside of his forearm. “And unless done willingly by both parties, it results in stabbing. The same is true of a memento blade: it’s why Hannah carries our sister’s blade within her, but Lucifer had to keep Michael’s in a box.” He doesn’t dare think of Uriel, of whether he’d manifested his blade before he was executed. He doesn’t dare think of many things.

Dan waves his hand as if batting Casper’s words out of the air. “Are you saying you lied to my dad to cover for me?”

Casper nods. Before Dan can ask why, he answers, “I’ve done you enough harm. You value his regard highly.”

Dan leans back on the desk, legs closing slightly as he wipes his hands on his thighs. There is strain in him, in his neck and spine. There is solidity in him, set before the purpling sky beyond the window. With more resignation than force, Dan points at him. “That was the last lie, do you understand?”

Casper nods.

“Say it,” Dan commands.

“I understand,” Casper says. “It was the last lie.”

Hands on his knees, Dan regards him coldly. “What were the other lies?”

“Sir Dan?”

Dan’s hands turn to fists. “Starting from the top. What was true and what was lies.”

Casper’s mind fills with their every interaction, and he knows not where to begin.

Dan clearly does. “What’s your name?”

“Seraph Casper,” he says, sitting up straighter.

“Do you work at a university? Any university.”

“No.”

“Are you a colleague of Seer Shurley?”

“No,” Casper says. “We’ve never met. But we were working together on a project.”

“Are you an orphan?” Dan’s face is impossible to watch, his eyes impossible to meet, and still Casper tries.

“I have never had parents. No one sired or birthed me. I don’t know if that qualifies.”

“Where do you live?”

“In a realm without light or air, beyond what we create ourselves through illusions,” Casper replies. “Or, as I told you, a place I would never wish you to visit.”

His honesty does not soften Dan. It is unlikely anything ever will. “Were you going to write to me?”

“Yes,” Casper says.

“Until you got the tablet.”

His eyes strive to look away. He forces them back to Dan’s. “Yes.”

“And then you were going to vanish on me,” Dan says.

“Yes,” Casper agrees.

“And then what?” Dan demands. “A great big hole opens in the air, a legion of angels comes flying out, and you, what? You stay vanished?”

“I hadn’t thought that far ahead,” Casper admits.

“No?”

“When trapped in a cage, it’s difficult to think of anything other than escape.”

“Do I look like I f*****g care?”

“Yes,” Casper answers, still honest.

Dan points at him, the gesture hard, his eyes gleaming. He opens his mouth. His shoulders fall, then rise. Visibly gathering up his control, Dan’s face twists in a manner much too similar to his father’s. He asks, “How did Anna die?”

Casper’s teeth click together. His jaw aches with more than the fading bruise of his face, and he turns his face away. “That’s not relevant.”

“You said she was possessed, but angels can’t get possessed. Magical creatures can’t. So you lied,” Dan concludes, his voice flat and cruel. “That makes it relevant. How did she die?”

“Uriel was captured,” Casper spits out. “We’d thought he was captured. When Anna asked me to take her shift on sentry duty, I thought… But she went. Alone. Against Michael’s orders.” He clamps his shaking hands on his knees but has no way to steady his wings. This is what Balthazar hurled at him during the selection process, and Casper had endured, but not with this exhaustion. Not with this human man staring him down.

He continues all the same. “Uriel… ‘escaped.’ When Anna returned, she was broken and vicious, unintelligible. She tried to kill Uriel. When we held her down, she lashed out at any who came near, snarling like a beast. When Raphael couldn’t repair her mind, Michael killed her. We thought her blade would reject us, from her madness, but Hannah took it easily. Uriel never tried and I thought it was guilt. We consoled him for years , and I thought him distant because only Anna had gone to rescue him. I thought… I thought my brother loved us. That is how Anna died.”

Looking Dan full in the eyes, Casper demands with a breaking voice, “Is that relevant ?”

For the first time today, Dan looks away first. “Do you know what happened to him?”

“To make him hate us so much?” Casper asks. “No. Contrary to what you might believe, I am not typically so awful a person as to warrant banishment to a sunless, airless void. I can only imagine Lucifer offered him something we could not.” Power, perhaps. Advancement beyond his station as a seraph, an impossibility in the traditional hierarchy of Heaven.