“You started it.” Kell smiled up at them. “May I touch them?”
“Touch, kiss, whatever you like.”
The fingertips on Kell’s left hand had decades of calluses, but his touch was a bare graze. It spread so much farther than that, chasing over their skin, and their eyes slipped shut.
“Don’t go away,” Kell said softly. “Stay with me.”
“I’m here.”
“Your eyes are closed,” Kell said. “Does this feel right? Do you want to change?”
Kell’s touch glided down to settle on the curve of their flaring hips. Round curves, full and soft and beautiful.
He was right. They wanted to change. “Should I be like this?”
Soft became hard, with curly hair all over their body. Kell smiled. “Very handsome, Handsome.”
He stroked Saeldian’s beard and drew them down to kiss himagain. Saeldian pressed against Kell’s chest and clung as Kell rolled them over and propped himself up on his elbows to look down at Saeldian.
“Close your eyes,” Kell said. “How is this? Does it feel right?”
“Touch me.”
All that hair on Saeldian’s skin carried Kell’s touch along the tips. It made them want to grind, to move under him. Kell watched Saeldian’s expression, so close Saeldian wanted to hide.
They shut their eyes. “This is nice too. Which do you like?”
“You,” Kell said. “I like you.”
Saeldian let the spell drop.
Kell was probably looking at them right now, taking in all the details. In a moment he would say that they were beautiful. He would touch their body and kiss them and promise that they were gorgeous.
Kell stroked Saeldian’s curls away from their face. He kissed their cheekbone, down their jaw. “No, keep your eyes closed,” Kell said. “Just listen.”
Eyes closed. That was easy.
“You can be anyone. You can become anyone, and I said I wanted you. But I meant something else. I meant I want you, the way you feel right.”
“The way I feel right?”
“The way you look when you glimpse your reflection and you don’t have to remember that it’s you.”
Inside the dream place where they lay, the amulet thumped.
Saeldian grabbed Kell’s shoulders, drew him down, and kissed him again.
Kell had known, somehow. Saeldian had spent whole afternoons alone in front of mirrors, outfit after outfit puddled on the floor, looking at themself, at every little bit. The nose they liked, even long and prominent as it was. Their shoulders and arms, strong enough to win a duel. The ears they hated to disguise.
They would change everything, bit by bit, until everywhere they looked, from their eyes to their knuckles and knees, was exactly how they wished it was, until they could look into their own eyes and see who they saw in dreams.
It was easy to slip into that body, but they had to be brave to end the kiss and open their eyes.
Kell was right there, studying them. “It’s you.”
“Are you surprised?”
He kissed the very tip of their nose. “I mean I was unfair to you. I knew it was you the moment I walked into that dining room in the Golden Rose. You didn’t even have to look right at me. I knew.”
