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I could see his handsome, laughing face as he painted the ceiling of my bedroom with cerulean skies and fat winged cherubs. And little birds on their delicate limbs and bowers, so real that I’d sometimes thought they’d stop pretending one day and just fly away. Rafe had been one of the few bright spots at Tony’s, although he’d often been gone. Tony had used him as an errand boy, never appreciating his gift. But when he was there, he’d defended me fiercely, even taking a beating once in my place.
He’d taken another blow for me recently, although not from a fist. But from something far more dangerous for a vampire. Although there were no signs of it now.
He picked me up and whirled me around, laughing, because laughter came easily to Rafe. And I realized that I’d been wrong: there were signs. But so subtle that I could barely make them out, even at this distance.
“Rafe.” I put a hand on his cheek, when he finally set me down, and I could feel them, too. Tiny scarification lines, in the places where his skin had cracked and split and bled from exposure to the sun. They were healed now, but had left a subtle pattern behind that was invisible from any distance, but up close, was almost beautiful.
Or maybe that was just me, because Rafe would always be beautiful to me.
“Mia stella,” he said, and hugged me again.
“How long have you been back?” Rafe had been away, recovering from his burns, for most of the summer.
“Almost two weeks. They have me directing all this.” He gestured around.
And I belatedly noticed that the interiors of other frames were also being worked on, although most of them were still in the sketch phase. There was one exception, however, directly across from us. And, like the one behind me, it was also a complete fabrication.
“That’s not how it happened,” I said, looking at an image of the very house we were standing in. Only the painted version was shown surrounded by a massive fey army, while devilish-looking things poured forth from the mouths of a couple dozen portals dotting the night sky.
The attack on the consul’s home a month ago had involved portals, but they’d opened up inside the walls, not in the sky and hills surrounding it. And the creatures that had been sent through hadn’t been demons. They’d been some weird experiments that the fey had been doing.
Really weird.
Our enemies had been trying to create hybrids between dark fey—whom they regarded as little more than animals—and humans. They’d
wanted to create troops that could fight on earth, because fey magic didn’t work any better here than ours did there. So far, their efforts had failed, and the creatures they’d thrown at us had been rejects that they’d used as cannon fodder.
But that’s not what the scene showed. It had fearsome beasts leaping forth from the portals, maws open and claws reaching. Only to be held off by the valiant efforts of the consul, who stood atop her house holding a flaming sword.
No, seriously.
She had a flaming sword.
A vampire.
They burn like gasoline-soaked tinder, but sure. Why not? And I couldn’t exactly talk, since I’d ended up a freaking goddess!
Rafe looked behind him. And then turned back around, a mischievous little grin on his face. “Oh, don’t you like it?”
“As art, sure. But it didn’t happen like that!”
It was Rafe’s turn to take my arm, while Caedmon walked beside us. “Mia stella, have you learned nothing from all your years with us? Reality is . . . malleable. And in time of war, even more so.”
“That’s not malleable,” I said, craning my neck to look behind me. “That’s Gumby.”
He laughed. “Perhaps. But it is also useful, no?”
“Very much so,” Caedmon said.
He was looking at a knot of people—judging by their outfits, they were from the East Asian Court—who were standing in front of one of Rafe’s sketches down the hall. I wasn’t close enough to see what it depicted; the outlines he’d done for the artists were deliberately light, so they’d be easier to cover up with paint. But the viewers seemed strangely intent.
Until they caught sight of us, and began whispering behind their hands.
“But did you get my chin all right?” Caedmon asked, suddenly turning to Raphael.
Rafe regarded him seriously for a moment, then dropped my arm to grasp his chin, moving it this way and that, the dark eyes narrowed. Caedmon put up with it, because genius trumps titles, and because he was probably vain as shit. Anyone who looked like that had to be.
“Hm, perhaps not. I will see to it,” Rafe promised.
