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“You need to learn to retract them all the way. I don’t know if you can.”

“I could pretend they’re a fancy dress. Or just put a coat over them. Or wear a hoodie and a long skirt, or… there’s lots of ways.”

“You really don’t want to go back to school, do you,” he chuckles.

“No!” I whine.

He laughs, and I feel the rumble beneath me like a tectonic thing.

“You’re going to flying lessons tomorrow. I will do you one favor, however. I will have you put into a class with those closer to your age. You will not have to tolerate the youth, or at least, not the youth that much younger than you.”

That’s something, I guess. Part of the humiliation is being treated like a baby, but I bet it won’t be any better in more advanced classes, where my inability to control my body will be even more of an obvious problem. I’ve got to distract him. I’vegot to make him realize that the seal is way more important than my education.

“I think I can feel the seal,” I lie.

That sparks a slap from him. Hard. He knew instantly that I wasn’t telling the truth.

“That is not something to joke about,” he says. “Please don’t ever toy with these things. Equinox is searching high and low for the artifact. You and I are going to stay here and you are going to get stronger. You are the most important thing. You are the future of my lineage, and you are the love of my very long life.”

“Ow,” I whimper.

Then I start to feel something besides the sting that is seeping through my ass.

Not just sting. A tug. Something that makes me feel…

No way.

Ornix

She sits up, wings adorably askew. Then she looks at me with an expression of pure excitement.

“I’m not kidding. I actually think I can feel the seal.”

I am not amused by this stalling tactic. It is obvious, and in poor taste. “You are going to school tomorrow, and at this rate, you are going with a very sore ass.”

“No, Ornix. Really. I think it’s here.”

“If this is some kind of a joke, you are going to hurt so bad, little one. You are going to wish you had never understood the concept of a seal, let alone…”

She gets up and runs out of the room. I lift myself from the bed, feeling some of my many hundreds of years of age in the process. She has more energy than I do.

“Here,” she says, stopping outside Equinox’s chamber. “It’s in here.”

“Equinox’s rooms? But he’s in the human realm.”

I open the door, feeling the seal on it break. Nox has tried to keep it private, but there are no seals that I cannot destroy in this castle. However, he will know I have entered, I cannot prevent that.

“Hello, Uncle.”

He is immediately on the other side of the door as we enter. Melissa pushes past me and sticks her hand out for the seal.

“You found it!” she exclaims happily. “You did so well! Where was it? Did I drop it? Did someone have it? I would have come and looked too, but you would not believe what they have been doing here. It’s been a whole thing.”

She ignores the vibe of the room, which is tense. There is something in the way Nox is looking at me, a certain dark, smug triumph that makes me instantly uncomfortable.

He drops the seal into her hand. She drops it immediately, then scrabbles around on the floor between us while the pair of us stare each other down.

“Very well done, nephew. Where did you find it?”