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Chapter twenty-three

Truth

P oppy stood in the rain, staring. Rai’s forgotten umbrella dangled from her hand, and a tiny part of her brain noted that she had rain on her face, that her clothes were getting soaked, that the umbrella might solve that, but most of her was all in on the staring, because…wings.

Wings.

What the fuck?

Rai stared back at her. Except it couldn’t be Rai.

Because wings. He had wings. Huge, dragonfly-ish, honest-to-Tinkerbell wings, faintly glowing in the stormy darkness.

As she watched, they shivered and crackled with energy, a sizzle of electricity radiating along the delicate ribs, limning the edge of his shoulders with vague purplish highlights, and wait , was his skin purple, and—

What. The. Fucking. Fuck?

Maybe she was dreaming. Hallucinating. She’d thought that package of mushrooms at the store had been plain white mushrooms but no, they’d been the wrong type of mushrooms, secretly planted there by some wackadoo who was upset they couldn’t get into Tylenol bottles anymore because of the seven arcane layers of wrapping.

Oh, but double no, that was even less possible than the truth that was staring her in the face.

Staring with eyes that she knew intimately, wide and shocked under a flow of wet hair that she’d run her fingers through just minutes before.

He’d frozen the moment he turned and saw her, and she knew that chest, too, knew its contours and the way it heaved, could almost feel her fingers tracing the same paths that rivulets of rainwater were now traversing.

“Rai?” she asked carefully.

He swallowed. Another thing she knew. His wings quivered behind him.

She sure as fuck didn't know that. Those. “Poppy,” he whispered, and his mouth opened as if he were about to say more, but then his eyes narrowed and his teeth snapped together in a grin or a snarl and he strode forward, and before she could even blink, he’d wrapped her in his strong arms, and they were in the air.

They were in the air. Rai had wings and they were flying with his wings and she yelped out something incoherent, wriggling, but he just embraced her more tightly.

She twisted to look at the ground and stilled, clutching at him with her umbrella-less hand.

Holy fuck , they were high! She looked back at Rai, focusing on his nose just so she didn’t have to think about how tiny the buildings were beneath them.

He had freckles. Freckles that she'd never seen before, a faint dusting that made her heart clench.

Still. “Wings!” She shouted it right into his face. His purple face, familiar yet alien and freckled and fuck fuck fuckety fuck! She was getting cold, far too cold, but she couldn’t even spare a moment to shiver with all the profanity clogging her brain.

“I can explain.” His voice was fierce and low.

“Please let me explain.” Those impossible wings beat powerfully, and the freezing rain pelted Poppy’s back and the top of her head as they soared higher into the sky, and for a moment she let herself feel swept away, like a perfect fairy princess.

Even with the rain and the clouds and the bitter chill of the wind.

A bolt of lightning cracked nearby, and she startled and remembered she had another hand.

Holding an umbrella. The umbrella she’d given Rai to keep him safe from the rain.

The rain he apparently belonged in, with his wings of fucking lightning.

He didn't need an umbrella. He had never needed an umbrella.

She hit him over the head with it.

He winced, though she didn't have the leverage to hit him hard at all, and gave her a wounded look that made her heart melt again despite everything .

“Wings!” she shouted again, steeling her heart against those soft, soft eyes. Those soft, lying eyes. “What the actual fucking fuck ?”

“Please,” he said again, gaze beseeching, voice urgent.

“Murder me after I have explained. I will provide the peaches myself.” He sank his hand into her wet hair, pressing her face to his shoulder, and she gave in, buried her forehead in the smooth skin of his throat, closing her eyes so that she didn’t have to watch his wings moving, his fucking wings, Rai had wings and oh god if she fell from however-the-fuck high they were, who would tell her mom?

Who would take care of her? Who would talk her down, who could talk her down from the cliff of yet another unbelievable loss that confirmed her most paranoid imaginings as real?

“Please don’t drop me,” Poppy said, trying not to whimper. She flung her other arm around his neck, both hands now gripping the umbrella behind him.

“Never,” Rai growled into her ear. “I will never let you fall.”

Liar! she wanted to scream. Because he’d already let her fall. She’d already fallen, and this was the part where she went kersplat . Her heart just a smear on the pavement. The price she paid for trusting yet again.

When would she ever learn?

The rain against her back slowed and ended, and then the breeze of their passage lessened and her stomach lurched as they moved downward, like they’d crested the topmost hill of a huge rollercoaster. Her feet touched a hard surface, and Rai’s arms loosened. She opened her eyes.

They were in a flat, clear space holding a rough, graffitied stone bench near the top of a steep hill, or perhaps a mountain, high above the city.

There was a small dark silhouette of a cross beside the bench.

The lights of downtown Tucson and the highway spread out below them; a heap of sharp boulders rose to a peak at their back.

To their left was the faint outline of another high hill, red lights blinking intermittently at its crest. The storm continued on all sides, but directly above, the sky was clear, the moon brightly peeking through a wide, unnaturally circular gap in the clouds.

As she watched, the moving clouds parted at the gap, scudding around either side in a perfect round arc.

“Where are we?” she managed, pushing away from Rai’s chest and stumbling a few steps toward the bench. Away from the wings that were somehow attached to the man she’d thought she’d known, at least a little.

He watched her, eyes dark and face wary. “It is the mountain with the A. ”

She laughed sharply, casting her gaze down the dark mountainside.

She couldn’t see the white rocks that formed the letter on the side of Sentinel Peak, and she wasn’t going to step out further to try, but now that he had said it she recognized the area, the landmarks, could even pinpoint the place in the darkness beyond where her father had loved to hike and paint.

A stab of grief went through her. “It’s…

it’s illegal to be here after dark. But I guess…

that doesn’t matter to you because you just kidnapped me and you have wings and oh, god!

” She stumbled to the bench, which at least was mortar and stone and paint and things that she knew existed.

She dropped the useless umbrella and sank onto the bench, facing the rocky peak.

The landscape wasn’t completely black, now that downtown was behind her—the city spread out into the desert a distance before the lights gradually faded away—but the darkness beyond was easier to deal with than the headlights of cars moving down the interstate normally, as if her world hadn’t just turned upside down.

“Poppy, I am sorry.” Rai’s footsteps approached her. “I am a liar. Ofelia told me I must tell you the truth, but—”

Pain stabbed through her. “So what, your other girlfriend is in on this with you, too? Or is she your wife? Am I the other woman this time?” She knew it was an unfair accusation, that just mentioning a woman’s name meant nothing—hell, that even if Ofelia was Rai’s lover or wife, they had never made any promises to each other—but it was easier to latch onto something real like cheating, whether it was on her or with her, than it was to think about the crazypants couldn’t-be-real wings situation.

“I have told you I am unwed,” he said softly. “I have lied to you about all but that.”

She sagged, burying her face in her hands.

She’d sat in a puddle, she suddenly realized—her leggings had already been wet, but now they were wetter.

Why was everything around her so stupidly real ?

Why couldn’t some of it be surreal so she could pretend this wasn’t happening?

“You have wings,” she said, forcing calm.

“I do.” Another footstep.

“And you’re purple.”

Rai was silent, and she looked at him again. He was regarding his arms in the moonlight. His eyes flickered to her, a sly expression crossing his face when he caught her gaze. “Yes,” he said solemnly. “I am a little bit purple.”

She snorted out a laugh and turned on the bench to face him completely. “A little bit.” The moonlight made it somewhat easier to look at him, desaturating everything back to a less mind-bending grayscale. Though it didn’t make the wings go away .

“I would not use the word purple ,” he said, regarding her with wry amusement. “Perhaps lilac.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Poppy heaved a deep, shaky breath. “We can get out the Pantone swatches and paint chips later if you want a different word. It doesn’t change the purpleness of it all. Or the wingness. Or…or any of it.”

He nodded sharply, straightening, face intent. “Poppy, will you allow me to explain?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Of course.” He frowned in confusion. “That is why I ask.”

She waved an arm all around. “You didn’t ask before you grabbed me and flew me up here. And now I’m basically trapped. I don’t mind a walk but this one would be a doozy, especially at night.” There had to be a path, since there was a bench, but she couldn’t see it in the darkness.