Baz’s shoulders soften in my hands. He lets me turn him back. He lets me touch his chin, his cheeks. His hand is still over his mouth—I kiss it. I’m so relieved to still be here, I can feel it rolling off me in waves. I’m surprised it’s not visible.

“I need a shower,” Baz says. “I haven’t cleaned up since Oxford.”

“I’m kind of enjoying it.” I grin. “I didn’t know you could get rank.”

He rolls his eyes, and shoves at me. “You need a shower, too. You smell like—actually I don’t know what you smell like. Something corrosive.”

“It’s my wings,” I say.

His face falls. And so does his hand. I lick my thumb and scrape the rest of the rat blood from his mouth.

“Does it hurt?” he asks. He’s looking at my shoulder.

I shake my head. “Oh, uh—no. I mean, I didn’t have it done yet. I chickened out.”

It wasn’t quite like that. I didn’t chicken out. It was more like I got overwhelmed. I couldn’t stop thinking about what Baz had said and how I needed to talk to him. Immediately. It felt like some window was closing. It was probably already closed, and I’d need to break it open. And what if I needed my wings somehow? To get to him?

I told Niamh I was sorry, said good-bye to Agatha, and left.

Baz sits up tall and reaches around my shoulder to where my wings are flattened against my back. He hasn’t touched me there since I walked in. “I thought these were bandages,” he says, patting them.

“No. Just my wings. They, like, pulled in super tight when the doctor was trying to clean them. Some sort of panic response, I think.”

“Could you do this on purpose?” He’s probing my back with his fingers, one eyebrow cocked. “If you could, you wouldn’t even need a spell to hide them—they’re hardly noticeable like this.”

“Pfft, I look like that Disney character with the droopy eye.”

He stares at me for a second. “Quasimodo?”

“Yeah, him.”

He rolls his eyes again. “All right, maybe, but you don’t look like a dragon.”

“They’re so bunched up, I’m afraid to move them. It hurts a bit.” I pull my hoodie and T-shirt up over my head and turn, so Baz can see my bare back.

“Circe…” he says.

He touches me there, and I wince.

“They’re folded up like origami, Snow. How is that possible?”

“How is any of it possible? Dragons are magic, I reckon.”

Baz runs his hand up one wing to the bony black talon that’s curled against my shoulder. “Is this where it hurts?”

“No, it’s more like a muscle cramp, in the wings themselves.”

“Maybe from clenching them so tight?”

“Yeah, maybe.”