The soft hum of decisions-yet-unmade started, and turning back to Ku’Sox, I reached out in my mind for Trent and Al. This was going to take all my finesse, and I didn’t have a clue how to do it. It would take wild magic to fix it to him, and ancient demon wisdom to find it.

You want to do what to him? I heard an echo in my mind, the shock of understanding tagging the masculine emotion as Al’s.

Like this, I said, eyes closing as a shimmer of my aura fell over Ku’Sox, tainted red from the ever-after. Ku’Sox stiffened, and as the memory of wild magic spun around and around in my head with the sound of fluttering wings, I showed Al a vision that he had shown me, a figure somewhat small, black as midnight, long fingers and toes, leathery wings, stretched like moonbeams. He would have an angular face, and wide black eyes, like Newt and Al now had. There would be long eyelashes, a small mouth, and whiskers, like a cat.

Al wove the charms at my direction, his shock and amazement making his attention skip and jump in mine. “My God!” whispered a voice, and I opened my eyes as the last of the charm melted away to leave Ku’Sox blinking up at us with large black eyes, looking exactly like I’d seen Al in his dream of blue butterflies.

“I had wings,” someone breathed. “I remember they shone in the sun and how cool they felt in the sand.”

“Black nails,” another said.

“I remember the taste of clouds,” came a voice from the back, soft and full of wonder. “Stardust in my ears.”

“What have you done?” Ku’Sox said, putting a hand to his throat when it came out in a mild, soft hiss. “What have you done to me?”

My head was down as I tried to separate myself from the spell, curse, whatever. Trent’s original curse denying Ku’Sox magic still held true, and he was helpless. He was a demon, the original form before mothers changed their children to make them stronger—into tools of war, images of man so well suited for it.

“Rachel?” Trent said, jerking me from my thoughts.

“I saw it in a dream of Al’s,” I said, looking up to see the wonder and awe in the faces around me. “Did I get it right?”

Trent shook his head in confusion, gazing at Ku’Sox as he tried to move, almost falling until he used his wing as support. “I have no idea.”

“Let me go!” Ku’Sox cried, his wings opening in alarm, and they all shifted back, stepping on toes and shoving those behind them until we stood in a wide space open to the night sky, ringed by silent demons. Newt was crying silent tears, trapped in a memory.