She shouldn’t tell him, but she told. They swept above the Paupers’ Quarter market and north, where narrow brownstones flanked narrow tree-lined streets. He landed on her building’s roof. Her arms felt loose in their sockets. When she rolled them, her shoulders popped. “That makes up for skipping the gym today. Lady of Skies and Earth. I need to visit the sanctum tomorrow, do a records search.”

“What did you learn?”

“Why you can fly and I can’t.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I don’t want to go into detail in case I’m wrong.” She thumbed her notebook open and added a line to the glyphs she’d drawn there. “I’ll need you later. You’re right about translation. I can report your claims, but your testimony will help. The court’s not built for gods.”

“I noticed.” Shale let his wings furl and his arms fall and his face droop. She did not know what a sigh would look like coming from a creature without lungs, but she thought it might look a great deal like that. “If I can help, tell me and I will.” He had more to say, so she waited. “I did the right thing tonight, but I understand Aev’s anger. I was not selfless in my work. I wanted to help those girls, to justify their love of me. I asked the Lady if I could aid them, and She said yes.”

Tara looked up from the book. “She said yes for her own reasons.”

“Not entirely,” he said. “You’ll find me when you need me, I suppose. You always can.”

He took two steps toward the roof’s edge. She wanted to reach for him but her hands were full; she snapped the book closed, let the pen fall, and caught him by the wrist as he was about to fly. “Shale.” His weight almost pulled them both over. His talons tore silvery grooves in the brick as he steadied himself. “Hold still.”

He did.

For this she did not need the knife. Glyphs on her hands and wrists gathered starlight. Shadow wet her fingertips. She touched his forehead, which was smooth and cold. A horse-skin twitch rippled through him—his body remembered the last time she’d touched him like this, and what she had done after. Her nails peeling back his face.

“Trust me,” she said.

He did.

She painted shadows across his forehead, down cheek, beneath chin, up again, and over. Crystal lines pulsed beneath her shade: the patterns of his being. Between her and those lines lay an ugly angular mark. Its edges had spread in the last year as his soul shifted to incorporate the scar. She dipped her fingers through his skin, too fast for him to react, and caught the scar as if catching an eyelash against the white of an eye. She lifted the scar free, and let him go.