Chapter Text
Lance streaked across the rooftops, paws drumming an easy rhythm on the clay tiles. Somewhere behind him—far behind him, by now—was a perplexed and probably pissed off shop keeper. Lance liked to imagine the man running out into the street, shaking his fist at the sky and cursing the cats that roamed the city at night.
He couldn’t know, of course, that this cat was more than just a stray. That it had been no accident that Lance had wandered into the shop that night, ignoring the potion that had been sprinkled around the doors and windows. It smelled bad, big deal. (Okay, “bad” was an understatement; his nose was still burning from that assault on the senses. But he could put up with a nasty odor for a good cause.)
The only real problem had been the window latch, his lack of thumbs catching him up, but a bit of patience and the forethought to practice, and he’d been through like a thread through a needle.
The first hint of dawn fizzled at the horizon—just the faintest smudge of gray muting the diamond glow of the stars, but it was a reminder that he ought to be heading home. The transformation had caught him on a rooftop once, and getting down as a human was considerably more difficult than it was with nimble paws, a tail for balance, and only a fraction of his normal body weight.
He paused on peak over a dormer window, set down the small pouch he’d stolen from the shop, and stared out over the city streets. Nocturne City was just beginning to wake for the day, a few people scurrying about, swathed in cloaks and cowls. Smoke rose from chimneys around the city, and the smell of baking bread simmered down in the warm crevasses between buildings. Somewhere far away, a dog barked and a quiet, instinctual voice inside Lance made him shiver, skin prickling as all his fur stood on end.
There was a certain beauty to the city when seen from this angle. High above the stink of the sewers and the shoving crowds of busy streets, away from grumpy masters and stoic knights and the drag of hard-beds-thin-shoes-short-days and always more bills to pay—way up here, everything was quiet. It was just him and the night, a companion on his most daring adventures, the ones he only risked when Hunk was sound asleep and something inside him burned with the need to be out here, to be moving.
There were worse curses, he figured, than spending half your life as a cat.
A cool wind ruffled his fur, slipping down into his ear like ice, and he shuddered, his ear twitching frantically in an effort to keep the wind out. It was a strange sensation, having ears that moved—and so often without his go-ahead. Like having a squirming baby strapped to his head, waving its hands around at inopportune moments. It wasn’t as bad now as it had been when the curse had first been set, nearly a year ago, but the fact that it still sometimes caught him by surprise made him wonder whether he was doomed to spend the rest of his life occasionally being surprised by his own body.
Heaving a sigh that felt too big for this body, he picked up his loot and got moving again, leaping the narrow gap over the next alley before picking his way down the sloped roofs and balconies to where a covered cubby for trash bins gave him easy access to the ground.
A year ago, the city had seemed so alien to him—all crushing hooves and careless feet and cold, wet, impassable streets. He’d spent those early nights at home, curled up on Hunk’s warm chest, the sound of his own purring lulling him to sleep.
The streets were still a terror, to be honest. Too many big, oblivious things that could crush him without a thought. Too much noise, too many smells. When he was down there, he stuck to shadows and narrow gaps, sprinting across open ground only when he was sure it was safe. More and more, he took to the roofs, building himself a three-dimensional map of the city, until he knew the best way to get from the loft he shared with Hunk to anywhere else in the city.
He sprinted across the street now, skin crawling as a cart drawn by a mule rounded the far-off corner. Even from a distance, the sound of hooves on cobbles made him nervous, and he scampered up the front steps of the shop, leaped up onto the post box, from there to the trellis over the neighbor’s house, and then onto the thin ledge that ran around the second floor of the bookseller’s where he and Hunk lived.
The window was open, as it usually was. Hunk might worry when Lance went out alone at night, but he was too soft to keep Lance penned up inside when his adventurous spirit reared its head.
Lance slipped inside now, leaving his pouch on the desk before he dropped to the floor and crossed to the low, lumpy bed. Hunk was still asleep, sprawled out on his stomach with one leg poking out from underneath the covers. Lance jumped up beside him, his whole body shivering with a contented purr as he curled up against the hollow between Hunk’s arm and his side. It wouldn’t be long now; he could feel the aches in his bones that warned of an impending transformation.
The changing was always the worst—especially in the morning. At night, he lost some of his mental acuity, the pain dulled to something distant as his mind tried to fit itself into a cat’s intelligence, and when the transformation was complete he usually slept off the last of the aches. In the morning, he didn’t have that luxury. An hour from now, he would have to be up and ready to deal with life like a normal person, however much he wanted to hold onto the warm apathy of the night.
Hunk said the transformation to human must hurt less than the other way around, because apparently cat-Lance yowled like a dying thing when the pain reached its peak, no matter how hard Lance fought to remain silent. He always lost himself a little bit when the cat’s mind first asserted itself.
Hunk woke just as it started. Lance was never entirely sure if that was chance, or if the first shudder of pain was enough to rouse him, or if a year of the same routine had ingrained in him the need to be up at the exact moment the sun crossed the horizon. Hell, maybe he set a waking spell for himself every night.
Whatever the case, Lance was grateful. He shuddered, a pitiful sound escaping him as the curse sunk in its claws—and then there was a hand between his shoulder blades, rubbing the loose skin around his neck.
“You’re okay, Lance,” Hunk said, his voice still slurred with sleep. He’d propped himself up on one elbow, pulling Lance against his chest and continuing to rub. “I’ve got you. Just keep breathing.”
It wasn’t that Lance needed the reminder. He’d done this often enough to know that tensing made it worse and that he had a tendency to hold his breath, which didn’t do anyone any good unless he wanted to make Hunk think that he’d died (never a pretty thing.) He knew it was all a matter of patience. Survive the initial throes, and things got better.
If there was one upside to the transformation, it was that he was never aware enough of himself to track the changes. There was the tingling skin and bone-deep ache, and then there was pain and nausea. At some point the feral yowls became something more human—he thought that happened before his vocal cords actually changed, though maybe that was just the delirium talking, but there was definitely a change, and it brought with it a change in Hunk’s soothing monologue.
The pain began to ease soon after, and Lance bit down on the last of his moans of pain, curling in on himself as Hunk shifted, giving him more room. His hand never left Lance’s back, the ceaseless motion giving him an anchor that wasn’t the all-over wrongness of his curse.
“Is it over?” Hunk asked, after Lance had been still for what seemed an impossibly long time. Sweat slicked his skin, already chilling him in the morning air, and he burrowed into Hunk’s chest with an unhappy grunt. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
Lance went boneless, letting himself be flopped this way and that as Hunk sat up to arrange the blanket over them both. Lance kept his eyes closed, partially because he wanted to go back to sleep until the pain passed, but mostly because there were still tears prickling at his eyes and he had to work not to let them fall.
“I got the feld dust you needed,” Lance muttered into Hunk’s shirt. He gestured in the vague direction of the window, identifiable by the cold wind entering through the open shutter. “On the desk.”
Hunk breathed out through his nose, his hand going momentarily still on Lance’s back. “Lance...”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, before Hunk could ask where he’d gotten it. “You needed it, and now you have it.”
“Which means you stole it.” Hunk sighed.
Lance said nothing.
“You know, it wouldn’t be half as bad if you’d just steal the things I need to undo your curse.”
Lance pulled back, pouting at him. “To try to undo my curse,” he corrected. “We don’t even know if any of your ideas would help.”
Hunk’s gaze slid to the open window. He wouldn’t say it, but Lance knew what he was thinking. Lance never should have gotten cursed in the first place. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. And however many times Lance told him he didn’t want Hunk or Pidge wasting time and money on futile cures, they never stopped spinning theories.
Thing was, Hunk only ever saw the worst parts of the curse. He didn’t see Lance at night, out in the city, where it was just him and the moon and the hush of a city sleeping.
“Speaking of your curse...”
Lance groaned, rolling over and swinging his aching legs off the bed. “No.”
“We have to talk about this sometime.”
Lance shot him a pointed look. “Do we? Do we really?” He stood, breath hissing out of him, and crossed to the tap in the corner, wetting a cloth and using it to wipe the sweat from his skin. He shrugged out of his shirt, and the weak sunlight caught on the patches of pale, unpigmented skin dotting the length of his right arm. He’d had them nearly as long as he could remember, a snowy constellation that bleached his brown skin to a pale pink. They trailed from the back of his hand up his arm and down one shoulder blade. He remembered a fuzzy day when he was much smaller and he tried to measure the constellations. They’d been smaller then, still growing, and he’d asked his mother what it meant.
A gift of the stars, she’d said once, telling you they’re watching.
A kiss of snow, she’d said another time, reminding you to have fun.
A story, she’d said the last time he asked, because yours is a story no one else can tell.
Tossing the wet rag back into the basin, Lance grabbed a towel and dried off, then pulled on a clean shirt. “So,” he said. “What horrors do you suppose Master Harwell has in store for us today?”
“None,” said Hunk. “She saw the summons, Lance. She knows we’re not coming in.”
Lance’s heart fluttered, and he tugged on a waistcoat, pointedly not looking in Hunk’s direction. “We haven’t accepted the summons. Technically.” Silence was his only answer, and the bottom dropped out of Lance’s stomach. “I’m not getting involved in a gods-damned prophecy, Hunk. My life is complicated enough with the whole cat thing.”
“And if we do this, you might not have to deal with the ‘cat thing’ anymore,” Hunk insisted. “They promised us a boon.”
Lance groaned. They’d had this argument before. Several times per day, every day since the summons had arrived. It was suitably dramatic for the royal diviners—The eclipse approaches! Answer the call to save your kingdom! Lance had no doubt the little scroll would have come packaged with a fanfare and streamers if anyone had figured out a way to do that.
Hunk was going to win this argument. Hunk knew it, and so did Lance. It wasn’t that Hunk was right, because there was no world where a life-or-death race to find the Fallen Star before the eclipse came and destroyed the city was worth the vague promise of the removal of what was, at best, a slight inconvenience.
It was that this was a summons from the Crown—the same Crown that had declared it justice that Lance spend each night as a cat, the same Crown that had arranged a new apprenticeship for him immediately after convicting him of theft and misuse of magical components.
The Crown was nothing if not fair (if only by its own definition), but it always got its way.
Sighing, Lance rolled his head back and scowled at the ceiling. “Fine. Is Pidge meeting us there?”
“Yep.” Hunk flung his arms around Lance’s shoulders, beaming. “Just you wait, Lance. Things are finally going to turn around for you.”
Yeah, Lance thought, letting Hunk drag him out of their loft. Somehow, I doubt it.
“You actually let someone stuff you into that monstrosity?” Lance asked, fighting down a grin at the sight of the mound of green fabric slumped against the wall outside the parlor in the Summer Palace. Pidge looked up at him, their eyes burning a silent warning.
“You’re going to the palace, milady,” they said, pitching their voice high in what Lance could only guess was a slightly unfair impression of their latest maid. Lance had never met the woman, as he’d never met the last three. Pidge had a way of scaring them off faster than a cat chasing rats. Pidge pushed off the wall, spreading their voluminous skirt wide. “You’ve got to look presentable, milady. Wouldn’t be half as bad without the crinoline and lace.”
Hunk gave them a sympathetic grimace as they tugged at their lacy neckline and swatted the skirt as it tried to trip them up. “Think you can get away with a change of clothes once we’re done with the stuffy palace business?” he asked.
“Oh, I have no doubt I can do that,” they said. “Do you know who’s in charge of this little mission?”
Lance furrowed his brow. “I was hoping it was you,” he admitted. “Being a noble and all.”
With a snort, they crossed to the door marked with a violet sash and rapped their knuckles against the door. “Yeah. Right.” They flashed him a grin. “You’re not getting off that easy, tomcat.”
A muffled voice called for them to enter, and Pidge pushed opened the door, leading Lance and Hunk through into a small, cozy parlor. The Summer Palace wasn’t really much of a palace at all—more of a receiving area for distinguished guests. The richest of the rich got to meet with the king and queen in the High Palace, whose foundations were carved into the stone of the jagged cliffs that sheltered Nocturne City.
Far from the gilded windows, crystal chandeliers, and marble floors of the High Palace, the Summer Palace was simply and sturdily built. The Crown had brought in only the finest craftsmen, of course, but they worked in oak and granite and brass, crafting a palace in miniature to sate the merchants, alchemists, and civilian knights whose lives brought them into the orbit of the royal family.
Pidge might have been permitted to visit the High Palace, had they kept different company. They were a minor noble—but they were a noble. Their father and brother were off supporting the war efforts as alchemists and tacticians, and their mother mingled with the wives of dukes and barons.
Pidge… not so much. People liked to blame their erratic behavior, peculiar hobbies, and uncouth habits on Lance and Hunk’s influence, but Lance happened to know that Pidge had started themself on that particular trajectory well before they snuck into an alchemy lesson with the Mule. (So Pidge called Master Els, both because he was stubborn to the point of vexation and because he was an ass, plain and simple.)
And, well. Where the Holts were concerned, the family’s younger child could hardly have been denied an audience in the High Palace, but in this—summoned along with two commoners for their combined skill in alchemy…
It was perhaps slightly insulting that Pidge was to be received here, no doubt by someone common-born, but it was hardly surprising.
For their part, Pidge seemed unimpressed with the subtle insult. They glided through the parlor door with as much poise as Lance had ever seen them employ, skirted the low sofa that took up half the plush rug, and dropped heavily into an armchair by the hearth, which blazed with flames tinged green with magic.
The man standing by the hearth, his broad shoulders exaggerated by the gleaming armor of the Royal Garrison, turned toward them, one dark eyebrow arched high. “Tell me how you really feel.”
Lance froze halfway to the sofa, his mind suddenly racing outward to the ink stain on the cuff of his shirt; to the stubborn tufts of hair sticking up at the back of his head, which he hadn’t bothered to tame this morning; to the pants that were just a bit too short after his last growth spurt and the waistcoat with its worn seams and tarnished buttons.
“You didn’t tell me Captain Shirogane was going to be here,” he hissed. Hunk just smiled, damn him.
Lance frantically reached up to smooth his hair, simultaneously tugging at his pants in an effort to make himself more presentable, but the flurry of activity only drew Shirogane’s gaze toward him. He was younger than Lance would have expected, though it had only been a year since he’d been raised to knighthood—one of the youngest to obtain the rank in recent years, and common-born to boot.
The streak of white through his black hair aged him, as did the scar across his face—both marks of the fight against enemy sorcerers that had cost him his sword arm. Lance had heard only fragments of the story. He knew Shirogane had been recalled from the war, but he hadn’t realized… he never would have thought that…
“Oh,” Pidge said, craning their head to peer at Lance and Hunk, a mischievous light in their eyes. “Right. Guys, this is Shiro. He’s an old friend of the family.”
“He’s—what?” Lance choked out.
Shiro gave Pidge a quelling look as they hooked their feet over the edge of the chair. They’d already kicked off their shoes, and their stockinged feet poked out from the up-turned cone of their skirts. It was a patently undignified display, but Shirogane—Shiro—only sighed and rested his hand on their short, untamed hair for a moment as he came to greet Lance and Hunk.
“Takashi Shirogane,” he said, extending his hand. Lance started to extend his right hand in response before realizing his mistake and correcting. “Call me Shiro.”
“Lance. And this is Hunk.” Lance paused. “How do you know Pidge?”
Shiro smiled. “Their father and brother were deployed with my company in the war. I heard a great many stories about the little devil waiting for them at home, and Lady Holt was kind enough to give me rooms when I returned to the city after my… injuries.”
“He’s moved out since then,” Pidge put in. “I don’t think he can handle my ingenuity.”
“I moved out so I could stay active in the Garrison,” he said. “Your brother desensitized me to the Holt ‘ingenuity.’”
Pidge snorted. “Matt? Please, he’s a baby troublemaker. He’s got nothing on me.”
Shiro rolled his eyes, but he was smiling a smile that put Lance’s nerves at ease. “Please,” he said, gesturing to the sofa. “Why don’t you take a seat? We have a lot to discuss, and time is running short.”
“Right.” Pidge flipped around, letting their feet drop to the ground. For just an instant as they turned toward Lance, he spotted a pair of trousers underneath all the petticoats—no doubt the dress would be gone the instant they left the palace, and Pidge would be back to the boyish look Lance was accustomed to. They wore skirts occasionally—simple ones that hung loose about their legs—but not after they’d been coerced into a getup like this one. “The eclipse is coming up soon.”
“Less than a week,” Shiro said, taking a seat in the other armchair. He rested his elbow on his knees, his hand reaching up to touch the sleeve covering his right arm, which ended a few inches below the elbow. Catching himself, he let his hand dropped. “I trust you’re all familiar with the prophecy?”
“Eh.” Lance wiggled his hand. “In the abstract?”
Hunk sighed the sort of sigh that said, Really, Lance? Now? “We know of it. Something about a disaster that’s going to befall the city during the eclipse, and… something about a fallen star that’ll save us? I know I heard the whole thing once, but it’s been a couple years. I don’t remember that much.”
“Same here,” said Pidge. “I’ve read a lot of people’s interpretations, but I’ve been having some trouble getting my hands on the prophecy itself.”
“That’s intentional,” Shiro said. “First of all, it was spoken in an ancient tongue, and translation is… difficult, at best. Add to that the risk of someone trying to pass themselves off as a fake Fallen One, and the royal advisers decided it was best if no one have access to the text of the prophecy except people working on sanctioned research.”
Lance raised a finger, halting Shiro’s lecture.
“You have a question?”
“Yeah.” Lance laced his fingers together, tapping his index fingers against his lips. “You said Fallen One. I thought it was Fallen Star.”
Shiro blew out a long breath. “That would be one of the ongoing debates. That particular line doesn’t specify who or what has fallen. Technically the fallen is the most accurate translation. The grammar indicates it’s speaking of a person, but the rest of the stanza makes reference to stars and the sky, which is where the original translation came from.”
“The original translation was generally more flowery than it should have been,” Pidge put in. “Everything I’ve read says that it interpreted lines instead of translating them directly, which makes that translation a poor one to use if you want to actually, you know, figure it out.”
“Exactly.” Shiro leaned back in his chair. “We’ve had scholars looking at this for a long time, but there’s still a lot they don’t have a solid answer for… And the eclipse is a week away. That’s where we come in.”
“Why us, though?” Hunk asked. “We haven’t studied this sort of thing.”
Shiro’s eyes met Hunk’s steadily before turning to Lance and then to Pidge. “No,” he said. “But you three have proven clever, resourceful, and a little bit… loose about the law. The people who know about the philosopher’s stone think quite highly of your initiative.”
Lance snorted. He didn’t have to ask why Shiro had been selected for this team. His skill and cunning had helped him rise through the ranks in the army, attaining positions rarely given to people of his age or social standing. And all that was before he’d stopped the witch Myzax, who had plagued the army for months, undefeated.
Honestly, it was kind of insulting that he’d been lumped in with the three of them, who as far as Lance could tell had been chosen because they were the right blend of sneaky, smart, and expendable.
“Isn’t there supposed to be one more person on this team?” Pidge asked. “I heard there were going to be five of us.”
“That’s right.” Shiro scratched his jaw, an odd expression crossing his face. “We’ll meet up with him later. He’s working on… other issues right now. He’s a sorcerer. Self-taught, but he has a knack for coming up with creative applications of his magical talents.”
Lance blinked twice, crossing his arms. “Uh-huh… So what exactly is our ragtag band of heroes supposed to do?”
Shiro spread his arms wide, shrugging. “We’re going to be pursuing what the researchers have identified as the most promising leads, and seeing if we can follow them to a satisfactory conclusion.”
Pidge nodded. “I mean, I guess that’s a plan. Can we at least hear the prophecy?”
Shiro nodded and began reciting, first in a language Lance didn’t recognize, full of long vowels and soft consonants, the words tumbling over each other like a brook over stones. “The original text,” Shiro explained. “I had to memorize it in case we run across someone who can provide a more accurate translation. This is the general consensus so far:
“The Fallen One arises:
A captive star yearning for the heavens from which it was stolen
Unwelcome protection from death preserves it
Protection, unasked, it gives at its own expense
With summer’s soul and winter’s mark, it waits:
A fugitive, a cast-off, a survivor.
The twilight between sun and moon.
Curses unravel and the soul is made free
When the night marries the day
A gift is given, affection won
When the moon embraces the sun
The watcher and the watched must be as one
When the night consumes the day, so shall life fail
Magic's net unraveled, the star in its pride cast down,
And the innocent pay in blood
One hope remains: the martyr, for hubris cursed
Life in payment, life in bounty
And twilight a new tale begins
To find she who stole the day.”
Cold dread seeped down Lance’s spine, gathering beneath his skin in pools of ice. Shiro had turned during his recitation to stare into the fire, and Lance took advantage of his distraction to glance frantically toward Hunk, who stared straight ahead but reached out one hand to grip Lance’s forearm. Across the room, Pidge was staring at him openly, their eyes narrowed and darting back and forth, as though reading some unseen text.
Lance licked his lips, trying not to think about the snowy patches across his arms and back or the way the third stanza prickled uncomfortably close to home.
“And… you don’t know who this Fallen One is?” he asked, his voice thin.
Shiro shook himself, then turned around. “Actually, that’s the first lead we’re going to be chasing down.”
“Oh?” Lance coughed, chasing away the squeak that made him sound ten years younger than he actually was. “I mean, oh? And who are we looking for?”
“Allura Leon. You might remember her as Allura of the Lions, Princess of Altea, from before the Galra Empire ousted the royal family.”
Lance blew out a shaky breath, trying to decide whether that was better or worse than the horrifying possibility his brain had immediately jumped to. “So, what, we’ve got a week to find a deposed princess who may or may not still be alive? That sounds doable.”
“Oh, she’s alive,” Shiro said. “In fact, she’s living outside a town not far from Nocturne City.”
Hunk’s eyes widened. “Seriously?”
Pidge nodded. “Altea was one of our strongest allies,” Pidge said. “I didn’t know who the princess was or where she ended up, but it’s pretty common knowledge among the nobility that we helped her escape the fall of her kingdom. Or at the very least, we gave her somewhere to hide.” They paused, smiling wryly. “Why do you think we’ve been at war with the Galra Empire for the last five years?”
Lance cursed. “Okay, so… where is this Fallen Star Princess?”
“Just outside Talero,” Shiro said. “Now, we’re on a tight schedule. Gather what you need for a night on the road and meet me at the western gate in an hour.”
Lance was freaking out, and not without reason. He’d never been to Talero, only heard of it vaguely as a small-ish town in the general vicinity of Nocturne City. There was nothing there worth visiting, and Lance was neither rich enough nor bored enough to go traveling the countryside.
So he hadn’t totally been thinking about travel time. Shiro had said it would be a long trek, but he’d also said Allura was close, so Lance had figured they’d get to this town late afternoon-ish, talk the princess into helping them decipher the prophecy, spend the night in an inn somewhere Lance could hide his transformation from Shiro and the princess, then go home in the morning.
Great, except for one problem: they hadn’t gotten to Talero in the afternoon. They hadn’t even gotten there in the early evening. They arrived just as the sun was beginning to bleed, the sky painted in warm hues as the heat seeped out of the air. Lance could feel the impending transformation in his bones as they rode into town, Shiro and Pidge astride horses borrowed from the Garrison, Hunk and Lance in the cart that carried their scant supplies.
Lance shivered, clutching at Hunk’s arm as they trundled over rough-cobbled streets. Where were they headed? An inn? Gods, Lance hoped so. It wouldn’t be long now before the transformation started, and he very much would not like an audience for it. Hunk was one thing, but the others? Lance didn’t even like Pidge seeing him in that state, and they’d been in on the secret from the start—one of only a half dozen or so people who knew about Lance’s curse.
It had to stay that way. Shiro was content to leave well enough alone only knowing part of the story, it seemed, but if he found out about this, then the questions would start, and once they started they would never end. And that wasn’t even considering the townsfolk still spotting the streets in the gathering doom.
To Lance’s horror, Shiro didn’t direct them toward an inn, but toward a small park on a hill near the edge of town. They left the horses and cart behind, and Shiro gestured for the others to follow. Lance climbed down from the cart and very nearly collapsed where he stood, a streak of pain shooting through him.
Hunk caught him, whispering an aborted question about how he was doing.
“I can’t—Hunk,” Lance wheezed. “Can you--?” He gestured weakly toward Shiro. Pidge stood near him, glancing over their shoulder at Lance, expression pained. Lance averted his gaze, looking instead to Hunk, who nodded earnestly.
“I’ll tell him you wanted to look into something and that you’ll meet up with us later.”
Good enough. Lance smiled weakly, then turned and staggered as quickly as he could toward the alleys between the surrounding buildings—houses, mostly, with a general store tucked in between two of the smaller ones.
He was just rounding a corner that would have put the street and all its prying eyes behind him when someone came barreling around the corner toward him. The other person jerked, body going rigid as Lance walked straight into him, his hunched posture winning him a face full of wool coat.
Yelping, Lance stumbled back, cringing as his bones shifted. The other person cursed, clutching his arm as though Lance had somehow wounded him.
“Watch where you’re going,” the other man growled. He was a work of contrasts—dark hair framing a pale face, bright blue eyes shadowed by dark bruises, rough clothes but a fine silver chain around his neck that disappeared beneath the collar of his shirt.
Lance wrinkled his nose. “Sorry, jeez.” He paused, thoughts slow to fall into line. “Wait… Who are you? And what were you doing hiding in an alley?”
The other man was already walking, hands digging into the pockets of his patched coat, and he gave no indication that he had heard Lance’s questions. For just a moment, Lance considered giving chase, demanding answers.
Then another, deeper wave of pain hit, bringing nausea with it, and Lance forgot all about rude strangers lurking around shady alleys. He sprinted around the corner, tucked himself into the shadow behind a trash bin, and let the transformation have its way.
He managed not to scream until he was mostly cat, by some miracle. That would be just what he needed—someone concerned bystander come charging in to help, only to find a grotesque monstrosity, half man, half cat. He’d be lucky if they didn’t bash his head in then and there out of mingled fear and superstition.
The transformation was more intense than it usually was, but it passed more quickly, like a torrent of water cascading through a shattered dam. It left him shaking, exhausted, and all he really wanted to do was curl up and take a nap. But he could smell other creatures in this alley—creatures that probably wouldn’t take kindly to a scrawny stranger encroaching on their territory.
He turned, ready to strike out in search of somewhere safer to nap, and caught a familiar scent. It took a moment to place it, as it always did when his cat nose was picking up on something he’d caught only weakly with his human nose.
The stranger. The man who had bumped into Lance on his way out of this very alley.
There was something unusual about his scent. Not exactly dangerous, but… powerful. He smelled like magic.
Lance’s fur stood on end as he followed the trail to the end of the alley and out into the open. It led across the street—and directly into the park where Shiro had taken the others.