Perigee - Chapter 15: Chapter 15

It was getting late.
He'd finished his last song with James and escaped inside to return his cello to its case, give his hands a rest for the night. The halls were empty and the hotel hollowed of its guests—most of which were still outside, drinking and dancing under spells of cloudless moonlight.
The reception usually lasted until two in the morning, but it was nearing midnight and Jaylin still hadn't surfaced. Paranoia—maybe that was all it was, but Quentin felt a tightness in his chest. It was harrowing, not being able to sense him.
He could feel them coming before they ever cut into his line of sight. Izzy, Bailey, Elizaveta, each of his sentinels and patrols and the omegas that played no part in his bidding. But he couldn't feel Jaylin anymore, and that terrified him. He was blind to something so important. It was a helpless feeling.
That was why he'd carried his things back to his room—for the excuse to drift a few doors down. To make sure everything was alright. Even if Jaylin was only asleep—if that meant he'd miss the ceremony or the entire reception, Quentin didn't care. He was emptied of the boy's heartbeat and it wasn't a feeling he favored.
For some reason, he wasn't prepared for the sight of Jaylin when he walked in. The slender curve of his spine, the relaxed shoulders, squared in a white dress-shirt and suspenders. He was fussing with the bow around his neck, trying to tie it in the large mirror above the dressers.
When he saw Quentin, he dropped his hands. "I slept in."
Quentin grinned. He couldn't not grin. Maybe it was the pillow lines on his face, or the canted upset to his hair, or just the way he'd said it, but Quentin couldn't stop grinning.
"What?" Jaylin asked with humored breath. "We stayed up so late."
"Nothing," Quentin said. "I told Izzy to come get you an hour ago. They'll be starting the ceremony soon."
"I kind of remember her stopping by." Jaylin turned and pulled himself up to sit on the edge of the dresser. He looked down as he worked with his tie. "But I don't remember her waking me up. She should have dragged me out of bed, I had no idea what time the ceremony was."
"She tried. You told her 'go away, I know what time the ceremony is' and fell back to sleep."
Jaylin looked to him and laughed. There was that grin, wrinkling his nose.
It was that grin that drew Quentin inside, reluctant to let the door shut behind him. He lingered by it, watching from a secure distance as Jaylin tried to tie his bow like the strings of a shoelace.
"You aren't wrapping a present," Quentin told him.
Jaylin sighed and knocked his heels against the dresser, letting the silk tie fall from his hands. "Matt didn't show me how, he just... fucked around with it until it looked okay." Then his eyes were on Quentin. Eyes like shallow water.
Quentin exhaled through his nose and stepped closer, though he begged himself not to. Every time he neared Jaylin, it became a moth-to-flame situation and he had never wanted to fly into fire so badly. But he dared to move closer, taking the tie in his hands, situating it beneath the collar of Jaylin's shirt. And there he was again, trapped between his knees. Gentle breath on his fingers. Standing at the fire's edge.
He formed the first loop with the silk and then his fingers failed him.
It was the pulse at the hollow of his throat. He could see it flutter—just slightly, but it was there. It beat too quickly, and he found himself drawing the tie away altogether, touching the place at the base of his neck where his pulse shown through his skin.
Jaylin's heart was a different kind of air. He could feel the heartbeats from all of them—he knew Bailey's beat slow and hard, he knew Felix had an unnatural murmur—that Izzy's thumped a mile a minute under pressure, and Elizaveta's hardly changed pace at all. But for some reason, Jaylin's heart sounded so different from the others. Like a chord, played again and again and again. He wished he could still feel it in him the way he did before. At least he could still hear it. He could touch it—hold it beneath his fingers.
So quietly, he heard Jayin say, "I miss yours too."
Quentin didn't take his eyes from the pulse. He lifted his fingers, ran them up the side of Jaylin's throat, pressing his thumb to his jaw—the spot that curved in just a bit. Jaylin let his head tilt to his will, baring the broad side of his neck. It wasn't without a rough exhale that Quentin leaned in, lips feather-light on his skin until he found that deep, steady thump of his heartbeat. Then he pressed his mouth to the spot.
He heard the sharp intake of breath come from Jaylin, and Quentin held him by the back of the neck, moved against the skin as he kissed it again. Then a third kiss, higher. A fourth on his jaw. Then his lips.
He felt those fingers in his hair and Quentin kissed him deeper, taking Jaylin by the waist, pulling him closer to the edge, knocking something from the dresser. Jaylin released a short huff against his mouth—then his fingers were moving down the sides of Quentin's neck, fisting onto the collar of his shirt. And Quentin kissed him harder—too roughly, knocking his head against the mirror behind him.
He felt Jaylin's hands move again, down to his chest, undoing each button on his shirt with a clumsy haste, and Quentin couldn't stop himself from tasting that pulse again. His lips fell eagerly to the other side of Jaylin's neck, keen on how his heart lurched, how it beat so hard beneath his tongue. Inclined to the sound he made—a soft, but unmistakable crack through his voice. A moan, stifled to nothing but passing air. Then Jaylin had him by the front of his slacks, pressing the button through—working the fly down and—
Quentin reared back, finding that look of surprise on Jaylin's face—not surprise that it had happened, but surprise that it'd stopped. He drew Jaylin's hands away from his zipper. "Someone's coming."
And then the door hurled open.
"Ay, they've started crowning." Felix slouched there, leaning on the handle—his hair mussed to one side. Lipstick smudged down the side of his neck. His shirt was half-spilled from his slacks and his jacket had gone missing at some point or another.
Quentin had seen him slip away with a woman from Imani's pack, Irina. He knew her only because she was one of Imani's proud sentinels—but Irina had been a twice-returning candidate for Felix's affections. She'd left him a mangled, sex-drunk idiot last year, too.
The small bites printed his neck must have been fresh on his mind because Felix was slow to observed them with those sharp green eyes. It was obvious what he'd stumbled into; Jaylin's face was two shades too pink, Quentin's shirt undone at the buttons, un-tucked from his pants—which fell low on his waist, due to the fly still part-way open. Finally, it clicked.
Felix groaned, "How many times in my life am I going to have to suffer the sight of yer happy trail?"
Quentin turned from Felix, pulling the zipper up, thumbing the button back through. "We're coming."
"Should really do that after the ceremony," Felix said, and Quentin clutched the nearest thing he could find—a magazine that had been supplied on the dresser—and chucked it toward the door. Felix retreated behind it and the magazine smacked against the wood with a thud.
Jaylin was laughing, hiding his grin in his arm while he reached out to fix the buttons on Quentin's shirt. "You can't do that to me."
"I'm sorry," Quentin said, his breath still somewhere else.
"No, I just—you can't do that and expect me not to...." Jaylin paused once the buttons were fixed, his hand pressing to Quentin's chest, sliding slow down the fabric. Chills. Even without direct contact, his touch left chills. "Was that perigee?" he asked.
"No," Quentin told him. "I think that was just you."
Then Jaylin looked up to him that way, with those eyes. The tint of flush on his face, that pulse still a distant flutter between his collarbones. Quentin drew in a breath and stepped back, tucking his shirt back into his slacks. "Cora's going to start crowning soon," he said. Then he held out a hand. "I want to know if you'll be my sentinel one day."
Jaylin reached for it with a smile and slid down from the dresser. "And if I'm not?"
Quentin didn't let go of his hand; they slipped out of the room and into the hall and he found his place between Jaylin's fingers. "Then you'll just be my lichund."
The courtyard hadn't changed much in the time he'd been gone. The two violinists from his group—Lacy and Charlie—played their set while they balanced on the edge of the fountain. Sometimes Lacy danced around, spinning on her toes but never losing her balance.
"Do you play together often?" Jaylin asked over the music. They'd found a seat outside of the dance circle and paused to watch the duet. "Are you part of an orchestra?"
"Sometimes," Quentin told him. Through the crowd, he could see Felix had captured another courting rose. It poked out from his breast pocket. "Sometimes I'll fly out when a group is short a cello. Most of my contacts are in Europe, though. My group here—we only play for the exposition."
"I thought maybe that was why you came here," Jaylin said. "To play your music, make your money. What exactly is it you do?"
"I'll show you," Quentin told him. "Tomorrow. I promise."
"But tomorrow's perigee," Jaylin said. His eyes flared with the glow of nearby fairy lights. "Isn't that important?"
Quentin opened his mouth to speak, but the music came to an abrupt spot and quiet whispers washed over the crowd.
He caught sight of Lacy as she was leaping down from the fountain, and it wasn't until the bodies had started to drift back and make space that Quentin recognized Qamar. He stood and Jaylin rose beside him, seeking her beyond the crowd—her soft, clay face looking over her wolves, long black hair plated back in a braid. She floated in an onyx dress that draped to the bricks beneath her—swathed in a black mesh that sheered her legs like smoke. Qamar always dressed the same: like a phantom bride, risen from the dead.
Parting the crowd from her right was Devi—a small, brittle old woman on her arm. Cora looked nothing of a wolf or a witch, or the creature she was, combined from both. She was too docile. A soft old woman with a toothless smile. Cora was possibly the most powerful witch on the West side of the states, and she was nearly glass.
"I ask for your attention now," Qamar said. Quentin could feel Jaylin tense beside him. It was natural; Qamar made them all uneasy. Unlike Ziya, who even Quentin himself had felt false affections for, Qamar had the opposite effect. He—and every other wolf in this place—feared her.
"Tonight on the eve of perigee, we crown our new arrivals. Our numbers are thin this year; we have only thirty new wolves, from five different packs. I ask that the wolves who've joined us within the last twelve months step forward." Her dark eyes grazed them all—not with malice, but with nothing, the way Qamar always looked at the world. "I look forward to seeing your potential."
Jaylin glanced to Quentin, hesitation in his stance. Quentin gave him gentle push on the back. "It'll be fine," he said. "Go ahead." And reluctantly, Jaylin cut his way through the circle—all the way to the front, where the newest wolves waited restlessly to be brought forward.
"Good, you found him," Tisper groused as she trotted up to his right. She wore a jacket over her dress that he assumed was Alex had given her, as he joined Tisper's side without one. Matt and Sadie took his left and they watched as one after one, wolves were brought forward and a flower crown was placed on their heads.
There were two different crowns: daisy and jasmine for the omegas, roses for the betas. In an earlier time, they held a symbolism—but it was only tradition now.
Apart from Jaylin, his pack had four other new wolves. He hadn't met them yet, but he would in time. This was his opportunity to get a look at their faces.
The first wolf pulled from the crowd was a young girl. She stood before Qamar, hands folded and bouncing on her toes, giddy with excitement. She couldn't be more than fourteen years old. But she was his. Even her, he could sense distinctly.
"From the North West territories..." Cora said, her voice rattling—so quietly, it hardly reached over the crowd. Cora looked to the crowns held out by the two young witches before her and selected a wreathe made of roses. She placed it on the the girl's cropped brown hair, and she stepped back into the crowd with a prideful grin on her face.
A new wolf was brought forth. A boy about eighteen—dark and strong-jawed. "From the Appalachia territories..." Cora's old voice brayed. She reached for a daisy crown this time, and the boy had to lower himself so she could place it on his head. A series of teasing hoots and guffaws erupted when he stepped back into the crowd and he was swallowed into hugs and hard pats on the back. The wolves from Nicon's pack.
Six more wolves were brought forward and crowned. Two with crowns of roses, four with daisies. Then, finally, Jaylin was leashed forward by the young witches. He stood before them all, the lights from the fountain casting a burnished moonstone blue in his eyes. He looked like he didn't know quite what to do with himself, and again, Quentin couldn't help but grin at the grace of him.
"From the North West territories..." Cora said, turning to the crowns held out before her. She looked them over, first the daisy crown, then the rose. But she denied them both, and instead, Cora raised her hand and pointing to the table where stacks of the hand-crafted crowns lay in abundance. The witches looked to one another, befuddled.
It was Devi who turned to the table and selected a crown from its supply. She passed it on to Cora, and Jaylin bowed his head as she placed the halo on top.
When he straightened out again and touched the crown on his head, there was no laughter, no cheers or guffaws. The crowd was mum, save for soft whispers and the shuffle of feet. Because the crown Jaylin wore wasn't made of roses or daisies. It was a crown weaved of lavender and baby's breath, and tiny blue cornflower buds.
"What's going on?" He felt Tisper tug at his arm, but Quentin was stuck there like the rest of them. Trying to comprehend how such a thing was possible. How after ten years, and with no change in the union, he was given this crown.
"What's that mean?" Matt asked.
Even Alex didn't understand. "I've never seen that one handed out. What is it?"
Quentin studied the lavender buds Jaylin wore, the soft cotton of the baby's breath, nesting in his hair. He remembered receiving that crown. The scent of the lavender, the love for a smell that never left him.
Matt gave him a nudge. "What was he just crowned, Bronx?"
"Omega?" asked Sadie.
"No," Quentin told them, though he couldn't feel himself speak it. "Alpha."