Wings! His wings were back, and so were his thick, glossy, beautiful feathers!

Diaval slid through the air, unbelievably happy to fly after the weighty clumsiness of manhood. The kingdom slid into a blur beneath him, because he was inspired to fly as fast as he could to make up for the unpleasantry of skin and hair and those clunky, idiotic boots. He wanted to taste the sky; he wanted to taste speed. He pushed his wings to their limits; everything was back as it should be, and he wanted to prove it.

Of course, while his speed did help greatly to assuage the feeling of his first shape shift, it also assured a hasty trip to his destination.

He reached the castle just before noon. It was much larger than he had expected, although it didn't look quite as large as Mistress's once-castle might have been before the time and weather sunk their teeth in. This castle was tall and strong, with sharp-cut stones and thick mortar and fluttering wall-banners and roof-standards. It was nearly, if not actually taller than it was wide, as long as one didn't count the sloping little buildings that trailed down the hillside towards the city.

The castle was also near to bursting. The streets and alleys were filled to the brim with people, colorfully dressed or thickly armored or some combination of the two. Heavily horsed knights wove their way through brightly decorated courtiers, shouting and ushering this way and that. Diaval had never seen so many humans in one place. Was this typical? Surely not. The raven dropped from the sky, coming to rest on a rooftop over one of the bustling streets. He had come here with a task.

Brown hair. Blue eyes. Large hands. Stefan. How was he supposed to find anyone based on that?

Brown hair. That was a start. And male; Mistress had said 'he,' hadn't she? She wanted a brown-haired man with blue eyes and large hands. In this crowd, that was both the easiest and most difficult thing to find.

There was a man with brown hair, and another one, and another, and another. That one and that one had blue eyes, and Diaval knew absolutely nothing about what made a big or small hand. All hands looked big to him, compared to the stick-like arms they were attached to. Why had Mistress given him such broad terms?

When looking failed, Diaval decided to look for the other trait Mistress had given. Stefan. Perhaps it would be easier to find the correct Stephan than it would be to find the correct brown-haired, blue-eyed, big-handed man. And so Diaval began to focus on what he heard instead of saw, which proved the better path: he caught the whispers almost instantaneously.

Stephan.

He didn't know where it had come from at first. Soon it had come again.

Stephan.

And again. Here, there, everywhere; the name Stefan lingered on hundreds of lips, hushed and curious and altogether too many to make out properly.

"Stephan." He managed to pick one voice out from the milling din of the crowd. She was young, with a stooped back and bushy brows, clad in a dark dress, a white apron and a white headwrap. She was on a corner, bent down to talk to the three children gathered around her.

Diaval flew closer and took up residence on the streetlamp just above to listen.

"His name is Stefan," she repeated, "and he killed a great beast to be where he is."

"How great a beast?" asked one of the wide-eyed children.

"Oh, a very great one indeed. With massive wings and horns, and––"

"Brunhilda!" Someone was coming out of an alley. Another woman in a dark dress and white apron, older than the stooped one, with a sculptured frown and a hand on her hip. "What are you doing, telling tales at this time of day? The feast will begin in an hour, and someone forgot to take down the tablecloths! We need every hand we can find!"

The stooped one, Brunhilda, straightened and adjusted her headwrap. "Sorry to leave you," she said to the disappointed children. "Clotheslines call, you know. It's no easy task, living in a castle."

The children were shooed away, and Diaval opened his mouth in consternation; she'd almost said it! He'd almost had what he needed! He couldn't just let this escape; the raven took to the air to follow the two women as they slipped into the alleyway, through the tightly-packed stone buildings and deeper into the citadel.

"You like gossip too much," said the elder. "Why do you care so?"

"Maybe you don't gossip enough. It's the king, Margaret. Surely you're curious?"

"Stefan will pay my coin. I'm not curious about anything else."

"How do you know he will, though?" Brunhilda pressed. "I heard he was a farmboy, and he turned into a warrior. That doesn't mean he will make a good king."

"You don't really believe the story, do you?" Margaret said dubiously. "I mean, to think that anyone could slay such a beast as that thing in the Moors."

"Of course I believe it," Brunhilda retorted. "He proved it. Brought the beast's wings back for all to see."

"Anyone can cut the wings off a bird and say it came from a she-witch, but that doesn't make it true."

"Don't think Moors-beast wings are quite the same, Hilga. Heard what the soldiers said about her? Beautiful enough to seduce. Horns like a crown. Wings as vast as a dragon's. You can't just find a bird with wings like that and pluck them off. Besides, they're to prove it at the ceremony."

"What do you mean?"

"Stefan's coronation." There was a pause as the two of them entered a small courtyard, where a gaggle of other white-aproned women were in the process of folding massive white cloths. Beyond, under a huge covered pavilion, other cloths billowed about on clotheslines to dry, tended to and fiddled with by more women. Diaval followed Brunhilda and Matilda as they wove their way through the maze of tablecloths; it was a somewhat difficult path, but he managed to flit from line-post to line-post as the two continued their conversation, determined to solve this mystery.

"What about Stefan's coronation?" Matilda asked.

"All the council heard King Henry's conditions: whoever brought proof of the witch's defeat would marry his daughter and become king. They're going to prove he did it."

"How?"

"The wings. Those are his proof. They'll be presented at the coronation, and after that is when he'll be crowned."

"Hmph." Matilda shook her head. "Winged beasts and dead kings. Does no good to think about it. We've got to get these tablecloths down before you speak any more of this, understood?"

"Oh Matilda, you could be a fine gossip if you just tried." With a sigh, the younger set about to the tablecloth nearest to her. "When do you think the ceremony will start?"

Matilda grunted. "If it hasn't already, I imagine it will be any minute."

Diaval heard no more after that. He leaped from the line-post and climbed back into the sky, suddenly desperate in his flight; they were talking about a Stefan, and he hoped to the stars that it was the Stefan he was looking for. This Stefan was meant to be king, then? Diaval knew that kings with castles tended to be found in the largest rooms. Kings liked to be surrounded by other people, especially when events like coronations were taking place. For the largest room, Diaval would seek the largest window.

The largest window wasn't at all hard to find. Tall, broad, with panes oddly flower-shaped, it stood in the center of the castle like a beacon. Unfortunately, there was no way to get through the window, since it didn't seem the sort to actually open up. It took some circling, but soon Diaval caught sight of a smaller, higher window, one that had been cracked to allow air in and out, and it was quite enough of a crack for the raven to slip through. He made his way down and entered the building, hoping to find what it was he had been ordered to look for.

What he found was people. Many, many people. They were crowded into the throne room, all shoulder-to-shoulder and mulling about until they ceased to be individuals and blended into a featureless sea of shapes and colors that the raven couldn't possibly hope to comb through. They were all facing forward, however, to look at the raised platform at the head of the room, and that was where Diaval looked, as well.

Atop the platform were two chairs, although they were the thickest and silliest looking chairs he had ever seen. The chairs were flanked by soldiers, and on the chairs were two expensively draped people: a woman, young, pale and possessed of long, honey-colored hair, and a man.

A man with brown hair.

Diaval managed to fly deeper, through the stone supports and pillars.

It was a man with brown hair and blue eyes.

Someone was calling out to the crowd and to the two people on the platform. A priest, it looked to be. Diaval strained to hear.

"… acquiesce to his last wish: to slay the she-demon responsible for his death!" The priest turned to the seated man. "Stefan."

Stefan.

The Stefan stood. "Your grace."

"You claim to have vanquished the beast."

"I did vanquish her."

"Do you bring proof?"

"I cut the wings from her back, and I bring them to you now."

Stefan waved, and a long crate was brought forward. Diaval cocked his head. It was so large… surely the horned she-demon was not quite that big.

His eyes narrowed. Horned she-demon…

The case was opened, and a large bundle brought out.

The Moors-beast…

The bundle was undone, the cloth pulled back, and the wings were displayed.

Cut the wings from her back…

Diaval's breath halted. The wings were massive. Brown, like an eagle.

Brown, like her hair.

He couldn't get a good glimpse, not from this angle, because the priest had moved forward and was bending over the wings. Someone else was called up to examine them, then another. The wings were bundled back up––no, he had to see! The raven fluttered on his perch, but they were already being stuffed back in the crate and carried away.

Stefan stood, arms wide as he faced the crown.

"Kneel," the priest commanded.

Stefan knelt. A pageboy darted forward, burdened by a rich red pillow and a glittering golden crown. The priest raised the headpiece and positioned it over Stefan's bowed head.

"I present to you, the first of his line, his Royal Highness, King Stefan."

The applause was meaningless noise in Diaval's ears. He fled the rafters, fled the room, fled the castle––he had to return to the once-castle. He had to tell Mistress… tell her what?

Stefan is king. Stefan killed a Moors-beast. Stafan cut off her wings.

The horns on her head. The points on her ears. The blood on her back.

He hardly remembered the flight, so lost was he in thought. He didn't remember the villages, didn't remember the farmlands, didn't remember the border; all the knew was that now it was nighttime and there was scrubland underneath him, and ahead of him was the once-castle, where Mistress would be.

He cawed loudly to announce himself. His first instinct was to go to the tower, where he had first laid eyes on her, but she wasn't there. She was in a courtyard, or perhaps it had once been the throne room; there were steps and a platform, and she stood in the middle, watching him as he descended.

The words of her spell slipped under the wind and into his bones, changing his shape before he had even landed. He hit the ground with his feet, kept moving and pitched forward; there was too much momentum to keep from tumbling into the dirt. She didn't offer to help him up or even turn to face him, remaining as stoic and stone-faced as ever. He couldn't help it; his eyes were drawn to her back, where the cloth that should have been yellow was stained black with clotted blood. It wasn't… it couldn't… he hadn't…

"Well?" she murmured.

Diaval blinked and rolled to his back, then to his knees, then got to his feet; he was in human-skin again, so he could speak.

"I went to the castle," he said, unsure if he wanted to get any closer to her. "I looked for a Stefan with brown hair and blue eyes. I think…" He didn't want to say it.

Her eyes narrowed. "You think?"

"… He's… king, Mistress."

Silence.

"There was a coronation. And there were… wings." He knew he was staring at the wounds on her back, but he couldn't tear his eyes away. "He gave them wings and they gave him a crown."

Silence. Long, terrible silence, and Diaval could only watch her. His instincts told him… no, surely not. Something else, anything else. He wanted a different explanation, even as his heart knew that there was none.

The air changed. It wasn't the wind. It wasn't the pressure. It wasn't the heat. Something snapped and stretched, crawling over the ground and pooling at the feet of his Mistress. Something thick and coarse. Something powerful.

Something dark.

"He did this to me…" It crawled up her robe, growing and thickening until it glowed, curling off her shoulders like green flames. "… so he could be king."

The world stopped. Her power swelled.

His Mistress screamed.

She screamed to the sky, to the stars, to the night, over the miles of distance to Stefan. The once-castle was suddenly on fire with light and heat and the sound of her agonizing cry until Diaval had to shield his eyes from his Mistress's fury. He couldn't see, he couldn't hear, but he understood. He understood what he had been hoping to be false.

The king had taken her wings.

As her scream rent the air, spiraling into the sky in a blazing pillar of green fire, Diaval understood with sudden, piercing gravity just what it was she had asked him to do when she had saved him.

I need you to be my wings.

Her scream died and her fire waned, and the night was again returned to darkness and dust. The world itself seemed to be ringing with the aftermath of her outburst, although for the life of him Diaval couldn't hear a single movement, anywhere.

But the fire did not disappear. Even as the light faded, he saw the fire fill her up, burning away that deadness in her eyes and replacing it with scorching rage, untapped and waiting to be unleashed. His Mistress looked back to the castle, eyes ablaze. Now her entire body was speaking, not in the language of humans or fairies, but in the rough, primal language of movements and lines that belonged to the beasts. Her emotions lay bare upon the curve of her shoulders, practically screaming. Fury, they said. Vast, unimaginable fury. Soon that fury became pain, betrayal, and then, finally, it morphed into a piercing, unbreakable determination.

Diaval observed her, curious and uncertain. "Now what, Mistress?"

Without answering, his Mistress spared one last terrible look at the castle, then turned and began to walk.

As always, I'd love to know what you think! Constructive criticism is always wanted!