Nocturna (A Forgery of Magic #1)(79)

After he watered the horses one more time, he stood before Finn and asked her to get started, his stance stiff and uncomfortable as he waited for her to get to work.

“I have to whiten your hair,” Finn said, tilting her chin up to stare at his head. He was so tall that it was inconvenient.

She raised an eyebrow when he didn’t move. “Should I levitate up to your head, then?”

“Oh, sorry,” he said, sheepish. He bent at the waist in an awkward half bow, his forehead hovering just before hers. The swaying sugarcane stalks made the air sound restless, buzzing with energy.

Finn reached up and passed her hands through his hair, the pads of her fingers making paths through his black curls. It was a shame to make them look limp with age when they were so full of life, springing against her palm at the lightest touch. She worked her way from the front to the back, finishing with her thumb brushing the line at the nape of his neck where thick locks met soft skin. He’d been still at first, but as her hands moved, his body had relaxed, almost leaning into her touch. Was he enjoying this? Her hands paused. Was she?

Finn shook that thought away and flexed her fingers before laying her hands on his cheeks. His eyes flickered down then, showing the dark sweep of his lashes. He looked away as if he wasn’t sure of where he was allowed to look at this moment. But then he gave up and his gaze drifted up to claim hers.

“Close your maldito eyes,” Finn snapped.

“I didn’t know if I should or shouldn’t,” he sputtered. “You didn’t tell me which would be helpful—”

“How would having your giant eyes on me be helpful?”

Alfie glared at her and she could feel him biting the inside of his cheek; the sudden dip of movement against her palm was strangely distracting.

“Well?” Finn said.

After a long, angry sigh through his nose, Alfie closed his eyes. It was only when she felt the heat draining from her face that she realized she’d been blushing.

No, not blushing, her mind argued. Flushed. With annoyance. Anger.

Satisfied with that correction, Finn set to work, quickly loosening the skin of his face and molding wrinkles. She lost herself in the practice of transformation, in how much she missed doing this to her own face. Happy with her work, she lowered her hands. “Your face is done.”

Alfie stood upright and rubbed at his lower back; the gesture made him look older still. Finn quickly aged his hands before pulling her small mirror out of her bag and holding it in front of his new face.

“Wow. Increíble.” He pinched and tugged the loosened skin. Finn felt a plume of pride catch in her chest. The prince was well-versed in desk magic, so he must’ve at least heard of spellwork that could change one’s appearance, but none of that ever worked as well as her propio did.

“What is your propio’s limit?”

Finn raised an eyebrow. “Why do you want to know?”

His eyes still clung to the mirror, so distracted that his words flew past his lips too quick for him to catch them. “Because the way you change people is so flawless that I wonder what you can’t do.”

Thrown off by the compliment, Finn fell silent.

The prince looked at her then, his newly aged face looking suddenly uncomfortable. “Though that’s a bit of a personal question, I understand. You don’t have to answer,” he said. “If you don’t want.”

She shrugged at that, smoothing her face into nonchalance. It wasn’t as if the prince could hold the information against her. “When I change myself or someone else, it’s like they’re made out of clay, and I only have so much clay to use. So if you asked me to make you five feet tall, I couldn’t do it. There’s too much clay, you’d come out too wide. Likewise, if a child asked me to make them tall as you, it wouldn’t be possible either. I’d have to stretch them too much, they’d look like a straw, the sculpture would collapse. So I have to work within the limitations of each body I change.”

“Fascinating,” he said, and Finn rolled her eyes. He sounded like he longed to write what she’d said down for further study. Though he always seemed to sound like that.

“Remember,” she said as she put the mirror away. “Like I told Bathtub Boy, my magic will stick to you effortlessly for a few hours, but eventually it’ll be up to you to keep the disguise up. That’s how it works when I change other people. I lay down the framework and—”

“And I power the framework with my magic,” Alfie said. “I understand.”

“If you exhaust yourself, the disguise will crumble. That’s the other restriction. So be careful.”

Alfie nodded, his hands kneading his newly wrinkled face with a sense of wonder tinged with fear.

He clearly missed his own face, and Finn wondered what that would feel like. The feeling of wanting to be the same. Of looking at your own face and not recoiling. When she surfaced from that thought, she found the prince’s eyes roving over her face, his gaze tinged with concern. Though his gold eyes were paired with a new, older face, they still held the quality of seeing exactly what she was thinking, no matter how she hid it.

“What?” she snapped. “What is it?”

He started at her brusque tone before pointing at her nose. “You’ve just got some dirt on your face.”

Finn blinked. Her face warm, she scrubbed at her nose with the back of her hand.