"Hell no!"

Aaron took several quick steps back, putting distance between himself and Bella like she had just offered to do something deeply unreasonable. Which, in his opinion, she had.

Cut off his wings? His wings?

How was that even being presented as a solution? He would rather come up with the most creative, elaborate, completely made-up explanation in the history of mankind before he let anyone take a blade to those. His dream of actually flying one day was still very much alive and sitting at the top of his priority list. He wasn’t about to let it get cut off along with the wings.

Bella took his dramatic retreat in stride. She shrugged with the calm of someone who had expected that answer and already moved on internally.

"That was certainly an option, but I guess if you don’t want it then I do have another idea. You can control those wings and form them into the shape of a backpack, or if your control gets better, they can overlap around your back to be hidden under your clothes."

Aaron stopped retreating. He blinked at her. "Form of backpack...?"

"Indeed." She nodded once, straightforward and certain. "Primordial wings are kind of special. They aren’t really connected to your body with blood, tissues and stuff. They are formed of very hard crystals. Of course, they can still help you fly. The point is, they are highly malleable and can be molded into any shape as long as you have sufficient control over them. After all, did you see my wings even once?"

Aaron’s mind went back to his meeting with Bella. He turned the memory over carefully, taking in the details he remembered. Her peerless beauty. The unusual charm of that blindfold she had worn. The kind of effortless grace that made the air around her feel different. He combed through every part of it looking for wings.

There were none.

"No," he admitted without any pretense.

"That’s normal. My wings were actually my clothes. I rarely need my wings since I can fly using mana just fine, so I fashioned them into a set of clothes that are really comfortable and convenient. Cool, right?"

Aaron nodded. "That’s really cool, but let’s say in case you need to use your wings... it means..."

He didn’t finish the sentence.

He didn’t need to. The thought had already completed itself inside his head the moment the words left his mouth, and it brought several other thoughts along with it — uninvited, unannounced, and entirely unwilling to leave quietly.

Claire and Eva both turned to look at him with the same expression. It was the kind of look that said they knew exactly where his mind had gone and they were only mildly surprised, given recent events. The man had slept with Karen not that long ago. This was hardly out of character.

And truthfully, it wasn’t an unreasonable thing to think about. Any reasonably functional man hearing that a woman’s clothing was secretly her wings in disguise would arrive at the same logical destination.

If the wings were the clothes, and the wings came off...

The mental image nearly got away from him. He caught it just in time and buried it firmly.

He had to.

Bella was staring straight into his eyes, and the last thing he needed was for her to clock his expression and follow the trail of his thoughts to their conclusion. That particular outcome would not end well for him. He was fairly confident of that.

Bella smiled. It was a perfectly pleasant smile with absolutely nothing warm behind it. "I would suggest you not to worry about my dressing and lifestyle, Aaron."

Her eyes were very, very cold.

"Of course, empress." He coughed once, sharp and businesslike, and pivoted immediately. "I understand. Then can you please teach me how to control my wings?"

The subject change was not subtle. Nobody in the room pretended it was. But Bella seemed satisfied enough to let it go, which was the only outcome that mattered.

She sighed, a small exhale that carried the particular weight of someone wrapping up their time somewhere. "Fine, my time here is nearly finished anyway. I will be watching from her consciousness, of course. You better protect my vessel, little consort."

A faint warmth crept up Aaron’s cheek.

He didn’t hate the title. Consort wasn’t degrading by any measure. It was a recognized role, one with actual weight to it. If she had called him something like a toy or a pet he would have reacted very differently. But consort sat fine with him. He let it sit.

"Does that mean you won’t be able to talk to us again?" he asked.

Her lips curved into something that looked almost fond, in the distant way that ancient things sometimes looked at creatures far younger than themselves. "Of course not. I can take over this body anytime I wish to, though I wouldn’t. A god doesn’t intervene in the matters that concern mortals."

The sheer confidence packed into that single statement was remarkable. The narcissism alone could have filled a room. But standing there listening to it, none of the three of them — Aaron, Claire, or Eva — found it strange. It landed as simply true, the way obvious things do.

Aaron had consumed enough fiction back on Earth to recognize the pattern. Gods, primordials, celestials, beings of that tier — whatever name you gave them across whatever story or world they appeared in — they shared one unspoken rule. They did not personally step into the affairs of those beneath them. The very idea was beneath them. They might move pieces, work through proxies, use mortal hands to accomplish mortal ends. But to descend themselves? To get personally involved?

Blasphemous.

There were exceptions, of course. Every story had its villain who threw the rules out entirely. But for the rest, for those who held to something resembling dignity, the rule stood. And hearing Bella say it now, Aaron had the distinct feeling this world was no different. He found, somewhat to his own surprise, that he was glad for it. Things were already complicated enough.

But one part of what she said stayed with him, pulling at his attention like a loose thread.

"I noticed that you all refer to us as mortals," he said. "Does that mean you’re immortal?"

Bella paused. She looked at him for a moment with an expression that was entirely unreadable, and then she let out a short sigh. "All I will say is that I cannot die of old age. Time is not my enemy anymore."

The way she said it, combined with the way she clearly didn’t want to say more, told Aaron everything he needed to know about where that line of questioning would lead. He left it alone.

Instead he brought the conversation back around to the thing that actually needed handling right now.

His wings.

That was the immediate problem. Everything else — the bloodline, the aura, the existential weight of what he was becoming — all of that could be processed later. Right now, he couldn’t walk outside with a pair of dark wings folded against his back. He couldn’t meet people, couldn’t move through the world, couldn’t function in the life he was trying to hold onto. Getting them under control wasn’t optional.

Bella seemed to recognize the shift in his focus. She straightened slightly and moved into explanation without being prompted.

"To start, you first need to know how your wings are bonded to your body. You will not understand the formation of those and neither the material they are made out of, but that should be the least of your worries. Your wings are bonded to your body and nerves using a unique power that only those of our race possess... the aether pathways. Unlike the mana that can flow freely through your blood veins, the aether is limited in capacity and requires separate pathways. Of course, your body has already been altered to that need. That’s one reason why a lot of pain is felt when undergoing bloodline transfusion."

She paused and looked at him. Checking, not testing. Making sure the information was actually landing somewhere useful before she continued piling more on top of it.

Aaron was following. Barely, in some places, but following. He gave her a small nod.

She went on. "You do not need to learn how to manipulate aether, since that’s beyond your power currently, but you need to learn how to... uhh... excite it? Basically you need to achieve resonance with your aether energy using your mana, allowing you to give it some basic instructions. Those instructions will act as a nervous signal and help you control your wings. It sounds complicated, but I am sure you can figure it out easily. You have an abnormal talent in magic, after all."

Resonance. Use mana to reach the aether. Treat it like a signal rather than a fuel. Let it carry the instruction to the wings rather than trying to force them directly.

It did sound complicated. But the more he turned it over, the more it also sounded like something with a clear enough starting point. He had worked with mana long enough to have a feel for it, a sense of where it lived inside him and how it moved. If that was the bridge he needed, then he had something to work with.

He looked at Bella.

She was watching him with that calm, expectant expression — the look of someone who had explained their part and was now waiting to see what would be done with it.

Aaron straightened. There was nothing left to deliberate about.

"Let’s begin."