It was only once he withdrew that Cera realized she'd been cuddled up against him. She watched, utterly perplexed, as he climbed from the bed they'd been sharing.
With a quick glance around, she saw that the canopy had been drawn down. The fabric was dark and heavy and blocked out much of the light, yet not nearly enough. She could see everything around her clearly, right down to the patterns embroidered into the dark bedding.
It was not her bed, she realized. Or at least, not the bed she'd fallen into the night before. It was larger and crafted of dark, lacquered wood. The grand headboard consisted of a hundred root-like knots of wood. As she stared at them, they seemed to move and slip beneath one another like black snakes.
The headboard stilled as Isael returned, the bed dipping with his weight. Cera knew she'd seen him only seconds earlier, and yet when she looked his way, it was as if she were seeing him again for the first time.
He looked younger than she remembered, and less austere. Perhaps that had something to do with his hair, which was rather unkempt. His silver locks had been pulled back into an untidy knot, with various loose strands coming down to frame his face. His crystal eyes were shadowed with fatigue, but something about him was bright and very much alert.
There was something above him, or perhaps all around him. It was a sort of glow that disappeared whenever she tried to focus on it. She didn't have long to puzzle over it. As soon as he was back at her side, he was offering her a cup filled to the brim with cool water.
Cera sucked it down, taking it in with great gulps. It was the best water she'd ever tasted, somehow sweet, yet also flavorless.
"I should not have left you last night," he said, the words flowing from his lips. "I didn't realize how arduous the ritual would be. I was of the understanding that you would fall asleep as one thing, and then wake as another. I suppose you did, though the process was hardly smooth."
Alternately captivated by his strange aura and his beauty, which was curiously accentuated by his state of dishevelment, Cera listened but didn't really take in what he was saying.
After a brief pause, he asked, "How are you feeling?"
It felt like an impossibly complicated question. After a few, long seconds of consideration, she said, "Not quite myself."
Her answer prompted another smile from him, and with it, the aura around him swelled both in size and brightness.
"Would you like to see yourself?"
It was an odd question, delivered with an enthusiasm that she might have described as boyish, had it not come from the elven lord. She looked him over again, needing to make certain that he was indeed the man she'd met the night before. It was then that she noticed the silver mirror that he held in his hand.
She reached for it without asking, letting her empty cup fall into her lap. Isael allowed her to take it, watching her closely as she drew it up to her face.
Cera took one look at herself and promptly dropped the mirror, as if the handle had burned her.
Isael remained quiet, waiting patiently for her to work up the nerve to look at herself once more. When she finally lifted the mirror again, her hand was trembling.
With some relief, she realized that she did still look like herself. Nothing about the basic layout of her face had changed, except that her cheeks did not look quite so full and rounded. The sides of her face were flatter, slanted, even. She supposed it made her look more mature, and more than a bit elven.
The most striking change was that of her eyes. They were no longer the cloudy gray that had marked her as a catalyst from birth. Now they were a rich blue, like a deeper version of Isael's. Her hair, too, had taken on his same rich silver coloring, though she'd still retained her loose, wavy curls.
"I look like you," she murmured.
"You look like an Ishvalindic woman," he corrected. "I still can't believe it. I knew that you would change, but not likethis."
Cera's eyes widened as she noticed her ears for the first time. She traced a finger over the rim of one ear, following its new arch and landing on the pointed tip.
“I’m an elf," she breathed. "What sort of magic is this?"
Isael's fine brows drew together. "I cannot say what sort of magic it is, except that it is the ritual of the catalyst."
"The what?"
Slowly, he said, "The catalyst drinks the blood of her mate and then takes his form. It is how she is able to bear him children."
Cera drew in a breath as everything fell into place. She had always wondered how a catalyst could bear the child of a centaur, or how one's belly could expand to accommodate the massive broods of a nightflier coven. She'd taken it for granted that nature either found a way, or that the unfortunate women simply died in the process of bearing such inhuman creatures.
Now, it made sense to her. Catalysts did not inexplicably bear children of their sire's race. They took on the race of their mate, thus granting them the ability to bear his children.
"I assumed that you knew," Isael said. "It's something so fundamental to your being. It was never explained to you?"
Cera ran her fingers through her hair, taking a few more seconds to gather her thoughts. "Perhaps they didn't know. My father and his scholars. We're born to human women, and we can bear human children."