Chapter 16
We were scheduled to leave early the next morning, and Inkiri started to fuss over me as soon as I’d woken up.
“I can carry you when you get tired,” he told me for the umpteenth time while I put on my boots in his room. He was already fully dressed and wearing his three swords.
I was busy making sure my laces were even and not too tight. Then I put another knot on top of the tie and tucked the ends into the boots in case we had to run.
“I’ll be fine. How long is this trip going to take, anyway? I’m not sure where we are, if I’m being honest with you.”
He clicked. “Three to four days, but we’ll take a break if you need it.”
“Jeez, I won’t need it, Ink. I’ll be fine. I’ve been walking more or less nonstop, you know?”
I’d had a car, or at least I’d stolen a car, early on, but with so many people gone, the sound of a car in the abandoned places had been noisy. And the monsters—the ones that would eat your face off—were often attracted to noise.
These days, most car batteries were dead, and I had no other option but walking. The commune had had four trucks and been working on getting a fifth running when I’d bolted. I’d be good walking though. Even if I didn’t want to go where we were going.
Inkiri nodded, but he didn’t seem convinced. “When we return, you can rest. We’ll have time for you to tell me what things please you.” He leaned in to lick my neck. “Both in the pillows and out of them.”
I blushed. “Closed windows while we’re in the tub is on the top of my list.”
Inkiri clicked. “Sweet thing, you need fresh air.”
I groaned. “Okay, I need fresh air. Which is why we’re going out for a hike. Let’s go.”
I stood and grabbed my backpack, then walked downstairs ahead of Inkiri.
I could do this. Just because that flat brown monster had been there that day two years ago didn’t mean it still was.
Just because something bad had happened at the Stone of Destiny once didn’t mean it would go the same way this time around.
The others were waiting, Nokim and Fellisse tugging their backpacks closed in the living room area. The glass doors were half barricaded by a metal and wood contraption Nokim had made, and we’d be leaving through the front door.
Vergis was leaning against the wall next to the windows, looking supremely bored. When he saw me, he quickly narrowed his eyes until he looked hostile.
Great. A hiking trip with someone who wanted me to fall and break my neck, or at least an ankle. That was going to be so much fun.
Inkiri came up behind me, clicking softly. “How about you let me carry your pack, just for a little while?”
I tightened both shoulder straps. “It’s my apocalypse backpack. It and I have been together longer than you and I, Ink, and you’re not getting between us now.” I was overacting, probably, by the way Vergis rolled his eyes.
“I think he’s funny,” Fellisse said as he walked up to Inkiri. “It’s good to have a funny mate.” He inclined his head until his horns were almost brushing Inkiri’s.
Inkiri sighed. “It’s been only two days since he took my barb and three since a monster almost ate him. You can see why I don’t want him to overexert himself.”
My jaw dropped, and I turned cabbage red. Vergis sniggered.
Lissir handed me a canteen, then took my hand. “Inkiri, your barb is not as terrifying or as impressive as something that wants to eat you. Because you know how to use it, I’d hope it helped to take Rory’s mind off the monster. Vergis, I believe everyone is ready now.”
I turned to Lissir. “Thanks.”
He walked outside with me, hand in hand. He was very touchy-feely, not that I minded.
He inclined his head to fix me with his orange gaze.
“Repay it by telling us to rest as soon as you need to. I understand how annoying care is when you’re not used to it, but it’s even more annoying for others if you do need it and don’t ask for it.
It makes a person feel useless when they’re not asked to care for their family. ”
I blinked up at the bright sky. “Deal. I’m actually pretty whiny, so you don’t need to worry about that. You know, the last thing I posted before the relationship update was how I found new shoes, and they gave me a blister.”
I stopped talking before I could tell Lissir, who was wearing an assortment of short daggers and two sickle-like swords on his belt, that I had nearly cried at the prospect of lancing said blister.
I’d been ridiculously proud of myself when I had, in fact, lanced it.
Taking aspirin for the pain after the lancing had been well deserved, in my book.
I wasn’t going to tell them about my blister experience. It might make Inkiri demand to check my feet for blisters every few hours. Although, come to think of it, maybe that would be nice, his careful fingers running over my sore feet—
“Good,” Lissir said, oblivious to where my mind had wandered off to.
The street outside the house was new and relatively tidy, but weeds had broken through all over the place, some growing pretty tall.
That wasn’t a surprise, given how rural everything here was.
But unlike in other places, there was no broken glass here, no upturned cars or improvised barricades.
It was just a quiet street in a quiet part of Ireland where no one but these monsters and a flock of magpies lived anymore.
We turned right and headed along the street running parallel to the road between fields and houses that Inkiri and I had taken when I’d first gotten here. A wild rabbit crossed our path, briefly looked up when Nokim clicked at it, then ran off.
A house to the left had a garden gnome collection around a small pond in the front yard, and lichen had settled on the glaze. Other than that, it looked so normal, almost as if the front door might open at any moment, the owner coming out to collect the mail.
Several magpies followed us, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Inkiri throwing them peanut treats.
That made me smile, and the old and almost forgotten urge to reach for my phone, snap a picture of him doing that, and post it along with a comment along the lines of, Look at my bf befriending birds!
The cutest!! was there. For the first time in a long time, things felt almost normal again.
Still, I didn’t take that picture. For one thing, I didn’t want anyone to see Inkiri and say mean stuff about him not being, well, human. For another, doing it would burst my bubble of just being in the moment, and I wasn’t sure I’d handle that well.
I knew what I felt, but I wasn’t ready to admit it to the rest of the world yet, to scream from the digital rooftops that I was in love with a bagu, and that I was on the road to figuring out what kind of magic I had done.
“Rory!” Nokim jogged up next to me, and I bumped into Lissir. “Oops, sorry.” Nokim grinned and clicked apologetically. “Here. I wanted to give this to you earlier, but I didn’t want to interrupt Inkiri doting on you.”
He held out a brooch on his open palm. When the light caught the small gemstones set into the design, I gaped.
They matched the friendship bracelet on my wrist—light and darker greens, but there were blue stones in there as well.
The shades reminded me of Inkiri, his skin, his indigo eyes, his ink-dark horns.
The whole thing was a little bigger than my palm, though it didn’t quite cover Nokim’s.
The design itself was a bird, feathers and beak and half-unfolded wings worked from metal and stuck together in such a fine design that I, with my untrained eye, only saw the beautiful whole, without seams or imperfections.
For eyes, the bird had one green stone and one blue one.
Its tail feathers were long enough to almost form a circle with its wings.
“This—Nokim, this is amazing.” I gaped at the pretty design. “You can’t give this to me.”
His face fell. “You do not like it? I apologize. I can make you something nicer when we return, of course, and—”
“No! I do like it. But…you can’t give me something so beautiful, is all. It’s too much.”
Vergis turned around. “If you like that brooch, take it. It’s extremely rude in bagua culture to refuse a gift given without the expectation of reciprocity. It devalues the standing and skill of the giver.”
“Oh.” I looked at Nokim. “I definitely don’t mean that.
Uh, thank you. This is probably one of the nicest things anyone has ever given me.
” I considered the damn gaming console I’d almost brought up, something my parents had bought me when they’d told me they were getting divorced.
“Scratch that. It is the nicest thing anyone ever got me. Would you help me with it?”
Vergis stopped and turned fully. “You have to be fucking kidding. How can a single human twink step in it every other time he opens his fucking mouth? If you truly intend to take Inkiri as your mate, you will let him put jewelry on you.”
My cheeks heated. “Well, how am I supposed to know that?”
Vergis rolled his eyes. “I believe by using your head for thinking.”
Inkiri walked up to Nokim and carefully took the brooch, then bent down to me.
He pulled a thin scarf from around his waist and wound it around my neck twice.
It was a pale green and super soft. It also looked very clean, almost new.
Seeing as how Inkiri only wore black, the lot of them had to have plotted this together, which was so sappy. I loved it.
Inkiri pinned the scarf loosely with the brooch, then bent to lick my neck while Nokim grinned happily.
“There, sweet thing. All done.”
I reached up to feel the brooch, hating that we were out in the open and not near a mirror. “Thanks. Thanks for the scarf too.”
Inkiri nodded.
Nokim was bouncing on his toes again. “This bird is half the human phoenix, the mythical firebird of this world, and half the kantik bird of Aer. Your red hair made me think of it, Rory.”
Inkiri clicked and ran his thumb over the pulse point in my neck. “A kantik is said to fly and sing when mates find one another and begin their shared happiness. Such a thoughtful gift.”
Vergis groaned. “Not thoughtful enough that we should stop for a picnic to admire it after we literally just left.”
We walked on after that, Inkiri next to me, clicking quietly, his hand around my wrist. Walking had never been this easy, and my feet had never felt this light.