Chapter Two
Lingering at the edge of the courtyard, Nick nursed a second glass of too-sweet wine.
According to a passing server, it was past midnight.
A too-large, too-bright, pale blue moon shone down on a thinning crowd, but the party endured.
Did harvest parties rage all night? Tired, Nick fantasised about sneaking off, finding his way back to his room, and lying down.
Unfortunately, in order to keep sleep within the realms of possibility, he would have to walk Trevor, Laurence and Connor to their respective rooms and then go to his own.
Otherwise, he’d just pace and worry. Not that he wouldn’t do that anyway.
The rooms all had beautiful verandas with ocean views.
Fresh salty air, a cool breeze…multiple access points.
“Vi’s wine is famed for its taste,” a voice at Nick’s side remarked. “But it does not seem to please you.”
The black-tailed man from earlier was there. He stood tall, head cocked to the side as he looked over Nick, that curious gleam back in his eyes. His gloved hands were loose at his sides, and his tail was wrapped around his leg, hiding it from plain view.
“I don’t have a sweet tooth,” Nick said. He looked on either side of the man, but his aggressive partner wasn’t anywhere he could spot. “You should move here,” he said.
The man stared at Nick. “Excuse me?”
“You won’t get smacked for swinging your tail around here.” Nick had no authority on the subject, but what was right was right.
Discomfort filled the man’s expression, and Nick looked away, not adding to it with the pressure of his stare.
Nick moved his gaze to the party. The dancers that just wouldn’t quit—and Nick was beginning to suspect Laurence would stay on the dancefloor among them until someone dragged him to bed.
Nick had a sneaking suspicion that was going to be his role for the night.
Trevor was comfortably settled at a table with Sam’s family, and Nick had counted a good dozen yawns out of him in the last ten minutes.
Connor was absent, consoling Adonis in the bay.
“My tail can cut,” the man finally said, a plain avoidance of the topic. He followed Nick’s gaze to Laurence, but his blue eyes focused on Jasper, whose tail swung through the air without causing harm. His attention returned quickly to Nick.
“I am Kit,” he said.
“You’re named after your species?”
Kit nodded. “It was my parents’ nickname for me as a child, and it stuck.” He caught the attention of a server who approached them, and he indicated Nick’s drink. “May I?” he asked.
Nick nodded, curious. He studied Kit’s profile as he took Nick’s wine glass.
He had tidy, fine features. A straight nose, soft and full lips, monolids and dark lashes.
He was almost feminine but for the strong cut of his jaw and chin.
Kit studied the glasses on the server’s tray before plucking up two with a clear liquid. “You may like this one.”
Nick’s fingers brushed against the leather of Kit’s gloves as he accepted the drink, the texture soft as butter. A faint aroma of beeswax clung to Nick’s fingertips as he raised the glass to his mouth.
There was a bitter, nutty note to the drink. And it was heavy too. Nick knew at once that Laurence and his sweet tooth would hate it. His enjoyment clearly showed on his face because a small, pleased smile twitched at the corner of Kit’s lips. “Was I right?”
“Yes.”
“It’s called Lua. It’s pressed from bitter, immature grapes,” Kit explained.
“Two decades ago, Vi’s father specially picked out the sourest grapes from his fields—the bitterest ones that would be thrown away—and pressed them into wine.
He offered the bottles to a kit tithe collector, who returned to Aridia and handed over the wine to the nobles.
” Kit smiled as though recalling a fond memory.
“They were furious. They wouldn’t touch a single bottle, but kits adored the wine.
It’s a rite of passage now to sneak into the grape fields and steal the bitterest grapes to make more of it. ”
Nick found himself grinning. “Your rite of passage is to steal bitter, unwanted grapes to make bitter, unwanted wine?”
“Indeed.”
“And did you steal grapes?”
“Don’t tell anyone”—Kit leaned in, a conspiratorial note in his voice, a pleasant ochre musk on his skin—“but I picked enough to make three whole bottles. One was so bitter a noble wretched after sipping it.”
Nick laughed, and as his amusement faded, he realised something. “Wait, Aridia nobles aren’t kits?”
The playfulness seemed to leach out of Kit. Darkness seeped into the edges of him, replacing joy. “There are no kit nobles.” There was no friendliness now when he regarded Nick, his eyes a chilled blue.
A year ago, Nick would have reacted poorly to the sudden unfriendliness.
But he’d learned the hard way with Connor that unfriendliness didn’t necessarily mean badness.
In his step-brother it had meant abuse and neglect.
“I didn’t ask that as some sort of dig,” Nick said, guessing at what had upset the man. “I just don’t know.”
Kit tipped his head to the side, which Nick took as a subtle sign of forgiveness for the unintended social faux pas. “Students do have the reputation of being unknowledgeable beyond their area of expertise,” Kit allowed.
Nick’s language symbol had been warm during the conversation, but now it began to itch. Nick rubbed it, and Kit’s eyes snapped down.
“You are using a spell upon me?” he demanded, heat in his voice. “I also did not mean that as an insult, more of a –”
“Kit.” Nick turned up his wrist, showing the symbol he was rubbing. “It’s just the language one. It’s been burning for this entire conversation.”
Kit’s expression froze. “Burning? I do not understand.”
Nick didn’t really either. “That means it’s working. It seems to get hot for complicated words. It sent a pulse through my arm for ‘expertise’, ‘unknowledgeable’ and ‘reputation’. And it hurt a lot when I said ‘some sort of dig’, so I guess that one was a bit more work to translate.”
Kit’s brow creased. “You do not speak Common?”
“No.”
“You have been using spells this entire conversation to understand me?”
“It’s something passive,” Nick said. He didn’t think he should be explaining magic he didn’t understand to someone who also didn’t understand it. Maybe he should stop burying his head in the sand and get a lesson from Laurence. At least Kit’s puzzlement had distracted him from his anger.
“Do you have coffee here?” Nick asked.
Somehow, he knew that the word ‘coffee’ came out in English. Kit tripped over the pronunciation, repeating it back. “Coffee. No, I do not know what this is.”
Nick dug into his pocket and pulled out his unroasted beans.
Kit tilted his head to look at them in his palm.
“These are seeds for a coffee plant. What you do is, you take these seeds, roast them, crush them up into powder and filter hot water through it to make a drink. That drink is called coffee. It’s a tea equivalent, but far more bitter, slightly nutty. ”
Kit’s tail twitched. It had been slowly unwinding as they spoke, and now waved in the air behind him. “Bitter?” he repeated, interested.
“Very,” Nick confirmed.
“I have never heard of this drink.” Kit studied the seeds with the utmost interest. His nose twitched as he leaned in, inhaling.
His pupils flared. There was something boyish and excited in Kit’s gaze as his eyes flicked up to meet Nick’s.
Nick sorely wished there was a jar of coffee somewhere for him to brew two cups.
“Here, take these.” Nick held out his hand to Kit.
Kit stilled. “Take them?”
“If Aridia is as hot as it is here, then you should be able to grow them.”
“But—these are yours.”
“Yeah. And I’m offering them to you.”
“I am a stranger to you. Why would you give me this?” Kit looked genuinely bewildered.
He shrugged. “You’ll like the drink it makes.”
Nick had the feeling he was once again trampling on another social norm. Kit’s resistance wasn’t simple politeness.
“Whatever you want from me, I cannot give. I am in service to –”
“Just take them.” Nick’s impatience reared its head, and he thrust his hand out, opening his fingers, forcing Kit to either catch the beans or let them fall to the ground. He deftly captured them out of the air.
“They need sunlight and heat, and then they’ll sprout.”
Nick edged away from Kit so he couldn’t return the beans.
He started to feel a little silly as Kit stared at him, conflict in his expression.
Who was to say if Kit had a notion of wanting to plant anything?
Nick decided not to be upset even if he tossed them straight into the ocean just on the doorstep, though he got the feeling Kit would be polite enough not to do that in front of him.
Kit closed his hand around the beans. “Thank you,” he said softly. “I do not deserve this gift.”
Kit’s head jerked to the side suddenly, as if he’d heard someone call his name. Nick looked in the same direction. The rest of the room came back into focus, and Nick realised there’d been conversations humming around them the entire time that he hadn’t noticed.
“I must go. Excuse me.”
Kit tracked away through the hall, his lean, tall form sharing none of Nick’s difficulties in manoeuvring through the crowd.
His tail wound its way tighter around his leg with each step until it blended seamlessly with his trousers.
Kit’s expression changed so that by the time he’d reached where he was going and received a harsh smack on his hand, his face was a blank mask.
Nick’s nerves ignited in a flurry of outrage.