Chapter Sixteen
Nick recognised the bitter taste of medicine on his tongue.
Smelled the thick mint and herb scent coming from his blissfully numb back.
An ache in his jaw survived the drugs, the muscles wrecked from either being forced open by the leather gag or biting down on it.
He twitched his fingers, recognising the feel of Kit’s silk sheets.
Next to him, Anna and Kit were speaking in hushed voices.
“How bad is the nose?” Nick slurred, as if drunk.
“Terrible,” Anna informed him.
“Ugly?”
“Horrendous.”
“So she won’t summon Kit, right?” Nick checked.
There was a band of pressure on Nick’s thigh that tightened at his words. If he wasn’t drugged to numbness, it might have hurt.
“No,” Kit said hoarsely. “Not until it heals. We’ll be in Aridia by then.”
Nick sighed with relief. He heard the distant, muted sound of water rushing against the hull.
Something clinked across the room, metal on metal.
Kit’s tail sifted against the sheets, and the leather of his gloves creaked as he ran his hand worriedly against Nick’s wrist. Nick opened his eyes to find himself facing a wall.
“Don’t move,” Kit warned.
“I’m getting a look at you,” Nick responded dully.
He groaned as he rolled to face into the room.
He didn’t register any of the furniture or even the size, his attention going straight to Kit.
Perched forwards on a chair next to the bed, Kit’s clothes were orderly, but his eyes were shadowed with dark circles.
Guilt radiated from him in waves. “Kit.”
Kit’s head turned down. Nick reached for the tail curled around his leg.
Kit twitched, the limb attempting to slide away, but Nick tightened his grip.
“I knew what would happen. I chose to act anyway.” Before Kit did, and got punished in ways far more horrifying than a few lashes on the back. “Look at me.”
Kit did, peering at Nick through long lashes.
“I don’t regret it,” Nick said.
Kit’s confusion masked his guilt. His lips parted, but Anna’s sudden reappearance in the doorway stalled whatever he’d been about to say.
She called Kit, who struggled to remove his tail from Nick’s thigh.
As if the limb had detached itself from Kit’s control, it refused to release him.
Kit was whining, a low guttural sound as he took hold of his tail in both hands to unwind it.
Nick, even in his half-aware state, saw the conflict on Anna’s face as she watched and grasped the difficulty.
Nick’s eyes slipped shut as the door closed, and from seemingly nowhere, a hand was poking at his own.
“Are you sleeping?” Mini asked.
Nick was transported back to his childhood.
He was a kid, just turned twelve, and home from school with a cold.
Laurence, by virtue of being cute, had convincingly begged their dad to let him stay home and ‘mind’ Nick.
It had built to tears, and Trevor gave in.
Laurence had spent the entire day delivering constant health checks, usually waking Nick from a dead sleep, and kept pestering him until he moved into the living room so Laurence had company while watching his show.
At least the scrambled eggs he’d made for Nick had been tasty.
Nick ached for home.
“Sleeping,” he confirmed.
“This one’s sprouted.”
Nick opened his eyes. Mini crouched next to the bed, holding one of the pots. In the centre of the rich brown soil was a sprout of green. Three delicate leaves grew from a thin stem.
“Help me sit up.”
Mini took Nick by the arms and practically hauled him into a sitting position, and Nick took the pot to examine the plant.
He’d made numerous attempts to grow coffee at home, always leaving it on windowsills, in greenhouses, even planting seeds next to heaters to keep them warm.
They never took. Never even began to sprout.
“It looks healthy,” Nick said, thrilled.
Mini’s tail lashed from side to side, a puppy wagging its tail. “The other two are smaller.”
“But they’re sprouting too?”
He nodded. Still looking at the plant, Mini said, “He spread it out so your skin wouldn’t break. It’s only two against your shoulder blades that split skin.”
Nick didn’t look up from the plant. “You saw?”
“I saw you keep your promise to protect him.”
Nick had delayed. Not protected. Not yet, anyway. He slid his hand to his arm, circling the part that had burned. He’d paid attention this time. “It was this symbol that rebelled her. Just this part.”
Mini leaned in, studying what Nick outlined carefully with wickedly intelligent eyes.
The door opened, and Nick shifted his attention back to the plant. The little miracle. He waved over Kit. “Look. They’ve started growing.”
Kit approached and peered at the plant.
“I didn’t even think about them when we moved ship.
Good job bringing them,” Nick praised Mini, who preened.
“Coffee usually takes several months to grow, and then a few years to mature fully. After that, it’ll produce seeds like the ones that we planted, and we can take those, roast them, crush and grind them up, and brew a cup of coffee.
” As Nick spoke, he realised he was giving instructions so they’d know what to do when the time came; Nick would hardly still be with them in a few years’ time to instruct them.
Conflicting emotions filled him at that thought.
“You can roast them to prevent sprouting, but they don’t last forever.
And once you grind them into powder, you should use them within the hour to get the best taste out of them. ”
Kit and Mini both listened attentively. Neither seemed put out by the prospect of having to wait years to reap the rewards of their efforts.
“Technically, you don’t need to be that fussy about it. Other people aren’t, but I work at a café with my dad, and I’m in charge of the coffee.”
Kit sat in his chair again. His tail butted into Mini’s face, bothering the child into a squealing retreat. “Brew us tea before you go.”
It could have been rude, but Mini clearly adored both the brisk treatment and the order. Nick surmised that was because he adored Kit; he wanted to be useful to him and clearly liked to be treated casually too. Nick thought it fairly obvious that Mini was Kit’s favourite.
“You work with your father?” Kit inquired.
“I’ve been helping out at his business since I was a kid, so has my brother.
You’d think with our personalities, he’d be the one out front talking to people and I’d be hidden away in the back, but it ended up the opposite.
Laurence wanted to be with Dad in the kitchen, so I sucked it up and learned how to be nice to people.
” Nick’s attention began to lag as he spoke, tiredness washing over him in a wave.
His torso was bare, and if something inside Nick wasn’t instinctively shying away from twisting to get a look at his own back, he’d have tried to sneak a peek.
“Your personalities?” Kit’s head tilted sideways.
“My brother is very friendly. Too friendly, even. You would have seen him at the party. He was dancing with the other kit, Jasper. With the green tail?” Nick smiled to himself.
“He’s not the slightest bit self-conscious when he’s excited about something.
” He loved that in Laurence. He understood the care that Trevor took in making sure Laurence’s enthusiasm for the world was never dampened.
Worries were expressed, but restrictions were rare.
Nick struggled greatly with that, whereas his dad didn’t.
Kit’s tail lashed suddenly to the side.
“Jasper danced with a noble,” Kit said, his voice as hard as his eyes were desperate.
“Did he? I only saw Laurence glued to him the entire night.”
“He attended the monarch’s child.”
Nick sifted through his memories. “I think there might be a translation issue. You called the merman cracking everyone’s hulls in the harbour the monarch’s mate, but that was just Adonis.
And Jasper was dancing with Laurence, who is Trevor’s child, not…
” Nick trailed off with a frown. He thought of Adonis’s persistent misunderstanding in thinking that Laurence was Connor’s child.
Which Nick had devised stemmed from how attached Laurence was to Connor and how carefully Connor looked out for him.
Monarch’s mate. Monarch’s child. “Was this monarch at the party?”
“You spoke to him at length.”
“Black hair? Grey eyes? Because if that’s who you’re talking about, you’re definitely misunderstanding because that’s my brother, Connor –”
Kit leapt to his feet. His tail slashed behind him in an angry arc; Nick flinched at the sound of it cutting through the air, the whistle raising the hairs on the back of his neck. Mini abandoned the tea and darted out of the room.
“You are a liar,” Kit hissed. “You expect me to believe that you are family to the new monarch? You were dressed in student attire. You have magic symbols! This persistent act of not being able to draw and trying to make me think that we took the wrong person is stupid. I will not fall for it.”
It was only when Kit’s lashing tail came to a twitching stop that Nick could tear his eyes away from it and focus instead on Kit’s expression. There wasn’t anger there, only fear. Denial. A rush of adrenaline hit Nick’s bloodstream.
“Get out.”
“It’s my room.”
“Get out.”
Kit’s tail lashed, and Nick’s attention snapped to the black limb.
It immediately stilled. Kit’s chest heaved, but he reached back and caught his tail. It coiled up his arm. “I am not going to –” Kit cut off, a whine in his throat. He turned abruptly on his heels and stormed from the room.
Nick glared at the door, bereft and not understanding exactly how he felt after Kit’s sudden outburst. He dragged in deep breaths to regain his composure.
He ended up curled forward, hands in his hair, an unreasonably potent feeling of upset settling into his stomach like a lead weight. He hated it.