Chapter Eighteen
Nick and Kit were guided out of the wagon into a crowded stone courtyard and quickly ushered into a towering stone building.
They marched down long halls, Nick’s bare feet slapping lightly on freezing stone.
They stopped in a room consisting of two chairs, a lit hearth and a table holding a cup of steaming, just-poured tea that smelled exactly like the kind Kit preferred.
Nick stopped dead in the doorway. One of the chairs had chains.
Kit was delivered into it. Four kits held his tail as his arms were cut loose momentarily from ropes, only to be locked into place by heavy manacles.
Ios ushered Nick to the other chair. He produced a knife and cut the ropes from his arms, indicating for him to sit.
Nick did reluctantly. Ios retied him to the chair with bows so loose Nick could slide his arms out without even trying.
At Nick’s questioning frown, Ios winked.
Seche untied Kit’s gag and slipped off his blindfold. As Kit blinked furiously, the four kits holding his tail exchanged a look and, at a non-verbal signal, leapt back together. Kit’s tail lashed out, missing two by a hairbreadth.
Kit’s head snapped towards Nick, pupils wide, panicked. A breath passed. Then his tail lashed sideways, colliding with wood. The table leg cracked, splintered, and collapsed with a crash. The ceramic cup shattered on the stone floor, and tea spilled everywhere.
“It’s my blood,” the tall kit reassured, “not his.”
“There’s also some of my blood on him,” Ios added.
After a gesture from Seche, the kits all filed out of the room, except for Ios, who clearly pretended not to notice the signal Seche gave him with an air of not-so-innocent ignorance.
Kit’s eyes slid over the bindings not tying Nick to the chair.
He blinked at the rope bows. Then his eyes slid to the way Nick was holding himself: curled forwards, tense.
Nick kept things locked down, his expression flat, not wanting to show the vulnerability of his physical condition, but Kit seemed to be aware of it anyway. Kit’s gaze cut to Seche, hard. Angry.
“They did no more than restrain him,” Seche insisted.
Ios stood at his side, his face bloodied, and focused on Kit. With his attention on him, his tail hooked. Kit’s lashed.
The friendly beckoning, answered with unfriendly agitation, seemed to take Ios aback. Seche broke eye contact with Kit to study the response. The beginning of a frown marred his mouth. “Has Lady Desre sent you to us, then?”
Ios looked sharply at Seche, colour draining from his face. His tail lost its hook, shaking instead in agitation like Kit’s, though not as violently.
“We thought she diverted to the river because of merfolk activity on the open seas. Was that simply a subterfuge?” Seche looked intently at Kit. “Were you sent to harm General Valor?”
The rebels, Nick realised, remembering where he knew the name Valor from.
General Valor, leader of the rebellion, and Desre’s husband.
Kit said he’d been in Desre’s service since he was a child, and Nick imagined that meant his role as her number one was commonly known.
A dangerous position to have, given where they now were.
Maybe even as dangerous as when Kit was by Desre’s side.
Ios hooked his tail again, though the friendly beckoning now had an edge; his tail didn’t flow from one side to the other, relaxed and smooth, instead it swung in twitches and jerks. But from Ios’s expression—hopeful, open—Nick thought his friendliness genuine.
“I am not here under any orders,” Kit said. His attention shifted to his chained arms. “Release me; I will not try to harm any of you.”
“You weren’t exactly cooperative on the way here,” Seche said, making no move to free him. “Even after Ios made himself known to you.”
Kit’s teeth flashed in a snarl. “You were harming Nick.”
“We weren’t harming him!” Ios denied with an agitated tail lash, somehow interspersed with a hook. The exact meaning of a violent hook eluded Nick. “He attacked us, and we did no more than necessary to restrain him.”
“His scent was drenched in pain!” Kit’s chains snapped as he tried to rise. A growl was beginning deep in his chest.
Nick cast his gaze from Kit to the men they faced.
They weren’t outright antagonistic, and Nick suspected that if Kit calmed, they might even be prepared to release him.
Despite the manner in which they’d been taken here, Ios’s friendly overtures had continued.
And they continued despite a broken nose.
“It’s my back,” Nick said.
Kit froze.
“It was brushing against the wagon wall on the uneven ground,” Nick explained, though perhaps Kit had somehow sensed Nick’s panic at the situation that the pain had piled upon.
“And when they restrained me, I was on my back too.” And actually, as Nick thought about it, despite the fact that he’d thrown punches and kicks, he’d not had a single one thrown back at him.
Kit’s tail curled in, shameful realisation in his eyes. “Seche, can you call a healer?”
“I can,” Seche agreed.
Ios cast Seche a sulky look. “I am more than competent. If you would give me leave to use my skills for once, I can –”
“I’m not listening to you whine about this again.”
“Excellent.” Ios strode towards Nick as if he’d been given permission and not denied. Seche stared at the back of Ios’s head, something heated in his dark eyes, though he apparently decided against arguing.
Ios freed Nick’s hands with a tug on the bows he’d tied. His hands were just released when the door opened.
A kit in the same outfit as Seche entered the room, though unlike Seche, who shone in polish, this man’s armour was covered in dust, making the dark leather look washed out.
His blue cloak was a beautiful, deep shade, though mud crept up the bottom hem, splashed all the way to mid-knee.
Nick guessed the man to be in his forties, and a glimpse at the shape of his features was all he needed to see a familial relation to Kit.
The man had the same hooded, almond-shaped eyes as Kit, the same straight nose, though where Kit’s jaw and fine cheekbones made him look like a delicacy, this man’s broadened to make him look fierce.
Ios and Seche inclined their heads towards the new kit. Kit looked at him head-on.
The newcomer examined Kit at length before he inclined his head to Kit the way that all in the room had towards him.
“General Valor,” Seche greeted. “We were just determining…” He hesitated before continuing in a level voice. “We were just determining.”
“I wager from the state of my men that you are under orders?” Valor stepped into the room. A kit followed him inside with a chair, placing it opposite Kit for Valor to sink into. His tail was dark green, the same shade as Anna’s, and scarred almost the entire way up one side.
“The state of us is due to… Your name is Nick?” Ios met his eyes and hooked his tail in that friendly manner.
Valor’s attention moved towards him as well. “Did I order a second brought to me?” he asked. There must have been a hidden rebuke in the word because Ios hunched his shoulders.
“I found him in Kit’s quarters, heavily scent-marked,” Ios explained. “I thought it might be, unwise”—his eyes flashed to Kit and quickly away again— “to leave him behind.”
Valor hummed, and again it must have held in it a missive Nick didn’t understand because Ios relaxed.
Valor’s gaze slid over Nick assessingly, his attention lingering on Nick’s tattooed arms. His gaze found the same mark that Kit had recognised what felt like so long ago, a patch of symbols on his inner left forearm.
A twitch in Valor’s otherwise controlled tail was all that betrayed an emotional response.
“Council teams are returning with their stolen witches. None have made it past us, though none were skilled enough for the task even if they had made it to Aridia.” As Valor spoke, his eyes remained fixed on Nick’s wrist. “Desre was the only one to go in person. The only one bold enough to steal a student from Vi herself. She has brought the ire of the merfolk upon us all, and I see it was not without purpose.” Valor turned to Kit, who had been watching him as he spoke, wary. “I presume she made you do it.”
Kit’s chin slid down in the tiniest of nods.
“Were you seen by anyone?”
“There was a party. I was seen by many.”
Valor took the news like a blow, his mouth twitching into a grimace.
“Given that you diverted to Dia, I presume you are under orders of some sort? She wouldn’t order me dead.
She wants to do that part herself. But are you to cripple me?
Drag me back to Aridia with broken legs and arms, so she can drown me in her well? ”
“There are no orders,” Kit replied. “There wasn’t time.”
“You were two days on the river. You expect me to believe that in that time she didn’t give you a command in the event that you were taken?
Last time, you left us in a bad way. Burning an entire ship of food while Aridia starves?
Quite the cold-blooded move. That food wasn’t even for us. We’d procured it for our people.”
“So that you might grow in popularity.”
“That isn’t why.”
“It is all that mattered to Desre,” said Kit.
Valor’s head cocked to the side. “Since when did she allow you to drop the ‘Lady’?”
Kit’s tail twitched.
As they spoke, Ios moved quietly to peel the cloak from Nick’s back. It came away, but the shirt stuck to his back, the fabric pulling at the flesh around his shoulder blades. Kit’s head snapped to Nick, a growl bubbling up as his nostrils flared. His gaze levelled threateningly on Ios.
“Lashes,” Ios reported at Valor’s querying look. “Two of the wounds are split.”
He draped the cloak over the back of the chair and went to the hearth, ladling water from a simmering pot into a basin, stirring it with cold water and then checking the temperature with his hand.
“She made you whip him?” Valor asked.
Seche’s face scrunched in disgust. Valor’s tail lashed, a sign of anger.
“She did not know that I…” Kit trailed off, a look of pain crossing his features. “Not that it would have meant anything if she did.”
Nick didn’t know the extent of what scent-marking meant to kits, but he had experienced for himself the intimacy of it.
He’d picked up enough hints, could read enough reactions, that it indicated a bond of some sort.
Nick suspected that if Desre realised that Kit was in any way attached to Nick, it would only have been used against him.
Fingers brushed over the top of Nick’s shoulder. “I will pour this to easier separate the fabric from your back. It will sting,” Ios warned.
Nick slid forwards so that his elbows rested on his knees. The water was the exact temperature of his body; he didn’t feel it until it was running into open sores and Ios was deftly peeling off the shirt, carefully cutting the garment away.
“Release me,” Kit requested. “I am here on no mission; Desre has confined herself to her rooms. I have had no private audience with her since the decision to take the river was made, and she cannot compel orders through her handmaiden.”
“Confined herself?”
Kit’s expression shifted. Something proud flashed in his eyes. His tail hooked. All the kits in the room—even Valor—mirrored the gesture. “Nick broke her nose. Twice. She’s been confined to her rooms since the night we left Vi’s estate.”
Kit said it the same way Trevor used to talk about him playing rugby. With boasting pride. As an achievement to be shared so that others would admire it too.
“He would be dead,” Valor said flatly. But then his eyes moved to the marking on Nick’s inner arm—the one they obviously needed for something—and then to Ios at Nick’s back, with his bruised nose. “How?” It was a demand.
“A protection symbol,” Nick answered. “Before you ask, I tried to draw it on Kit, but it didn’t work.”
Kit turned a confused look on Nick. “It did work. Her influence—I felt it repelled.”
“Because I was holding your tail. My symbol did that for you, not the one we drew on.”
Kit didn’t make a sound. He didn’t blink.
Nick’s heart sank as he saw the new realisation play out across Kit’s face.
He thought that the drawing Mini had done protected him.
Thought it was something he could replicate.
“I’ll figure something out,” Nick promised.
Though, as far as he was concerned, the best thing for Kit would be to stay far, far away from Desre.
Where it wouldn’t matter what power she had because he wasn’t there to be affected by it.
“You are truly not here under orders?” Valor asked Kit once more.
“Truly.”
Valor nodded to Seche. “Release him.” He rose from his chair. “Tend to your partner.”
Valor left.
Seche nodded to Ios, who eagerly approached Kit, his tail hooking. “It is good to see you,” he said to Kit, a fond note in his voice. “We have been trying to steal you away for months now, but –”
“Ios,” Seche warned.
Ios threw Seche an annoyed look over his shoulder. “For reasons I am not allowed to tell you, we could not.” He unlocked Kit’s chains with deft clicks. “But you are with us now, and –”
“Ios.”
“—and for reasons I am allowed to tell you, that makes me very happy!” Ios determinedly talked over Seche.