Chapter 2 #2
“I don’t have cravings,” I said quickly, then licked some chocolate off my left index finger. “No uterus, no cravings.”
“Honey, you sound a bit misogynistic there,” Donna said to me, and my face flushed.
Vergis smirked. “He’s obsessed with uteruses. Has been like that since we found him, Donna. Between you and me, I think he was trying to find women’s underwear.”
“I—no! Just the cat socks. All I did was tell you all I don’t have one. A uterus, that is. Never been involved with them before, never ever. I don’t want one either. I mean, no offense to, erm…” I gestured toward Donna.
“To the trans woman in the room who doesn’t have one and the bagua who do have them?” Donna suggested.
I wanted to go back to being unconscious, even if it meant sleeping in the tent, but as it was, I turned millet bean red with shame. “Yeah. Sorry.”
Gran had said something about silence and grace or something. Maybe I should talk less? Yes. Shrubbery did not speak. I wondered whether my third-grade teacher had, after all, been trying to teach me a life lesson when she’d cast me as that tree. It did bear considering.
While Vergis kept up his lurking, Kinnek pulled out a chair and slid into it, his eyes on me.
“Hmm. He does sound a little bit Canadian, Muffin. You’re right about that.
But—” He got all serious and intent all of a sudden.
“—all joking and making light of the situation aside, you are feeling better, aren’t you?
You look paler again now than you did when you smelled of your mate’s pleasure. ”
Oh dear effing gosh. My face heated all over again, but I managed to nod and take another bite from my chocolate waffle. Gosh, but food was good.
Inkiri ran a tender hand over my shoulder. “He’s no longer as cold to the touch. He took a shower.” He had the nerve to sigh. “Alone.”
Kinnek crossed his legs. “Ah. Yes, they do that. Humans, that is. Don’t let it bother you.”
Silence was grace or something, so I didn’t bother to inform them they were the weirdos here. At any rate, I did feel warmer—about as warm as the hot shower should’ve made me feel. It was because Inkiri was touching me.
I jerked, the piece of waffle almost falling off my fork.
That grain of knowledge had just come to me, but it was true: My mate’s touch helped after the drain of magic.
That was why I needed him near, why I’d physically craved the closeness of sex.
It was also why the animal part of my brain was signaling “mate, mate, mate” whenever I saw him, even though I’d only recently started thinking of Inkiri as my…
husband and spouse; the handsome blue guy with the horns I’d fallen for and who was mine now.
“Well, that kicks ice maiden off my list of theories for good, but I really think we hit it on the head with Loathly Lady.” Kinnek steepled his fingers in front of him and looked me in the eyes.
“Vergis said you knew things by some magical means and heard voices in your head. Care to tell me about that? Just now, it looked as if you thought of something important. Penny for your thoughts?”
I stuffed the last bit of waffle in my mouth, more to stall than anything. I didn’t think that Kinnek or anyone else here would think I’d lost my mind, but I simply didn’t want to talk about it. About the magic.
After the events at the Stone, I’d had enough adventure, enough violence, enough travel, even. Now, after Esaka, I had most definitely seen more than I wanted to see of any and all kinds of conflict. I just wanted a quiet life with Inkiri, maybe somewhere close to my guys.
I let myself fantasize about a nice little house in Esaka or somewhere similar, with everyone living on the same street so that when the afternoons turned long and lazy, I could walk over to Lissir’s house and hang out with him, gossip, ask him about bagu stuff I didn’t understand.
Or make him give me fashion advice, seeing how, as a trophy mate, I couldn’t be a slob.
But I got the feeling Kinnek wouldn’t let me weasel out of telling him about what I’d already let slip to Vergis. He wouldn’t let me run away to Aer.
I wiped my mouth on the napkin before I said, “I…I know stuff. It’s like…
when you watch some spy show, right, and you get to see what the bad guys do and what the good guys do.
You always know more about what’s going on than either side.
It’s sort of like that. A bird’s-eye view of events, you know?
I can tell it’s not my own knowledge, but it’s… I just know that it’s true.”
I looked at my plate. Saying it out loud made it sound totally bonkers. Inkiri clicked at me and pulled my coffee mug closer to me so that I had an easy time reaching it.
I took a sip, then put it back down with a thunk that seemed incredibly loud while everyone was waiting for me to go on. Inkiri rubbed my upper arm as if he wanted to make sure I knew he was there for whatever kind of support I needed.
I clung to the coffee cup as I went on. “I heard that voice the first time at the Stone. It asked me what I wanted, and I said I wanted my guys to be okay, and so it did that. And then I got this cold feeling in Esaka, like I said, and it was there again.”
“And it told you that you were far away,” Kinnek said, repeating what I’d told him when we’d crawled out of the tent. “When you say you spoke, did you use actual words? Or think the words?”
I shrugged and looked up. “I thought them. In my head, you know?”
“Well, where else would you think but in your head?” Kinnek smiled brightly. “Is that voice a foreign thing? Can you feel it, or do you just, for lack of a better word, hear it?”
That made my eyebrows go up. “It’s… I can kind of feel it? In my mind. And when I tell it something I want, it’s like it rummages around up there.”
“Hmm. If you try to think back to before you woke up in the tent today, did you feel that disembodied presence there with you?”
I licked my lips. This was where I had to wonder whether maybe, just maybe, I should tell him that, no, I’d felt nothing.
I was about to, but before I could, Inkiri leaned in and said, “Tell us, sweet thing. Did you feel that presence when we brought you here to help you heal?”
His voice was steady, but he was anxious for me to answer. He’d been worried about me, had told me as much. Had he slept? Had he held me? Sat by my bedside all this time? Would he have protected me if the cola ash asshats had found me?
I was pretty sure the answer to all of that was a resounding yes. He’d probably taken care of me more than he had himself, and I wasn’t about to reward that with a lie.
“I, uhm, I kind of felt it. But in the distance. And it greeted me. Or acknowledged that I was back home, you know?”
Kinnek tilted his head in the bagu way. “Home? I understand you came here vacationing.”
“Yeah, but… I don’t understand how this works either. Maybe home as in, Earth? I don’t know how else to explain it.”
“Very, very interesting.” Kinnek fixed me with his sharp gaze. His eyes were a dark Prussian blue rather than Vergis’s steel gray, but there was something about Kinnek that made me think he had the kind of X-ray vision that allowed him to look through my skull and straight into my thoughts.
Everyone in the room went quiet—everyone except for Wilson, who hopped over and landed in my lap, where she promptly sat and pecked at my sleeve until I petted her.
“If Donna is agreeable, I think we should stay here for a few days so Rory can fully recover,” Kinnek said at length.
Donna shrugged. “If Wilson’s okay with that, I’m okay with it. Inkiri and the others are always welcome anyway. Plus, there’ve been a lot of those purple monsters here since yesterday.”
Kinnek grinned and stood. “Wonderful! Muffin, we should step out and tell your daddy. The monsters, I expect, might be attracted by the magic. The pull might have been stronger while Rory was hurt and easy prey, so it should lessen now that he’s ambulant again and not so easily snatched.”
Vergis eyed the coffee maker longingly. “As I said, a twink trouble magnet. You really need me to make a phone call?”
Kinnek clicked. “Muffin, I don’t need you, but you don’t call anywhere near often enough.
Just because your daddy grunts rather than use his words doesn’t mean he doesn’t like to hear your voice more often.
Plus, did I not ground you a mere hour ago?
You should consider your umbilicus reestablished until I decide otherwise. ”
Kinnek’s tone of voice implied the chop-chop. He headed back out, and Vergis grumbled, but followed his dad.
“Well, those two are very extra, aren’t they?” Donna got up and poured the rest of the coffee into her mug.
“It’s a hangu thing,” Inkiri said.
“You sure?” Donna and I said in chorus, and Wilson clucked contentedly. For all I knew, she agreed with us.
Inkiri’s chest rattled with a growly purr. “Some of it is a hangu thing, at least.”
I relaxed against him, letting all the tension bleed out of my body.
“I’m deciding not to care. Hey, Ink, thanks for taking care of me. When I was out, you know. And Donna? Sorry. About bringing the monsters here.”
“Aww,” Donna cooed. “Don’t you worry. Vergis times two seems like they can handle all the extermination I might need done around the place. Plus, so far, the electric fence has been doing its job pretty well. I figure, wherever those things come from, they don’t know what an electric fence is.”
I remembered my time in the world the monsters came from and shivered. “I think you’re right about that.”
Inkiri clicked. “It’s nothing for you to worry over, sweet thing. I will always take care of you. I’m overjoyed that you’re feeling better again. I’m overjoyed that you’re awake and talking to me, even if it seems you favor Wilson over me now.”
I turned so I could kiss him without dislodging the chicken. “I don’t. She’s just sitting on me because your lap is taken for the foreseeable future.”
Inkiri gave me the softest and most loving of smiles. “Do you promise, Sadir?”
I let out a big breath and my shoulders relaxed. “Yeah, promise.”
It was a movie moment, even with the chicken, and for once, no one interrupted it.