Chapter 12
The best part about staying with Kinnek and Charles was when no magic happened, when we could all just be and enjoy the monster-free quiet. Honestly, I’d never have thought I’d like living in the countryside, but after everything, boring days with zero excitement were a balm.
The morning after we got there from Donna’s place, I was treated to my guys working out, which meant they did some sparring in the backyard, near the gazebo.
When Inkiri came out of the house, all ready to do some sparring of his own, he stopped next to where I was standing and watching Lissir and Fellisse warming up with some gentle combat.
That was what it looked like to me, at any rate.
“Sadir, are you going to watch?” Inkiri asked.
I looked up, shielding my eyes against the sun. “Can I? I don’t want to get in the way of anyone. I was just curious.”
He smiled. “You’re never in the way, sweet thing. I’ll be right back.”
He turned on his heel and walked right back to the house.
About five minutes later, he came back with a camping chair under one arm and a sun hat in the other hand.
He put up the chair in the shade under a tree—apple or cherry maybe, I couldn’t tell from the pretty white blossoms alone—and held out the hat to me with an almost mischievous smile I kind of wanted to kiss, except that might’ve distracted my monster husband, and I wanted him to win at sparring.
I took the hat. It had no holes for horns, so I figured it was Charles’s. “I could’ve sat on the grass.”
Inkiri clicked. “But isn’t a chair nicer? You can see better from a chair.”
Trophy mate, I told myself. Be the trophy mate you were meant to be. “You’re right, of course. Thank you, Ink.”
Was I overacting? Maybe. Inkiri seemed to be okay with it though, judging by how my words made him smile.
“You’re very welcome, Sadir. Let me know if you need anything or want to go back inside.”
I nodded and sat, and he joined the others. Then the sparring really started, and while I did my best to watch, I had to look away several times.
How my guys managed the throws and all the falling and rolling without hurting their horns at all baffled me. Charles walked past me, watched for about three minutes, then asked whether he could have a go. Three minutes later, Kinnek came out with another folding chair and joined me.
“Charles enjoys new challenges,” Kinnek said. “Nice, bulky hangu-na like your mate and Fellisse are a lure he can’t resist.”
The workouts in the mornings were a regular occurrence from that point on, and after, Inkiri unfailingly came to have me kiss him before eventually going to wash up and soak or steam with the others.
The next few days were like a vacation, at least for me and the rest of the guys.
Vergis, not so much. With Nokim as his accomplice, he murdered the pigeons and then “accidentally” dropped a pigeon corpse almost on my head when I was coming back into the house from the vegetable patch with some carrots Charles had asked me to dig up for dinner.
Vergis had apologized with a shit-eating grin from the roof.
Other than avoiding pigeon corpses, Kinnek thought I needed to learn the Lugarran alphabet and a few words in it.
According to him, they’d get used in ko circles and sacrifices, and while I liked neither, I figured it couldn’t hurt to know, if only to make a sacrifice not work and save some poor bunny.
Apart from helping me with my Lugarran writing, Kinnek made me do magic all the time.
Either alone—not fun, because it meant I’d have that voice in my head—or with Vergis—also not fun because I’d get sarcastic comments from outside of my head.
On the plus side, Vergis, sarcastic though he might be, was easy to work with.
When Kinnek suggested Vergis take me to feed the bunnies, my eyes lit up, and I made some comment about cuddling them. It got me blank stares, followed by Vergis’s suggestion that maybe I stick with learning the alphabet.
“But why?” I asked, crestfallen.
We were sitting at the big round kitchen table in a similarly generous kitchen that saw a lot of use.
Vergis snorted. “They’re not for cuddling. We use them for sacrifices.”
Kinnek nodded happily while correcting some words I’d written in Lugarran. “It’s so Muffin doesn’t have to snare any.”
“Don’t call me that.”
Kinnek looked up, twirling his red pencil. “But you’re my little chocolate chip muffin, Muffin. Ah, all this reminds me of when you were little and we used to homeschool you.”
I gaped at Vergis. “You were homeschooled?”
He glared at me, presumably fondly. “Look at me. No school on Earth I could go to.”
“Poor Muffin. We kept telling you, if you want to go to a school, it would have to be a school on Aer, which would’ve meant a boarding school, and you didn’t want to go away to a boarding school.”
I blinked at him. “People used to board at my old school. They had to share rooms, and you couldn’t really pick. Also, they had a curfew.”
Kinnek nodded. “See? You wouldn’t have liked that at all.”
Vergis crossed his arms and rolled his eyes. “Like I was ever asked.”
I looked at Kinnek. “I guess… I mean, I thought there was the Raiken. Isn’t that like a school?”
Kinnek nodded. “Yes, but a boarding school. Rory, tell me, who tucked the students in at your school?”
I cocked my head. “No one? I mean, they tucked themselves in. Not that I ever asked about that.” It had never occurred to me, seeing as only some of the au pairs had bothered, the really good ones, and even then only until I was maybe ten.
I glanced at Vergis. Had Charles and Kinnek read stories to him before bed? The thought made me oddly jealous.
Kinnek nodded. “You see?”
Vergis stood. “I’m going to feed the bunnies now.”
“Aw!” Kinnek elbowed me. “He’s cross with us now, but he knows I’m right about the tucking in.”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
Vergis walked out, but I could see on Kinnek’s face that he knew all the talk about tucking little Vergis in had made me sullen, and I hadn’t even noticed.
“It’s not so bad about the bunnies, really. It’s how magic is fueled.” He put a hand on my back. “You know, there are chocolate chip cookies in the freezer. Charlie made them, and they’re to die for. How about I make us two with a nice big cup of almond milk?”
It wasn’t so much the bunnies, but I couldn’t tell Kinnek that. Besides, Charles made the almond milk fresh almost every day now that there were so many people around, and it was delicious. I was nodding almost before Kinnek finished speaking.
“Do you want me to help?”
Kinnek chuckled. “Snapdragon, I want you to correct the mistakes I marked on your practice sheet. And try for a neater script, hmm?”
Well. I got a feeling Vergis’s homeschooling had been a lot of this stick and chocolate cookie pedagogy. No wonder Kinnek called him Muffin.
Five days in, on a balmy afternoon, I stepped back into the guest room I shared with Inkiri on the second floor.
Kinnek had been making me write Lugarran words in the unfamiliar script for the past two hours, and I was exhausted from concentrating and not taking any breaks.
Chocolate chip cookies, as it turned out, were reserved for very special occasions.
I was looking for a quiet corner to hide in for a half hour or so before I had to correct my writing.
Inkiri found me moments later, clicked at me, licked my throat, and…handed me my backpack from behind his back. My apocalypse backpack.
My mouth fell open, and my eyes went wide. “How…?”
“I asked Vergis to help me get it back for you, Sadir.” The absolutely bestest of mates sounded smug. As he had every right to.
I took my backpack from him, incredulously running my fingers along the zipper. “You and Vergis went to Ireland while I was doing writing exercises?”
Inkiri tilted his head. “I may have asked Kinnek to make sure you were busy while we were gone.”
With slow reverence, I opened the bag and went through the contents. Everything was still there. Everything I’d barely missed, and the cat socks Inkiri had gotten for me the day—the very hour—he’d found and saved me. When he’d made it so I wasn’t alone anymore.
“It’s… Everything’s still in here.”
Inkiri’s hand smoothed up and down my side while he regarded me, apparently utterly satisfied by my reaction.
“The humans weren’t interested.” He chuckled. “Vergis said they would’ve looked for guns or other weapons, or for magical things maybe, but no one is interested in your pretty cat socks.”
“He’s such a philistine.” My eyes were starting to sting, and I rummaged around in the backpack to hide it. There was my phone, my charger, a candy bar, my clothes. Everything I’d owned since the monsters had come.
“Maybe he secretly wants pretty cat socks too. It’s difficult to tell with Vergis. Those socks wouldn’t fit a bagu’s feet well though.”
I nodded. “Not to mention the claws. Hey, Ink?”
“Yes, Sadir?”
I closed the zipper and carefully set the backpack down on the floor. Then I hugged him.
“Thank you. Thank you so much.”
Inkiri hugged me back, his hands warming my skin and making me feel as if I glowed.
Maybe I did. Was love a thing that made you glow and shine and shimmer?
An actor should know. I’d probably only ever been shrubbery because I didn’t glow.
That I might be learning now thanks to everything that had happened made me feel all kinds of things—too much all at once.
“It was a very little thing.”
I looked up at him, shaking my head. “It really wasn’t, and—” I thought about it for maybe a second, then did my best to look as sexy as anyone could on such short notice. “Yeah, you deserve a reward.”
Inkiri’s eyebrows quirked up. “You’re happy. That’s a good reward.”
Gosh-darnit, why was he being so gentlemanly? “Yeah, but—I mean—” I glanced over my shoulder at the bed. “I mean…”