Chapter 6 Coffee And Gold
Coffee And Gold
The door swung open with a bang.
I jerked violently, buried inside an unbelievably comfortable, soft, blanket-covered, and very warm bed.
I unwillingly opened my eyes, and immediately regretted it.
The sunlight felt like a medieval torture device, and I barely managed to look at it for a fraction of a second before I squeezed my eyes shut again and groaned.
My magic spiraled out around me, told me there was no danger, and my body immediately demanded I go back to sleep. I grabbed a pillow and shoved my head under it, groaning louder. My head didn’t hurt very much yet, despite the pain in my eyes from the sun, which told me I was probably still drunk.
“Alaric,” I complained. “Don’t slam the door, for fuck’s sake!”
“Oh, no you don’t, you minx.”
The familiar growl made me freeze, even before someone snatched the pillow off my head, once again forcing me to deal with way too much light. I whimpered that time, and tried feebly to push whoever it was away, and he immediately let go of the arm he briefly held.
“Unfuckingbelievable,” the voice muttered.
I heard real anger in it that time, and something about that simple fact snapped me out of the bare edges of my stupor. It hit me suddenly, that this wasn’t a dream.
I wasn’t dreaming this.
Comprehending that much was enough to force my eyes open, but I still couldn’t manage to keep my eyelids fully apart. I squinted up at a shockingly familiar and unmistakably angry face. Gold eyes met mine, and my heart clenched in my chest.
I felt something in my magic spark out in a shocked, heated wave. I saw him flinch when he felt it, saw his eyes close briefly, longer than a blink.
“Bones!” I winced at the sound of my own voice. “Bones, what are you doing here?”
He let out a scoffing, scathing, infuriated laugh.
Something about the exact mixture of those things was just so him, some part of me snapped awake for real.
“Whathafugisthis?” another voice, to the right of me, demanded in an outraged, ridiculously posh-sounding, groggy and half-understandable slur. “What is this travesty? Saboteurs! Demons! Who would do this to me at this godawful hour?”
I’d been so sure Alaric had been the one to slam the door, I stared at the lump under the blankets in bewilderment, confused as to how it had gotten there.
“Go away!” Alaric demanded. “Leave us, evil demons! I command you to return to the bowels of every hell!”
I don’t know how loudly Alaric actually said it, but it was loud enough to make me grimace.
I raised a hand to my eyes, closing them briefly before I tried to look at Bones again.
He wasn’t in a stretcher, or a wheelchair.
I saw fading bruises on his face. I saw a cane in his hand, not the one with the gold Anubis head at the end, but hints of some carved creature poked out from under his hand.
Whatever it was, it had a green stone in its mouth.
Then my stomach woke up enough to lurch, and I immediately panicked.
“Oh no,” I said quietly.
“Feeling poorly, darling?” Bones sneered. “If you have to retch, I strongly suggest you aim it at the head of the wanker sleeping naked next to you. You know… the one you decided to bring to my bed while I was in hospital, convalescing.”
I waved him off, unable to answer, even if I’d known what to say to that particular collection of words and venom.
I swung my legs over to the side, and slid off the mattress to the floor in my stockinged feet.
My stomach lurched even more violently once I was vertical, and I clamped a hand over my mouth.
I had no memory of my and Alaric’s decision to crash in Caelum’s bed, but it occurred to me suddenly how that might’ve looked.
“Oh, it looks just as bad as you fucking think it does, witch,” Bones snapped at me as I ran past him for the loo.
I made it to his toilet in time. Barely.
I don’t know how long I knelt there, but it felt like I’d emptied my entire intestinal tract by the time I finished heaving. I wondered if I saw bits of my actual organs in the bowl when I finally managed to reach up and flush it.
I dragged myself up to his bathroom sink and washed my face and swirled water in my mouth, wishing I had a toothbrush. I considered trying some of the blue liquid I saw in a potion bottle by his sink, then decided that was likely tempting fate under the circumstances.
After splashing more water on my face, and blinking into the mirror a few more times, I reentered the main room, only to find Bones holding Alaric to the stone wall with magic that flared off his arm and fingers.
I’d heard some back and forth arguing from the loo, but I hadn’t really listened to their words, not until now.
“You’re positively hilarious, you are,” Caelum growled. “Want to try that again, Greythorne? Maybe with a little more awareness of the gravity of your current situation?”
“Bones,” I snapped, wincing at the sharp pain my own voice brought to my increasingly throbbing head. “Let him go.”
He glanced over his shoulder without lowering his arm, nor releasing Alaric from his magic. “Why?” he asked coldly.
“Because you know full well it wasn’t anything,” I said, back to rubbing my head.
“The only thing we should apologize for is drinking too much of your alcohol, and being in here in the first place. Oh,” I said, noting the tea service on the table by his couch.
“And I took some of your tea.” I waved towards the wall. “Alaric fixed your wall––”
“Well, not exactly, darling,” Alaric broke in.
When I looked at him, he held up his hands.
“Cocked up magic, remember?” he said, apologetically.
“Anyway, if you recall, I never actually said I’d fixed it.
I only didn’t correct you when you so generously assumed I had.
” He motioned towards Caelum’s office area, which had also been tidied up since Malefic had thrown his son into the desk and table, spilling books and papers all over the floor.
“Same with the rest of the charitable things you credited me with, I’m afraid. ”
I blinked at him, still struggling with the intensity of sunlight streaming through the open windows.
I glanced out briefly at a view of distant mountains and the Eyrie covered in snow, along with the fields and the trees nearer to Malcroix Mansion.
The view was serenely beautiful, like something out of a painting.
Blinking dumbly at the sun hanging over the eastern skyline, I looked back at Alaric.
“What were you doing in here, then?” I asked, baffled.
“Yes. What were you doing in here, Greythorne?” Caelum mirrored. He’d been looking between us as we spoke, a scowl on his lips. “And what the fuck were you doing in my bed, all but naked, with my gods-damned witch?”
A denser silence fell at his words.
Then real, genuine delight spread over Alaric’s face.
“Your witch?” he cackled in glee. Alaric turned and pointed directly at my face. “I knew it! You sneaky, sneaky little vixen! You absolutely absurd liar!”
“I never lied!” I protested.
“You utterly and completely did lie. Multiple times. I asked you point blank if you and Cal were ever groin buddies while you were sneaking around, spying on royals, and you gave an emphatic and relatively convincing no!”
Had I? I honestly had no idea whether I’d done that or not.
The night before was a gradually deepening blur from the moment I started drinking whisky with him by the fire.
“Did she, now?” Caelum was giving me a cold look again.
I rolled my eyes at him. “Oh for god’s sake,” I said. “I didn’t tell him because I honestly thought you wouldn’t want him to know.” I glared at Alaric. “I told him far too much as it is. About the bonfire party and the Golden Sun meeting and most of what happened in here.”
“Most of?” Alaric repeated, sounding affronted.
Caelum only scoffed.
After another silence where Alaric continued to stare at me, deep offense in his hazel eyes, and I rubbed my forehead, and Caelum looked between the two of us, his jaw hard, Bones finally lowered his arm, withdrawing his magic from Alaric.
Immediately, the other mage let out a gasp, and half-staggered against the stone wall, as if that magic had been the only thing keeping him upright.
Only then did it fully sink in that Bones had been right. At some point in the evening last night, either before or after we’d crawled under Bones’s blankets, sheets, and duvet, Alaric had elected to strip down to only his boxers.
Bones glared at me, as if he’d heard that, too.
I only held out my hands, motioning down at my own clothes, which included everything I’d walked over from Valarian wearing, with the exception of my scarf, coat, and boots.
Bones didn’t look remotely appeased.
He was still glaring at me, that gold and green fire rippling through his irises, when Alaric clapped him strongly on the shoulder.
“Breakfast?” the mage asked cheerfully.
I’m surprised Alaric didn’t catch fire from the stares Bones aimed at him after he collapsed on Bones’s couch.
The younger royal sprawled out on the leather like he lived there, which probably didn’t help.
He also didn’t make even a vague, hand-waving offer of help in our direction, leaning his head back and staring up at the ceiling while Bones made coffee and I washed out the tea service from the night before.
Alaric wore trousers now, at least, but his shirt remained unbuttoned and open, revealing his bare chest, along with his new gold tattoos.
I couldn’t help noticing other marks on his body now that the sun shone directly on his skin.
His chest and abdomen were littered with what looked like healing burns and cuts, the remnants of fading bruises.
Based on what he’d told me, I had to assume that was Sergius Calvarias’s work, too, a name I’d never heard before the previous night.