Chapter 4 #5
“I have bad news for both of you,” she said, interrupting a straight minute of bickering. “You’re both in the back. Kaden’s up front.”
This elicited the predictable how-is-this-fair objections.
“It’s not fair or unfair. It’s determined by the fact that motion sickness usually isn’t as severe in the front seat of a vehicle as it is in the back. Also, if Kaden ends up projectile vomiting, I’d think both of you would be glad he’s in front of you, and not behind you.”
This shut them up long enough for bags to be stowed in the trunk and for everyone to take their respective seats.
Evra chose the driver’s side backseat, which left Morgen behind Kaden.
Nyx unbuckled Alihana’s sword belt and, after a moment of bickering with them, stowed them in the floorboard of the backseat before climbing into the driver’s seat.
Veritas dug into her thigh, so she unbuckled the thigh sheath for the truth-telling dagger and settled it into the console.
But there was still something else biting into her thigh.
She dug into her pocket and came up with a small pill bottle.
Oh, right. She tossed it to Kaden before starting the car.
“What’s this?” Kaden asked, frowning at the bottle.
“Dramamine. Take some. It helps with the nausea.”
“You never thought to mention this before?”
Before, as in, when they’d lived together. “Before, we never drove anywhere that was more than fifteen minutes away. It didn’t feel necessary. Also, it can make you drowsy, which made it feel extra not desirable for a fifteen minute car ride.”
Kaden’s mouth tightened at this last bit of information, and he held tried to hand the bottle back to her. “I don’t need it.”
Nyx rolled her eyes. “The world will keep spinning if you take a nap.”
“I’m fine.” He had that look on his face that said no force on this earth would move him.
“Kaden,” she said slowly, and a flicker of something crossed his face that made her wish she hadn’t said his name. “I’ve seen you in vehicles before. You did throw up the fourth time.” That was the first—and only—time they’d driven anywhere longer than fifteen minutes.
This statement made Morgen snicker and Kaden glower. “Not in the car,” the latter ground out.
“Yes, yes, you heroically barfed on the street.” She’d felt terrible, and demanded to know why he hadn’t told her he got carsick.
He’d hesitated, and then he’d just shrugged and said he hadn’t wanted to bother her.
She understood now that he hadn’t told her because he hadn’t known.
On the shorter drives, he’d probably just felt a little off, and chalked it up to the novelty of the new transportation method.
It wasn’t until she’d wanted to attempt fun and normality, and had decided to push the limits of her own ability to travel beyond Tempe’s borders to go to the Phoenix Art Museum, that the problem had become apparent.
By the time she’d pulled over because he was green in the face, she’d already had a splitting headache.
After a half-hour breather on the side of the road, her hope of anything resembling a normal life died, and they’d turned around and gone home.
Home, where she’d already been living with him because she was desperate, had nowhere else to go, and because it would have taken an army to pry her away from the one person who could remember her for more than five seconds and also seemed to like her.
Stars, she’d been so dumb not to see the con from the start.
But then, cons were designed to prey on the desperate, right?
She shook off the memories—she hadn’t thought about her previous relationship with Kaden in a long time, and she certainly didn’t want to start doing so again now—and pushed the bottle of Dramamine back at him.
“It’s roughly a four hour drive. Don’t triple the travel time because we have to stop every half hour for you to breathe fresh air. ”
He took the bottle back but didn’t open it.
She sighed. “What exactly do you think is going to happen if you fall asleep?” She had herself, Evra, Morgen, the Harvester of Worlds, and a sapient sword. There was precious little in Dead Earth they couldn’t deal with. Did he really still think she couldn’t handle herself after all this time?
“Nothing,” he answered.
Did that nothing sound a little hostile?
He popped the top off the bottle, shook out a pill and swallowed it dry—which, gross—and said, “Can we go now?”
Yep, he was pissed. Because stars forbid she try to prevent him from puking and point out that the world did not require his conscious presence on a car ride. “Yes, Your Majesty, we can go now.”
Morgen snickered again and clapped Kaden on the shoulder.
Evra met Nyx’s gaze in the rearview mirror and rolled her eyes.
That, at least, made Nyx crack a smile. She dropped the car in drive, followed her phone’s overly chipper voice telling her which direction to turn onto which street, and sincerely hoped this wouldn’t be the longest four hours of her life.