Chapter 40 Kit
KIT
SFS POLARIS
“I miss ice cream,” Nevis says, throwing herself dramatically on to Kit’s bed. “I don’t think I can live without it for another twenty-eight days.”
Kit chuckles, pulling her knees into her chest as she leans against her headboard. Amaltheia is curled up in Kit’s desk chair, chewing on her nail. It’s rare that they are all off-duty at the same time, but tonight they are. They’ve become fast friends, and adding Amaltheia to the mix felt natural.
“I have a surprise,” Nevis says, smiling coyly as she sits back up.
“Oh, Aaris,” Kit groans. “Do I want to know?”
“Yes, I think you do,” Nevis sings, crossing Kit’s quarters to grab the black bag she’d tossed on the floor by the doorway. She produces a bottle, brandishing it.
“What is it?” Amaltheia carefully picks her way across the floor, avoiding Kit’s sprawled shoes and clothing.
She’s not neat, and having to be in the medical bay for days on end, while spending nearly every other waking hour in the lab working on the antidote, means that it’s a disaster in here.
She should have cleaned before the girls arrived, but she’d barely escaped a lengthy back-and-forth with Wynstann and Tullia about the most appropriate way to start an IV.
“Nexarian wine,” Nevis says, grinning. “Voss gave it to me.”
Kit smiles, nodding. There is absolutely something going on between her friend and Voss, though she hasn’t pushed the subject with Nevis. “And you fancy sharing with us?”
“Obviously,” Nevis says. “Kit, can you get us some glasses?”
Kit grabs three from under the sink in her bathroom, reemerging and placing them on the small wooden desk behind Amaltheia. “There you are.”
“Voss tells me this is his favorite,” Nevis says, opening the bottle and pouring out a hearty serving for each of them. “It’s made from an orange grape they have on the more arid part of the planet.”
Kit picks up the glass, studying the liquid.
The wine is, indeed, an orange hue. She wants to know more about Nexarium, where Task comes from.
She feels her cheeks heat at the mere thought of him — of what he’d done in the hangar the other night.
She’s no prude, but that was on another level entirely.
It’s like she can’t control herself with him.
“Lumaria to Kit?” Nevis is saying, and Kit snaps back to reality. “We’re doing a toast.”
“To what?” Kit asks, leaning against the desk next to Amaltheia, trying very hard to remain rooted in the present.
“To our progress,” Nevis says, raising her glass, “on all levels.” She raises her eyebrows, casting a very pointed glance at Kit.
Kit isn’t sure what progress she’s referring to, but clinks her glass against theirs anyway.
She sips the wine and is pleasantly surprised.
It’s both sweet and tart, a hint of orange left on her tongue.
“Now spill,” Nevis says, gesturing toward Kit with her glass.
“Spill what?” Kit asks.
“Oh, please!” Nevis exclaims, looking to Amaltheia. “We all know you’re hooking up with him.”
“Who is we?” Kit asks, her face heating.
She didn’t think they were being that obvious.
After that night in the infirmary, she’d been careful to make sure she didn’t have any evidence along her neck, though Task had taken to leaving little love bites other places.
And of course, Nevis did very nearly walk in on them the other day, but they weren’t doing anything when she’d entered the medical bay.
She touches the inside of her thigh absentmindedly, the latest victim of one of his particularly intense nips.
Amaltheia takes a sip of her wine and grins. “Well, let’s see. Me. Nevis. Voss. Luminary Oswald. Wynstann and Tullia.”
Kit almost chokes. “Did you say Luminary Oswald knows?”
“Oh, most definitely,” Amaltheia says, laughing. “Don’t worry. I don’t think he’s in any position to do anything about it. He needs you too much.”
“And he thinks it’s sweet,” Nevis chimes in.
Sweet? The way they’ve been behaving with each other after hours has been anything but. More like crazed. Frenzied. Like they might not have another chance.
Kit sets her glass down and buries her face in her hands. “This is so embarrassing.”
“It’s fine,” Nevis sings. “Nobody cares. Except me. I care because I want details. What’s he like?”
Kit scoffs. “Ew! You’re not getting details.”
Nevis raises her hands, moving them slowly apart and wriggling her eyebrows. “This big?”
Kit stares at her incredulously as Amaltheia howls with laughter, Nevis continuing to move her hands outward. “Damn, Kit.”
“Stop it!” Kit shouts, laughing, her entire face aflame. This cannot be happening. Her friends are ridiculous, absurd people.
Nevis shrugs, frowning slightly as she knocks back her glass of wine. “We have to live vicariously through you, you know? At least one of us is getting some action.”
Kit frowns. She knows that Nevis is teasing her, but the way she’s put it also feels so impersonal.
What she’s doing with Task — it’s so much more than that.
Of course it feels good — too good — but with him, it means everything.
To be able to touch him, knowing what he is, the pain that lacerates him on a daily basis, is more meaningful than she would have imagined.
He’s done so much for her between getting the pagadium, and bringing her silly flowers, and holding her hand when she’s not sure she can take another second of the uncertainty that roils inside of her.
He’s promised her he’ll help her find out whatever it is she needs to know about being a Vitalis.
She knows she’s in deep, with the way she’s thinking, but it’s not one-sided. She knows he’s there too, if their conversation the other night was any indication, even if he keeps trying to cut himself off from it.
Nevis senses Kit’s silence and cuts in, her face more serious, eyes soft. “You know I’m only joking with you, right?”
“Yes, of course,” Kit says, shaking her head slightly, as if to derail her train of thought. “I just… it’s intense. All of it.”
Amaltheia raises her eyebrows, a small smile playing at her lips. “I wouldn’t have expected anything less from the hand to the governor. Intense is his middle name.”
Kit is quiet, taking another drink of the orange wine. “Why’d Voss give this to you anyway?” She switches gears, steering it to Nevis’ preferred subject.
“Because he loves me,” Nevis laughs and then holds up a hand when she sees the look on Kit’s face. “Nothing has happened.”
“That’s actually shocking,” Kit says.
Nevis shrugs. “I think he likes flirting with me. That’s all.”
Kit is skeptical of that claim, but doesn’t argue with her. “Whatever you say.” She crosses back to her bed, laying back on it and staring up at the ceiling.
“Voss gets around,” Amaltheia pipes up. “At least, that’s what the staff at Xaria have told me.”
“I mean, have you seen him?” Nevis cuts in. “I’m not surprised.”
Kit thinks that Task is the more attractive of the two, with his icy blonde hair and otherworldly eyes, and his fucking forearms — since when does she even pay attention to forearms?
But keeps her mouth shut. Instead, she asks, “Why isn’t he married yet?
Why isn’t Task?” She hopes Amaltheia will know something about the possible engagement Caden had mentioned to her, or that she’ll dispel it entirely.
Amaltheia shrugs. “Task is presented with suitors every winter. Rumor has it he’s turned them all down.
Draven doesn’t have a wife, and the Consortium has never been stronger, so it’s not always necessary.
It depends on your power, I suppose. If you’re a part of the Eight Great, sometimes you’ll be matched to produce particularly powerful offspring.
But sometimes, the line is powerful enough on its own. ”
“And Voss?”
“I assume enjoying the fruits of youth,” Amaltheia snorts. “He can afford to wait until he takes his father’s seat on the High Council, unless there is a need for a political union before then.”
Kit shakes her head. The entire governing structure of Nexarium feels so antiquated.
Marrying for political gain? Insane. Dividing people into castes based on their power?
Bizarre. Murdering people for committing treason?
Draconian. And yet, from what she sees from the outside, the planet is flourishing.
The unmatched ruler of the Consortium. “Your planet is…strange, Amaltheia. Very different from where Nevis and I come from.”
She shrugs. “Seems normal to me. It’s all I know.”
That’s the problem, Kit thinks. It’s all any of the Nexarians know. How is anything supposed to change when that is the system they’re raised in?
“Have you had any other opportunity to practice?” Amaltheia asks her.
“Not really,” Kit admits. “I’m too focused on finding the cure. I don’t have time to play around with the Vitalis stuff.”
“But you used it successfully with Task?”
Kit nods once, trying not to focus on that particularly traumatizing moment where blood was spilling from his sternum like a fountain.
“We need to keep honing it,” Amaltheia says. “That was lucky, but the only way you’ll ensure you can access it consistently is to keep practicing.”
Kit sighs. She doesn’t want to practice.
She doesn’t even want the power. Sure, it helped her in that situation, and she was grateful for it, but she also didn’t ask for this.
And now there are people that are being sent after her, and she just wishes she could rewind to a year ago.
When she wasn’t under the pressure to find a cure to save her family and her planet, when she didn’t have a strange power that she didn’t ask for, when her biggest concern was the breakdown of her relationship with Finn.
That had been heart-wrenching, of course, but damn, it felt so much less complicated than the current circumstance.
And she still doesn’t know how the hell she inherited the power, though she is more and more convinced there is something her parents were hiding from her. Something explosive.
“Give me the plant,” Kit grumbles, gesturing to the little green plant on her windowsill, pushing it out of her mind. She will sort it out soon enough. She will ask her father the next time she speaks to him.
“You’re welcome,” Amaltheia teases, handing it to her. “Really. This is good for you. I promise.”
“And it’ll give you something to focus on while Task is with his wing. Keep your mind off him,” Nevis adds. Kit wants to roll her eyes. She’s focused on plenty without him. Even if he has been in the back of her mind all week. Even if she keeps thinking of his lips on hers.
She places her fingers on the plant and breathes in, shoving him out of her brain. Focus.