Vergis groaned. “It’s just chalk, you can see that, right?”
“Muffin—”
“The rain’s going to take care of it.” Vergis finished his coffee in one long swig.
“Well, I’m not waiting for rain when there are magic squiggles on my porch. I don’t want your bagu magic to go and mess with my plants, Vergis. C’mon, I’ll show you where the brooms are.”
“But—”
Kinnek gave his son a stern look. “Muffin, you promised Donna you would clean her porch.”
“You promised her I’d do that!”
Kinnek clicked at him. “Oh, sugar cookie, that’s the same thing. Squeaky clean, please. You know I’ll make you do it over if it’s not.”
Vergis glared at me. “Your fault. I hate mopping floors.”
With that, he stomped off after Donna and Wilson.
Inkiri clicked. “Kinnek, can the humans find Rory? I’ve been worried about that since Esaka.”
I pushed at his chest, and after I pointedly wiggled my feet, he set me on the ground. It made it so I had an easier time taking part in this conversation, not that I thought I had a lot to contribute to it. Still, this was important. If I really was a danger magnet, I needed to know. For Inkiri’s sake.
“I’ll not use the magic again if that helps,” I said after swallowing around the lump in my throat. Kinnek’s eyebrows shot up, but I soldiered on. “I don’t want anything like what happened in Esaka to happen ever again. Or…like back at the Stone two years ago.” I looked up at Inkiri and tried my eye batting. “I want to see the others anyway. I get why people in Esaka would chase us out of town after that attack, but we can find another place back on Aër where we can all just…be, right? Your House maybe? You could go back to being a prince, and then you’d never have to fight again, right?”
Inkiri looked at me for a long time. It was worrisome. I’d only ever known him as a bagu of action.
When he spoke, his voice was pained. “Sweet thing…” He reached for my wrist and rubbed the inside of it with his thumb. “We can go back to Esaka if you want that. Hove would be happy to have us, I’m sure. Delighted, even.” His gaze hardened. “There is much to do close to the border, and I could show you that I am a protector worthy of being your mate.”
Kinnek chuckled. “You two’re missing each other’s subtext, and it is adorable. Inkiri, I don’t think your mate means to criticize your abilities to?—”
“Criticize!” I spun on him. “When did I criticize him? He’s the most… The best! Thing. Person! He’s the best person ever, and I don’t know how I got so darn lucky with him. I never criticized him. Did I?”
Kinnek huffed. “When you told him he should never fight again, butter cookie.”
I looked at Inkiri. “No, that’s not what I mean, I just—you don’t have to fight. I mean, I don’t want you to fight like some chosen one just because some disembodied voice is all weird about blood and whatnot. I want you to be safe.” I pointed at my neck. “You promised me all those scarves, remember? Can’t buy me scarves when you go out and fight the cola ash people.”
Inkiri’s brow furrowed. “Sadir, do you think you need to protect me?”
“Yeah?”
Inkiri sighed, bowing his head so his horns caught the light.
Kinnek whistled. “Before this continues, I have a question, chocolate chip. I gather that voice told you Inkiri was chosen to be your mate?”
Dang it, had I said that out loud? Was my brain giving up on quality control altogether now?
“It’s…it’s not like I know what to believe.”
That was true enough. After all, believing some voice no one else heard wasn’t a healthy thing to do. I was pretty sure none of this magic stuff was anywhere near healthy. Normal, I needed to focus on being normal. With a dash of boring, maybe.
Kinnek sighed. “Well, let’s abandon belief then and go to what we know. You use the magic of the land and there are people who want that. This ko circle—” Kinnek tapped the chalk design with a claw that pushed out from his paw shoes. “—is pretty strongly secured against anyone from the outside picking it up. Assuming we are dealing with human mages who are after you, they might well be able to track you, at least to a point, especially when you’re not at your strongest.
“The cola assholes likely deduced you were headed to Esaka because, for one thing, it’s a very close hop through the veils, and for another, Vergis didn’t have the time to properly disguise how he had folded through the veils when he got you all out of there. I don’t think they would know how to track you specifically, Rory, and they might not even have the manpower—the mage-power—to spare for it. Holding on to power in Kankarraz requires them to regularly display the worst of that power to their people, you see. They’re a cruel regime, and without the proof of that cruelty, they’d begin to fear their own people.”
Kinnek’s words sent a shiver down my spine. Kankarraz was their home country, Lissir had told me that. I hadn’t really considered that those white mages didn’t just terrorize Inkiri’s—my—people, but also their own. Was it possible to hate the Koa Esher more than I already did?
Inkiri clicked. “We need not worry him with the details of all that, Kinnek.”
