Inkiri clicked. “Hmm. Birds are easy to please.”
“I’m easy to please.” I reached for the napkin Donna had pulled out of a dispenser on the counter behind her. “I’m just like a chicken.”
“What’d I tell you?” Vergis turned to his dad. “Chicken-brained twink gold digger. Isn’t the Loathly Lady supposed to be graceful, not stuffing their face with chocolate waffles?”
“Well, chocolate waffles never did feature in the myths.” Kinnek hummed. “Who knows? It might be a distinguishing trait.”
Donna tsked. “You two aren’t blaming us poor humans for our cravings, are you?”
“I don’t have cravings,” I said quickly, then licked some chocolate off my left index finger. “No uterus, no cravings.”
“Honey, you sound a bit misogynistic there,” Donna said to me, and my face flushed.
Vergis smirked. “He’s obsessed with uteruses. Has been like that since we found him, Donna. Between you and me, I think he was trying to find women’s underwear.”
“I—no! Just the cat socks. All I did was tell you all I don’t have one. A uterus, that is. Never been involved with them before, never ever. I don’t want one either. I mean, no offense to, erm…” I gestured toward Donna.
“To the trans woman in the room who doesn’t have one and the bagua who do have them?” Donna suggested.
I wanted to go back to being unconscious, even if it meant sleeping in the tent, but as it was, I turned millet bean red with shame. “Yeah. Sorry.”
Gran had said something about silence and grace or something. Maybe I should talk less? Yes. Shrubbery did not speak. I wondered whether my third-grade teacher had, after all, been trying to teach me a life lesson when she’d cast me as that tree. It did bear considering.
While Vergis kept up his lurking, Kinnek pulled out a chair and slid into it, his eyes on me. “Hmm. He does sound a little bit Canadian, Muffin. You’re right about that. But—” He got all serious and intent all of a sudden. “—all joking and making light of the situation aside, you are feeling better, aren’t you? You look paler again now than you did when you smelled of your mate’s pleasure.”
Oh dear effing gosh. My face heated all over again, but I managed to nod and take another bite from my chocolate waffle. Gosh, but food was good.
Inkiri ran a tender hand over my shoulder. “He’s no longer as cold to the touch. He took a shower.” He had the nerve to sigh. “Alone.”
Kinnek crossed his legs. “Ah. Yes, they do that. Humans, that is. Don’t let it bother you.”
Silence was grace or something, so I didn’t bother to inform them they were the weirdos here. At any rate, I did feel warmer—about as warm as the hot shower should’ve made me feel. It was because Inkiri was touching me.
I jerked, the piece of waffle almost falling off my fork. That grain of knowledge had just come to me, but it was true: My mate’s touch helped after the drain of magic. That was why I needed him near, why I’d physically craved the closeness of sex. It was also why the animal part of my brain was signaling “mate, mate, mate” whenever I saw him, even though I’d only recently started thinking of Inkiri as my…husband and spouse; the handsome blue guy with the horns I’d fallen for and who was mine now.
“Well, that kicks ice maiden off my list of theories for good, but I really think we hit it on the head with Loathly Lady.” Kinnek steepled his fingers in front of him and looked me in the eyes. “Vergis said you knew things by some magical means and heard voices in your head. Care to tell me about that? Just now, it looked as if you thought of something important. Penny for your thoughts?”
I stuffed the last bit of waffle in my mouth, more to stall than anything. I didn’t think that Kinnek or anyone else here would think I’d lost my mind, but I simply didn’t want to talk about it. About the magic.
After the events at the Stone, I’d had enough adventure, enough violence, enough travel, even. Now, after Esaka, I had most definitely seen more than I wanted to see of any and all kinds of conflict. I just wanted a quiet life with Inkiri, maybe somewhere close to my guys.
I let myself fantasize about a nice little house in Esaka or somewhere similar, with everyone living on the same street so that when the afternoons turned long and lazy, I could walk over to Lissir’s house and hang out with him, gossip, ask him about bagu stuff I didn’t understand. Or make him give me fashion advice, seeing how, as a trophy mate, I couldn’t be a slob.
But I got the feeling Kinnek wouldn’t let me weasel out of telling him about what I’d already let slip to Vergis. He wouldn’t let me run away to Aër.
I wiped my mouth on the napkin before I said, “I…I know stuff. It’s like…when you watch some spy show, right, and you get to see what the bad guys do and what the good guys do. You always know more about what’s going on than either side. It’s sort of like that. A bird’s-eye view of events, you know? I can tell it’s not my own knowledge, but it’s… I just know that it’s true.”
I looked at my plate. Saying it out loud made it sound totally bonkers. Inkiri clicked at me and pulled my coffee mug closer to me so that I had an easy time reaching it.
I took a sip, then put it back down with a thunk that seemed incredibly loud while everyone was waiting for me to go on. Inkiri rubbed my upper arm as if he wanted to make sure I knew he was there for whatever kind of support I needed.
I clung to the coffee cup as I went on. “I heard that voice the first time at the Stone. It asked me what I wanted, and I said I wanted my guys to be okay, and so it did that. And then I got this cold feeling in Esaka, like I said, and it was there again.”
“And it told you that you were far away,” Kinnek said, repeating what I’d told him when we’d crawled out of the tent. “When you say you spoke, did you use actual words? Or think the words?”
I shrugged and looked up. “I thought them. In my head, you know?”
“Well, where else would you think but in your head?” Kinnek smiled brightly. “Is that voice a foreign thing? Can you feel it, or do you just, for lack of a better word, hear it?”
