“It wouldn’t have made things awkward.” He joined me in contemplating the ceiling.
I felt my brow furrowing as I tried to parse that. “What do you mean?”
“Oh,” he said, as if it were nothing of import, “I’ve been completely mad for you since you dragged me into the mirror.”
“What?”
He reached over and took my hand, interlacing our fingers. “You were so excited. You tried to show me everything at once, and your eyes lit up, and you were just so fascinated by everything. Gets a man thinking what it would be like to have you look athimthat way.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, I thought you knew.”
“No! I thought I repulsed you.”
“Dead and merciless gods,” Javier said, and dragged me down into a kiss that proved that whatever else he was, he was definitely not repulsed.
When we finally broke apart, I slumped back against the sheets, feeling positively wrung out. “Well. Glad that’s cleared up. But why didn’t yousaysomething?”
“Didn’t want you to think I was a fortune hunter.”
I opened my mouth and then closed it again.Oh.In the last few days, my family’s wealth hadn’t seemed terribly important, given the mirrors and the poison and a lot of other things that money couldn’t fix. But if you were a guardsman, living in the palace barracks… Yes, all right, I understood. “I doubt a fortune hunter would runtowarda mirror-geld.”
“Not a smart one, anyway.”
I propped myself up on one elbow. “I should probably go back and thank them. Bring them mirrors or something… Do you think Grayling got out okay?”
“I’m sure he did. And I still don’t think he’s a cat,” Javier said.
“Why not? Because he can talk?”
“Yes. No.” Javier frowned. “Would a cat really follow someone across the desert like that? A dog, sure. But a cat?”
“Cats can be loyal,” I argued.
“Yes, but they’re fundamentally lazy.”
“Loyalty had nothing to do with it,” said a thin voice from under the bed. “She was my person.Mine.No one else had the right to interfere. And I wasn’t done with her yet.”
In a human, that sentiment would have been horrifying. In a cat… yeah, I couldn’t say I was surprised. “I’m glad you made it out,” I said, trying not to think about the fact that he might have been there during the… uh.
Grayling emerged from under the bed. There was a dust bunny stuck to his tail. “Please. As if that was ever in doubt.”
“So did you get what you wanted?” I asked.
“Vengeance, yes. I could do with more cream.” He finally noticed the dust bunny and, with immense dignity, removed it from his tail. Between licks, he added, “I cannot believe you involvedmirror-gelds. Revolting creatures.”
“They saved our lives,” I protested. “And they were very helpful.”
“Which does not alter the fact that they’re revolting.”
“Are there a lot of them?” I asked.
“Thousands, I imagine. You get them wherever there are two mirrors together. They dig tunnels under the world and click to one another in the dark.” Grayling gave a delicate shudder.
“I thought I might bring them some paper and see if we could communicate.”
“Ofcourseyou did.” The cat rolled his good eye. “It’s just the sort of thing you’d do.” He got to his feet and stalked toward the washroom. Over his shoulder, he said, “The Queen’s guards took the horses and fled, incidentally. So, if you decide to go back, you ought to be safe enough.”
He vanished through the curtain. I heard a soft thump, as of paws landing on the edge of the basin, and then the non-sound of a cat sliding through the silver.
“There’s no way that’s a cat,” Javier said.
