“No fear of polite conversation with me,” I say, teasing and hoping for another lovely laugh from her.
She chuckles, then her face pales and her arms fall to her sides. “Sio!”
I whirl around to see a tumbling mass of orange fur, a green pelt, claws, and the sharp beak of a shrub gryphon.
Chapter 20
Kaya
Isprint toward the fight, my lungs tight with worry. “Stop it! Sio, no!”
Cyrus flies past me. He has Sio by the back of the neck and pulled away from the gryphon before I can blink twice. Sio wriggles, howls, and spits. The shrub gryphon, its pelt sticking up in spots, lets out a snarl in Sio’s direction. It begins digging up the ground around a patch of flowers, like he is glad to be done with the maplecat and back to his earthy endeavors. Cyrus lowers Sio to the ground.
“I suppose I must thank you for drawing me out of my rage,” Sio says.
Cyrus just stares. “I…”
“I’ll find you both tonight by scent,” Sio says. “Have a good day.”
“Bye!” I wave as Sio trots out of the courtyard and toward the city.
Cyrus runs a hand through his hair. “About fifty thoughts have come into my head, but I’ll just say that Tully could sell the king’s weight in gryphon repellent spells here.”
Then I realize I forgot something that I was looking forward to. “Ah, no.”
“What is it?”
“I meant to save us a few treats. It’s a tragedy that we had to smell them all the way here, and we don’t even get a single bite.”
Cyrus’s grin turns devilish. He’s painfully handsome when he has that naughty look. He pulls a small bundle from his cloak and holds it out. I unwrap a linen napkin to see exactly what I forgot—two perfect chocolate croissants.
“After all these years, I’m an expert at stealing your pastries, Kaya.”
I laugh. “You’re a menace.”
“I’m your menace.”
A smile stretches my face, but then my stomach flips and I fully absorb the way he said that. What does he mean? It sounded like…
And then he is putting the treat to my lips and I can’t do anything but bite into the flaky, buttery layers. The chocolate is soft and just the right level of sweet.
I shut my eyes and savor the taste. “Yummmm.”
When I open my eyes, Cyrus is staring at my mouth. He coughs and sets the rest of my treat in my hand and takes a quick bite of his own.
“Come,” he says, not looking at me. “Let’s go have some fun.”
I probably am reading too much into everything at this point. That kiss tangled me into knots.
Outside the courtyard, the city is a storm of sounds and smells. It’s a feast you can live inside, and now that I have finished delivering my goods and all that is settled, I feel more capable of enjoying this. Plus, the gleam in Cyrus’s eyes raises my spirits further. He was made for adventure like this and more. I sigh and trail him into the market proper, where he begins haggling with a hemp bag merchant.
“For this size bag, I wouldn’t go that high now…” Cyrus turns the satchel this way and that, his eyebrow lifting and his scalescatching the afternoon sun’s warm light. His tail swishes behind him in the way it does when he’s enjoying a challenge. “I’ll give you this much and not a copper more.” His taloned fingers uncurl to drop coins into the merchant’s hand.
“I’m being robbed,” the merchant mutters. But he slides the coins into the small box on his table and is already seeking his next customer.
The next spot features bright silks, wools, and linens. I run my hand down a draped length of purple-dyed linen that would look so pretty as an apron.
“Let me get it for you,” Cyrus says at my shoulder.
