“Technically, you don’t need to be that fussy about it. Other people aren’t, but I work at a café with my dad, and I’m in charge of the coffee.”
Kit sat in his chair again. His tail butted into Mini’s face, bothering the child into a squealing retreat. “Brew us tea before you go.”
It could have been rude, but Mini clearly adored both the brisk treatment and the order. Nick surmised that was because he adored Kit; he wanted to be useful to him and clearly liked to be treated casually too. Nick thought it fairly obvious that Mini was Kit’s favourite.
“You work with your father?” Kit inquired.
“I’ve been helping out at his business since I was a kid, so has my brother. You’d think with our personalities, he’d be the one out front talking to people and I’d be hidden away in the back, but it ended up the opposite. Laurence wanted to be with Dad in the kitchen, so I sucked it up and learned how to be nice to people.” Nick’s attention began to lag as he spoke, tiredness washing over him in a wave. His torso was bare, and if something inside Nick wasn’t instinctively shying away from twisting to get a look at his own back, he’d have tried to sneak a peek.
“Your personalities?” Kit’s head tilted sideways.
“My brother is very friendly.Toofriendly, even. You would have seen him at the party. He was dancing with the other kit, Jasper. With the green tail?” Nick smiled to himself. “He’s not the slightest bit self-conscious when he’s excited about something.” He loved that in Laurence. He understood the care that Trevor took in making sure Laurence’s enthusiasm for the world was never dampened. Worries were expressed, but restrictions were rare. Nick struggled greatly with that, whereas his dad didn’t.
Kit’s tail lashed suddenly to the side.
“Jasper danced with a noble,” Kit said, his voice as hard as his eyes were desperate.
“Did he? I only saw Laurence glued to him the entire night.”
“He attended the monarch’s child.”
Nick sifted through his memories. “I think there might be a translation issue. You called the merman cracking everyone’s hulls in the harbour the monarch’s mate, but that was just Adonis. And Jasper was dancing with Laurence, who is Trevor’s child, not…” Nick trailed off with a frown. He thought of Adonis’s persistent misunderstanding in thinking that Laurence was Connor’s child. Which Nick had devised stemmed from howattached Laurence was to Connor and how carefully Connor looked out for him. Monarch’s mate. Monarch’s child. “Was this monarch at the party?”
“You spoke to him at length.”
“Black hair? Grey eyes? Because if that’s who you’re talking about, you’re definitely misunderstanding because that’s my brother, Connor –”
Kit leapt to his feet. His tail slashed behind him in an angry arc; Nick flinched at the sound of it cutting through the air, the whistle raising the hairs on the back of his neck. Mini abandoned the tea and darted out of the room.
“You are a liar,” Kit hissed. “You expect me to believe that you are family to the new monarch? You were dressed in student attire. You have magic symbols! This persistent act of not being able to draw and trying to make me think that we took the wrong person is stupid. I will not fall for it.”
It was only when Kit’s lashing tail came to a twitching stop that Nick could tear his eyes away from it and focus instead on Kit’s expression. There wasn’t anger there, only fear. Denial. A rush of adrenaline hit Nick’s bloodstream.
“Get out.”
“It’s my room.”
“Getout.”
Kit’s tail lashed, and Nick’s attention snapped to the black limb.
It immediately stilled. Kit’s chest heaved, but he reached back and caught his tail. It coiled up his arm. “I am not going to –” Kit cut off, a whine in his throat. He turned abruptly on his heels and stormed from the room.
Nick glared at the door, bereft and not understanding exactly how he felt after Kit’s sudden outburst. He dragged in deep breaths to regain his composure. He ended up curledforward, hands in his hair, an unreasonably potent feeling of upset settling into his stomach like a lead weight. He hated it.
Nick forced himself to his feet to finish brewing the tea Mini had started. The room was identical to the one on the last ship, allowing Nick to navigate everything with ease. He found the painkiller powder in a tub next to the tea leaves and sprinkled some into the drink. The brewing process calmed him. He was pissed at being yelled at, but he had seen the denial on Kit’s face. Nick had stopped insisting that he wasn’t a student of Vi’s, but somehow over the course of their time together, Kit had come to believe Nick anyway. He didn’t want to. He wasn’t going to accept it. But he knew.
And why did that lead to lashing out at Nick?
Nick’s anger lessened.
Kit could hardly lash out at anyone else. Not without consequence.
Connor was reactive and volatile when he moved into the house, and Nick, though he’d seen the pain and fear in his responses, had prodded anyway. He’d taken it as confirmation that Connor was a dangerous person who shouldn’t be let near Laurence. Trevor had treated him with respect. Showed genuine care. And Connor had finally felt brave enough to show them all that beneath a hardened exterior was a soft centre.
Kit’s hardened exterior might as well have been made of glass; his gentleness was so painfully obvious.
Kit quietly slipped into the room hours later and tried to check on Nick’s back. “I apologise for waking you.” Kit’s voice was formal and stiff.
