Page 30 of Moonstriker (The Summertide Chronicles #4)
Chapter 30
Aubrey
How was I the weak link?
I was never the weak link.
I didn’t get sick, didn’t get injured, didn’t show up to work hungover. I wasn’t old enough to deal with the aches and pains the other guys got like a knee that knew when rain was coming or a back that needed a brace.
But there I was, sitting on the mountainside just a mile or two from our destination, with a broken ankle that was finally causing me a fair bit of pain.
Okay, no, that was my stubborn pride talking. The pain was almost blinding in its intensity. Every time I moved the ankle, a stabbing sensation shot up from it, through my entire leg and up into my hip, and I...I didn’t even want to cry out with it or clench down on anything like people did in movies. No, it completely robbed me of the ability to tense my muscles at all, let alone move them as I commanded.
I mostly just wanted to go limp and cry a lot.
But we didn’t have time for that.
Kit had been planning this for most of his life. We had to save the world, him and me, and I absolutely refused to fail at this, no matter what my damned body was determined to do.
“You’re going to have to help me,” I told him. “I’ll use you as a crutch on the broken side.”
For a moment, he stared at me, mouth slack with horror.
Then I watched as reality dawned in those beautiful silvery gray eyes. He’d been planning this for years. He knew as well as I did that there wasn’t a choice. If we quit, that was the end. Everyone, including us, died.
That wasn’t a real option at all.
So I motioned with my right arm, waving him under it, and even though he looked sick at the very notion, he came up beside me and took most of my weight, pulling me up and letting me hop alongside him on one foot.
It was even slower going than the previous days had been, especially since I froze and had to work not to sob like a baby every time my ankle was jostled, which was often. It was instinct to step down on it, and even though it hurt, I had to fight not to do it.
“I’m going to kick your ass for this,” Kit growled as we walked.
I chuckled, though it came out embarrassingly wet and pitiful. “Me? What did I do, other than ruin a perfectly lovely walk in the woods?”
He scoffed, and I felt it more than heard it, as the feeling of having cotton in my head was back, but this time it was mostly muffling the ambient noise around us. I hadn’t heard a single bird, or the breeze on the mountain, or the random creaking and motion of the woods in a while.
“Is bonding always this weird?” I stopped and frowned at that, then shook my head. “Okay, silly question, I know it’s not always this weird, but...like yesterday. I kept drifting away and only being able to focus on Slate.”
“I acted like I was high for a few days,” he told me. “I wasn’t, really, but it was a strange sort of relearning of the world. Like I was suddenly able to see a dozen new colors and spent the week fascinated, looking for them everywhere. I kept slowing the world around me down, or speeding myself up, whichever it is, and watching every nuance of everything that happened.”
It sounded like the first time I’d gone over to a friend’s house, and they’d had a huge high-definition television. I’d been able to see the actors’ pores, everything had been so huge and detailed, and I’d spent hours staring at it, even though I’d had less than no interest in the teen drama he’d been watching.
His distant smile turned into a smirk, and clearly I was in this up to my ears, and maybe a little delirious, because my first thought was how sexy that expression was on him.
“A little like when I first discovered how my dick worked. Spent a whole lot of time focused on figuring that out too.”
I flushed at the thought, at the images that notion provoked. Not of a clumsy preteen Kit learning his own body, but of the current Kit, lying on his back in a bed—the picture in my head was my own bed, in my childhood home—exploring his body with those dexterous fingers of his.
I blushed and ducked my head, and only barely kept from toppling us both over with the motion. Darn it.
“Sorry,” he said, sighing. “That was a terrible idea. I’ll try not to distract you.”
“I didn’t mind,” I told him. “Maybe let’s talk about it later, when I’m not using you as a literal crutch. I’d love to hear more about it.”
He shot me a sultry look, biting his lip and looking me over, then sighed. “You’re like a fucking package of nothing but temptations, you know that?”
I let out a breathy laugh almost punctuated by a cry of pain when my toes dragged on the ground, shaking my head. “Can’t say I’ve ever been called anything of the sort before. Just plain old Aubrey.”
He shook his head, eyes closed. “Incredible. Are people in Duskbringer lands just not all that bright? Is everyone so good looking there that the beauty standards are fucked up?”
“You’re kidding. You’re...look at yourself. White hair, silver eyes, duelist body, and you think other people are ever going to notice me instead of someone like you?”
He shrugged, then paused to make sure it hadn’t tipped me too far over before taking the next step. “I’m nice to look at. It’s the first thing people notice about me. The second is that I’m an asshole and they don’t like me.”
We walked in silence for a while, and as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t refute his point. That was precisely what had happened. I’d seen him and thought he was beautiful, then I’d decided that he was a jerk and I didn’t want to be around him.
“You left out third,” I pointed out after a bit.
He snorted. “You think most people stick around to find a third thing?”
“That’s their problem,” I said, determinedly pushing on. “Because third is that your being an asshole is a defensive facade, and you’re actually a great guy.”
The look he gave me was pure incredulity, but he didn’t say a word, and there was a flush in his cheeks that I didn’t think was just exertion.
I decided to give him a break. “What about me? First I’m okay-ish to look at, then I’m also a judgmental jerk, and then third, if they stick around long enough, I’m still a judgmental jerk, only I’m using the wrong fork because I didn’t know there’s a salad fork and a fish fork and...I mean, how many kinds of forks are there?”
Kit cocked his head, as though considering, and seriously? How many could there be? Finally, he turned and looked at me, and entirely deadpan, said, “Thirteen, I think.”
Thirteen.
Thirteen kinds of forks.
“Of course,” he added, tone a little hesitant, “that doesn’t include barbecue forks, since that’s a kitchen tool and not an eating utensil. Same to serving forks. Oh, fondue forks, so maybe fourteen? But those will never be sitting by your place setting, unless they’re the only utensil there. It’s not like anyone has a fondue course at dinner.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said, almost breathing the words, because of the sheer shock at the notion of fourteen forks.
Kit waved his free hand, dismissive as ever. “If anyone serves you dinner with thirteen forks at your place setting, don’t even bother trying to figure out which is which. They’re just doing it to be an arrogant asshole, so you should deliberately use the wrong one for every course. Just pick a random one. Use the oyster fork for the fruit, and watch them seethe.”
And that, okay, that was funny. Would someone actually seethe over people using the wrong fork? Were there really forks for oysters and fruit?
While staying with Titania, I’d worried if I used the wrong one, someone would think I was an uncouth boor, but that was probably because I’d read too many historical romance novels where characters who came from backgrounds like mine were always shamed by not wearing the right clothes or using the right forks.
“Honestly, it’s not hard,” Kit said, drawing me back to the present. “Start with the one on the outside, and work your way in with each course. If they’re in the wrong order, most of the other people at dinner won’t know that either, and they’ll just use the next one in line, so you’ll blend right in.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.” He turned to give me a smile. “Or I’ll be with you, and you can just use whichever one I do.”
“And will you be using the right one, or the oyster fork for the fruit, to make someone angry?”
He laughed, that beautiful honest laugh of his. “Depends on the host, doesn’t it? If it’s Delta, you can be sure I’ll grab the serving fork right off its platter and use it to eat from. If it’s Caspian or Titania, you can probably safely follow my lead.”
That was a fair point, and what was more, I thought maybe I knew Kit well enough to be able to tell which it was. The stiffer and more unhappy he was around a person, the more likely he was to do something completely outrageous, just to make them angry. Like make mean comments about how entitled it was to fly a doctor all the way out to the middle of nowhere for just one man.
Though I supposed, in retrospect, that had been as much about getting me out of the chalet as anything else. I wondered suddenly, why hadn’t we stayed in the chalet? It would have been so much simpler than trekking back through the woods and over the mountain.
Except that with the seizures, I’d needed to go to a doctor, if only for Aunt Titania’s peace of mind. He could have told people I was bonding the mountain instead, but I doubted even half of them would have believed him, and if she had, Aunt Titania’s response probably would have been to take me and run home.
No, it actually did make sense, taking into account the fact that Nikka could see the future. Part of me just wanted to look for an easier way—like Kit probably hadn’t spent years talking things through with her, trying to find the easiest path.
I very much doubted he’d wanted to work for Huxley Dawnchaser.
No, he’d sacrificed more than I cared to think about, in order to save us all. I suspected that he was going to be dealing with the fallout of that for years to come. He’d said it himself: he was a duelist. He had killed people.
Even if they had all been monsters, that did things to a person.
I stopped, leaning against a tree, catching my breath and looking at him.
We would fix it, I decided, insomuch as a thing like that could be fixed. We’d get him a therapist, and I would spend every day of the rest of his life showing him that he wasn’t a bad person like he thought.
He didn’t seem to want credit for what he’d done. He hadn’t even hinted to nearly anyone about what was happening. But with me, he wasn’t going to have that choice. He’d saved us all, and he was going to have to put up with me being grateful.
Also, I was going to have to learn blowjobs. Maybe he’d teach me.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “You look a little flushed, and your eyes are glassy. How much does it hurt right now?”
I definitely could not tell him that it might be because I was thinking about cocks. But also, it was strange. My ankle didn’t hurt, right then.
The world was also getting weird and smeary, like it had been made of wet paint, and a toddler had just dragged their fingers over it.
A high, feminine voice laughed somewhere to my left. “This way,” she said, drawing the last word out strangely. “We’re over here. Come to us. Come home, little kitten.”