The Rise of Deragon (The Deragon Duology #2)

13

Pandora

M y mother always made an effort to remind me what a wise and knowledgeable girl I was. Every time Venus and Jericho would instruct me on foreign policy or nail me on intricate details of Urovia’s history, I’d have to pass one of their little tests to ensure I was on track to proving myself. This ranged from written assessments to public recitations when they would hold court with the nobles. But pass or fail, the latter of which was incredibly rare, my mother was always there with an affectionate embrace and a kiss on the forehead afterwards.

“My darling girl,” I can still hear her say to me, even now. “How infinitely fortunate is the one who gets to love a mind as beautiful as yours one day.”

But if Mother saw me now, she’d surely rescind those years of admiration and validation.

Kit and I have kept our respective distances, though Andie insists he’s offering me space to settle in, as opposed to outright avoiding me. Either way, I never thought I’d want to spend time with Kit Andromeda.

However, Madman hasn’t sent word in a week, and my attempts at keeping busy are dwindling by the day. In the meantime, I’ve resorted to memorizing every square inch of Andromeda House that I could uncover. Mainly, I learned that from the secret passage beneath my bed, instead of hanging a right for the wrought iron door that led to Madman’s dispatch boat, a left turn leads me into a subterranean hallway—the same hallway that housed me in the storm shelter until my sleeping tonic wore off. Madman must’ve dumped me there that way.

Madman . . .

When my thoughts of him sent me into a jittery sense of chaos, I tried busying myself with my other surroundings. The gardens were pretty, but they were nothing compared to the lawns Venus engineered back in Broadcove. I’d have afternoon tea with Andie and ask about the Isle until I wore down her lackluster sense of Kit-imposed secrecy, but even those details didn’t hold my attention long.

Tonight’s last-ditch effort is to steal a bottle of wine from Kit’s cellar and drink myself into sickness so I rot in bed the rest of the day. But having tread towards me on silent footsteps, Kit gruffly seizes the merlot before I can even uncork it. I startle at the sudden yanking motion.

“And just what do you think you’re doing with that?”

I shrug through an awkward smile. “Drinking it.”

He eyes me funny. “It’s two in the afternoon.”

Is that a grin creeping along the edge of his mouth?

“And?” I ask, hoping Kit reads into my defiance more so than presuming me a miserable alcoholic.

Kit looks prepared to scold me and return his precious merlot to its proper shelving, but just before he emits a sound, he pauses and looks me in the eye as if to assess the truth of my original intentions.

“Alright, princess,” he sighs instead, grabbing a bottle opener and two iridescent glasses. I take the one he offers me with careful steadiness. “I’ll bend, but no way am I letting you down one of my best reds alone.”

When Kit pours the wine into my goblet, I notice the way the dark liquid swirls in its base, the red gleaming black for a short second. It reminds me too much of home, of my family’s coat of arms—dragon’s flame licking up the borders and annihilating all enemies in its wake.

“What are we toasting to?” he calls out as he serves himself, pulling me out of my head.

I don’t have much to say that likely wouldn’t come out moronic in his eyes. I speak my piece anyways. “To disappointing my family. If not for my easy capture, then at least for believing that day-drinking will make me feel better about it.”

Kit chuckles—actually chuckles —before taking a swig of his drink. I hear him bark out a full laugh, however, when my first sip isn’t a sip at all, and I crush my wine like it’s nothing. The bitter sucker punch of an aftertaste only hits me once it’s all the way down.

“Another,” I say.

To his credit, Kit doesn’t deny me the drink and pours cautiously, decreasing my second portion as innocently as he can manage. “Care to talk about it?”

“So you can revel in my misery? I’ll pass.”

I’m surprised that Kit doesn’t push back, and asks instead, “Were you this much of a drinker back home?”

“Only when the parties were dreadful.”

“And what makes a lavish Urovian party dreadful , princess?”

I take another hearty sip of my merlot, the taste stinging the longer I let it sit in my mouth. I swallow with a tinge of internal suffering. “When I’d be forced to perform at them.”

Kit appears puzzled at that. “Singing?”

“I sing. I play the harp too. But no, I mean performing in conversations with guests. Those sorts of social gatherings tended to exhaust me.”

He nods, taking another drink. “Which do you prefer?”

My face scrunches up at the question for some reason. “Come again?”

“It seems like a simple, non-threatening question to ask,” he notes pointedly. “If you enjoy singing and playing your harp, but you were given all day to do one or the other—for yourself, not for an audience—which would you choose?”

The answer is simple. “Definitely singing.”

Sure, I craved knowledge all throughout my childhood and still to this day, so when mother and I acquired my first harp, I was smitten. It looked so lovely but proved to be so complex—a challenge presented within beautiful structuring.

But I don’t think anything ever beat the feeling of Aunt Calliope and I harmonizing in the sitting room over lines from drinking songs, or how her face would light up with pride and a smidge of envy whenever I’d nail a complicated run in an aria she had idolized all her life.

“Are you any good?”

“You’re just trying to bait me into singing for you.”

“Even if I am,” Kit openly concedes, “I don’t see the harm in one song.”

“There’s no accompaniment here.”

“If you’re as seasoned of a professional as you’re implying, you don’t need it.” He rolls his eyes. “Come on. One song.”

I shake my head, and he groans in a manner that lets me know he isn’t truly aggravated just yet. “Not even one verse ?”

“No can do,” I tease, to which Kit reacts in a way like he’s about to barrage me with complaints. I settle him with an extended hand. “And before you get all wound up about how I’m depriving you of something simple and unnecessary, or how I should comply to your every whim because I’m graciously being housed under your roof, you should know that I’m only trying to protect you.”

Kit nearly guffaws at the statement. “Oh, really?”

“That’s right,” I say, daring to move closer to him. A playful move, but a calculated, risky one, nonetheless. Then, I peer intently into his green eyes and tell Kit, “Because the minute you hear my voice, Mr. Andromeda, I have no doubt you’ll fall in love with me.”

Kit visibly halts at my words, eyeing me in a way that makes me wonder whether he believes me to be a downright liar or if he’s evaluating my statement’s potential actuality. “Is that so?”

I nod, and I don’t fight off the blush that floods my cheeks when his stare deepens at the same time his gaze softens.

“We’ll see about that,” Kit mutters, and even though there’s a considerable amount of alcohol in my system, I’m not too far gone to hear the unsteadiness in his voice. It makes me giddy and nervous at the same time, and I begin to sip from my glass again to distract myself from the feeling.

+

Kit Andromeda and I are ludicrously drunk by the time Andie announces that supper is ready, and we practically mow through our food once we drift into the kitchen on unstable feet, stuffing ourselves senseless.

Andie easily detects our blatant inebriation, but rather than hound us about it, she takes great pleasure in sitting in on our joint conversation. Our chatter gets louder the longer we eat, and it’s only once we’re all too full to move from our seats that the three of us end up playing cards together. Specifically, we strike up a game that involves two decks intermingled and a jar of green paint—one that Kit and his mother accredit as an Andromeda Family favorite. Every time a person gets caught fibbing about what’s in their hand, they inherit the entire discount pile and get to be “decorated” by the person who sniffed out their deceit.

By the time the three of us call it quits—mainly because our sides hurt from laughing—I bear an overgrown green mustache and beard courtesy of Kit. Meanwhile, he wears a painted pair of spectacles and cat whiskers that Andie took great pride in painting on her son’s face.

Despite having resided in Andromeda House for more than two weeks at this point, Kit insists on showing me where all the soaps and other bath essentials are in my private bathroom. Now, perched before the doorframe of my room as I pick out a changing robe, he looks to the floor as he says, “I’ve got to admit, Princess, you’re not half as dreadful as I anticipated you to be.”

The comment warms a part of my heart that had previously been convinced to remain guarded, and I sense a sliver of ice there beginning to thaw.

“You can call me by my name, you know,” I say, hoping Kit registers the fact that I might just want him to call me by it. “It’s not poisonous.”

But it sure as hell is personable , his temporary silence seems to say.

Still, the alcohol puts a damper on his typical, sober judgment, and Kit nods slowly. “Okay, then. I had . . . quite a day with you, Pandora.”

Immediately, there’s a voice inside my head groaning, Dear Saints, don’t do it. Don’t start to get those ridiculously fluttering feelings for a man who wants your family in ruins, who is actively using you as bait to get what he really wants. You are drunk and already have to make sense of things between you and Madman. Don’t add Kit Andromeda to the list.

But deep down, past all the food and drinks I consumed tonight, something about the sound of my name on Kit’s tongue triggers an eerie sensation that I can’t quite place. I feel it in my bones, but as for what I feel…

“You look like a scholar,” I blurt out, pointing to his painted, round-rimmed glasses.

The words sound idiotic when I hear them back, and it takes great effort to keep from clenching my eyes shut in utter embarrassment. Kit’s quiet chuckle certainly doesn’t ease my discomfort. “You already know that I am one. Ever since I confessed my interest in history, I’ve caught you stealing glances at my library at least four times in the last week. Given your curious nature, I can only imagine how many times you’ve wandered over there and I haven’t found you.”

I shrug, only because I don’t want my mouth to further shed light on how drunk I am. Then, in the silence that follows, Kit makes an unspoken decision in his head, his eyes casually grazing mine in a way that feels . . . tender.

“You can borrow a book whenever you’d like, you know.”

“I’ll believe that when you say it to me sober.” If he’s a stickler about the rest of Andromeda House, there’s no way that he doesn’t have a death grip on his personal library.

Kit means to argue, but instead, he chooses to be enigmatic and float away from my door. He departs without another sound, and while I’ve always been skilled at picking fights to get my way, I’m too weighed down by dinner and the day I’ve had to convince him to come back.

Dizzily, I traipse over to my bed, meaning to lay down sideways just long enough to settle my heart rate before I draw myself a bath. Instead, I fall asleep before the last of the day’s light disappears beyond the distant horizon—but it doesn’t last long.

No more than two hours later, I wake up on top of the covers with the very distinct feeling that I’m being watched.

I jolt upwards in bed, and sure enough, Madman stands at the foot of my bed. Even in the darkness, his eyes pierce through mine like a blade, but I can’t deny the fact that I am pleased to see him. I might go as far as to say that I’ve missed him. The satisfied smile that spreads across his lips tells me he knows it, too.

“Oh, angel,” Madman drawls, amusement dancing in his eyes. “You look . . . terrible.”

Suddenly, what would typically be a gas bubble in my throat turns acidic, and both Madman and I look at each other as it happens—me in panic, and him in confirmation of my current state.

Lightning fast, Madman rushes towards me when my feet don’t move. My head is so foggy and my body is so full of dead weight that I’m inclined to be sick to my stomach right here in the middle of the floor, but Madman pulls me as firmly, yet delicately, as possible towards the bathroom. I go limp in his hold, so my legs fold beneath me and I’m already kneeling before the latrine when I start to sweat from every pore.

“Don’t make me do this,” I plead.

“You’ll feel better afterwards.”

I shake my head, unable to look at him as I fight off the inevitable. “You shouldn’t see me like this.”

“I’m fairly certain your painted facial hair is more alarming than anything you could conjure up out of your body, angel.”

His remark makes me laugh, true and deep, but the motion rattles the sickness in my belly. I only have enough spare moments to mumble the word please before Madman sweeps my dark curls out of the way and I spill my guts into the bowl.