The Rise of Deragon (The Deragon Duology #2)

26

Pandora

S o long as I am in Kit Andromeda’s line of sight, I do not dare open Marzipan’s note, even though the urge to do so nearly eats me alive.

The only thing that takes my mind off the piece of paper burning a hole in my pocket is the matter of my physical proximity to Kit. As the first day drags on, I don’t know which is worse—the silence when we run out of things to say, or the way our new closeness makes everything feel so loud .

The two of us can practically hear a pin drop as we eat supper, but after the pork and rice from one of the sacred city’s food banks begins to disagree with both of our stomachs, falling asleep this first night becomes nearly impossible with all the noise.

All day, I have dreaded using the bathroom more than anything else, even the prospects of what could happen while we sleep beside each other. Kit doesn’t mind—mainly because he can’t afford not to frequent it with how our supper sits with us—but out of courtesy, I plug my ears every time he gets up to use it. I, however, remain stubborn, and certainly don’t want to imagine Kit listening in from our bed. Instead, I try to control my breathing and distract my brain from the roiling in my stomach. Waves of nausea sometimes crash over Kit and I at the same time, and just as I’d be about to cave, Kit would rise from the bed again and occupy it. In the end, I wait until Kit finally dozes off to excuse myself out the front door and vomit into the hedges.

Relief sweeps over me like a warm cloak in wintertime the moment it passes, and after wiping my heated brow, I step back inside the hostel—

Kit sits board-straight in our bed, the covers tousled like he was about to bolt from the room had I not caught him. “Are you alright?” he asks, his voice entirely awake.

“I’ll be fine—”

“You’ve been suffering in silence all night,” he says.

My smile downturns. “Yeah, well . . . you don’t need to see me like this, Kit.”

“All I need, Princess,” Kit murmurs, “is you.”

As my eyes flare at the gravity of what he’s saying, Kit quickly adds, “. . . to feel better.”

He fetches an empty bowl from the kitchen and sets it on the floor on my side of the bed. “In case you don’t make it in time,” he says quietly, not wanting embarrassment to swallow me whole but understanding my predicament. My throat is hoarse as I thank him for his generosity, to which Kit merely waves me off. Before I can climb back into bed, however, he stops me with a hand. “You need to change.”

“What?”

“You shouldn’t be sleeping in clothes you’ve gotten sick in,” he explains.

I want to argue that he shouldn’t be either, but then remember that Kit’s not wearing a shirt. Or his slacks. I ought to act like it stirs me somehow, but I’ve been too busy forcing acid to stay in my stomach to notice.

I gulp, a new wave of queasiness dawning on me that has nothing to do with my previous sickness. “But I don’t have anything else to wear.”

“Then at least take those off,” he points directly at me.

My pulse and heartbeat are jackhammers beneath my skin. “Kit—”

“If they have food banks here, they likely have clothing depots, too. I’ll go stock up for the both of us and bring you back something clean. Until then . . .” He doesn’t want to say it. He doesn’t want to voice the words take off your clothes , because despite the feelings that won him over and ultimately betrayed his agreement with the tribunal, my eyes give me away.

I’m nervous.

“I’ll be going now,” he says briskly, turning on a heel and leaving me to my business.

Despite anticipating Kit will barge back in claiming he forgot something he needs, I peel myself out of my clothes, tossing my shirt onto the floor and shucking off my bottoms, I try not to resent the fact that Kit was right: I do feel better. Within seconds, cool air dries the sweat accumulating down the center of my back. I feel like I can breathe —

“I forgot to ask what size you—”

And then, Kit and I are staring at each other.

He’s just as he was a minute ago, and yet . . . the intensity with which Kit looks at me defies gravity. In a way I don’t want to admit to myself, this heated moment plays a mean trick on my mind. Reminding me, somehow, of the masked man I left in the past. The man who, come to think of it, also happened to insist I abandon my old clothes and battle oncoming sickness with sleep once before.

I manage to drag the covers over my nearly naked body before I outright flash him, the hem of the quilt lining up just before my cleavage dips. Fighting the urge to look at my clothes on the floor, I watch, instead, as Kit chews on the inside of his cheek.

“I’m sorry, I should’ve . . . I mean, I . . .” he stumbles, and for the first time, a full spread of pink colors his face.

He’s nervous, too.

Kit clears his throat. “What size do you wear? I want to make sure I get you clothes that fit you comfortably. Do you prefer something loose or . . . form-fitting?”

There’s an audible struggle in the last phrase, and against my better judgment, a girlish laugh escapes me. I don’t bother skirting around it. “Worried the men here will gawk?”

“No,” he says dryly. “I’m worried about myself.”

And that is a can of worms I do not wish to open, especially not when my clothes are on the floor and I’m in a bed I share with him.

“I don’t know my exact measurements,” I mumble. “If you’re getting pants, though, try and find something with laces I can tie or sinch, in case they’re too big.”

“Of course.” Kit nearly trips over his own feet backpedaling to the door. “Of course,” he says again.

“Kit?” I say, even though I have nothing to ask him in response.

It’s like he can read it all over my face, so he doesn’t prompt me further. Instead, without needing me to ask, he lights the lone candle previously discarded on the kitchen table, as if knowing the darkness deters me from slumber. Rather than say goodnight, Kit tells me, already retreating out the door, “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

+

Kit insisted on fetching our meals from the food banks for the next four days, likely so that he could personally chew out the cooks responsible for the spout of food poisoning we underwent.

Even though the both of us made a full recovery after two days of conserving our strength, he refused to let me break his mandated schedule: rest through breakfast and drink lots of water, stew and non-acidic fruits at lunch, and gradually increased portions of white meat for supper. This morning, however, I stir from my morning daze to find Kit leaving the hostel to go on a walk. The door barely makes a sound as he delicately feeds the lock into the plate, and once his form passes the view from our window, I surge from the bed.

I’d been careless and forgot that I left Marzipan’s note in the pockets of my old clothes, the ones I’d worn when we first arrived. Fishing it out in a mad dash, as if Kit hadn’t just made the effort to secretly slip away, I fumble with the scrap of paper and read her concise message:

Mosacia needs you. Find me when you can.

Needs me? Mosacia hates me, as proof by the bounty on my head.

How could a territory my family has conquered need me in any facet?

The laughable concept is enough to draw me out of bed, into fresh clothes, and up to the third floor. I’m mid-knock when Marzipan swings open the door to her home, as if anticipating my arrival. “Ah, Pandora! I was wondering when you’d—”

“I don’t have much time.” The words fall out in a frantic blurt. “Kit’s on a walk, but I don’t know when he’ll be back. Does this conversation require privacy?” I hold out the scrap of paper to her.

Marzipan’s eyes glimmer at the sight of her slipped correspondence. “Don’t worry. I’ve memorized that man’s routine over the past few days. We’ve got an hour. But . . . yes, you should probably come inside.”

“What’s this about, anyways? Why would a nation out to sentence me to death need me?”

“Oh, right.” She giggles. “That may have been a stretch. You see, they don’t know they need you. Maybe not yet, at least, but they do. They need someone on the other side to see the truth, and I need to know if you’re the kind of person I’m hoping you are—all curious and kind and compassionate—so that you won’t bury it.”

“Bury what—”

“ Marzi !” the elderly downstairs neighbor heckles. And then, she yaps something in a dialect I’ve never heard before. My eyes go wide at the intensity at which she verbally flings it at Marzipan.

Still, Marzipan laughs, unaffected by her berating. She leans in and whispers, “To put it nicely, she said something along the likes of, what have I said about having your conversations on your front porch this early?— and the answer is not to. Anya’s not a morning person.”

Then, she cups her hands and loudly responds in the woman’s native language. And while I can’t understand what Marzipan means in return, her childlike smile seeps through every foreign word, lightening the tension. I hear the woman scoff but retreat into her hostel, and only once she’s gone do I have the strength to ask her what Kit had wondered from the start.

“How many languages do you know, Marzipan?”

She gestures me into her place so sweetly that I almost mishear her as I walk through the door. “All of them.”

I chuckle. “No seriously, how many.”

“All of them,” she repeats candidly.

Finally, I gear my eyes back to her in horrified shock. “How’s that even possible?”

She must be joking , I tell myself. That is both statistically and physiologically not possible.

Yet, the way Marzipan stares me down with that carefree, pleased smile . . . she’s serious. There is no mistaking it, not as she carefully shuts us inside and leans against the door, as if to trap any sound from slinking out.

“I’m like them,” she whispers. “Venus and Jericho.”

The warmth in my blood chills in an instant. My veins crackle against the ice forming there, and Marzipan bares her teeth in an uncomfortable smile. “Surprise.”