Dragon Your Bones, page 18
Her right arm slipped from his grip and slapped him. He slapped her right back. She slapped him harder. Kai licked at the blood on his split lip, then licked at his palm and reached for his dick. He frowned. He licked his hand some more. He tugged and twisted and stroked and grew all the more angrier with himself.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Rasia said above him. She slammed both hands against his chest, throwing him off balance, and sent him crashing to his elbow. Rasia turned away from him. The shame of failure rang red around Kai’s vision. He beat at his dick, but no matter what he did, it wouldn’t rise.
“I can eat you out.”
“No.”
Rasia never said no.
Kai collapsed back to the floor and curled in on himself away from her. He felt the burn of her scratches on his arms. The pain in his chest where she had shoved him. This hadn’t happened before. They always had been able to rely on sex to communicate. It had always been the place where they could meet in the middle. Sex had buried his initial lack of confidence. Sex kept his head floating above water long after he had been pulled from the Yestermorrow Lake. It was the pedestal of their victory over a dragon. It ferried them here.
“I don’t get it,” Rasia said, brokenly. “It was so easy during the Forging. Why is this so hard? All we’ve done today is argue.”
All Kai’s hopes and dreams from that morning lost color. He thought it would take only a few adjustments on his part to fit their lives together, but it was far harder than he could have ever imagined. Kai felt Rasia slipping through his fingers, and he didn’t know how to hold on to her.
They say Forging flames never last.
“How do we fix this?” he asked. He didn’t want to give up on this relationship. She was the best thing to ever happen to him. How could he let it crumble without a fight?
“I don’t fucking know. You’re the one that froze.”
“You’re the one who treated the whole thing like some game.”
“That was the perfect opportunity to get some practical experience with your swordwork,” she argued. “Against the skinko, you didn’t freeze. Against facehunters, you didn’t freeze. Against a dragon, you didn’t freeze. But a group of date-climbers and stall hawkers who can barely hold a sword scares you? At first, I thought you were joking.”
Rasia stripped off all the articles of clothing he never got the chance to. She reached behind her back and unbuckled the leather straps that held down all the illegal items under her clothing. She tossed off a shoe and unbuckled a belt of daggers from around her ankle. She left on her wrap, a new one she must have recently bought that offered better support with thicker straps. She tossed on a night robe, stepped over him, and stretched out grumpily across the reed frame of her bed.
He felt guilty in that moment. He needed to tell her the why, but he found it so difficult to give voice to his nightmares. He had lived his entire life where his best defense had always been his silence. Zephyr was right. If Kai didn’t want to lose this, he would need to work for it. No matter how much he didn’t say, Nico would always be there for him. Rasia . . . might not be.
Kai stared out her window at the stars and said aloud for the first time, “I got caught up haggling at the market. The merchants were skinks. We needed a new cooking pot, and they all refused to sell me one at a fair price, but we couldn’t afford to waste our money. I went home with nothing. In the end, it was all for nothing. It had gotten dark, and I took a shortcut through an alleyway and got jumped by . . . I don’t know how many there were.”
Rasia had shifted at this point. He felt her eyes on him, but he continued to talk to the stars, unable to face her.
“I don’t remember much of it. I don’t remember if they wore shrouds or if it was just the darkness. All I remember is stabbing one of them in the throat. The rest fled after that. I remember sitting there, in the quiet, with a dagger they left in my stomach and thinking that I couldn’t do this anymore.
But giving up meant that tah died for nothing. Giving up meant that Kenji was right about me. I remember thinking I had a few blinks until my Forging, and everything would change, and everything would be different, and I’d show everyone. But within the first few vibrations of my first Forging, my kull tossed me out of the windship. I gave up after that and existed from one day to the next, waiting to die.
Then you happened. I’m not so naïve to think that everything should have changed after the Forging, but I thought . . . I thought I had changed. Today was the first time I’ve been back to the market since that happened, and I still froze in that alleyway. It all seemed that everything: you, the dragon, the scavengers—had been for nothing. For some stupid reason, I thought I wouldn’t be scared anymore.”
It wasn’t the behavior of others Kai had hoped the most would change. Ultimately, he was disappointed in himself. He was an idiot to have believed that somehow his debilitating fear of every sudden movement, of every rustled shadow, of every unexpected visitor, and every unknown stranger, would somehow disappear. He thought he had finally outgrown the runt of the Grankull.
“You’re right. You haven’t changed,” Rasia said, finally. “That brave and smart kid from the Forging is the same brave and smart kid from before it and the same brave and smart kid after it. A gang of stupid kids jumped you, and you got back up. You failed your first Forging, and yet you threw your bones on me. I don’t know what I have to do or what you need to do to prove to yourself the truth. If a dragon isn’t enough, then I don’t know what is. But tomorrow, you’re going to stand in front of the entire Grankull and show them your face, and that brave and smart kid will become a brave and smart adult.”
Kai crumbled at the words. He never thought anyone would interpret that nightmarish scene of weakness and helplessness as one of strength. He found it so hard to be strong in the Grankull, in this place where nightmares crept around every corner, anxiety wracked every decision, and panic awaited him in ambush. The reed frame of the bed creaked, and Rasia joined him on the floor. When she wrapped her arms around him, tears slid down his cheeks.
“If I had known,” Rasia said, “I would have taken the confrontation a lot more seriously. I would not have left you to fight on your own. But lani, I still would have chosen that alleyway. Spears and longswords aren’t effective in an alley because of the limited space. The walls limit the number of sides a group of attackers can come at you at once. The alley is a daggers game, and you excel at those. Next time you’re being followed by a group of people out to do you harm, run toward the alley. Not away from it. In the small dark spaces, it is you they should fear.”
Leave it to Rasia to do what she did best by turning his whole world upside down. She turned traps into opportunities, and fear into lessons, and maybe even the runt of the Grankull into a brave and smart adult.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Kai lay awake. His brain churned, so paranoid about missing the sound of first drum that he kept going in and out of a superficial sleep. It gave him a lot of time to think, to count the puffs of Rasia’s breath against his neck and stare out the window from her bed. He didn’t have a window in his small bedroom back home, but even sitting outside on his veranda, the stars blinked distant overhead. He wondered what it would have been like to grow up as Rasia did, to have the stars so close in reach.
At the tallest spire, the Elderfire scout whistled at the first sight of sunrise. Then the drums rolled, beginning at the center, to deploy down the spine in both directions. Sometimes in the Desert, Kai had lain awake waiting for first drum, only to realize its absence once the sun had risen. But he had never experienced first drum like this, so close to its origin that the sheer volume physically boomed through his skull and along his vertebrae.
“Morning,” Rasia said, awake and bright underneath him. She licked her lips and coiled. Kai braced himself as she flipped on top of him to greet him with a morning energy he found hopeless to match. Warmth rushed through him, and as one, both Rasia and Kai looked down at his waking dick. Her lips twisted, amused. “Morning to you, too.”
Then their eyes met again, jolting a spark down his spine and twisting the air with tension. He wanted her so badly in that moment and desperately wanted to make up for the disaster that had happened last night, but he also hadn’t been in the right headspace. He saw clearer in the morning.
Kai grabbed her hips and shifted her higher. “My interview is at second drum, and I promised your jih to be more responsible.”
“But I can get gonom right down the hall.”
“We’ve waited this long. We can wait for tonight. It’ll be safer for the both of us when it’s legal and you have your own gonom.” He soothed a hand up her thigh. She crossed her arms and collapsed sideways onto the bed. He could feel her anger stewing beside him.
Five kulls. Twenty-five vibrations.
The time ticked down.
“Rasia,” Kai said nervously and licked his lips. “Can you escort me to my interview?”
He hated the fact that he needed so much handholding for basic activities like walking down the street. But he didn’t know this neighborhood, and he feared another incident like last night could keep him from reaching his interview on time. But what if Rasia was too mad at him?
“Of course,” she said, and flopped her legs as if she were going to get out of bed but stayed horizontal like that with her head on his stomach.
Kai didn’t know why he had expected the worst. He felt so insecure around her lately. Yet, she had held him last night as he told her one of his darkest secrets, and she had thought him brave. The thought gave him the courage to ask, “Are you angry at me?”
Rasia released a heavy huff. “I’m frustrated. I finally have you in my bed, and we can’t do anything about it. I hate . . . I just want people to stop telling me what to do. I want my names already. I want you. I want to be free to do whatever I want with you.”
He released a breath and said, truthfully, “I don’t want to do the bodika.”
Rasia turned on her elbow to give him a flat stare. “I know. You don’t have to force yourself to do something you don’t want to do.”
“I just . . . I thought you’d think me weird for not wanting to do it and it’s a lot of people and I’m afraid I might have another . . .” Was there a word for what had happened to him last night? “I have these . . . episodes.”
Rasia sat up, wrapped her arms around her legs, and placed her chin on her knees. She studied him in the close light of morning. “It was scary,” she said. “You couldn’t breathe.”
“It’s usually not that bad. I don’t know. I handle it better when I’m by myself, I think,” Kai whispered, and hung his head between his own knees. He couldn’t describe to her the mixture of panic and anxiety that demanded inexplicably that he freeze. He felt so stripped open and scared that she would judge him, that she would determine he was too broken to keep around. He held himself and his edges went numb with the waiting.
“Okay.” It all popped when Rasia kissed him on the forehead. “It’s my morning at breakfast. I need to ask Ysai-ji to cover for me.”
“Wait, no, if you need to stay-”
“It’s fine. Your interview is important. We got cornered by five losers last night. I am not going to let anyone make you late.”
Then she pushed off of the bed to her feet. She picked up caftans from the floor to sniff at them, and then quickly discarded them over her shoulder. Her brows rose when she grabbed one by the bed, smelled it, and then moved to toss it on.
“Wait, Rasia, that one’s mine.”
“Oh,” she laughed at that and tossed it to him. Eventually, she found an acceptable one. She threw it on, inside out, judging by the stitching. “I’ll go update jih on the situation and bring back water from the pump so you can clean up.”
She disappeared through the beaded curtain of her doorway. Kai took advantage of the moment alone to collect himself and process everything that had happened. He had opened up to her, and she hadn’t run away. Finally, having reached a sort of equilibrium, he uncurled from the bed. He took the moment to look around the room.
Last night, while he lay awake, everything looked like imposing shadows and unknown borders, but now, the sliver of sunlight rising through the window illuminated the contents of Rasia’s bedroom. The dragonglass beads of the curtain, still swaying from when Rasia displaced them running out of the room, caught on the light, and spun sparkling stars atop her belongings.
Several clothes littered the ground, while well-tended swords and spears rested in racks on the walls. Rocks ranging in different sizes and colors were scattered with purpose atop a dresser. Spread across her desk was a large map, larger than the one she carried on her person, with lines drawn in and landmarks marked, a work in progress and years of dedication, with as much craft and beauty as the murals in the baths of his home.
Kai again began to imagine their futures together but this time with sharper details. He wouldn’t want to move out of his house with Rae still so young, but perhaps Rasia would be willing to move in with him into a room big enough for the two of them? He saw how all her belongings could fit like puzzle pieces.
“Rasia!” He jumped at the sound of Ysai’s voice down the hall. “What do you mean he’s here? He spent the night?!”
“Calm your tits. We didn’t do anything. We were disgustingly responsible.”
“You have got to get him out of here before tah gets home.”
“Are either of you finally going to tell me who he is?!” Kai froze at the familiar voice of his cousin. Logically, in his head, he knew Jilah lived with Ysai, but that fact hadn’t occurred to him when he accepted Rasia’s invitation.
“Shush the both of you. His interview is at second drum. We’ve got to get going.”
The volume of the voices lowered. Kai stood over Rasia’s map and inclined his head toward the hallway, trying to pick out any words. Soon, she came back, charging around the corner with a basin of water on her hip and a towel slung over her shoulder.
Kai washed quickly. He threw on his caftan. She wrapped his shroud around his head and practically pushed him out of the window.
“This way. I know a few shortcuts.”
Rasia led him down Spine Road. Luckily very few people were up and about. While first drum typically signaled everyone to wake up, second drum signaled everyone to get to work. Since a lot of people were off for the holiday, their way was practically clear.
Spine Road arched over the world below. All his life, Kai had viewed the Grankull as buildings that bent over him and narrow alleyways that threatened to steal him away into the shadows. From the top, with his feet on the wide berth of the spine, Kai for the first time felt tall.
Then Rasia froze, her entire body shuddering at the force she used to come to an abrupt stop. Someone had turned the corner of a distant street. He sucked in a breath, because no one in the Grankull could ever mistake those eyes of steel.
Named Kibari Shamaikulani-Spearedge-Undefeated-Sentry Han-Ribs Councilor-Oshield. Kai knew her names.
In a vibration, the Han noted the color of his eyes to the inside-out of Rasia’s caftan. The confusion that twisted through Kibari Oshield’s face smelted into something heated and dangerous.
Rasia snatched his hand and ran toward the closest side-street. She led them down ladders, jumped across rooftops, and descended stairs until they made it to the relative safety of the ground. She pressed against him where they paused in a narrow alley. Kai’s throat burned, and he gathered a few breaths of air.
“Are you in trouble?” he asked.
“I’ll deal with tah. You focus on your interview.”
“Is she going to hurt you?”
“She won’t kill me,” Rasia laughed, and then frowned when she searched his face. “I was joking. Tah has never hurt me. I’ll deal with her. Trust me.”
She moved to pull away, but he held her against him. He rested in the crook of her shoulder, not ready to let her go.
“Thank you,” Kai said, “For last night and this morning. Thank you, kulani, for taking care of me.”
Rasia’s focus narrowed on him, surprised. Kai had imagined the setting would be a lot more romantic when he finally said the word aloud, instead of in the middle of an alleyway bleeding red with the sunrise, but it felt right at that moment.
“It’s difficult sometimes for me to say things, but I don’t want that left unsaid. You deserve to hear it. And tonight,” he stamped her lips with a promise, “I’ll take care of you.”
Rasia grinned wickedly, then she tapped her hands on his chest. “Say it again.”
“Kulani.”
She lit up pleased, and he felt so full of warmth. She had patiently waited all this time for the moment he was ready to say it. It truly hit him that he was safe with her. Come alleyways or dragons, he found safety in her arms.
Then Rasia snorted, breaking the moment, but unable to fully wipe away the blush that peeked through her sloppily wrapped shroud. “We’re so fucking sappy. Come on. Let’s get you to your interview.”
They stopped outside the temple steps. Out of all the buildings in the Grankull, Kai had been in and out of these temple doors the most. It was where tajih taught him to read and then further allowed him to help with scribe work. It was also where the Council tried to beat his magic out of him. Later this evening, on these very steps, he’d show his face.
He looked over at Rasia. “I’ll see you . . . later?”
