Mia arched her back, slipped one hand between her legs. Pressing at the sweet ache she found there, she closed her eyes and sighed.
This is the strength that topples kings. Ends empires. Even breaks the sky.
She ran damp fingers over smiling lips.
This is power.
She awoke hours later from a blissful, dreamless sleep. Stretching like a cat, squeezing her thighs together and luxuriating in the memories of the way he’d touched her. She looked at the boy beside her, the face beneath the ink softened by sleep. Telling herself it had only been to keep the dreams away.
Guessing it was close to mornbells and remembering Hush’s scourging, she decided it’d be best for all concerned if she wasn’t seen sneaking from Tric’s room when the other acolytes woke. So she dressed silently, stole from the bedchamber without waking him. Her shadowcloak about her shoulders, she pawed blindly along the wall until she made it to her room. And unlocking the door with a swift turn of the key, she slipped inside with none outside the wiser. Breathing a small sigh of relief.
“… the perfect crime …”
“Mister Kindly!”
There he was at the foot of her bed; just a sliver of deeper darkness in the gloom. She took a running dive onto the furs, compelled to try and touch him, pick him up and squeeze him. And as he leapt up into her arms, she was shocked to find she did feel some vague, velvet soft touch as her hands passed through him, cold as ice, soft as baby’s breath. He threw himself around her shoulders, slinking through her hair, and the long locks moved as if in some gentle breeze. Tears of relief welled in her eyes.
“I was worried, you little shit!”
“… i am sorry …”
She leaned back in her pillows, and the not-cat hopped up onto her chest, peered into her eyes. He’d been missing all eve without a whisper. Which, despite the relief filling her at her friend’s return, still begged the question …
“Where have you been?”
“… o, a short trip to the theater, a quick round of ale and whores, you know …”
“Hold now, you don’t get to be a smart-arse. You were missing for hours.”
“… i trust you found some way to entertain yourself while i was gone …?”
“O, a short trip to the athenaeum, some light reading, you know.”
The not-cat twisted its head in the direction of Tric’s room.
“… i think it best if i don’t …”
She grinned, ran her fingers through him, again feeling that vague chill prickling the hair upon her skin. Questions about her sleeping arrangements could wait.
“… So,” she said.
“… so …”
“Jessamine stole Mouser’s Trinity.”
“… did she really, i hadn’t noticed …”
“I warned you about the smart-arsery.”
“… as if one sun had warned another it was shining too bright …”
“She hates my guts, Mister Kindly. And now she’s got a weapon we can’t defend against hanging around her neck.”
“… so tell mouser. the ministry. have the trinity confiscated …”
“Tattling tales to the Ministry lacks a certain … style, don’t you think?”
“… you have another plan then …?”
“I’m sure I could conjure one with the help of enough goldwine.”
“… you do not have time for petty antics. remember why you came here …”
“That’s all well and good, but what if Jess decides to avenge her father once and for all? She draws that Trinity and I fall to my knees trying not to puke my guts up.”
“… in case you had not noticed, jessamine hates almost everyone around her. let her think you beaten, and she will grow bored. she loathes carlotta as much as you …”
“So what, I just lie down and let her stomp all over me?”
“… have you heard of the scabdogs of liis …?”2
“Of course.”
“… it never hurts to be underestimated, mia. initiation should be your goal …”
Mia chewed her lip. A question roiled behind her teeth. One she’d never needed to ask before. But then, he’d never abandoned her before. In all their years together, the shadowcat had been her confidant. The star she set her course by. It was he who saved her from Scaeva’s men. He who stood beside her when her mother …
No. Don’t.
Don’t look.
But the Trinity had affected him even worse than her. The suns had terrified her, but Mister Kindly had been near mad with panic. What about him made the Everseeing One’s gaze hurt him so? Was it simply because he was a thing of shadow? Or was there more to him than simple darkness?
“What are you, Mister Kindly?”
The not-cat tilted his head.
“… your friend …”
“But what else? A daemon like the folklore says?”
A wind-in-the-gravestones chuckle hung in the air. “… daemon, yes. i’ve been meaning to ask you to sign this parchment. in blood and triplicate, if it please you …”
“I’m in no mood for jests. Why won’t you tell me?”
“… because i do not know. before i found you, i was just a shape waiting in the shadows …”
“Waiting for what?”
“… for one like you …”
“That simple, eh?”
“… what is wrong with simple …?”
“Because nothing ever is.”
“… you are too young to be so cynical …”
Mia lurched upward, passing right through Mister Kindly and up off the mattress. The not-cat licked its paw and cleaned its whiskers as if nothing were amiss.
“Fuck you, then. Keep your secrets. I’ll seek out Lord Cassius when he comes back for initiation. Ask him again about darkin and what it means to be one. And if he decides to play cryptic instead of giving me my answers this time, I might just choke them out of him. I don’t care how nice his damn cheekbones are.”
“… that is unwise, mia …”
“Why? Because he might tell me the truth?”
“… because he is dangerous. surely you sense that …”
“All I sense when I’m near him is your fear.”
“… and you think i am afraid for me …?”
Mia bit down on her tirade, stared at the not-cat sitting among the furs. All Mister Kindly had ever done was protect her. Chasing her nightmares away when she was a little girl. The nevernight phantoms of the puppy-choker who came to drown her. The scarecrows and shadows she’d seen inside the Philosopher’s Stone.
“So I wait for the chronicler, then. There’s bound to be a book in the athenaeum that holds the truth. It’s only a matter of time until he finds it.”
“… you truly believe you will learn to master the shadows by reading a book …?”
“Then what am I supposed to do?” she shouted.
“… i have told you a thousand times, mia …”
She looked at her friend, curled there in her bed. Chill fingernails running down her spine. The sound of distant screaming echoing in her head. The image of a tear-streaked face. Hollow, frightened eyes. Blood.
“… to master the darkness without, first you must face the darkness within …”
Breath coming quicker. Sweat on her skin. She rummaged in her britches, found her cigarillo case. Put one to her lips with shaking hands.
“… it was not your fault, mia …”
“Shut up,” she whispered.
“… it was n—”
“SHUT UP!”
The girl hurled the silver case at the wall. Face twisted. The not-cat pressed his ears to his head. Shrunk down on himself and whispered.
“… as it please you …”
Mia sighed. Closed her eyes and breathed. After long, silent minutes, she struck her flintbox and lit her cigarillo, drawing deep and sitting down on the bed. Watching the smoke wind in broken spirals through the gloom. Finally sighing.
“I’m becoming something of a bitch, aren’t I?”
“… becoming …?”
She glanced at the cat as he chuckled, flicked ash in his general direction.
“… this is all new to you. it cannot be easy …”
She dragged hard on the smoke, exhaled through her nostrils.
“It’s not meant to be easy. But I can do this, Mister Kindly.”
“… i have no doubt. and i am with you to the end …”
“Really.”