“Only on the fecking phone,” Davin muttered, holding up—oh. Right. I’d forgotten about the pants I’d been wearing the day before, with my phone still in the pocket, that had been banished to the main room.
I hoped the phone hadn’t bothered Twist.
She didn’t seem bothered by the phone, though, but by our extended absence. I looked up to meet Davin’s eye. “She really doesn’t like being locked out of the bedroom.”
He shrugged, the picture of nonchalance. “We’ll install one of those corner kitten doors. How big do you think she’ll get?”
Caspian was the one to answer, which was good, because I had no earthly idea. “Just the size of an average house cat.”
“Really?” Davin looked between her and Caspian a few times, then shrugged and handed me my phone and walked back into the bedroom with the jeans. I guessed he was putting them in his bag, which...was fine. I was sure he was better at packing than me anyway, since my bag seemed just as full as before I’d pulled my clothes for the day out.
Caspian motioned me over to the table in the dining area of the suite, where Nina was setting up a fucking feast for breakfast. She lifted a brow at all of us, including Davin, who’d come up behind us, carrying his bag. “I hope you guys are hungry. Apparently Kaz decided to order all the meat in the kitchen.”
“It’s for the cat,” Caspian explained, motioning to a huge dish of...well, a dozen things, some of which decidedly did not look like meat. “I’m not sure her breed has a name. They’re quite rare. Honestly, before I saw your companion, I assumed they had gone extinct, because I hadn’t seen or heard of one in nearly a hundred years. To your question, Davin, yes, really. She’ll get to be the size of a house cat like this. It’ll take a while, though, because they’re rather longer lived than house cats, so like humans, they stay children a bit longer.”
I took her over to the table and set her down on it, leaning in to inspect the black rounds of...“What the hell is that?”
“It smells of blood,” Twist informed me, and I grimaced and pulled away.
“Never mind. I don’t want to know. As long as I don’t have to eat any of it.”
Nina grinned at me, picking up a piece off the plate in front of her and waving it around. “You sure? Your loss. It’s delicious.” She took a bite, seemed to savor it, and then washed it down with some juice. “Honestly. The best part of traveling the world is getting to try every cuisine on offer, everywhere. There’s some amazing stuff out there.”
I mostly agreed, and would try very nearly anything, but black round things that smelled like blood? Not on my menu.
Davin grabbed my bag from my hands and tossed both mine and his onto the couch together, then leaned in and kissed my cheek. “Don’t worry, mo chroí. I’ll eat yours for you.”
Which . . . fair enough.
Caspian came up behind us, slinging one arm around my shoulders and one around Davin’s, which was funny, because he was barely tall enough to manage it with Davin, but also, because Davin accepted it. Then he leaned toward me and nodded. “I’m with you, personally. Eat all the things, sure, but there are limits. We used to eat some things because we didn’t have better options and couldn’t afford to waste anything edible. Now? We can do better.”
Nina tutted in disapproval, but her eyes were shining with mirth. She patted the table next to another plate of food, one without whatever the stuff was. “Come eat, old man. Got to keep up your strength.”
And . . . wait, what?
He did it. Caspian just...went over, sat in front of a plate of food, and picked up a fork. It had been strange enough the day before when he’d eaten the chocolates, but this was a whole meal. When he glanced up at me, he grinned. “You should be used to strange things by now, Flynn. And seriously, one of life’s greatest pleasures is eating. I’m not saying it was a sensible thing to do, paying a mage a fortune to make an artifact that made me able to eat real food again...but it’s the best thing I’ve ever used money for. Three thousand years of joy in one king’s ransom. The king didn’t mind. He was dead anyway.”
Nina rolled her eyes like she’d heard the story before, and Davin looked to me as though asking whether Caspian could be taken seriously. Me? I was pretty sure he was telling the truth. What made a better story than a weird but true thing?
Once we started eating, Caspian went all business. “There’s a storm brewing out there right now, and if we play it right, we can slip in under Tadhg’s radar. Not that I think he’s got an actual radar. I’m rather counting on old dragons to be like old vampires, and largely eschew the newest technology. My point is, we might be able to slip in unnoticed.”
“Until we start burning things down,” Davin added.
Caspian leaned his head to one side, then made a face like “yeah, makes sense,” and nodded. “Hard to stay unnoticed then.”
“So,” Nina interrupted. “Since you boys are taking a boat out, do I get to spend my day at the hotel spa?”
Caspian beamed over at her. “Your appointments are already made. I’d invite you to come with us, but you’re the kind of weirdo who likes a massage better than stabbing villains. I suppose there’s no accounting for taste.”
“I also like spending time with you, so that’s certainly true,” she shot back. Then he gave her the evil eye, and she glared at him, until they both started laughing.
“Anyway,” Caspian said, seamlessly coming back to the subject at hand. “Boat. Hope neither of you is prone to seasickness.”
Thankfully, we were not.
Less thankfully, a boat in a rainstorm? Still sucked, whether you were seasick or not.
It was a nice boat, run by a group who clearly had military training, given the way they didn’t react at all to the weather, or more importantly, to the way Caspian sat down in the middle of the galley and pulled out two wicked-looking knives.
