All Hail the Shifter King
Title: Lords of Kensington, Part 14
Word Count: 2201
Note: I may be utterly infatuated with Atticus. Just saying. Also yes, this is a ton of talking and stuff and I'm sorry that I keep babbling with the nothing-writing but I could listen to him talk for days.
Azrin was visibly agitated as he walked her down the hallway, his hands stuffed in his pockets and his body tense. Before she could ask him what was eating at him, he stopped and pointed into what had been the school's administrative offices.
"Wait here," he said. "He'll come meet you." She took a few steps into the office and turned around to thank him, but he was already gone.
At one point the office had likely been the heart of the little school, but now it looked more like a bizarre flea market, with random furniture shoved against the walls and stacks of items on the floor. She paused in front of a claw-footed tub with a slab of wood across the top, some sort of repurposed desktop she guessed, and ran her fingers across the pitted brass faucet.
“You must be Katrina Shan,” said a silken, accented voice behind her. She twisted to look over her shoulder, finding a tall, pale-skinned man standing in the doorway of the principal’s office, hands clasped behind his back as he watched her with steel-grey eyes and only the very faintest hint of a smile on his face.
“You must be Atticus,” she responded, her voice feeling tiny in her throat. Something about the way he held her in his gaze made her shrink into herself, intimidated in ways she couldn’t describe and so uneasy she felt claustrophobic. When he nodded at her - really more of a slight inclination of his head than an actual nod - and turned to go into the office, she leaned against the tub and breathed a sigh of relief.
“Have a seat,” he called from inside the office, gesturing to a plush chair on the opposite side of the large desk. While the rest of the administrative area was cluttered and dusty, the office and all of the furniture in it was pristine and functional, as if it actually saw regular use. She lowered herself into the chair as Atticus dropped into the seat across from her, tapping on a stand-mounted tablet that faced him and watching the screen for a few moments before he turned his attention to her. “You’ve had an exciting evening,” he said smoothly, tenting his fingers and watching her closely.
“That’s one way to put it,” she replied.
“Are you well? Did Kerry-Anne take proper care of you?”
“Better than anything a human doctor could do for me,” she quipped, and a genuine smile touched his face for a few seconds, proving not only that he had a personality under his cold exterior, but also that he was painfully handsome. “Thank you,” she added. “For agreeing to see me.”
“I was informed that you are not a woman to be trifled with.” He leaned back in his chair, inspected his fingernails, then stared at the tablet screen for a few moments. “Any human that pulls stunts brazen enough to baffle Anya is worth my time, I think.” Katrina scoffed, looking away with her cheeks blazing.
“She’s exaggerating.”
“I can assure you, Anya is not the sort.” He opened one of the desk drawers and removed a small cardboard box - a deck of cards, she realized - and gestured at her with it. “Do you mind if I play?” he asked, and when she shook her head he removed the cards from their packaging and shuffled them deftly in his thin-fingered hands before laying out the first row of a Solitaire game. “It helps me think,” he told her as he meticulously placed the cards. “And today is a day for thinking.” He placed a few more cards, then looked up at her expectantly. “Why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind?” he asked. “Conversation is good for the soul.”
“I didn’t want to interrupt you,” she said, hypnotized by the precise movements of his hands.
“Please do. You have a lovely voice, and I hate silence.”
“Alright,” she told him, shifting in her chair and rubbing her aching forearm. “What is this place?”
“It’s a school,” he said matter-of-factly, and Katrina’s jaw clenched out of reflex at the thought that she would have to wade through a painfully literal conversation, like all of her early talks with Ryder.
“What is it really, I mean,” she corrected.
“It’s really a school,” he told her, glancing up with a slightly exasperated expression. “It’s where we teach our children.”
“It’s a shapeshifter school?” she asked, shocked.
“Please. I despise that word.” His cards laid out, he carefully placed the remainder of the deck beside him and spent a few moments staring at the playing field. “As a family we own a great number of properties throughout the city. Some are safe houses, some are dormitories, some are functional buildings or storage or…” He waved his hand. “You get the point. We call them pack halls.”
“How can you afford that?” she asked, stunned. “The prices on city properties are…” She paused, thinking of what she’d paid on her tiny condo. “Astronomical,” she finished.
“Today, yes. Two hundred years ago, not so much.” He quickly matched some cards between rows and smiled, clearly pleased. “The land wasn’t expensive. Putting buildings on it was easy.”
“How many people are in your clan?”
“Family. We number approximately twenty-five hundred, with current growth at two hundred per year.” He matched several more cards and selected one from the deck, staring thoughtfully at it before he looked up at her again. “These are awfully basic questions, Miss Shan. Any of the others could have given you this information.”
“I wanted to see how willing you are to talk to me,” she replied honestly, crossing her arms over her chest. “I can be difficult, if that’s what you want.”
“I’d like a turn, first,” he said. “Perhaps I can set the tone of this conversation.” He gave her a brief smile, checked the screen of his tablet, then looked back to his cards. “What business have you with a junglekin?”
“They’re called tesairen,” she corrected.
“I’m aware. Answer my question, please.”
“We’re friends. We met while I was working in Rion Fell.”
“Really, Miss Shan, it’s hard enough to believe you simply ‘met’ a junglekin. Telling me you’re ‘work buddies’ is downright insulting.” Katrina’s jaw clenched and she glared at him, though he continued working on his card game and seemed to ignore her entirely until he said, “I’m waiting.”
“He saved my life,” she clarified.
“And?”
“And I got involved in the conflict.”
“Between the clans, yes?”
“Yes.” She hoped that was enough for him, but he glanced up at her again and she sighed in annoyance. “I got involved in the conflict and he promised that he would keep me safe until he could get me home.”
“Why?”
“Why, what?”
“Why would a junglekin make such a promise to a human?”
“I guess he just felt sorry for me,” she said, her voice edgy not because his questions were prying but because he’d asked one she’d agonized about herself, for months.
“I suppose so,” he mused, sounding entirely unconvinced. “Is that why he trusts you with his magic, then?”
“Isn’t it my turn to ask a question?”
“It is when I say it is,” he said, his voice taking on a razor-sharp edge that hadn’t been there at the start of the conversation. “Please don’t make me repeat myself.”
"I honestly don't know why he trusts me with it," she said, aggravated. "Maybe it's because I don't know how to use it. Maybe it's because I'm not trying to kill him for it."
Atticus placed his card on one of the piles, folded his hands, and stared at her for several seconds.
"You're very easily angered," he observed quietly.
"Is there something I should be feeling besides anger?" she asked, her voice thick and trembling just slightly. "We finally manage to get out of one war and walk straight into yours, which we have no choice but to be involved with, we've nearly been killed twice in as many days, and now your people have run off with him and..." Her voice caught, surprising even her, and when she couldn't manage to speak around the lump in her throat she slumped back in her chair and knotted her hands in her bangs, shielding her face from him. The room fell completely silent save her strained breathing as she tried to maintain her composure, not sure whether she wanted to cry or scream, until she heard Atticus shift in his chair.
"You're in love with him?" he asked, though it was not really a question at all, and she snorted a humorless laugh.
"That's irrelevant," she sighed.
"Irrelevant?" He sounded so shocked that she actually dared look up at him - he'd slumped back in his chair, his mouth hanging open in disbelief. "How on earth can love ever be irrelevant?"
"Because I'm human."
"And our inhumanity precludes us from affection?"
"I didn't say that," she defended, her face growing hot.
"You give your love to any number of things in your life," he said, and started counting off on his fingers. "Your parents, your family, your friends, your colleagues, your pets." He put particular emphasis on the last one, tapping his finger. "But not the man who saves your life? Because he'll outlive you?"
"First off," she shot back, "the way I love my pets isn't the same as how I love my parents. And second -"
"Love is love, Miss Shan. Just because one is stronger than the other doesn't invalidate the weaker of the two."
"And second," she continued, "it's none of your goddamn business."
"I would argue it's entirely my business."
"What? On what planet is -"
"When I first met Anya, she was a kinfellow. A teenager, with a boyfriend several years older." He stared at the desk and, clenching his jaw, swiped his hands across the cards to mix them into a pile before forcing them back into a semblance of a deck. "She was chosen during our pilgrimage, he wasn't, but they remained together."
"I don't see how this -" Katrina began, but he held up a hand to silence her.
"Life was not easy, for any of us, back then," he said. "Rumors of witchcraft, threats of imprisonment or worse..." He shook his head and chuckled softly. "But they stuck it out, and we did as a family, and two years went by. We were preparing for our pilgrimage again when he was captured." He shuffled the cards, his fingers a blur. "They tortured him, naturally. Accused him of cavorting with witches, of training with them. And in exchange for his life, he gave them Anya's name. Our names."
"I still don't -"
"Being immortal lends you a certain appreciation for things like loyalty, Miss Shan," he said, cutting her off again. "We're a small family and we've only each other, decade after decade. But in the face of threats to their lives, I've found that mortals are very quick to offer someone up in their place. Even those they claim to love the most." He started to place the cards again, setting up another game. "Do I care about your relationship with that embarrassing mess of a junglekin? Absolutely. Because in order to keep Kaius from adding another coin to his collection, my family has to watch over you. They have to potentially risk their lives for you, like they did tonight. And if your constitution is weak enough that you would surrender him to save your own skin, then that -"
She would look back on the moment her hand struck his cheek as one of many bad decisions she'd made in her life, the second she'd leaned across the desk, scattering his cards, and hit him as hard as she could manage. It wasn't enough to hurt him and she knew it, but it wasn't about causing him pain - it was, to her at least, about sending a message. Like most kin she'd met his honesty was grating, close to infuriating, but she had to appreciate it at the same time, his devotion to his clan and the quiet, underlying message that she was not part of that family. Not that she could explain any of it to him, no more than she could explain how his little story had sparked memories of that night in the ruins near Eli's house, Merrick's clawed hands tight around her arms and Terren with his gun to Rebekah's head, asking her what her loyalty was worth.
In the end enough time passed for the shock of the slap to fade and for his face to start reddening, and during that they stared at each other, her leaning over the desk with angry tears brimming in her eyes and him with an expression somewhere between amazement and adoration on his beautiful face.
Slowly, he reached up and took her hand, his eyes never leaving her face, and gently turned it so that he could kiss her palm.
"Thank you," he said softly, and rose from his chair, still holding her hand. "Now we're getting somewhere."
Word Count: 2201
Note: I may be utterly infatuated with Atticus. Just saying. Also yes, this is a ton of talking and stuff and I'm sorry that I keep babbling with the nothing-writing but I could listen to him talk for days.
Azrin was visibly agitated as he walked her down the hallway, his hands stuffed in his pockets and his body tense. Before she could ask him what was eating at him, he stopped and pointed into what had been the school's administrative offices.
"Wait here," he said. "He'll come meet you." She took a few steps into the office and turned around to thank him, but he was already gone.
At one point the office had likely been the heart of the little school, but now it looked more like a bizarre flea market, with random furniture shoved against the walls and stacks of items on the floor. She paused in front of a claw-footed tub with a slab of wood across the top, some sort of repurposed desktop she guessed, and ran her fingers across the pitted brass faucet.
“You must be Katrina Shan,” said a silken, accented voice behind her. She twisted to look over her shoulder, finding a tall, pale-skinned man standing in the doorway of the principal’s office, hands clasped behind his back as he watched her with steel-grey eyes and only the very faintest hint of a smile on his face.
“You must be Atticus,” she responded, her voice feeling tiny in her throat. Something about the way he held her in his gaze made her shrink into herself, intimidated in ways she couldn’t describe and so uneasy she felt claustrophobic. When he nodded at her - really more of a slight inclination of his head than an actual nod - and turned to go into the office, she leaned against the tub and breathed a sigh of relief.
“Have a seat,” he called from inside the office, gesturing to a plush chair on the opposite side of the large desk. While the rest of the administrative area was cluttered and dusty, the office and all of the furniture in it was pristine and functional, as if it actually saw regular use. She lowered herself into the chair as Atticus dropped into the seat across from her, tapping on a stand-mounted tablet that faced him and watching the screen for a few moments before he turned his attention to her. “You’ve had an exciting evening,” he said smoothly, tenting his fingers and watching her closely.
“That’s one way to put it,” she replied.
“Are you well? Did Kerry-Anne take proper care of you?”
“Better than anything a human doctor could do for me,” she quipped, and a genuine smile touched his face for a few seconds, proving not only that he had a personality under his cold exterior, but also that he was painfully handsome. “Thank you,” she added. “For agreeing to see me.”
“I was informed that you are not a woman to be trifled with.” He leaned back in his chair, inspected his fingernails, then stared at the tablet screen for a few moments. “Any human that pulls stunts brazen enough to baffle Anya is worth my time, I think.” Katrina scoffed, looking away with her cheeks blazing.
“She’s exaggerating.”
“I can assure you, Anya is not the sort.” He opened one of the desk drawers and removed a small cardboard box - a deck of cards, she realized - and gestured at her with it. “Do you mind if I play?” he asked, and when she shook her head he removed the cards from their packaging and shuffled them deftly in his thin-fingered hands before laying out the first row of a Solitaire game. “It helps me think,” he told her as he meticulously placed the cards. “And today is a day for thinking.” He placed a few more cards, then looked up at her expectantly. “Why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind?” he asked. “Conversation is good for the soul.”
“I didn’t want to interrupt you,” she said, hypnotized by the precise movements of his hands.
“Please do. You have a lovely voice, and I hate silence.”
“Alright,” she told him, shifting in her chair and rubbing her aching forearm. “What is this place?”
“It’s a school,” he said matter-of-factly, and Katrina’s jaw clenched out of reflex at the thought that she would have to wade through a painfully literal conversation, like all of her early talks with Ryder.
“What is it really, I mean,” she corrected.
“It’s really a school,” he told her, glancing up with a slightly exasperated expression. “It’s where we teach our children.”
“It’s a shapeshifter school?” she asked, shocked.
“Please. I despise that word.” His cards laid out, he carefully placed the remainder of the deck beside him and spent a few moments staring at the playing field. “As a family we own a great number of properties throughout the city. Some are safe houses, some are dormitories, some are functional buildings or storage or…” He waved his hand. “You get the point. We call them pack halls.”
“How can you afford that?” she asked, stunned. “The prices on city properties are…” She paused, thinking of what she’d paid on her tiny condo. “Astronomical,” she finished.
“Today, yes. Two hundred years ago, not so much.” He quickly matched some cards between rows and smiled, clearly pleased. “The land wasn’t expensive. Putting buildings on it was easy.”
“How many people are in your clan?”
“Family. We number approximately twenty-five hundred, with current growth at two hundred per year.” He matched several more cards and selected one from the deck, staring thoughtfully at it before he looked up at her again. “These are awfully basic questions, Miss Shan. Any of the others could have given you this information.”
“I wanted to see how willing you are to talk to me,” she replied honestly, crossing her arms over her chest. “I can be difficult, if that’s what you want.”
“I’d like a turn, first,” he said. “Perhaps I can set the tone of this conversation.” He gave her a brief smile, checked the screen of his tablet, then looked back to his cards. “What business have you with a junglekin?”
“They’re called tesairen,” she corrected.
“I’m aware. Answer my question, please.”
“We’re friends. We met while I was working in Rion Fell.”
“Really, Miss Shan, it’s hard enough to believe you simply ‘met’ a junglekin. Telling me you’re ‘work buddies’ is downright insulting.” Katrina’s jaw clenched and she glared at him, though he continued working on his card game and seemed to ignore her entirely until he said, “I’m waiting.”
“He saved my life,” she clarified.
“And?”
“And I got involved in the conflict.”
“Between the clans, yes?”
“Yes.” She hoped that was enough for him, but he glanced up at her again and she sighed in annoyance. “I got involved in the conflict and he promised that he would keep me safe until he could get me home.”
“Why?”
“Why, what?”
“Why would a junglekin make such a promise to a human?”
“I guess he just felt sorry for me,” she said, her voice edgy not because his questions were prying but because he’d asked one she’d agonized about herself, for months.
“I suppose so,” he mused, sounding entirely unconvinced. “Is that why he trusts you with his magic, then?”
“Isn’t it my turn to ask a question?”
“It is when I say it is,” he said, his voice taking on a razor-sharp edge that hadn’t been there at the start of the conversation. “Please don’t make me repeat myself.”
"I honestly don't know why he trusts me with it," she said, aggravated. "Maybe it's because I don't know how to use it. Maybe it's because I'm not trying to kill him for it."
Atticus placed his card on one of the piles, folded his hands, and stared at her for several seconds.
"You're very easily angered," he observed quietly.
"Is there something I should be feeling besides anger?" she asked, her voice thick and trembling just slightly. "We finally manage to get out of one war and walk straight into yours, which we have no choice but to be involved with, we've nearly been killed twice in as many days, and now your people have run off with him and..." Her voice caught, surprising even her, and when she couldn't manage to speak around the lump in her throat she slumped back in her chair and knotted her hands in her bangs, shielding her face from him. The room fell completely silent save her strained breathing as she tried to maintain her composure, not sure whether she wanted to cry or scream, until she heard Atticus shift in his chair.
"You're in love with him?" he asked, though it was not really a question at all, and she snorted a humorless laugh.
"That's irrelevant," she sighed.
"Irrelevant?" He sounded so shocked that she actually dared look up at him - he'd slumped back in his chair, his mouth hanging open in disbelief. "How on earth can love ever be irrelevant?"
"Because I'm human."
"And our inhumanity precludes us from affection?"
"I didn't say that," she defended, her face growing hot.
"You give your love to any number of things in your life," he said, and started counting off on his fingers. "Your parents, your family, your friends, your colleagues, your pets." He put particular emphasis on the last one, tapping his finger. "But not the man who saves your life? Because he'll outlive you?"
"First off," she shot back, "the way I love my pets isn't the same as how I love my parents. And second -"
"Love is love, Miss Shan. Just because one is stronger than the other doesn't invalidate the weaker of the two."
"And second," she continued, "it's none of your goddamn business."
"I would argue it's entirely my business."
"What? On what planet is -"
"When I first met Anya, she was a kinfellow. A teenager, with a boyfriend several years older." He stared at the desk and, clenching his jaw, swiped his hands across the cards to mix them into a pile before forcing them back into a semblance of a deck. "She was chosen during our pilgrimage, he wasn't, but they remained together."
"I don't see how this -" Katrina began, but he held up a hand to silence her.
"Life was not easy, for any of us, back then," he said. "Rumors of witchcraft, threats of imprisonment or worse..." He shook his head and chuckled softly. "But they stuck it out, and we did as a family, and two years went by. We were preparing for our pilgrimage again when he was captured." He shuffled the cards, his fingers a blur. "They tortured him, naturally. Accused him of cavorting with witches, of training with them. And in exchange for his life, he gave them Anya's name. Our names."
"I still don't -"
"Being immortal lends you a certain appreciation for things like loyalty, Miss Shan," he said, cutting her off again. "We're a small family and we've only each other, decade after decade. But in the face of threats to their lives, I've found that mortals are very quick to offer someone up in their place. Even those they claim to love the most." He started to place the cards again, setting up another game. "Do I care about your relationship with that embarrassing mess of a junglekin? Absolutely. Because in order to keep Kaius from adding another coin to his collection, my family has to watch over you. They have to potentially risk their lives for you, like they did tonight. And if your constitution is weak enough that you would surrender him to save your own skin, then that -"
She would look back on the moment her hand struck his cheek as one of many bad decisions she'd made in her life, the second she'd leaned across the desk, scattering his cards, and hit him as hard as she could manage. It wasn't enough to hurt him and she knew it, but it wasn't about causing him pain - it was, to her at least, about sending a message. Like most kin she'd met his honesty was grating, close to infuriating, but she had to appreciate it at the same time, his devotion to his clan and the quiet, underlying message that she was not part of that family. Not that she could explain any of it to him, no more than she could explain how his little story had sparked memories of that night in the ruins near Eli's house, Merrick's clawed hands tight around her arms and Terren with his gun to Rebekah's head, asking her what her loyalty was worth.
In the end enough time passed for the shock of the slap to fade and for his face to start reddening, and during that they stared at each other, her leaning over the desk with angry tears brimming in her eyes and him with an expression somewhere between amazement and adoration on his beautiful face.
Slowly, he reached up and took her hand, his eyes never leaving her face, and gently turned it so that he could kiss her palm.
"Thank you," he said softly, and rose from his chair, still holding her hand. "Now we're getting somewhere."