All Hail the Shifter King
Title: Holiday Travels (Part III)
Word Count: 2000
Author's Note: And so, the little spinoff story comes to an end. I had a ridiculous amount of fun writing this, and was surprised at how much Kat and Ryder's relationship opened up to me in the process - I thought this would just be some silly, frivolous piece where I could write them snarking at each other, but in the end it became a lot more than that and gave me a lot of material for future revisions of the actual novel.
She took her time in the shower, both because she felt it would take hours to wash the sticky discomfort of traveling from her skin, and because she wasn't eager to face Ryder when he was in a mood. She knew that she probably shouldn't have called him out, but a tiny part of her couldn't resist bringing him down to her level now and then. After half an hour, though, she realized that she was probably just appearing avoidant - which wasn't far from the truth - and grudgingly shut the water off.
The lights over the vanity cast garish white halos across the crown of her head as she sat naked on the small plush stool, brushing her hair. Her reflection looked almost alien to her - despite having spent the last three months on edge of a rainforest, practically spitting distance from the equator, she looked pale and almost sickly. She'd lost weight - no surprise, really - that had left her cheeks looking sunken and her shoulders and collarbones painfully obvious through her skin. The weeks of stress were evident in the dark rings under her eyes, which she'd been covering with foundation in an attempt to at least look like she wasn't falling to pieces. Sighing, she reached for her makeup bag and paused with her fingers hovering over the pale purple fabric. Her earlier conversation with Ryder flashed through her memory, and with a growl of frustration she realized that a layer of foundation wasn't much better than magic. She picked up the bag and stared longingly at it for several minutes, during which she heard room service arrive - by the time they left, and Thaddeus and Crispin had commenced their excited purring and yipping as they waited for their food, she'd decided that as much as she wanted to be a hypocrite in this one instance, Ryder would never let her live it down. Muttering, she clambered into her clothes and sulked her way out of the bathroom.
"Thought you were going to bed," she said to Ryder.
"I was, until they showed up with enough food to feed a small army," Ryder commented. He was standing over the cart of food that had been delivered, lifting the covers off the steaming dishes. The two beasts at his heels were practically drooling on themselves, dancing back and forth on their six legs as they waited impatiently to be served. Laughing despite herself, Katrina pushed Ryder out of the way and picked up two plates of shepherd's pie, mixed with extra ground sirloin, and placed it on the floor.
"Stop teasing them," she ordered, slapping Ryder's stomach with the back of her hand. "They're starving."
"So am I, but I don't see you laying food out in front of me," he pointed out, sulking for the two seconds it took for her to uncover the steak she'd ordered him and shove the plate into his hands. "Oh. Touche."
"You're welcome," she responded, rolling her eyes as she took her orange ginger duck and sat crosslegged on the couch, her stomach growling loud enough that Crispin looked up curiously, his muzzle covered in mashed potatoes and gravy.
"Great choice in food," Ryder chuckled. He sat beside her and balanced his plate on one knee as he poured two glasses of sparkling water, sliding one across the coffee table toward her. "Hope you're looking forward to bathing them."
"I'd kind of hoped that they'd be smart enough to not wear it," she moaned, tucking her wet hair behind her ear. "But hell, Eli hasn't even figured that out yet, so I guess that was just a lot of wishful thinking." Ryder snorted a laugh at this, nearly choking on his water, and shook his head in amusement.
"That boy," he said. "Four hundred years and he still hasn't learned to eat properly."
"Yeah," Katrina agreed. "He focused on all those useless things, like social skills."
"Highly overrated."
"Oh, I don't know. Some people would say they're pretty important life skills."
"Oh?" Ryder glanced at her from the corner of his eye. "Maybe you should get working on that, then?"
Cocking her jaw to one side, Katrina glared at him for a moment before asking, "You have a smartass response for everything, don't you?"
"Not everything," he admitted. "Sometimes you don't need any help looking like a fool."
They managed to eat in companionable silence, then, after Katrina landed a hard punch on his shoulder for his comment. When Thaddeus and Crispin finished their food and whined for more, Ryder got up and set out a second serving for them, then settled back onto the sofa beside her. She glanced at him once or twice, but he had taken his medallion off and was turning the coin in his fingers, and seemed so lost in thought she didn't think it right to interrupt him.
It was so strange to her, the way worlds had seemed to collide around her. Back in Rion Fell, practically every dinner had been much like this - the four of them sitting in Eli's living room, eating whatever they'd managed to concoct in the small kitchen, laughing at the beasts as they scarfed down their food without even tasting it. And here she was, thousands of miles away from Rion Fell, back in the civilized world that would never understand - and really, could never know - what her odd life had been like at the edge of the rainforest, and she was reverting to the same habits.
Part of her still felt that it was wrong to have left when it was clear the conflict in Azinsi hadn't been resolved. They really had no definitive proof that Eli's brother Terren was dead - and if he was still alive, then the war was just going to continue. It had very quickly become clear that Terren regarded all humans in Rion Fell as enemies, and that the Taggart labs were just a convenient place to start. But at the same time, if they hadn't left when they did, chances are they wouldn't have left at all. It was one thing for Eli and Ryder to be targeted when they at least could fight Terren and his lackeys on even ground, but Jordan and Katrina were little more than collateral damage in the whole mess. They couldn't really do much to be effective in a fight - they'd lucked out a few times, sure, but Katrina wasn't much of a gambling woman and when she was, her luck usually ran out quickly.
Stretching, Katrina yawned loudly as she pushed her plate onto the table. Crispin was there in a heartbeat, licking the last of the sauce from the bones before he ate those as well.
"I'm exhausted," she announced as she wearily headed for the bedroom. "I'm going to bed."
"Alright," came Ryder's distracted reply.
"You're welcome to join me," she added. He looked up at this, raising an eyebrow suspiciously, and she rolled her eyes. "It's a king sized bed, Ryder. You won't even notice I'm there."
"The last time I shared a bed with you, I got shot," he reminded.
"Then there's lots of room for improvement, isn't there?" When he didn't seem about to follow her, she shrugged and turned around to collapse on the bed, squirming around until she was under the covers and then pawing at the lamp until she managed to turn it off. For a few minutes she could hear Ryder moving around in the living room, collecting the dishes and placing them on the room service cart, and then heard him speaking in low tones to Thaddeus and Crispin, who chirruped at him as he turned the lights off in the rest of the suite. Katrina twisted to look at him as he slipped into the room and closed the french doors behind him, the coin around his neck again and glowing faintly in the dark. "I knew you'd cave," she murmured with a grin as he slipped into bed beside her. He snorted softly.
"If I sleep out there I'm apt to be mauled by your hellbeasts," he said, shoving the extra pillows out of the way and punching the remaining one into submission. "This was the lesser of two evils."
"Hey, at least I'm the lesser this time," she murmured, and twisted onto her side to look at the clock. Four thirteen. Moaning, she hauled the blankets up over her head. "Can I just sleep for the next two days?" she asked, yawning. "I'd seriously sell my soul for that, right now."
"I think you've listed at least a dozen things you'd sell your soul for in the last two days," Ryder observed. "Including a cigarette, chocolate, a cabana boy, and a pair of fuzzy slippers."
"Yeah, but sleep, sleep is worth selling my soul for," she defended. "Don't you think?"
"I can't say I've ever gotten to that point, no."
"Okay, smartass, what would you sell yours for?" When he lifted the coin off his chest and gestured at her with it, she made a face. "That doesn't count."
"It doesn't?" he asked, confused.
"It's supposed to be an imaginative exercise, Ryder. Not literal."
"One would think I get a one-up because I actually did sell my soul." He rubbed his fingers across the uneven golden surface, then sighed dropped the coin back onto his chest. "What a waste that was," he murmured. His words caught Katrina off guard, and she stared at him in mute shock for several seconds before he finally opened his eyes and looked at her. "What?" he asked.
"I've never heard you say that," she said quietly. "Do you actually think that?"
"That it was a waste?"
"Yeah."
"Contrary to what you might think, immortality isn't all that great." He stared up at the ceiling, rubbing his fingers across the medallion. "You spend most of your time wishing you'd had a say in the matter and..." He paused, then cleared his throat and closed his eyes again. "It's not important," he said finally. "Go to sleep."
"But..."
"Go to sleep, Katrina," he repeated.
She lay beside him for several long minutes, stung by his dismissal and the abrupt end to the conversation, her eyes fixed on the faint pulse of light off the coin that lay flat on his chest beneath his hand. Without thinking, she reached across the space between them and wrapped her fingers around his, holding tight when he flinched reactively and tried to pull away from her.
"For what it's worth," she said, "I'm sorry. For everything they took from you, and all the choices you didn't get to make. And I'm sorry that things didn't work out the way you wanted them to, back in Azinsi. But..." She hesitated, trying to choose the right words. "But I'm grateful for you. I mean, you're cantankerous and difficult and pig-headed, and hell, sometimes you're the biggest asshole I've ever met..." She grinned when he smiled faintly. "But for all your social defects I know you have a soft spot for us meatbags, and that's good because, well... I have a bit of a soft spot for you too, you know, and I don't think I would have survived that mess without you. So... thank you, I guess, stupid as that sounds... for going through the trouble, and for giving me the choice that you didn't get."
She squeezed his hand and let go, curling into a ball under the blankets on her side of the bed and closing her eyes, feeling somewhat better - if not ridiculously vulnerable - and determined to at least try and get some sleep before she said anything else stupid or emotionally grating. She was on the brink of dozing off when she felt the mattress shift with movement - seconds later, she felt his cool lips brush her temple and the light thump of the hot medallion against the tip of her nose.
"You were worth it," he whispered.
Word Count: 2000
Author's Note: And so, the little spinoff story comes to an end. I had a ridiculous amount of fun writing this, and was surprised at how much Kat and Ryder's relationship opened up to me in the process - I thought this would just be some silly, frivolous piece where I could write them snarking at each other, but in the end it became a lot more than that and gave me a lot of material for future revisions of the actual novel.
She took her time in the shower, both because she felt it would take hours to wash the sticky discomfort of traveling from her skin, and because she wasn't eager to face Ryder when he was in a mood. She knew that she probably shouldn't have called him out, but a tiny part of her couldn't resist bringing him down to her level now and then. After half an hour, though, she realized that she was probably just appearing avoidant - which wasn't far from the truth - and grudgingly shut the water off.
The lights over the vanity cast garish white halos across the crown of her head as she sat naked on the small plush stool, brushing her hair. Her reflection looked almost alien to her - despite having spent the last three months on edge of a rainforest, practically spitting distance from the equator, she looked pale and almost sickly. She'd lost weight - no surprise, really - that had left her cheeks looking sunken and her shoulders and collarbones painfully obvious through her skin. The weeks of stress were evident in the dark rings under her eyes, which she'd been covering with foundation in an attempt to at least look like she wasn't falling to pieces. Sighing, she reached for her makeup bag and paused with her fingers hovering over the pale purple fabric. Her earlier conversation with Ryder flashed through her memory, and with a growl of frustration she realized that a layer of foundation wasn't much better than magic. She picked up the bag and stared longingly at it for several minutes, during which she heard room service arrive - by the time they left, and Thaddeus and Crispin had commenced their excited purring and yipping as they waited for their food, she'd decided that as much as she wanted to be a hypocrite in this one instance, Ryder would never let her live it down. Muttering, she clambered into her clothes and sulked her way out of the bathroom.
"Thought you were going to bed," she said to Ryder.
"I was, until they showed up with enough food to feed a small army," Ryder commented. He was standing over the cart of food that had been delivered, lifting the covers off the steaming dishes. The two beasts at his heels were practically drooling on themselves, dancing back and forth on their six legs as they waited impatiently to be served. Laughing despite herself, Katrina pushed Ryder out of the way and picked up two plates of shepherd's pie, mixed with extra ground sirloin, and placed it on the floor.
"Stop teasing them," she ordered, slapping Ryder's stomach with the back of her hand. "They're starving."
"So am I, but I don't see you laying food out in front of me," he pointed out, sulking for the two seconds it took for her to uncover the steak she'd ordered him and shove the plate into his hands. "Oh. Touche."
"You're welcome," she responded, rolling her eyes as she took her orange ginger duck and sat crosslegged on the couch, her stomach growling loud enough that Crispin looked up curiously, his muzzle covered in mashed potatoes and gravy.
"Great choice in food," Ryder chuckled. He sat beside her and balanced his plate on one knee as he poured two glasses of sparkling water, sliding one across the coffee table toward her. "Hope you're looking forward to bathing them."
"I'd kind of hoped that they'd be smart enough to not wear it," she moaned, tucking her wet hair behind her ear. "But hell, Eli hasn't even figured that out yet, so I guess that was just a lot of wishful thinking." Ryder snorted a laugh at this, nearly choking on his water, and shook his head in amusement.
"That boy," he said. "Four hundred years and he still hasn't learned to eat properly."
"Yeah," Katrina agreed. "He focused on all those useless things, like social skills."
"Highly overrated."
"Oh, I don't know. Some people would say they're pretty important life skills."
"Oh?" Ryder glanced at her from the corner of his eye. "Maybe you should get working on that, then?"
Cocking her jaw to one side, Katrina glared at him for a moment before asking, "You have a smartass response for everything, don't you?"
"Not everything," he admitted. "Sometimes you don't need any help looking like a fool."
They managed to eat in companionable silence, then, after Katrina landed a hard punch on his shoulder for his comment. When Thaddeus and Crispin finished their food and whined for more, Ryder got up and set out a second serving for them, then settled back onto the sofa beside her. She glanced at him once or twice, but he had taken his medallion off and was turning the coin in his fingers, and seemed so lost in thought she didn't think it right to interrupt him.
It was so strange to her, the way worlds had seemed to collide around her. Back in Rion Fell, practically every dinner had been much like this - the four of them sitting in Eli's living room, eating whatever they'd managed to concoct in the small kitchen, laughing at the beasts as they scarfed down their food without even tasting it. And here she was, thousands of miles away from Rion Fell, back in the civilized world that would never understand - and really, could never know - what her odd life had been like at the edge of the rainforest, and she was reverting to the same habits.
Part of her still felt that it was wrong to have left when it was clear the conflict in Azinsi hadn't been resolved. They really had no definitive proof that Eli's brother Terren was dead - and if he was still alive, then the war was just going to continue. It had very quickly become clear that Terren regarded all humans in Rion Fell as enemies, and that the Taggart labs were just a convenient place to start. But at the same time, if they hadn't left when they did, chances are they wouldn't have left at all. It was one thing for Eli and Ryder to be targeted when they at least could fight Terren and his lackeys on even ground, but Jordan and Katrina were little more than collateral damage in the whole mess. They couldn't really do much to be effective in a fight - they'd lucked out a few times, sure, but Katrina wasn't much of a gambling woman and when she was, her luck usually ran out quickly.
Stretching, Katrina yawned loudly as she pushed her plate onto the table. Crispin was there in a heartbeat, licking the last of the sauce from the bones before he ate those as well.
"I'm exhausted," she announced as she wearily headed for the bedroom. "I'm going to bed."
"Alright," came Ryder's distracted reply.
"You're welcome to join me," she added. He looked up at this, raising an eyebrow suspiciously, and she rolled her eyes. "It's a king sized bed, Ryder. You won't even notice I'm there."
"The last time I shared a bed with you, I got shot," he reminded.
"Then there's lots of room for improvement, isn't there?" When he didn't seem about to follow her, she shrugged and turned around to collapse on the bed, squirming around until she was under the covers and then pawing at the lamp until she managed to turn it off. For a few minutes she could hear Ryder moving around in the living room, collecting the dishes and placing them on the room service cart, and then heard him speaking in low tones to Thaddeus and Crispin, who chirruped at him as he turned the lights off in the rest of the suite. Katrina twisted to look at him as he slipped into the room and closed the french doors behind him, the coin around his neck again and glowing faintly in the dark. "I knew you'd cave," she murmured with a grin as he slipped into bed beside her. He snorted softly.
"If I sleep out there I'm apt to be mauled by your hellbeasts," he said, shoving the extra pillows out of the way and punching the remaining one into submission. "This was the lesser of two evils."
"Hey, at least I'm the lesser this time," she murmured, and twisted onto her side to look at the clock. Four thirteen. Moaning, she hauled the blankets up over her head. "Can I just sleep for the next two days?" she asked, yawning. "I'd seriously sell my soul for that, right now."
"I think you've listed at least a dozen things you'd sell your soul for in the last two days," Ryder observed. "Including a cigarette, chocolate, a cabana boy, and a pair of fuzzy slippers."
"Yeah, but sleep, sleep is worth selling my soul for," she defended. "Don't you think?"
"I can't say I've ever gotten to that point, no."
"Okay, smartass, what would you sell yours for?" When he lifted the coin off his chest and gestured at her with it, she made a face. "That doesn't count."
"It doesn't?" he asked, confused.
"It's supposed to be an imaginative exercise, Ryder. Not literal."
"One would think I get a one-up because I actually did sell my soul." He rubbed his fingers across the uneven golden surface, then sighed dropped the coin back onto his chest. "What a waste that was," he murmured. His words caught Katrina off guard, and she stared at him in mute shock for several seconds before he finally opened his eyes and looked at her. "What?" he asked.
"I've never heard you say that," she said quietly. "Do you actually think that?"
"That it was a waste?"
"Yeah."
"Contrary to what you might think, immortality isn't all that great." He stared up at the ceiling, rubbing his fingers across the medallion. "You spend most of your time wishing you'd had a say in the matter and..." He paused, then cleared his throat and closed his eyes again. "It's not important," he said finally. "Go to sleep."
"But..."
"Go to sleep, Katrina," he repeated.
She lay beside him for several long minutes, stung by his dismissal and the abrupt end to the conversation, her eyes fixed on the faint pulse of light off the coin that lay flat on his chest beneath his hand. Without thinking, she reached across the space between them and wrapped her fingers around his, holding tight when he flinched reactively and tried to pull away from her.
"For what it's worth," she said, "I'm sorry. For everything they took from you, and all the choices you didn't get to make. And I'm sorry that things didn't work out the way you wanted them to, back in Azinsi. But..." She hesitated, trying to choose the right words. "But I'm grateful for you. I mean, you're cantankerous and difficult and pig-headed, and hell, sometimes you're the biggest asshole I've ever met..." She grinned when he smiled faintly. "But for all your social defects I know you have a soft spot for us meatbags, and that's good because, well... I have a bit of a soft spot for you too, you know, and I don't think I would have survived that mess without you. So... thank you, I guess, stupid as that sounds... for going through the trouble, and for giving me the choice that you didn't get."
She squeezed his hand and let go, curling into a ball under the blankets on her side of the bed and closing her eyes, feeling somewhat better - if not ridiculously vulnerable - and determined to at least try and get some sleep before she said anything else stupid or emotionally grating. She was on the brink of dozing off when she felt the mattress shift with movement - seconds later, she felt his cool lips brush her temple and the light thump of the hot medallion against the tip of her nose.
"You were worth it," he whispered.