BREATH OF LIFE

14: kai

Warnings: none

LING COULDN'T SLEEP. She hadn't been able to for a while. Everytime she tried, she was haunted by nightmares of her family dying and being unable to do anything. It was too close to life for her to feel safe enough to sleep.

Usually, her and Aminah slept together, so she spent the night in her arms, somewhere between sleep and consciousness. Even if she didn't fall back asleep, she felt the safest she had in a while.

Tonight, though, she and Aminah had slept in their own rooms. As she was quietly making her way to Aminah's room, a sound from the mess hall drew her up short. Who would be getting food at this hour? Thorne would.

It was not Thorne.

Kai stood at the counter, trying to put together what Ling was pretty sure was soup — she could never tell with the food this ship had. Whatever it was, he was failing miserably. So much so it would have been funny, had it actually been Thorne.

She meant to leave, their conversation from earlier in the day fresh in her mind, but before she knew what she was doing, she was commenting on his cooking skills. "I think Thorne would do a better job than you are, and he's blind."

Kai looked up, surprised, then looked down at his hands. "I've never cooked anything in my life."

"I can tell."

Kai had tried to help around whenever he could, serving food and cleaning up after meals, but they never let him do much. Thorne insisted he was their guest and they'd treat him like one, but Ling wasn't so sure. If he was going to be part of this crew, even temporarily, he should be able to carry his own weight.

And he should be able to cook.

"Do you . . . want help?" Ling blamed her years of being a servant for the offer. She absolutely did not want to help him.

Kai blinked and narrowed his eyes, like he was trying to determine whether she was tricking him. Apparently deciding she was serious, he stepped back. "Please."

She fixed his mess from something that would have gotten her yelled at by her grandmother to something edible. When Kai tried to pour her a bowl, she accepted.

They ate in silence, though Ling could tell Kai wanted to talk. It would have been funny, how scared he seemed to talk to her, when he was the emperor of an entire country, if being alone with him didn't make her want to curl into a ball and cry.

"How do you know how to cook?" Kai asked eventually.

"I was a servant."

There it was. Kai froze, paled, whatever perception he'd had about her destroyed. "Oh."

Ling leaned back. "You thought I was an aristocrat."

Kai looked down, a little embarrassed. Tucked a piece of hair behind his ears. "I kind of assumed. After you said you had Thaumaturge training. I'm sorry, that was stupid of me."

"Plenty of Thaumaturges grew up as servants. Maybe not as many as aristocrats, but enough. Any boy who's not powerful enough for Thaumaturge makes guard," she added, thinking of Jacin. "Though I would've just been a servant my whole life."

Kai swirled his soup. "You said you didn't have a choice. About Thaumaturge training."

"I didn't," Ling said. "Levana just . . . summoned me one day and said I was to train with Kalise until I was ready to be a Thaumaturge." It was Ling's turn to look down. "I tried to quit, but . . . Levana would have killed my family. It was the same for Kalise too."

"Why'd you try to quit?" Kai's voice had softened in a way she wasn't used to.

Ling shrugged, offering a small smile. "My sister was a shell. Kalise took me to the lab they were held in." Kai's face twisted in something almost like fury, and Ling quickly added, "she didn't know. And she was forced into it just as much as I was. I'm pretty sure she'd help us if given the chance."