Chapter 6 In the Snow
Seri
Later that night, as Casimir wrestled both Zane and Brummy away from the staircase leading to the roof—“No, you absolutely cannot ‘serenade the moon’ from up there! You’ll break your necks!”—Koa and I retreated to the kitchen.
We’d been through terror, relief, and absurdity all in the span of less than an hour, and my nerves felt raw.
Koa knew it, too, silently preparing hot chocolate and popcorn.
Wrapping my hands around the steaming mug he handed me, I smiled to see he’d added a dollop of whipped cream, just the way I liked it.
But that was Koa. He remembered those little details, stored them away like treasures.
“Do you think they’ll be okay?” I nodded toward the living room where Casimir’s exasperated commands still echoed.
“Cas can handle them. Zane’s been drunk before. Brummy is the wild card.”
A crash followed by Casimir’s creative cursing suggested “wild card” might be an understatement.
Koa didn’t seem concerned. He just slid onto the barstool next to me at the kitchen island and set the popcorn bowl between us.
“Eat,” he murmured.
I obeyed, realizing I was actually starving. As the buttery popcorn melted on my tongue, I found my thoughts drifting back to what had happened. Not just the panic and fear, but what it meant.
Something inside me had gone cold in a way that had nothing to do with fear. Arabesque had nearly stolen Brummy from me. My first friend, my silent companion through those dark days at the farmhouse. After everything he’d survived, she’d nearly ended him with one last cruelty.
Not only that, she’d hurt my husbands. Each in their own way.
“She almost won.” I stared into my mug of hot chocolate.
“Exploited our blind spot.” His jaw clenched, then relaxed as he nudged my shoulder with his. “You okay?”
“I will be,” I answered. Not yet, not while the image of Brumous writhing in pain was still so fresh, but soon. “Thanks to you.”
“Right place, right time.” He shrugged. “Any of us would have done the same.”
“True, but you were the one who did.”
“He’s ‘ohana.” That explained everything about Koa. He protected family. Period.
Both of us winced at the crashing thud from the living room and Casimir’s aggrieved voice: “I swear by the eternal night, Zane, if you try to hang from that chandelier one more time—”
Whatever threat he made was lost beneath the sound of Brummy’s excited barking and Zane’s manic laughter. Koa and I exchanged a look of half amusement, half concern.
“What are you thinking about?” His dark eyes, always so perceptive, seemed to see straight through to the tangled thoughts I was trying to sort out.
“Arabesque, of course. She upset all of you today. Casimir feels betrayed by his own security protocol, Zane nearly fell apart, and you…”
“Me?” Koa raised an eyebrow.
“You’re out for blood,” I said, and he didn’t deny it.
“Aren’t you?”
Was I? The Seri who had arrived here, broken and terrified, would have said no. That Seri wanted only to escape, to hide, to find a corner of the world where Arabesque couldn’t reach her.
But I wasn’t that girl anymore.
“Yes,” I admitted. “I am.”
“Good.” He gave me a nod of approval.
“We need better protections, Koko. Not just magical ones. We need to think like her, anticipate how she’ll try to hurt us next.”
“You’re right. We’ll reassess everything.”
In the background, Casimir was now threatening to make them sleep outside if Zane and Brummy didn’t “sit down and act like sentient beings for five consecutive minutes.” The fact that only one of his targets qualified as fully sentient even when sober didn’t seem to factor into his ultimatum.
“I’m not running anymore,” I said as much to myself as to Koa. “I’m done being afraid of her.”
“Damn right you are, beloved.”
“She thinks she knows us, but she doesn’t. Not really.”
Another crash from the living room, followed by Casimir’s exasperated, “Damnation! I will tranquilize both of your fang-rotted asses!”
“I’m sorry, Koko,” I said after a moment. “I was so busy being annoyed at all of you for being overprotective that I didn’t stop to think that maybe there are different kinds of strength. Different ways to fight.”
“You’re not weak. None of us think that. You were never worthless, either. Not to us.”
“I have been stubborn, though. I just want to feel useful.”
Yes, my ward was important work, but I’d been dismissing it as not enough, too eager to prove myself in the brothers’ world even when I knew I wasn’t truly ready for that. And yet…
I took a deep breath, feeling the cold knot in my stomach transform into something molten and fierce.
The memory of Brummy’s labored breathing, of Zane’s tears, of Casimir’s self-recrimination, of Koa’s quiet fury, it all swirled together inside me, crystallizing into something sharp and clear.
“She didn’t just attack Brummy, Koko. She attacked our family. And that was her biggest mistake. Instead of hurting me, she just gave me more incentive to end her.”
“Hell, yeah, baby.” A slow smile spread across his face, fierce and just a little bit dangerous. “Now you’re talking like a Cimmerian.”
#
Koa
Cas finally gave up after the third time Zane slid off the couch, landing with all the grace of a sack of cement beside Brumous.
The pair had synced their snores, one rumbling deep, the other high-pitched and wheezy.
A duet of intoxication. I caught Cas’ eye across the living room and nodded toward the stairs.
“Leave them. They deserve each other tonight.”
He pressed his lips together, not quite hiding his amusement as he tossed a throw blanket over Zane’s face.
“If he vomits on the new rug, I’ll make him eat it.”
I knew he wouldn’t. Not really. The only person who ever truly saw the tender side of Cas was currently washing her face upstairs, but occasionally Z and I got glimpses. Like now, as he adjusted the blanket to make sure Zane could breathe, then bent to check Brummy’s vitals one more time.
“He’s fine,” I told him. “And Seri’s waiting.”
The mention of our beloved was enough to get him moving, leaving the disaster zone of the living room behind. We climbed the stairs together, his footsteps nearly silent beside mine.
“She’s exhausted,” he said as we approached the master bedroom.
“We all are. Long damn day.”
When we reached our room, we found only the bedside lamps on and more light spilling from under Seri’s en suite bathroom door. The second we stepped inside, Cas headed for our bathroom to shower, and I stripped down to my boxers, letting my clothes stay where they fell.
I sat on the edge of our bed, letting my head hang forward as I worked the tension from my neck.
I had to admit that I couldn’t wait for Seri’s period to be over.
I was happy it had returned, of course. It meant her body was healing, functioning again after months of Arabesque’s abuse and magical siphoning. It meant she was healthy.
But on the other hand, I was dying to be inside her.
I knew we could have made love to her even with her cycle, but we’d all noticed how her emotions swung wildly, and none of us missed a single wince when the cramps hit.
Plus, she didn’t really seem interested, and I couldn’t blame her.
She probably would have agreed if we’d asked.
She was far too eager to please, but if she wasn’t feeling it, I for one wasn’t going to insist.
Yesterday, Cas had to threaten Zane to within an inch of his life not to push the issue.
Not that Z would have forced her. None of us would ever even consider that, but he’d been making suggestive comments, wiggling his eyebrows, offering massages that we all knew would lead to wandering hands.
He wasn’t being malicious. Just desperate. We all were.
The moment she says all clear, Zane’s going to have her bent over the nearest flat surface with Cas and me in line behind him.
Seri’s bathroom door clicked open and there she was. Our beloved, in her simple t-shirt nightie, her honeyed curls tumbling around her shoulders. She took one look at me sitting on the bed, hair falling around my face, and her eyes lit up as if I’d handed her a chocolate milkshake.
She spun on her heel and disappeared back into the bathroom, only to emerge seconds later with two hair bands and a comb clutched in her hand like a prize. That pure excitement over something so simple made my chest tighten with affection.
“May I?” She wiggled the comb as she bounced over.
“Of course. You never need to ask.” I told her that every time, and every time she only smiled.
Handing me the hair bands, she climbed onto the bed behind me, her knees against my back as she knelt.
The first stroke of the comb through my hair sent a wave of relaxation down my spine.
She had an instinctive understanding of how to touch without hurting, and for someone denied gentleness for so long, I ate that shit right up.
“I’m going to do a braid on either side.” She was already sectioning my hair. “Would you like that?”
“I like anything you do,” I said honestly.
As her fingers worked through my hair, gentle and confident, I closed my eyes, letting myself sink into the comfort of her touch, trying to think of a compromise to her joining us on a hunt.
Arabesque had outsmarted us by thinking outside the box. My mind kept circling back to that, nagging at me that I should be doing the same thing. Thinking beyond the obvious.
I frowned, my thoughts shifting gears as an idea began to form. If Seri couldn’t physically come with us yet, what if she could be there in another way?
The spy eyes. My little surveillance bugs with crystalline wings and magic cores. They were designed to relay both audio and video feeds back to my equipment. I’d been developing them for reconnaissance, but they could be more…
“Braid one done!” Seri reached one hand over my shoulder, and I dutifully gave her the hair band.