Solbourne Feast #2
Delilah peered at them from her place by the mantle. Standing in the shadow of their mother’s portrait which hung in its gilded frame over the crackling fire, she gave them a look of uncanny confusion. “Where’s Viktor?”
Theodore winced. It’d been years since Viktor joined them for any family event, but she never seemed to remember.
Giving her a gentle look, he answered, “He’s not coming this year, Lilah.”
“Oh.” She wrinkled her nose. “That’s rude. We’re family.”
Crossing the room to give her a kiss on the cheek, he agreed, “It’s very rude. Maybe someday he’ll pull his head out of his ass and join us again.”
Her heavy sigh brushed his ear. “There are too many people missing. It’s not the same.”
The holidays — all of them — were difficult for his sister, but he thought that perhaps Burden’s Moon was the hardest for her to endure.
The woman who stared serenely out at them from the canvas over her shoulder loomed even larger in his sister’s fragile mind, and sometimes the shadow of her loss made it harder than normal for Delilah to connect with the present.
Samuel, who understood Delilah better than any of them, draped an arm over her shoulders. “Let’s break out the game, huh? We have more than enough people here for that.”
Brightening immediately, she took a large swig of her drink before swanning off toward the food, her melancholy forgotten almost as quickly as it arrived.
“I’m going to kick everyone’s ass,” she declared, plucking a strip of cured salmon off a platter.
Wiggling it in the air, she sent her consort a cheeky wink.
“Except my Winnie, of course. I’ll happily kiss hers. ”
“There are parents present!” Valen called out with a heavy roll of his eyes.
“You better let me win,” Winnie sing-songed as she sashayed toward Delilah, her own drink in hand.
Pressing a loud, smacking kiss to her lips, Delilah promised, “Always, my love.”
Turning away from the display with a fond shake of his head, Theodore yanked his brother into a tight hug. Samuel barely escaped it before Kaz did the same.
“Welcome home!” Theodore slapped his back once, but when Kaz followed it up with his own slap, it became a game to see who could smack him the most and quickest.
“Good gods, you monsters need to leave me alone,” Samuel grunted, swatting at them with his pale, ungloved claws.
“But we missed you,” Kaz drawled, smacking him even harder.
Theodore, seeing his brother had bigger hands and therefore more impactful slaps, switched to grabbing Samuel by the biceps and giving him a good, brotherly shake. “So much! Didn’t you miss us? Huh?”
“For fuck’s sake…” Samuel sighed, and in one blindingly fast movement managed to not only slip from Theodore’s hold, but snag them both around their necks in shockingly efficient chokeholds.
“Must we every time I come home? Really?”
He gave them both a hard squeeze. Despite the fact that Samuel appeared quite a bit leaner than his brothers, he was by all accounts a superior fighter.
That probably had something to do with the fact that he could predict exactly what his opponents were going to do the second before they chose to do it, but it was also because of the horrifying expectations their father had laid on his perfect heir — before Kaz was born, anyway.
“You’re menaces,” he said, still using that soft, raspy voice that never seemed to hold any anger or urgency. “Who raised you, anyway?”
“Hey!” Winnie gave them all the stink eye. Pointing one diamond-tipped claw at them, she ordered, “No sparring and no blackouts until after we play a game. Understood?”
Always quick to do whatever Winnie said, Samuel immediately answered, “Yes, ma’am.”
He nearly released them, too, but Kaz choked out, “Suck-up.”
Throwing Theodore away from him, Samuel put the full force of his body weight into turning Kaz’s much denser frame toward the fire. “What was that? You want to see how flammable you are? You know, I’ve always wondered.”
Howling with laughter, Theodore stumbled backward and nearly smashed into the table. Their dinner was saved by Andy, who caught him by the scruff of his collar. Smiling, she gave him a good shake. “You started this. What kind of behavior is that for a future sovereign?”
“I didn’t do anything!” he complained, struggling to hide his laughter as his brothers twisted and contorted themselves in an attempt to force each other into the fire. It wouldn’t hurt them, but it would annoy Winnie to have to break out the fire extinguisher so early in the evening.
“Kaz, twist your hips! Use your momentum, for pity’s sake,” Valen called out. “You have a weight advantage!”
Winnie threw her hands up in the air when Delilah cheered for Samuel. “Do not encourage— Samuel Thaddeus Solbourne, if you stick your brother’s head in the fire I am going to throw your gifts in with him!”
Shucking his suit jacket and carelessly tossing it onto the floor, Theodore rolled up his sleeves, clapped his gloved hands together, and ran headlong back into the fray. A roar of laughter exploded from Kaz as they took on their older brother in an objectively unfair fight.
At some point, it stopped being about trying to throw someone in the fire and turned to simply pinning the wily red-haired sibling to the ground.
While Delilah called out pointers and Valen criticized their moves, Andy and Winnie retreated to the couch, resigned to wait out their annual wrestling match.
Laughter erupted as they grappled, using every dirty trick in the book, and the golden light of the fire winked in the glasses their audience brought to their lips.
All the while, their mother’s portrait watched over them, a soft smile on her lips, and the white-hot glow of his consort burned in Theodore’s mind, reminding him that no one was ever really gone.
They were with him every step of the way.