24. Max
Max
The smell reached us. Warm bread, butter, sausages spitting somewhere behind a service door, and under all of it, sugar.
Missy had my hand and she was towing.
The family dining room stood at the lake end of the house, one whole wall of windows, the water throwing its light up onto the ceiling in slow-moving bands.
No court. No servants hovering at the walls.
Just the heirs, Frost, Marco, my sister, and me, and a long table laden with food.
Eggs and sausages and fruit in silver bowls.
Bread still steaming where it had been torn open.
And at the center, at a six-year-old’s exact eye level, a tiered stand of donuts glazed in every color the kitchen could invent.
Missy strode in fast and stopped dead, scanning the table in glee, Ross trailing at her feet like he owned the room and was considering renovations.
The cub went everywhere she went now. He’d bonded to my sister down to the marrow, and one day he’d be all horn and scale and loyalty, the guardian I couldn’t always be.
Then Missy spotted the company, and her smile jumped to its highest voltage. That smile could disarm any adult at twenty paces, and she knew it.
Ross, meanwhile, conducted his own inspection of the room, swept the assembled royalty with one imperious look, fixed on Caspian, and growled a warning.
The whole table cracked up.
“Why me?” Caspian spread his arms. “Why single me out?”
“You’re a ten,” Drakken snickered.
I hadn’t let myself look at him until then.
“He knows you’re a wolf, and he doesn’t like it,” Nikolai said. “Cub’s just being honest.”
Missy took one look at the most feared general on the continent and ran at him. Drakken caught her under the arms and swung her up, and something in his face came unlocked that I’d never seen there before.
“When can I ride a dragon again, Prince Drak?”
Prince Drak. She’d trimmed all of them down to size. Caspian was Prince Cas, Nikolai was Prince Nik, and Aelindor had been cut to Prince A.
Drakken set her down. “Not soon. But we’ll fly one day.”
“Is that a promise or a maybe?” She stepped back and studied him with a negotiator’s squint. “Because Max says maybes aren’t promises. People give maybes when they’re hoping you’ll forget.”
“A promise,” Drakken sighed.
“I’ll hold you to that.”
The moment we sat, Missy and I fell on the food like nobody had told us there’d be more tomorrow. Old habits; mine habits. The heirs watched us with open amusement, and I let them, because my sister was here, at this table, chirping happily around a bite of donut with powdered sugar on her nose.
“Slow down, Missy,” I warned. “So you don’t choke.”
“I won’t.” Her eyes had already locked onto the strawberry-glazed ring sitting untouched on Caspian’s plate beside her. “You going to have that, Prince Cas?”
“Have it.” Caspian smiled at her.
“You’re very sweet.” Missy lifted the donut off his plate, took an enormous bite, and beamed at him with her whole face.
Below the table, her partner in crime was running the same operation on a different mark.
Ross had stationed himself at Aelindor’s boots, sitting tall, chin up, radiating the patient entitlement of a creature who had decided the lord of the mansion was the softest touch in the room.
He was right. Aelindor palmed a strip of bacon down without breaking his conversation, and the cub took it and made a sound of pure happiness, a rumbling little churr, as he demolished it.
Aelindor tried him next with a corner of toast.
“Awrrrrh!” Ross growled, the unmistakable sound of a lion promised bacon and served betrayal.
“My bad,” Aelindor murmured to the space beneath the table, and paid the bacon tax properly.
“When I grow up, I’m marrying Prince Drak, Cas, and Nik. In that order.” Missy delivered it sugar-dusted and solemn. “I just have to make sure they’ll wait for me.”
Chuckles rolled around the table.
“You forgot Prince Aelindor,” Caspian said.
“He’s my sister’s boyfriend. He’s taken.”
“Not boyfriend.” Aelindor was grinning. “Mate.”
“You can’t marry the rest of them either, little viper. Not even when you grow up.”
“Why not?” Her cheeks were still bulging with donut.
“It’s complicated. You’ll have to trust me.”
“We all belong to Max,” Nikolai said.
“Even Drak?”
The table went quiet all at once.
Drakken’s gray eyes came to me. I kept still and gave him nothing, though my pulse was going hard enough to feel in my throat.
“Even Drakken,” Aelindor said.
Missy’s gaze traveled the table, from me to the heirs and back, doing six-year-old math on all of it.
“That sucks.”
Then she perked up, eyes landing on Frost and Marco down the table. “I’ll compromise and marry Frost. He’s powerful and good-looking. And if Frost is also unavailable, I’ll take Marco. He’s a vampire, so he’s a good fighter. And he’ll provide for me.”
The table broke up. Frost inclined his head a grave half-inch, like a man accepting a diplomatic commission.
“I see. I’m the backup plan.” Marco didn’t sound bothered. “Fair enough. I’ll protect you with my last breath.”
Missy looked across at me, and under the sugar and the mischief, her eyes had gone old.
“Max. We’ll make sure the princes, and Marco, and Frost, and everyone we love never die. Deal?”
“Deal.”