92. Look At What He Kept #2
Andrik’s giant form fills the doorway, lowering his antlers to clear the frame.
One enormous arm curled around his chest. Bundled against all that fur, wrapped in wool with two dark curls escaping her little cap, is Eirlys.
Her wide dark eyes blink around the room.
Riding between Andrik’s antlers is my favorite little bunny sprite.
“He won an argument,” Andrik retorts flatly.
“CHIRP.”
“He always wins the argument,” I chuckle. “Unless there’s food involved.”
Andrik stops beside Lumi, and she tilts Vaelína gently toward him.
Andrik angles his chest, lowering Eirlys.
And the two of them—The first Rhavari and Solvernah babies in the history of the world—regard each other.
Eirlys’s mittened fist rises, waving with the drunken precision of three months’ practice.
It lands on Vaelína’s cheek. Vaelína’s shadow uncurls and wraps around Eirlys’s wrist, claiming her back.
“Oh,” Lumi whispers, tears starting all over again. “They’re going to be terrible together.”
“The forest isn’t ready,” Andrik says.
By the window, Therael’s hand slowly rises to his mouth. The roses climb his shoulders again. Arteus doesn’t tease him. He only watches in silence, letting him bloom.
Andrik studies Vaelína a moment longer. “Thank the six gods she looks like her mother.”
“Yes. The green skin is clearly from her mother,” Sage drawls.
“And the mismatched eyes,” Ashán adds.
“And the wings,” they say together.
“CHIRP,” Droot agrees from Andrik’s antlers.
And then—because His Majesty has waited hours and will wait no longer—he descends, picking his way down the antler like a mountaineer.
He hops to Lumi’s shoulder, and leans over the bundle with his ears at maximum attention.
His light cycles slower and softer than I’ve ever seen it.
He looks at Vaelína for a long, long moment before reaching out one tiny paw and patting her, very gently, and lets out the softest chirp.
“He says welcome home,” I whisper. Vaelína’s shadow curls around his little paw. Droot immediately purrs and plops himself down in the petals beside her. He shoots the entire room one warning look. The nest has a guard now. Clearly.
“Well,” Damon’s voice drifts in from the hallway, rich with wounded patience, “if the children are quite finished, some of us have been waiting with jewelry.”
He slinks into the room as though the room has been waiting its whole existence for him to arrive. The charms in his hair chime softly.
“Little Empath,” he greets me warmly. Then his golden eyes drop to the bundle in Lumi’s arms. I can see the joke flickering behind his mouth, something silky and outrageous the way it always is.
But it simply never comes. Whatever he prepared simply dies in his throat.
The smoothest god of all stands in my bedroom, in the early morning light, looking at my daughter with an unreadable expression.
“Ah,” he says thickly. “Well.”
“Would you like to hold her, Damon?”
“Obviously,” he manages. “I have been ready since dawn.”
One elegant hand cradles her skull, gold charms chiming as his thumb makes one small circle at her temple.
“Hello, Smallest Reaper,” he murmurs. “I am your Uncle Damon. I am the fun one. We will discuss the details when you’re older, over pastries your fathers do not approve of.”
Vaelína considers him. Her fist rises, wobbles, and closes unerringly around one of his braids.
Damon stills. “... She may keep it,” he announces. “She may keep anything she likes.”
“Damon—” Sage starts.
“Anything,” Damon repeats, gazing down at the tiny fist in his hair. He clears his throat and blinks hard, twice. He produces his other hand from behind his back. A small velvet box.
“Absolutely not,” Ashán says.
“You haven’t even seen them.”
“She is two hours old.”
“They are CLIP-ONS,” Damon says, deeply offended, opening the box to reveal two minuscule golden clovers.
“I would never pierce an infant—there is a waiting period. It’s called etiquette.
” He tilts the box toward me, suddenly, disarmingly earnest. “For when she’s ready.
However long that takes. Every royal lady of the Afterlife needs her jewels. ”
The room stays silent.
“And…” he adds. “I could not forget my other little lady of the Afterlife.” He produces a second tiny box and cracks it open. Two tiny snowflakes rest on top of a pink velvet pillow.
“Snowflakes,” Lumi breathes, leaning in. “For Eirlys?”
“For the winter lady,” he confirms. “Born in the cold, to the cold.”
“She’s three months old,” Andrik deadpans.
“And already sturdier than most of my court.” Damon arches a brow.
“You don’t have a court,” Therael sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose.
Andrik looks at the tiny snowflakes. His enormous hand comes up, and with one careful claw, he tilts the box toward Eirlys, bundled against his chest.
“What do you think?”
Eirlys’s eye catches on the glinting metal. Her mittened fist rises and lands on the box.
“She accepts,” Andrik states.
“Naturally.” Damon relinquishes the box to the mitten without hesitation. “Both of my ladies have excellent taste. It runs in the family.” He pauses. “Mine. Not yours.”
“They’re not related to you,” Sage points out.
Damon turns slowly. His gaze moves from Sage… to the wing still curving over the nest… to Vaelína’s fist still tangled in his own braid… and finally, around the crowded, tear-streaked room.
“Aren’t they?” he says simply.
Therael crosses the room and wraps his arm around his brother’s shoulder. Damon’s charms stop chiming.
“... Not a single word,” Therael murmurs.
“Wouldn’t dream of it, brother.”
Vaelína chooses this exact moment to yank the braid still caught in her fist. Damon’s head tips with it, entirely unresisting. The wet-eyed god breaks into the most genuinely delighted smile I have ever seen on him.
“Yes,” he tells her, nose to nose, “good instincts. Never let go of anything you love. Your Uncle Damon never does.”
Elena arrives with a satchel over one shoulder. “Hi mama,” she whispers. “How are you doing?”
“I’m pretty sore,” I admit.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Ashán and Sage say at the same time.
“Because I knew you’d make that exact face,” I say, “and you’d do that exact thing with the shadows.” The shadows in question, already coiling toward me from three directions, freeze guiltily in mid-air.
“Everyone out,” Ashán rises to his full height.
A chorus of protest rings around the room.
“Out,” he repeats, herding gods, sisters, and one deeply offended Horseman who was about to enter the room toward the stairs with a polite, immovable shadow. “We’ll circle back to this in a moment. My mate is sore, and you are all standing on my patience—five minutes.”
“We’ll take the baby—” Lumi says hopefully.
“The baby stays.”
“CHIRP,” from the petals.
“... The bunny stays,” Ashán concedes.
The door clicks shut on Damon’s hushed commentary—“five minutes, he says, as though we don’t all know exactly what the preferred route of venom delivery—”
And then it’s quiet. Just us. The fire. Our daughter drowsing against my chest. Droot curled in the petals at her back, and my two monsters looking down at me with identical expressions of tender, affronted concern.
“Sore,” Sage repeats softly, settling on the edge of the nest. “Where?”
“Everywhere I did the work,” I admit. “It’s not horrible. It’s just… loud.”
“You should have told us the moment—”
“You were busy watching our daughter being held by every person we love,” I whisper. “I wasn’t going to interrupt that. Not for anything.”
Ashán crawls closer. He kneels, taking my face in both hands, thumbs tracing my cheekbones. This close, I can see the venom already gathering. His whole body wanting to fix what hurts.
“May I?”
“You never have to ask.” I smile. “But I love that you do.”
He kisses me slowly, deeper than gentle, and the sweet heat of the venya blooms across my tongue and spreads through my body. The soreness loosens, letting go of me one knot at a time, until I’m melting back against the pillows with our daughter.
“There we go, ílyen,” Sage murmurs, brushing my hair back.
“Better?” Ashán asks against my lips. “I can give you more?”
“Mm,” I murmur. “Not right now. There’s still a couple of people who need to meet our daughter.”
Ashán quietly opens the door just wide enough for one person.
“Elena. Quietly,” he whispers.
She slips in with her satchel, takes one look at me lax against the pillows with Vaelína rising and falling on my chest, and her whole face goes soft.
“Oh,” she whispers. “Hi, mama.”
“No Penelope?” I chuckle.
“Penelope wanted to come.” Elena kneels beside the nest, unpacking her things. “I told her no. She’s currently expressing her feelings to my porch furniture.”
Sage snorts.