Chapter Thirty-One
The Huxleys were very loud, and getting even more so as the empty wine bottles on the table started piling up.
“—so I’m half asleep, I’ve got one eye open, and I hear Ryland get out of bed,” Stephen was saying, gesturing with a lumpia.
“And I think, right, he’s gone to do the feed, brilliant, I’ll go back to sleep.
But then I hear rustling, and clicking. So I get up and go to the nursery, and Ryland has covered the far wall of the room in glow-in-the-dark star stickers. ”
Colin’s hand flew to his mouth.
“Tell them why,” Stephen said, turning to Ryland.
Ryland straightened in his chair. “Max’s urination trajectory is inconsistent,” he said.
“Both in arc height and directional spread. When you change a nappy in low light, you can’t see where the stream is going until it’s already hit you, the wall, or on one occasion, my laptop screen.
” He adjusted his glasses. “The star stickers create a visual map. Each sticker marks a confirmed strike zone. Over the course of a week, the pattern reveals his dominant spray vectors, which allows me to position the changing mat at the optimal defensive angle.”
Hamish had put his forehead on the table and was laughing so hard that his shoulders shook.
“He’s got a heat map,” Stephen said. “Of our infant son’s wee. Stuck to the nursery wall in glow-in-the-dark stars.”
“It’s not a heat map,” Ryland said. “A heat map implies graduated intensity values. This is a scatter plot.”
The laughter rolled over Cassian like warm bathwater. He smiled when they smiled and laughed when the room laughed. He genuinely found Ryland’s star map funny, even if he couldn’t have articulated why a scatter plot of baby urine was funnier than a heat map of it.
Ryland’s gaze swung across the table and settled on him, unblinking. “Cassian, the sticker placement follows a modified polar coordinate system, where Max’s navel serves as the origin point…”
Cassian’s shoulder pressed into Colin’s arm. Colin’s hand found his knee under the table and rested there.
Stephen was acting out the moment the stream hit Ryland’s glasses, and the table had dissolved into collective hysteria, everyone laughing at each other’s laughter rather than at the original joke, so that when Cassian pushed his chair back, nobody noticed.
The family’s attention was a closed circuit, feeding back on itself, and slipping out of it was as simple as being the one person in the room who wasn’t a Huxley or a significant other.
He climbed the stairs in his socks, his feet silent on the thick carpet that swallowed every sound in this house.
The landing was dim, the overhead light off, and the door to the nursery stood ajar by a few inches, letting a narrow band of warm light fall across the hallway floor from the nightlight inside.
Cassian eased the door open and stepped through.
Two Moses baskets sat side by side beneath the window, the curtains drawn against the July evening. The nightlight on the dresser cast everything in a low amber glow that softened the edges of the furniture and made the room feel smaller than it was.
Max was on his back with his fists up by his ears, his mouth open. Tala lay on her side with her knees drawn up. One arm had worked its way free of the blanket, her hand splayed open against the basket’s lining, her fingers so small that Cassian could have covered all five of them with his thumb.
He crouched between the two baskets and checked Max first. His blanket had ridden up and bunched beneath his chin, leaving his feet exposed, so Cassian drew it down and tucked the edges around his legs, smoothing the fabric flat. He moved slowly because rushed hands woke babies.
Max’s mouth worked in his sleep, his lips pursing and releasing around nothing.
Cassian moved to Tala. Her blanket was fine, but her shirt had rucked up at the back, exposing a strip of bare skin above her nappy. Cassian tugged the fabric down with two fingers, careful not to shift her.
He went to sit in the rocking chair by the window. The cushion was deep enough that his knees came up higher than his hips, and the chair moved beneath him whenever he repositioned himself.
Cassian watched the babies. Eventually, Tala’s legs kicked beneath the blanket, one foot escaping the tuck he’d made, and her face compressed as she wailed. The sound made Max twitch in his basket but didn’t wake him.
Cassian was on his feet before her second breath. He scooped her up and drew her body against his chest.
“Shh,” he murmured into her hair. “Shh, shh, shh. I’ve got you, Tala. I’m here.”
She screamed directly into his collarbone, her mouth hot and wet against his shirt, her fists beating the air beside his neck. Cassian swayed on the spot, shifting his weight from foot to foot in the rocking pattern that he’d used on the babies at the compound.
That was when the smell of poo hit him. “Oh,” he said, pulling back to look at her face. “Right. That’s what this is about.”
He carried her to the changing table and laid her down on the padded mat, one hand flat on her belly to keep her from rolling while the other reached for the stack of nappies on the shelf.
She kicked furiously, her legs cycling, her cry scaling upwards into a register that could have shattered the nightlight.
Colin appeared in the doorway, drawn in by the noise. “You all right there, Cass?” he asked.
“She needs a nappy change,” Cassian told him, over Tala’s protests. “I can do it. I used to spend a lot of time in the littles room at the compound, helping take care of the babies.” He unpopped the bottom of her onesie with one hand. “I’m very good at it.”
“I’m sure you are,” Colin said.
He crossed to a panel mounted on the wall beside the door, a white rectangle with a row of switches and a small digital display, and flicked a big switch. Then he came to stand beside him at the changing table. “That’s the daft ‘baby monitor’ system Diwa set up.”
“To tell you when she’s crying?” Cassian asked.
“Yeah.” Colin wrinkled his nose as he watched Cassian peel open the soiled nappy.
“And there are sensors that detect her body heat. And sensors that monitor her heartbeat. And things I’m quite sure he didn’t tell me about, because he knows I’d think it’s fucking ridiculous.
” He took the dirty nappy from Cassian and folded it shut in one motion, pressing the tabs down. “He’s in tech, Diwa.”
Cassian looked at him.
“It means,” Colin said, reaching for a fresh nappy from the stack, “that he solves every problem by building something. If the baby’s cold, you or I would put a blanket on her.
Diwa would design a blanket with a thermostat in it and connect it to his mobile so he can monitor conditions going forward.
If she’s hungry, we’d heat a bottle in the microwave.
Diwa would buy a fucking warming system, and then he’d explain why each setting exists, and by the time he’s finished running you through things, you would’ve lost the will to live. ”
Tala kicked against the changing mat, her heels drumming in outrage at the cold air on her bare skin, and Cassian slid the clean nappy beneath her.
Colin watched his hands slotting the sticky tabs into place. “You weren’t kidding. You really are good at this.”
“Babies are easier than lambs,” Cassian said, fastening the tabs and smoothing the front flat. “Lambs have four legs. The angles are more complicated.”
Colin pulled Tala’s onesie back down and repopped the buttons while Cassian held her steady. Their hands moved around each other without collision, as though they’d been doing this together for years.
“That’s why Diwa and Ryland get along so well,” Colin said, lifting Tala from the mat and settling her against his shoulder.
Cassian noticed the tremor run through his forearm as he took his daughter’s weight.
“They’re both like that. Ryland can’t look at anything without wanting to know exactly how it works.
Every measurement, every detail. He just has to know.
” He rubbed slow circles on Tala’s back.
“He’s really very nice, Cassian. I know he upset you tonight. ”
Cassian’s eyes stayed fixed on Tala.
“He wasn’t trying to hurt you,” Colin said.
“That’s not how Ryland works. He doesn’t say things to be cruel.
He says them because he thinks knowing things is the greatest gift you can give someone.
” Colin’s cheek rested against Tala’s head, his eyes half-closed.
“It’s how he tells people he loves them.
He finds out something extraordinary about the world, and he can’t bear to keep it to himself, so he shares it.
That’s Ryland handing you a present. He just doesn’t always remember to wrap it up nicely. ”
“I’m not upset at Ryland,” Cassian said after a while.
“He was being nice to me. I know that. I could tell, because his face went all —” Cassian made a small, tight gesture at his own brow, a furrow followed by a blink, his approximation of Ryland’s earnest recalibration.
“What he said was interesting. But it didn’t make sense with what I know, and I couldn’t — I didn’t know how to have both things in my head at the same time. So I let it go empty.”
Colin shifted Tala higher on his shoulder, his chin tipping down towards her.
“It just goes,” Cassian said. “Everything I’m thinking.
Everything I actually know. The second an alpha looks at me like that, it all drains out, and the only thing left is the words.
” He swallowed. “The Principles. The Lumineer’s voice saying them.
I opened my mouth and it came out, all of it.
The Third Principle and the talk about vessels and darkness.
I couldn’t stop myself.” His fingers curled into the hem of his own shirt.
“And then I got scared because I’d had a go at an alpha, and alphas don’t forget when you do that. ”
Colin leaned in close, his shoulder pressing into Cassian’s, and kissed him on the cheek. “In this house,” Colin said, “you’re always allowed to quarrel with an alpha. Or anyone, really.” He drew back just far enough to catch Cassian’s eye.
“I would never argue with you, Colin,” Cassian said.
“I want you to argue with me.” Colin’s voice was quiet, but the steel in it was unmistakable.
“You need to tell me when I’m being unreasonable.
Everyone in this house has been treading on eggshells around me because I’ve been poorly, and I understand why, but that’s enough now.
I’m getting better. Which means I expect to be told off when I’ve bought too many tights for Tala, or when I’ve said something that doesn’t make sense.
I need the people around me to be honest with me, Cass. Even when it’s uncomfortable.”
Cassian’s mouth curved into a smile that wobbled at its edges.
Colin watched him for a moment, then spoke. “You’ve spent your whole life in the Family of Light, Cass. That’s all you’ve ever known. So I’m going to give you something simple to hold onto. One rule that you can use to decide whether a thing belongs in your head, or whether you let it go.”
Cassian waited.
“The people who love you properly,” Colin said, “don’t want you smaller.
They want more of you. More of your opinions, more of your quarrels, more of the bits that are inconvenient and loud and difficult to manage.
If someone’s asking you to believe them without question, if they’re trying to disappear what you want and what you need so that they can have their way: that’s not love. That’s not what you need.”
Tala yawned against Colin’s collarbone, her fist uncurling.
“Colin,” Cassian said, testing the new rule in his head. “You let Diwa overrule you about the baby monitor. You said you didn’t want it, and he put it in anyway.” He pointed at the wall panel. “And you just let him. He made your opinion disappear.”
Colin’s mouth twitched into a sly curve.
“Second rule, then. For the little things, where really your alpha’s just being an overprotective daddy who can’t help himself, it’s best to let it go.
An alpha needs a low-stakes win once in a while, Cassian.
Functional relationships are all about knowing when to give and when to take. ”
Cassian’s eyes went very wide.
“So when Hamish nags me about wearing shoes —”
“You let him have the shoes,” Colin confirmed.
Cassian stood perfectly still in the amber glow of the nursery, his gaze fixed on a point in the middle distance where a new and thrilling strategic landscape was assembling itself.
He would wear the shoes. He would wear them conspicuously, right in front of Hamish, making sure the alpha clocked it.
And then, once Hamish was warm and pleased about the shoe wearing, Cassian would suggest that tonight they watch the crime documentaries on YouTube instead of Hamish’s boring programmes about people who talked a lot to other people.
He was heading for the door before Colin could say another word, Tala forgotten, the stairs already creaking beneath him as he went to find his test audience of alphas.