Aodhán balled up the fragile booklet and threw it to the carpet by his knee. So many nonsensical pictures, so few words, most of which made no sense in any of the languages that he’d picked up over the centuries. Some made sense singularly, but in groups it was a lost cause. Setting it on fire was looking better and better each time he glared at it.
Stacks of flat boxes surrounded him, sitting where they’d been delivered that morning, seeming to loom over him where he sat cross-legged on the bare floor. All he had to defend himself was a tiny, strange, bent, wrench. How the hell was he expected to put together a condo’s-worth of furniture with this nonsense?
A squeal of high-pitched frustration sounded from behind him, somehow mirroring the one spinning inside his head, and he turned to see his little Keiko in her jury-rigged baby jail, the brand-new couch and loveseat combined with a wall of pillows to keep her contained. From his position on the floor all he could see were her two uneven pigtails standing up short and straight like little paint-brush antennas.
Aodhán grinned with affection and amusement and love. So much love. So, it would seem to be another escape attempt thwarted by her inability to find her feet. Yet. Any day, now, at the rate she was growing now that she was no longer starving. He sighed and picked up the balled paper wad and set about smoothing it out as best he could. He needed this crib more than he needed anything else, tonight. The couch wouldn’t hold her for long.
A polite tapping sounded from the front door, and Aodhán’s head snapped in that direction. What time was it? Who would come seeking him out at this hour? He stood and staggered a moment, feet numb, attention on the direction of the door. No staff, yet, no nanny, nobody to answer the door. Living with his dread wife for so long, he wasn’t in the habit. He’d have to do it himself.
Aodhán pulled on his gun rig and masked it and his SIG Sauer beneath a bit of glamour. He could have also worn his swords, propped up in a corner with the rest of his weapons, but he couldn’t carry both Keiko and two rapiers on his hips, so he decided to lean on firepower and tucked the baby against him, mindful of the handgun and her sticky little fingers. Probably nothing, but Seahaven was a violent town, and he was a violent man. The two often came in search of one another. But he also couldn’t leave Keiko to maybe fall between the cushions.
Aodhán carried his daughter into the condo’s front hall, the air redolent of outgassing paint, the tiles echoing with nothing to absorb the sound of his bare feet. He shifted the baby to the side a bit, tensed for an instant as he strained to listen—
“Just open the damn door, Aodhán. It’s not rocket surgery.”
“Etienne, don’t be rude.”
Aodhán frowned in confusion. Etienne and Cian? What were they doing here? Last time they’d come in search of him, he’d gone to war. Hopefully, war wasn’t in the cards for tonight. He’d never find a babysitter in time.
He opened the door and tilted his head just to one side at what he saw. Four men, smiling with good humor — well, as close as Etienne Knight came to smiling, anyway. The short faerie knight stood there with a large toolbox hanging from one hand, wearing a t-shirt pitted with tiny burn holes that said in scrolling letters, “Save an anvil, bang a blacksmith.”
Beside him was Cian the Glorious Dawn, Prince of Seelie and gifted healer. He bore several bags that proved to carry the home-brewed beer Aodhán was developing a serious liking for. Cian’s smile lit up the doorway, and he crinkled his nose playfully at Keiko, who giggled and wriggled on her daddy’s hip.
Between the two sidhe lords stood Alerich Ashimar, one-time wizard and sorcerer, currently… what, Aodhán didn’t know. The tall Englishman bore four large boxes of pizza with the logo from Mama C’s on top. Aodhán managed to not drool, but barely. He hadn’t eaten since arriving that morning.
Towering over them all was Brian MacDowell, Seahaven’s strapping young Hero. He also carried a heavy toolbox, but it and his simple, white t-shirt both were immaculately clean.
Aodhán gave Keiko a little bounce, looking the men over again as if not entirely believing they were there. Winter Mulcahy’s men and her cousin. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s good to see you… but what are you doing here?”
Etienne moved forward with his toolbox, not bothering to ask to be let in, and Aodhán stepped back to let him. Princes. They all had their bad habits. “Rescuing you.” Etienne’s gruff voice sounded as if it was the most obvious fact in the world and Aodhán was a special sort of idiot. “It’s what knights do, isn’t it?”
“Well, no, not really…”
Cian came in behind Etienne, looking both amused and irritated with his lover. “Etienne, you’re being rude, again.”
The knight just grunted.
Alerich gave Aodhán a little nod and a smile, both warm and polite. “May we come in? We heard through the grapevine that it’s Moving Day.”
Aodhán waved them through, a sarcastic little flourish on the gesture. Seahaven. Fucking gossipy town.
“A week early.” Etienne looked over the shimmer of glamour that hid Aodhán’s SIG Sauer and passed by him into the living room where Aodhán had most of the furniture boxes. “What did you do to piss off an Eldest?” He set down the toolbox and picked up the rumpled instructions, crouching as he began to read without waiting for permission or Aodhán’s reply.
Cian rolled his green eyes and moved through the other doorway to the kitchen. “We come bearing pizza and beer.”
Aodhán closed the door behind them and carried Keiko into the kitchen, where Cian and Alerich were setting down their simple feast. Aodhán felt his mouth watering. “Thank you.” He sighed and let Cian take possession of the baby so he could eat in relative peace. “My Dread Mistress, Himiko the Jómon,” may as well be formal about her, now, “decided early this morning that she could no longer stand my face and ordered us immediately out of her sight. Pretty sure it had to do with taking possession of the condo, but at least we’re not trying to stay at a hotel tonight.” Not that Seahaven didn’t offer a fine variety of high-end hotels, but setting the protection glyphs was always a pain in the ass, especially alone, and he wasn’t the best magician, anyway. He was best left with his blades and his wits.
Maybe they could cut past the pain behind the rage in Himiko’s hard eyes? Aodhán ached to be by her side, but he couldn’t abide her neglect of Keiko. He had to choose, and he would choose his daughter every time. But the pain in his chest as his wife had dismissed him from her personal life cut deeper than any blade.
Alerich handed over a brown bottle of beer. “Winter sends her apologies. She had a minor emergency show up just as we were leaving.”
Aodhán took a deep drink of Winter’s excellent beer and let himself relax a little for the first time since coming to the decision about the divorce. “She’ll be missed. What she’ll be missing, though…?”
Cian dandled Keiko on his hip, smooth, confident, and practiced. She chewed a piece of pizza with enthusiasm, little teeth cutting through the cheese. Cian handed her another small bite to work on. “We heard that you got tossed out and that somehow you didn’t get the stores to assemble the furniture for you.”
Aodhán rolled his eyes and took another drink before picking up a piece of tantalizing pizza. “I didn’t know it was even an option. And then the boxes arrived.” He swallowed and sighed. “Five-hundred-years-old and I have no clue what I’m doing in there.”
Alerich smiled around his pizza. “Neither do we, but together I’m certain we can figure it all out.”
“If we can keep Etienne out of trouble,” Brian muttered as he craned his neck a bit, looking through the kitchen doorway to the living room with its labyrinth of boxes. Aodhán thought it was funny as hell. Brian, of all of them, probably had more than just a clue about assembling furniture. He was a handyman as one of his many side-hustles. “Etienne, wait for us, please. You haven’t done one of these, y—”
The sudden sound of Etienne’s power drill whine cut Brian off.
The Hero immediately dropped his pizza back on his plate, frustration coloring his dark cheeks, and made his way across the room. “Whoa, whoa! Etienne, what are you doing?”
“They put the holes in the wrong damn places.”
“No, they didn’t. You’ve got the wrong pieces.”
Cian clapped his hand across his forehead, but not before Aodhán saw him roll his eyes.
It made Aodhán smile. What was it about being with these people, just hanging out and eating pizza, that made him feel so comfortable? Safe? There was Cian, across the kitchen from him, a young sidhe prince Aodhán was just barely getting to know, feeding pizza to Keiko and Aodhán was fine with that. At home, Aodhán couldn’t trust most outside of her and her twin’s nurses with holding Keiko. At home, it seemed he’d forgotten how to be happy, so long ago that it defied memory. He remembered fragments of this feeling from his childhood, but most of them were gone, now. They had been wiped away by five centuries of surviving in the Eldest Himiko’s dangerous household, pretending to be less than he was to avoid the attention of Himiko’s collection of therian kings. And for five centuries, he’d thought it normal.
What had Himiko done to him?
Alerich was grinning as Brian calmly explained to Etienne, even as the cantankerous prince tried to blow him off, that they really didn’t need the drill for this. “Brian is really starting to stand up well against Etienne.” His voice was pitched well below the two arguing in the living room.
Aodhán nodded, shaking away his pensive thoughts, and took a last long drink of his beer. “Let’s go save our Hero.” He threw a smile at Cian. “If you can keep an eye on her, we can see what these hands of mine are capable of.” Beyond violence and survival. Beyond Himiko’s intoxicating cruelty. Maybe on the path to a whole new life.
Could he really do that?
Keiko squealed in Cian’s gentle arms, the sound robust, so much more than the thin wails she had produced before in her mother’s ‘care.’ She was getting so strong. Maybe he couldn’t have gotten out of that life alone, but now he had Keiko. He had friends.
Today, he had a reason to fight for this new life, and fight he would. Tomorrow…
Tomorrow would have to wait.
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