Steal the State I'm In

“You said it was beautiful here, Vi, but fuck,” Ridoc whistled, shaking his head as he pulled the U-Haul onto the exit ramp for Aretia.

“I’ve never been here in the fall,” I admitted, marveling at the vivid colors that surrounded us. “We mostly came for the solstices. Summer here is like a romantic poem and winter looks like a fucking Hallmark movie; I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that autumn is straight out of a brochure for a leaf-peeping tour.”

“What’s spring gonna be, then? A music video? A Spotify playlist?”

I laughed. Ridoc could make me laugh on my darkest days, and I was really glad he’d volunteered to help me move. “Probably a novel, but I guess you never know.”

“Turn right,” the GPS announced as I sent Liam’s dad a text to let him know we’d made it to town.

Ridoc followed the directions, exclaiming anew as we turned down each picturesque little street. When the Mairis invited me to come stay with them as long as I wanted, I’d searched for a nearby storage place to put my books and the furniture I’d wanted to keep. The only one I’d turned up had been in an old building, formerly a factory that made fireplace tools, and it was the most charming storage location I’d ever seen.

“Can you stay in the truck so we don’t have to wake the baby?” I asked Ridoc. “I‘ll go find out where my unit is.”

“Sure thing, Vi,” he said. “Nothing worse than a cranky baby, after all.”

I looked down at my daughter, car seat strapped between us on the bench seat, and a smile crept across my face. Everything had been hard since Liam died, but our little girl gave every struggle a purpose. “Be right back,” I said, hopping down and shutting the door softly behind me.

The girl behind the desk had a blue streak in her blonde hair, piercings curving around the top of each ear, and a pleasant customer-service smile plastered across her face. “Can I help you?”

“I reserved a unit?” I asked hesitantly, coming up to the counter. “Over the phone the other day?”

“Can I get your name, please?” She tapped at the laptop on the counter.

“Violet Mairi,” I said, starting to dig in my purse for my ID.

“Oh!” The customer service smile was replaced by a genuine one, and sympathy filled her eyes. “That’s right, the colonel said you were coming to stay with them so they could help with the baby. Your unit will be -“ she glanced at the screen, “over in the fourth wing, flame section. It’s the second unit.”

There was a big map of the place hanging on the wall behind her head, and she pointed. “We’re right here, in first wing, so you’re going to want to drive through the gate, go down to the fourth building and turn left. About halfway down there’s a big fireplace mural. Park outside the door, and it’ll be the first door at the top of the stairs. Or if you park outside claw section - it’s got tools painted on - there’s a freight elevator. There should be a couple of carts and hand trucks over there too. Do you need a lock?”

“I’ve got one, thanks,” I smiled back at her. I muttered the instructions back to myself all the way back to the truck.

“My storage unit is just U113, this is so much cooler,” Ridoc observed as he pulled through the gate.

“It’s definitely different.” Violet noticed that the end of each building had a number with wings painted on it.

There was an old brown pickup and a bright green sedan sitting under the fireplace mural, and a familiar blonde woman jumped out of the passenger door of the car as the U-Haul approached. Ridoc carefully backed the truck into the parking spot next to the others, and I hopped down as soon as we’d stopped. “Sloane!”

”Violet!” She threw her arms around me. “Dad let me know as soon as you texted and I recruited unloading help.”

”You’re amazing, thank you so much.”

”Of course! You’re the only sister I’ve got, after all. Now, where’s my precious nibling?”

Ridoc reached in and unbuckled Claire with practiced ease - I had discovered that I couldn’t reach her car seat from the ground, and standing on the edge made me feel too unstable. Fortunately Ridoc had helped a ton since she was born and he knew exactly what to do. “Here she is,” he called cheerfully. Sloane rushed over, beaming.

“Oh, she’s gotten so big,” Sloane crowed, sounding as proud of her as I was.

“Definitely a Mairi baby.” Bodhi had gotten out of the green car in the meantime. “She looks just like her Auntie Sloane did at that age.”

“Says the guy who’s only two years older than me,” Sloane grumbled.

“Your parents have pictures of you all over the house,” Garrick pointed out, climbing out of his truck. “Hi, Violet, how was the drive?”

“You’d have to ask Ridoc; he wouldn’t let me do any of it,” I laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you without a kid in your arms, Garrick.”

“You could hand me yours,” he shrugged, “but Ma thought I’d be better at carrying heavy things without rugrats underfoot, so she took them for a couple hours.”

“Very wise,” I nodded. “Thank you all for coming to help me. I don’t have a ton of stuff - I sold most of it when I was cleaning out the apartment - but most of what I do have are boxes of books.”

“That’s what family’s for,” Bodhi said. “You must be Ridoc; we’ve heard a lot about you.”

“All true,” Ridoc grinned. “Unless it was bad, then only most of it is true.”

“Would I say bad things about you?” I demanded, hands on hips. “Ridoc, this is my sister-in-law Sloane and our friends Bodhi Durran and Garrick Cardulo. Guys, this is my best friend and partner in crime, Ridoc Gamlyn.”

“Anyone who would voluntarily drive a moving truck through Seattle traffic is a keeper,” Garrick said. “I don’t think my wife would be willing to do that for me, much less anyone else.”

“Violet’s worth it,” Ridoc replied cheerfully. “But we’d better get this truck unloaded before little miss Clarity Rose decides to start expressing her displeasure. That kid’s got a serious set of lungs on her.”

Sloane set me and the baby up in a camp chair she pulled out of the bed of Garrick’s truck and took charge of unloading the truck and moving everything into my storage unit with cheerful efficiency - clearly she’d been taking being-in-charge lessons from her mom.

Before I met Liam, I would have resisted letting other people handle moving my stuff without my help, and I definitely wouldn’t have let Ridoc drive the truck all the way here, but I didn’t have the energy to fight against his determination or Sloane’s good will. My college squad had diligently taught me to accept help when I needed it, and all that hard work paid off in the days after Liam’s death, when they swooped in and made sure that I ate and slept, that there were groceries and diapers and dog food.

My friends were amazing, and I loved Seattle, but I couldn’t figure out how to make it on just my salary when I’d have to pay for rent and day care and everything else. There was some insurance money, but using it to make ends meet would just be kicking the can down the road.

“Come live with us,” Colonel Mairi had said after the funeral. “Isaac’s retired; he can look after the baby while you write, and I can put in a good word for you over at the college if you want to keep teaching. And once you get tired of sharing another woman’s kitchen,” the corner of her mouth twitched at that, and I suspected that the kitchen in their house was Isaac’s in the same way that our kitchen had been Liam’s, “you can get a little house. The cost of living in Aretia is much lower than Seattle.”

I loved Seattle, but I’d also fallen in love with Aretia during the summer and winter breaks in college. Liam had first invited me home over Solstice break before we’d even officially started dating, because he knew I didn’t really have anywhere to go. My mother and Mira were deployed to different parts of the world, and Brennan spent Solstice with his husband’s family if he bothered to take time off work at all. Meanwhile, Liam’s family - blood and chosen - had welcomed me with open arms. (Well, Garrick’s wife Imogen had welcomed me with snark and mockery, but Liam had assured me that it was Imogen’s way of expressing affection.)

The four of them made short work of emptying the truck and filling up the storage locker, and Sloane was locking it when Ridoc came over. “Weird question,” he said, bouncing on his toes a little. “Would you mind if Bodhi rode in the truck with me and you rode with Sloane?”

“As long as Bodhi doesn’t mind one of us driving his car,” I said. “Or you could ride with him and I could drive the truck.”

“I’ll ask him which is better. I just - want to spend some one-on-one time with him.” Ridoc’s eyes were bright, and if I didn’t know better I’d think he was blushing.

“Ridoc Gamlyn, have you got a crush?” I whispered.

“Mayyybe,” he whispered back. “Have you seen him? He’s fucking gorgeous and sweet as pie.”

I nodded. “Go for it! I’m not going to discourage you from getting close to my other friends group.”

“You’re the best, Vi.”

That was how I found myself driving the empty truck over to my new home in Aretia. Isaac’s car was in the driveway, with my big black SUV parked off to the side where I had left it last weekend. Isaac had driven me back to my apartment in Seattle and helped me pack before coming back to get my room ready, as he’d said.

He and the Colonel came out of the house as I pulled up. Garrick had headed back to pick up his girls, and Ridoc said something about picking up snacks before he and Bodhi came over.

Sloane unbuckled Claire and swung her down to a peal of giggles. “Is that my happy grandbaby?” the Colonel asked, taking the baby and making faces at her until she giggled again.

The front door burst open, and an enormous black dog barreled across the lawn, jumping over raised flower beds with grace, barking and wagging the whole way. He stopped short at the Colonel’s feet, gently sniffed Claire as she shrieked with joy, and then bolted over to me, wiggling with so much excitement he nearly knocked me over. “Tairn!” I bent to let him sniff me all over, confirming that I was also intact. “I missed you too, old man.” After a minute or two he settled and sat politely at my feet in what I called his ready-to-work pose. I’d hated to leave him here for the few days it took to pack up my apartment, but there was no way we would be able to comfortably fit Ridoc, Claire’s car seat, me, andTairn in the cab of the U-Haul.

“Well, somebody couldn’t stand being left in the house!” Isaac, beaming, gave me a hug. I could see echoes of the son in his father’s face - the same nose, the same hairline, the same sparkling blue eyes. Some of those features were also present in Claire’s baby face, and it gave me such a strong sense of connection to this place and these people. This was the house Liam had grown up in, the trees he had climbed, the street he had ridden his bike down. He was gone now, but somehow I still wasn’t alone.

“Welcome home, Violet.”

I rolled up to the front door of Runic Books with Lyn tucked in the wagon alongside the groceries and baby Avery on my back. It was just six, so my Ims was locking up and Gwen was twirling around on the sidewalk.

"Hey, princess! How was kindergarten?" I asked my oldest as she flung herself into my arms and I picked her up.

Gwen was just starting to tell me the latest circle time drama when Imogen turned away from the shop door. She raised an eyebrow at the wagon as we started walking the block and a half to our house.

"Gar, I asked you to stop at the store for waffles for the girls' breakfast. Just waffles."

"We got waffles!" Lyn added helpfully. "Plain AND chocolate chip!"

Imogen was clearly trying to stay mad but the corner of her lip was pulling up into a smile. "Well I hope there's mostly practical things in there and not just three bags of snickerdoodle chips or whatever you discovered this week."

"Daddy's gonna make cobbler!" Lyn was so excited she stood up in the wagon and nearly toppled out of it. Imogen caught her and lifted her out into a hug.

"That was supposed to be a surprise, Lynnie," I laughed, knowing full well my three year old was not going to be keeping secrets any time soon. She wiggled out of Imogen's grip and started running ahead of us and then back, and a second later Gwen wanted me to set her down so they could race.

"Today's just full of surprises," Imogen said as we watched them run away from us, her smile getting a little sad.

"Does that mean you heard about Violet?"

She blinks, a clear no. "What about Violet?"

"Liam's-" I stopped, shaking my head. The word widow still refused to come out of my mouth. "Violet Mairi's moving in with her in-laws, so they can help with their grandbaby."

"I can't blame her, I hate Seattle and I'm never there more than a few days at a time. I have no idea how people live there."

"Not everyone takes traffic as a personal insult, Ims." I could feel Avery starting to fuss against my back, but fortunately we were almost home, walking down the little street that turned off of Main.

Imogen snorted. "They should."

I crouched down so she could take Avery out of the carrier. While she walked up onto the porch to get the girls in the house, I parked the wagon under the car port and grabbed the grocery bags. Now that it was getting colder and rainier, the lawn was mostly clear of brightly-colored plastic hazards as I made my way to the front door. I followed Imogen and the girls in, setting the groceries down long enough to take my boots and hat off in the hallway and then carrying them into the kitchen.

I fed the girls chicken nuggets and green beans while Imogen nursed Avery, and then made dinner for the two of us and started the dishes and laundry while she herded them through bedtime. I'd been toying with a new version of the cleaning array on the dishwasher and I wanted to keep an eye on it while it worked.

Once we'd sat down to eat, Imogen looked at me over her pasta. "So… about surprises."

I tried not to sound excited. "Are you pregnant again?"

"What? No! Avery's… well okay, Avery's about the age Lyn was, but no. Why would you think that?"

I shrugged. "Because you surprised me about Avery over dinner almost the same way? And Lyn too, now that I think about it."

She picked up a piece of chicken and used a spoon to fling it at me. I wasn't quite fast enough to catch it in my mouth, but I laughed. "Okay, okay, I'm sorry. What's your surprise, then?"

"Well I guess it does involve a baby," Imogen said, and there was that sad look again. "I got a text from- from Fen this morning. Asking me to come out and consult tomorrow."

"Fen Riorson? What, is he finally selling the library or something?" It was still weird to talk about my parents' friends by their first names, but it was less weird than still referring to your dad's law partner as Uncle Fen when you're thirty. As a kid I'd always called him that, or Mr. Riorson when we were in trouble, or sometimes Mr-Xaden's-Dad, but Xaden was a sensitive subject with his dad. And me.

"Not about books," Imogen said, and she knew me well enough that she probably could tell what I wasn't saying. "About Xaden."

My breath caught and somehow in the time it took her to gather whatever she was going to say next I managed to spiral through a whole soap opera's worth of what that could mean. Since he'd left, since he'd gone radio silent, I'd been waiting for a shoe to drop, for something terrible to make it back to us. After we got the call about Liam, I'd had nightmares about getting a call like that about Xaden, but my catastrophizing brain had had no shortage of other suggestions over the years: amnesia, in jail, in jail with amnesia (because otherwise he'd call his dad the lawyer, right?), turned into a statue, cursed somewhere with nobody to help break it, trapped in fairyland… seriously, I had no shortage of awful ideas.

Finally, mercifully, Imogen continued, "He's back. He flew into Tacoma this morning, Fen picked him up at the airport."

"What happened?"

"I don't know yet, not exactly. I called him before I agreed to do it, but we only talked for a few minutes. He said Xaden hadn't told him much about where he'd been, but he thinks Xaden's ex was… doing something to him. Won't know what until I see him."

"Where's he been, though? What-"

"Garrick, I don't know. All I know is he needs help, and he finally made it home so we can help him. And- and he has a son."

It was probably a good thing I'd stopped eating, because I'd have choked at that. "He has a kid and he never told-"

"Gar-"

"I'm coming with you."

"What? No." She glared at me. "This is a professional consultation, and I don't know what kind of shape Xaden's in. I probably shouldn't have even told you about it, except I'm sure you'd be hearing about it from the gossip mill in a day or two anyway."

I didn't know when I'd balled my hands into fists but it was long enough or tight enough that it hurt to stretch them out and put them flat on the table. "I have to see him, Im. He's my best friend." I hated the way my voice broke on that. "Besides you, of course."

"Of course," Imogen rolled her eyes. "Look, I'll tell him you want to see him. We'll see how he's doing. Maybe it'll be helpful, but I don't think you should be a surprise, okay?"

"You're right. I know you're right."

"Obviously. Because I'm the subject matter expert here, and I know you respect that when it doesn't involve the guy I was jealous of before you married me, so I'm not taking it personally. But I'm also going to do everything I can to help him. I would even if he wasn't our friend, but I know what you'd do for him."

We finished eating without any more dramatics, just a normal conversation about Gwen's playground pigtail-puller and what to do about him.

"I'm fine with her beating the crap out of him," I told her finally. "I just hate dealing with Ethan's mom."

"Yeah, well, Amber should teach her son better," Imogen snorted. "You deal with the school and I'll handle her if she wants to get involved. Fair?"

That made me laugh as I got up and took my plate and hers into the kitchen. "She's all yours, babe."

"That's what I like to hear." She leaned up to plant a kiss on my cheek. "You good with the dishes?"

"Yeah. I'll be up in a few, don't worry."

"I've got some reading to do, but if I nod off, don't hesitate to wake me up," she winked at me and snickered as she started up the stairs. Whether or not I'd actually wake her up would depend on how long it took me to come to bed and how well Avery was sleeping, but I appreciated the invitation anyway.

I liked washing dishes. There was something satisfying about getting the kitchen reset for the next day, loading the dishwasher and setting the mugs to dry. Sometimes we had things to finish sorting out and Imogen would keep me company, helping put away leftovers or something, but most nights I took care of it myself.

The thoughts kept rolling around in my head, like a boat with no oars floating aimlessly around the lake, not getting anywhere. It had been years since we'd heard anything from Xaden. It almost didn't seem real that he could be back; if I'd heard it from anyone but Imogen I think I would have called bullshit.

With the dishes sorted, I flipped off the kitchen lights and crossed the living room toward the stairs. I hesitated, drawn over to the bookshelf. I picked up the carved wooden bear that sat in the center of the shelf, running my fingers over the gentle curve of its back.

It couldn't be an accident, could it? He hadn't come for Liam's wedding or his funeral, but it was soon enough after that he must have heard.

I shook my head and set the bear back down. I'd know what the fuck was going on with Xaden soon enough, but right now Imogen was waiting for me.

Calling my father was the hardest thing I've ever done. By the time I did it, I could only see two options and calling him was the harder of the two, but I already knew I couldn't leave my son with her. Will deserved better, honestly deserved better than either of us, but at the very least he deserved one parent who would protect him. That was the reason I stayed as long as I did.

That was also the reason I was stumbling into SeaTac at six in the morning, still stiff from three hours folded into a coach seat with my son in my lap. Trying to keep him calm the whole time was nerve-wracking, but that's what you deserve when you leave your wife by sneaking out with a duffel after she goes to bed.

I crossed the airport to the waiting area with Will strapped to my chest in his carrier. He was snug against me and finally starting to calm down from the landing, thankfully. With his diaper bag on one shoulder and my duffel hanging from the other, I figured I looked awkward as hell and wondered if people were judging me as they went by. I used to be unflappable, I was the master of giving no fucks. I hate that I'm not anymore.

At first I didn't see my father waiting for me. For a minute I wondered if he'd decided I wasn't worth the trouble after all; the phone conversation had been quick, almost panicked. "I'm at LAX. I need to come home. Can you pick me up at SeaTac at six and bring a car seat?"

All he'd said was "of course, text me your flight." That was it.

I scanned the crowd again, matching everyone I saw against the mental photo I had of my dad, because Fen Riorson never changed.

Except when I did finally spot him, my whole world shifted a little further off axis. He had changed. There was grey threaded through his neat beard and his dark hair, lines around his eyes that had never been there before. I'd been taller than my dad since I was sixteen, but somehow he still seemed smaller than I remembered.

He looked at me, his eyes narrowing with- distrust? Worry? But his first words were for my son.

"Hello, little one," he started. Will's big, dark eyes fluttered open again and he turned his head to look at his grandfather for the first time. He smiled- they both smiled. Will fucking loves people, something I don't think I'll ever understand, but I can appreciate that everyone else thinks the kid is as amazing as I do.

"Bye bye!" Will forced his little hand out of the side of the carrier and waved. He hadn't quite figured out yet that you say different things for meeting and going away, but the effect was adorable so I wasn't really in a hurry for him to outgrow it, either.

"You must be young Willow. Let's get you in the car, hm?"

He started walking without a word to me. It only took about two long strides to catch up, and about that long to wring any hope I had that this would be easy out of me.

The walk to the car was much the same, but honestly, there wasn't much I wanted to talk about in the airport anyway so maybe it was for the best. I told myself that maybe he was struggling like I was.

There was a carseat in the back of the car, but it was just sitting there on its side.

"It's been... a while since I needed one of those," he pointed out. "I had to borrow one. May I hold young Will while you do it?"

After putting our bags in the trunk, I pulled William out for my father to hold and unbuckled the carrier. It slid off my shoulders so it hung like an apron while I awkwardly bent into the car to wrangle the seat into place. Dad sat in the front passenger seat, Will in his arms, while I threaded the straps and snapped the buckles.

I felt strangely anxious about it until I reached for him and my father handed him back to me, like I'd been worried I wouldn't be allowed to have him back.

Dad went around to the driver's side as I buckled Will into the harness and tucked his blankie in around him. He was nodding off again and I hoped he'd sleep for the drive. Will's breathing and the hum of the car's engine was the only noise while we exited the garage and headed for the highway that would eventually take us home to Aretia.

"Well?" my father finally asked me.

"Oh, I do exist after all," the sarcasm spilled out. I was frustrated, my head hurt, I felt like shit, but I didn't want to pick a fight with him immediately either. I hated being like this. "Fuck, I didn't-"

He had his eyes locked on the road. "It's hard to know what to say to you after so long. I'm not sure where to start asking."

"I'm not sure where to start talking," I groaned. "Just ask whatever you want to know and I'll answer."

"Were you in Los Angeles this whole time?"

"Mostly Santa Monica and Pasadena, yeah." Honestly I was glad he wasn't looking at me. It gave me permission not to look at him either, to stare out the window where we were getting on the highway. Fuck, I forgot how green it was up here compared to LA. There was plenty of landscaping down there but it just wasn’t the same. "She liked Santa Monica, she liked to talk to tourists."

"’She,’ meaning Willow's mom."

"Yeah." What else would it mean?

"Was she-"

"Yes, I was with Sage the whole time. She's his mother." The enormity of how much I hadn't told anyone hit me again. I'd brought Sage to Aretia once and it had been a disaster.

Dad turned off the freeway to stop at a drivethru and get breakfast, and I appreciated not having to think about anything while he ordered.

At least, I appreciated it until he handed me a coffee with some kind of cookie name and whipped cream on top. I just looked at him.

"What? You used to love those."

"I haven't had coffee like that since I was sixteen." Long before I left, but now I remembered him ordering me the same thing every time I was home regardless. "Anyway. Thanks." It was so sweet it hurt my head somehow, but I drank it anyway because I needed the caffeine.

He waited until we'd merged back into the highway traffic out of Seattle before he picked up his questions. "So, is this Sage of yours gone for good?"

"I hope so, but I didn't tell her I was leaving. That's why- why I had to call from the airport. She couldn't know. Fuck, I didn't know what I was going to do until I did it, I just knew I had to."

"Were you married?"

"Legally or magically?"

"Either. I need to know what I have to fix for you."

I couldn't help groaning at that, but I'd committed to putting myself in this situation, and I reminded myself that it was for Will's sake. "There's a lot of things that are a blur; she really messed with my head. But custody for Will's my main concern. We weren't courtroom married but we took vows."

My father swore. "I taught you better than that."

I bit back my response.

That was the whole ride home. I could answer questions, but trying to talk about anything with Sage beyond what he asked was like trying to talk through a mouthful of marshmallows. I just couldn't bring myself to do it, like something was sitting on me. Like I felt like she was still watching or listening, somehow.

I felt it when we crossed into the wards around Aretia. They're subtle- they have to be, for the tourists to be able to come through- but I'd been sensitive to everything and getting worse for years now. Even the slight buzz of them was enough to give me a headache and I closed my eyes against it.

"Tired?" my father asked.

"Yes," because of course I was tired, but it wasn't like I was trying to sleep. "It's the fucking wards, though."

He turned to me as we started passing the Tavises' tree farm on the outskirts. "Xaden, the wards shouldn't push back on you, you’ve lived here your whole life."

"Well the fuck aware," I mumbled. I knew my coffee was empty, but I picked up my father's and took a swallow.

"What *happened* to you?"

I felt like he was finally, actually looking at me for the first time.

"Haven't we been talking about that the whole time?"

"I thought we were, but perhaps..." he trailed off.

"Perhaps what?"

"Perhaps I was not asking the right questions."

The farther we got into town, the less the wards bothered me. Either they were starting to recognize me or I was getting used to them, and I didn't really care which as long as it hurt less.

The whole town looked mostly the same. My brain cataloged small differences automatically, without me paying particular attention. The sign on Aretia Bakery was new; the storefront for Runic Books had been updated. The campus gate had new ironwork.

When we pulled into the driveway, it felt for a minute like it could have been any time I came home to visit. The house looked mostly the same. It was only when I heard Will stir in the backseat that time caught up with me.

I carried Will inside, and this time my father got the bags out of the trunk. We went straight to my childhood bedroom, which still looked like it did when I went away to study at the University of Washington. A pack and play was unfolded next to my old bed, and a box of diapers sat next to it.

"When I picked up the car seat, Rory said he'd have one of the boys bring over some other baby things," my dad explained.

I was too tired to do much more than nod and fish the last bottle out of the diaper bag. "Microwave?"

He looked faintly horrified. "You don't use a rune to warm them?"

I shook my head and he took the bottle away from me. "This part, I remember." He drew the rune on and a minute later handed me back the bottle, perfectly warm.

While I fed Will, he looked me over and tsked.

"What is it?"

"Nothing," he said, and then- "you look- I thought it was just the lighting in the airport."

I felt him lay two fingers at the base of my skull, and I knew he was checking my energy. I knew it wouldn't do any good, but it didn't seem worth trying to stop him. I felt the little bit of energy he sent in to check me over, the way it slipped through my veins like ice and disappeared.

"You need more help than I know how to give," he said quietly. "I'm going to have an expert look you over."

"Professor Cardulo?" Imogen's mom had always taken care of us when our magic got twisted up as kids. She was the one who climbed a fucking tree to help Garrick the first time he shifted into a bear and got stuck.

"Yes and no. Alda is retired these days but Imogen is quite good, better than her mother was in some ways."

"Imogen?" I recoiled at the idea- there was no way any of them would want to help me, not after the things I'd said. "Fuck, Dad, I can't-"

"You can and you will," he said, and that hint of command in his voice was enough to stop me in place.

"She hates me, and I deserve it."

"She's a professional. If she can't take you on she'll refer you to someone else, but I think you should give her more credit. You friends have missed you, Xaden."

The bottle was empty, and he took Will out of my arms. "Dad-"

"I'll get young Willow changed and looked after. You are going to sleep." He said it with enough force that I all but passed out on top of the blankets.

I pinched a thick hank of hair and, focusing, slid my forefinger and thumb down the length of it until it settled into my preferred shade. “There,” I murmured, divided the mass of my waist-length pink hair in half, and began to braid it. It had been a while since I’d done anything more complicated than pulling it into a messy bun or a fishtail braid, but a consultation with the Riorson clan called for the most elaborate style I knew, the sort of “proper witch” outfit I’d worn during my supervised practice in grad school, and a level of formality I normally skipped.

”Lady Amari, guide my hand,” I whispered, lighting incense and placing it on the altar as a sharp rapping echoed in the back hallway.

Confirming that there were no stray toys on the floor or any of the low shelves, I headed to the back door.

All thoughts of being professional vanished. “You look like hot garbage,” I told him flatly.

”I know,” Xaden said.

I took a deep breath. My consultation with Fen hadn’t prepared me for this. Xaden’s father had been worried, uncertain, but he hadn’t said that his son looked like he’d aged thirty years in the past ten, with silver in his thinning hair and hollow cheeks over muddy, empty eyes. If someone had told me that Xaden had been fighting cancer, or mixing arsenic into his food every day, or… whatever they told me, I would have believed it. I wasn’t sure I would have recognized him on the street, this boy that I’d known since we were toddlers.

He followed, shoulders slumped and head hanging. “Thanks for making time for me,” he said. Mumbled, really, but not like a little boy who’s been reminded of his manners, more like someone who wasn’t used to being listened to.

I swallowed down half a dozen dismissive responses - Fen had asked; I was pledged to support the community; it was my actual job; all the things that were true but meaningless in that moment. “You’re my friend,” I said instead.

”Am I?”

I caught his gaze, held it. “Yeah.”

I nodded to the hanging shelf that held my various oracle decks. “Pick one that speaks to you,” I told him, closing the door and lighting every candle in the room with a single gesture, doubling the wards against the intrusion of… whatever it was that had drained Xaden Riorson to the dregs.

“Can I - touch it?” he asked, softly hesitant.

”Does it want you to?”

”Yes?” He gave me a worried look. It was and wasn’t a test, and he recognized it. Somewhere he’d started doubting himself. It made me want to throw up.

I kept my voice calm. ”Then yes. You’d know if it didn’t.” I pulled out my best silk laying cloth, the one Colonel Mairi had embroidered runes into as a graduation gift, and settled it onto the table. This consultation had shifted from formality for its own sake to the way each step strengthened my protections against outside influence. I was glad I’d woven my hair up.

”This one,” he said, holding out the box. It glinted in the flickering light, and I knew he had chosen truly. This wasn’t the pretty, fluffy deck that attracted the superficial gaze or the dark one that drew in the ones who took themselves too seriously. It was a working deck, and it sang under his hands.

I took it, drew the hexagonal cards out and handed them back to him. “Shuffle them. Put your energy into them, if you can.”

The scarred eyebrow he arched at me was pure Xaden Riorson, and the feeling that blossomed in my heart in that moment was hope. If he could respond that strongly to just being behind the wards, both my own and the store’s, then it meant there was someone left to save.

”Don’t give me that,” I grumbled, hiding my expression. “Somebody fucked you up, and if you hadn’t got out when you did, you probably wouldn’t have made it to spring.”

“Really?” He looked surprised.

“Yes, really. Fuck, Xaden, you look like someone’s sucked the life out of you.”

He said her name - not her real name, of course I wasn’t that lucky; the name she used in public, and I watched his energy flare and die back. Interesting.

“Sit,” I said, and we sat across the little table from one another. He handed me the deck, and I lay four cards down in quick succession. Him - The Runaway. Her - The Queen. The root of the problem - Fate. But I knew just from looking that it wasn’t a truly fated connection. Those bonds ran in both directions, glittered or glowed or shone, twined around one another with the strength of lives brought together over and over again. Officially, they were rare; in Aretia, they were very nearly common. “She said you were fated,” I said.

“Yes,” he whispered.

I built the reading from that point, up and out, looking for a true reflection of events and what would be needed to break her hold. “Were you married?” I asked, squinting at the cards.

“Yes,” he said.

“Are you sure?”

He looked at me for a long minute. “I - don’t remember,” he admitted slowly. “In the beginning, especially, I - lost time. She told me my shadow-self was in control.”

I snorted. “Well, that’s some kind of bullshit.”

“I know it sounds ridiculous, but…”

“Not you,” I interrupted. “You were the victim of her scheming, Xaden. You,” I threw another card, confirming my sense of the situation, “you came in good faith, and she stole everything from you. But. You did manage to get free, and you’re here now, which is a good sign. She shouldn’t be able to cross the wards without an invitation, and your dad and Garrick’s can make sure the town’s energy is clear of her. What you need,” I threw a card - The Knight - for the answer, “is a purpose.”

“My son,” he said.

“Mmm, no. Kids will give you a sense of purpose, and they’ll keep you busy, but you can’t just swap her for him. You need your own purpose. And for that, you’ll need…”

“A mentor,” he groaned, looking at the card I dropped on top of it.

“You said it, not me,” I shrugged. “You’re right, though. Someone here, I’d imagine, to bring you back into the community and restore your sense of belonging. And your - and I never thought I’d ever have to say anything like this to you - your confidence. That cocky asshole I grew up with? You need to remember how to be him again. Just - the slightly more mature version of him.”

“He was surrounded by people who loved him.”

“So are you,” I said. “People got their feelings hurt, you’ll have to make amends, and you’re going to keep colliding with all the things you didn’t get to be here for, but that’s why she kept you down there and didn’t let you come home. Because your roots are here and hers are not, and every time she let you cross the boundaries of your home she risked losing the hold she had on you. Especially since every single one of us hated her on sight.”

“Everyone?”

“Everyone. Even Liam. Fucking Cat told me that bitch gave her the creeps.”

“You and Cat… said words to each other? On purpose?”

I shrugged. “She’s mellowed out a little. I’ll let her come within fifty paces of me occasionally. She buys books. Whatever. People change.”

“Garrick probably hates me, though.”

“Garrick wanted to be here to see you,” I retorted. “I told him no, because I didn’t know what to expect. But - if you wanted to come by for dinner around seven-thirty, after the girls are in bed, he’d like that.”

Xaden was nodding before I’d even finished the sentence. “If Will’s asleep, I’ll ask my dad to watch him, but I’ll probably bring him. He’s as much of a night owl as I am.”

I smiled at that. “My mom says that the truest act of karma is having a child just like you.”

“Do you?” he asked.

“Worse. Gwen’s like Braelyn, Lyn’s like me and Garrick mixed together - that child argues with herself - and Avery’s very opinionated for someone who hasn’t had a birthday yet.”

Xaden laughed, a sound so warm and familiar it gave me goosebumps. “Will’s like Bodhi’s best traits with my worst - he loves everybody, he’s friendly and outgoing, but he hates sleeping and he shrieks like he’s being murdered when he doesn’t get what he wants.”

“The older girls will be thrilled, then. They love babies, except when Lyn decides Avery’s being too noisy and wants me to send her back where she came from.”

“Where did she come from?”

“Presumably the birthing center? She’s three, details aren’t really her strong suit.”

“Right, right. Only child with an only child, the ways of siblings are strange and mysterious to me.”

I snorted. “You say that like you didn’t grow up surrounded by sibling groups and treat Bodhi like a brother except when it was convenient to remind him he was only your cousin.”

He groaned. “Why did I come home again?”

“Clearly it’s because you missed the way I made fun of you at every opportunity.”

“Definitely that. I missed my honorary baby sister.”

“Not as much as I missed my honorary big brother.” I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of crying, but fuck if I wasn’t so very glad to have him home.

I woke up relaxed and pleasantly sore to find Ridoc watching me. His eyes were dreamy and his smile soft, and I was hit with the feeling that I wanted to wake up like this for the rest of our lives. Which was a lot from someone who usually didn’t even stay the night.

“Morning,” he said, smile widening. “Did you sleep well?”

“Very well, thank you,” I grinned back. “You?”

“Better than I ever have.” I saw a flash of panic in his eyes. “Was that too much? I’m trying not to sound like a stack of red flags.”

“Why would you be worried about that?”

“Because… because I really like you. Really like you. And I feel like I like you way out of proportion to how well we know each other? Because we… well, we don’t? Aside from the mind-blowing sex? Don’t get me wrong, the sex was mind-blowing. Like, really mind-blowing. Best hookup I’ve ever had. And I’ve had a lot. Not a lot, a lot, but…”

I kissed him.

Not just to stop the panicked flow of words, but that was certainly part of it. Because I was feeling the exact same way, which meant… Well, it meant…

Fuck.

“I like you too,” I said. “Also. Similarly. I don’t hook up often, and I never bring them back to my house, and I didn’t even stop to think about bringing you here. And that was before the mind-blowing sex.”

His shoulders dropped from around his ears, and the smile melted into something natural, and goofy, and sappy. I felt the same expression on my own face, and it was probably Garrick’s fault that what came to mind was the owl from Bambi grumbling about the rabbits being twitterpated.

“I’ve never felt like this, not this fast. I was lying here watching you sleep and thinking about having to go back to Seattle today, and… I don’t want to.”

The idea of him leaving felt like a punch in the chest.

“What’s in Seattle? Besides your whole life, of course.” I groaned. “That’s not even a fair question to ask someone I’ve just met.”

“My apartment, my job. My best friend lives here now, so that’s a plus.”

“What do you do?” I laughed, rolling my eyes at the absurdity of having not asked this question before.

“Write code. Which I could do remotely; most of my team’s actually in SF and all I need is good internet.”

“I have that! One of the benefits of having a college in town, even if it’s primarily a magical one.”

“What’s a magical college?” His brow furrowed. It was ridiculously adorable.

“A college that teaches magic? My best friend - Garrick’s wife Imogen - is a Licensed Magical Practictioner and has her doctorate in Energetic Healing from Basgiath, plus… shit, half a dozen certificates and specialties and whatever related to her work that I could actually come up with if I thought about? She’s brilliant and I’m super proud of her. The point, because I have one, is that if you’re from Aretia and you went to college, you’re more likely to have gone to Basgiath than UW.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes? Of course, why wouldn’t I be?”

“Magic is real?”

I blinked at him. “Amari’s braid, really? I mean - I knew you were an outsider, so is Violet, but… you’re a mundane? Raised without any magic at all?”

“No? Or - yes? Where I grew up, magic means sleight of hand. It doesn’t mean… you can’t go to college for magic.”

“Wow. I didn’t think true mundanes actually existed. But you didn’t have any problems coming into town, and you’re not uncomfortable now?”

“No. I mean - I fucking love it here. Aretia’s beautiful, you’re amazing, I never want to leave.” He stopped, blinking. “I - shit, I never want to leave, that’s absolutely true. You really are going to think I’m a pile of red flags.”

“I definitely do not think that, I promise. Hang on a second.” I grabbed my phone to check the time. It was just after ten.

Me: This sounds stupid but what if i need a consult?

Pinky: are you fucking kidding me

Me: you are a hardworking professional i do not kid

Pinky: you better come over then

Me: you really want me to shower first

Pinky: DID YOU FUCK VIOLET’S FRIEND?

Me: mayyyyyyyyybeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Me: but also yes and HOLY FUCK Im

Pinky: take a shower and then bring allll the tea. And some coffee, Avery has decided sleeping is for losers

Me: ohh babe, 4 shots for you

Pinky: you’re my favorite, don’t tell garrick

Me: Your secrets are safe with me

“Okay, I’ve hit my threshold of weird - not in a bad way, don’t worry - and we’re now going to go meet with a professional navigator of weirdness.” I grinned at Ridoc.

His eyes lit up. “I have been waiting my entire life to find out that people like that exist. Blowjob in the shower?”

“I’m keeping you.”

It was about thirty minutes later when I locked the door behind us and headed down the driveway. “We’re walking?” Ridoc asked.

“Yeah, the bookstore’s about two blocks away. Small town, and all that.”

“And yet you lock your doors.”

“It’s the easiest way to ward against Tavis pranks.”

“What’s a Tavis prank? Some kind of magical thing?”

I laughed. “Sometimes! Not always. It’s been safe for a while, but I swear every time I blink the oldest Tavis grandkids are two years older, and I refuse to be surprised if they suddenly start pranking like the previous generation did.”

“Oh! So a Tavis is a people!”

“They’re a family. A huge family. Garrick is one, though he’s a Cardulo by marriage. He and his brothers were serious pranksters when we were kids. Nothing too terrible, but if you didn’t ward your doors, they might show up and turn everything in a room upside down, or rearrange your pantry, or organize your books by color… just whatever they thought was funny. They turned everything in my cousin’s bathroom green one time. Garrick and Derik used to sneak fish into people’s refrigerators.”

“Just… surprise, fish?”

“You’ve come home after a long day,” I said, leaning down to murmur in his ear. “You put down your stuff, hang up your coat, wander into the kitchen to figure out what you’re going to make for dinner. You open your refrigerator…”

“And there’s a fish.”

“That wasn’t there when you left the house this morning.”

Ridoc burst out laughing. “Oh, fuck, you’d spend the rest of the night trying to figure out if anything was missing, or broken, or… and how do you call the cops and report… what’s the opposite of a burglary? Officer, someone put a fish in my refrigerator!”

“Now you see the devious nature of the crime,” I grinned back at him. I’d been just as perplexed the first time Garrick had explained it to me, and it was delightful watching the realization spread across Ridoc’s face as he figured it out.

“Fucking genius. It makes me want to make secret copies of my friends’ keys and sneak stuff into their apartments.”

“I think it’s the real reason they’ve got three kids; Ims has to keep him busy.”

Walking two blocks through downtown Aretia took about twenty minutes, because people kept stopping to say hello - nobody was officially stopping to meet Ridoc, but seeing me walking down the street with a stranger meant that people who would normally wave and keep going, stopped to talk. And because I was a credit to my name, I would make introductions and small talk.

“Is it always like this?” he asked after the third or fourth time we’d stopped.

“Not unless there’s something going on that’s worth talking about. In this case, it’s you.”

“Grist for the gossip mill.”

“Fortunately Violet’s arrival will probably be more interesting than you walking down the street with me, but my perpetually single status might pull us up to number one for a day or two,” I said as I pushed open the door to Playdate Coffee and walked to the counter, dodging running children as I went. “Hi, Rhi.”

“Hey, Bodhi, who’s your friend?”

“This is Ridoc, he’s up from Seattle. Ridoc, this is Rhiannon. Can I get Im’s rough-day special, my usual, and - what’s your coffee of choice, love…ly?”

“What’s the most tooth-rottingly ridiculous thing you can stand to make?” He grinned at Rhiannon, and she laughed.

“Hot or iced?”

“Iced.”

“Raspberry white mocha?”

“Perfect. One of those.”

We took our coffees through the archway into the bookstore where Braelyn was sitting by the register, scowling at her computer. “Morning, Red. Where’s Pinky?”

She didn’t look up. “Hiding in her office, probably. Did you need her?”

“She’s expecting me, don’t get up.”

“Wasn’t planning on it.”

“That’s Braelyn, Imogen’s older sister,” I murmured to Ridoc as I led him back through the KEEP OUT THIS MEANS YOU door under the stairs. The steady hum of voices from the coffee shop and people wandering around the bookstore dropped into silence immediately.

“That felt weird, right? Walking through that door?”

“Only if you’re magically sensitive,” Imogen’s voice called from her open office door. “Come on in, Bodhi. Is that why you need a consult?”

“Well… yes and no,” I said, coming in and handing over her cup of coffee. Rhiannon had written her name on it in pink glitter marker.

“You are a saint and I adore you,” she replied, looking up as Ridoc followed me in. Her eyes widened slightly.

“Oh. Oh. Yeah.”

In the dream, I was walking in the woods just outside Aretia. I knew I was near the river even though I coudn't hear it, and I knew my way even though I'd never been in this part of the woods with Liam.

My chest ached thinking about him. I had no shortage of dreams where the grief was fresh, which the knowledge that he was gone hit me in the jaw without warning, and for a minute I thought this was one of those dreams. Then I realized that in those dreams, I never know I'm dreaming.

This dream wasn't fully lucid like the ones I have sometimes, where I can control what's going on around me, or even the ones I have occasionally where I work out the answer to something that's driving me up the wall in my waking life, but I knew it wasn't reality.

I heard laughter ahead of me, young and joyful at the sheer act of existing, like the way Clarity laughs. Hurrying forward, I stepped out of the trees into a clearing where the Tairn River splits, creating a narrow branching stream and a small island close to the shore. A young woman sat next to it, her skin dark with a golden sheen and her hair twisted up in blonde knots on either side of her head. I tried to guess how old she was but it was hard to tell- one moment she looked like she could be in high school, the next like she was was barely ten or eleven.

She put her hand down into the water, letting the water run between her fingers. As I watched, she raised it and watched the water drip down. The sunlight hit it perfectly, creating a dozen flashes of color and light, painting the girl in rainbows for a moment. She laughed again and then turned, looking up at me.

"Oh, you're not the one I was expecting," she smiled. "I like that."

"I like that too." I hadn't expected that to come out but I liked the way she was smiling at me, so it was true.

"You're the new Mairi, aren't you? Well, the second-newest Mairi. You must belong here now," she said with a decisive nod. "We haven't had a Speaker in ever so long, my mother said so."

"Who is your mother? Are you from Aretia?" I didn't think I'd seen anyone who looked quite as sparkly as her, but I knew looks could be deceiving, especially here.

"The land here, she's my mother."

"Of course." Somehow it really did make perfect sense. Dream logic, I guess.

"Are you good at remembering your dreams?" she asked, as if she heard what I was thinking.

I nodded to her. "Sometimes. Definitely when they're important." The last true dream visit I'd had had been Liam. The only dream visits I'd had were Liam since… well, my father came to me the night after Liam died.

"Good. If you remember this one, tell the Colonel that you're a Speaker. If you didn't learn what one is, she should be able to explain it. And--" she looked at the river, "we're sorry about Liam. We loved him too."

"Everyone loved him," I agree. "Thank you." I started to turn toward waking, but then I looked back at her. "You didn't tell me your name."

"You can call me Andarna. It's good to finally meet you, Violet Mairi." She turned and dove into the river, and there was a flash of gold- scales? Was she a mermaid or something? And then I was awake, Claire giggling and grabbing at her feet in the crib next to my bed.

"Good morning, my little giggling girl," I told her, and she immediately started grasping for me. "Hungry, hm? Let's get you changed first and then I'll get you fed." I got her changed and nursed, and both of us dressed, before I went downstairs for breakfast.

The dream kept circling around in my head as I went. By the time I was downstairs I figured I had to get it down before I could do anything else, so I popped Claire into the high chair and pulled out my phone, hurrying to type everything I could remember into my dream tracking app.

When I looked up, my father-in-law was setting a plate of pancakes and bacon in front of me and Claire was already smashing banana slices into her face like a spa treatment.

"Sorry, Isaac," I said as I set me phone down on the table. "I had a dream that I needed to get down."

"Oh? Something interesting?" he asked, as he put a lid etched with the rune for warmth over Sloane's plate and sat down across from me.

"Very unusual, at least for me," I told him. "Though there was something- I met someone in it, and she told me to ask the Colonel what a Speaker is." I turned to where my mother-in-law was sliding her tablet into her work bag next to the back door.

Rebekah stopped and looked at Isaac; something passed between them that I couldn't read. "That's a very complex question for the breakfast table," she said, picking up the back.

"I don't mean to be a bother about it. There's no rush." I took a bite of my pancake. Clarity reached for it, so I cut her a few smaller pieces and put them on her high chair so she could eat along with me. Baby-led weaning was one of the easiest parenting decisions, because it meant I rarely had to say no when she was interested in what I was eating.

It made me sad to think about her outgrowing the discussions Liam and I had about parenting philosophies. Sure, the big ones would stay the same, but the infant milestones felt like they were flying by and there were so many things we hadn't gotten around to talking about.

"You're definitely not a bother," Rebekah interrupted my thought. "It's just that I have a meeting with the healer faculty this AM about the mending position. I definitely would like to hear more about this dream and talk to you about speaking."

I could guess from the context that speaking was a verb for a specific skill, like mending, but I'd only heard it in compounds like commandspeak or charmspeak, not by itself. Maybe it was an umbrella term?

Watching Rebekah and Isaac say their goodbyes, thinking about the piecemeal nature of my own magical education, I couldn't help thinking about my own parents. The Colonel was very much the efficient and no-nonsense woman her… nickname? suggests. She ran the local university with a precision that my own mother would appreciate if she stepped away from her military career long enough to appreciate anything that didn't wear camouflage.

Isaac, like my father, was a man at home in his library, but where my father was quiet and content to let my mom run their relationship, Isaac didn't seem to have any trouble disagreeing with his wife when it seemed necessary. They were clearly still friends forty years in.

My mother was always uncomfortable with magic, which is probably why the training I got from my father was excellent in some areas and entirely lacking in others. I never met Dad's parents and I know almost nothing about his side of the family. After he passed and my brother decided to give up medical school and run off with his boyfriend to study what Mom called 'magical claptrap' I wasn't even allowed to talk about it at home and most of Dad's books disappeared overnight.

I felt like I was going to lose that part of myself entirely until I met Liam and my world opened back up again. That was one of the reasons I was happy to move to Aretia; I wanted to make sure Claire grew up with her extended family and the full education I hadn't had.

No matter how welcoming Liam's family and friends were, I was still new. I would probably be new by Aretia's standards until Claire was in school, maybe longer. But if I couldn’t give my daughter two loving parents, I was going to give her the community her father had, the one that came together for him. It was the next best thing.

Outside of Aretia I had- what, exactly? My mother, who could barely make time for me when my life fell apart. My sister, who was amazing when she was there but too often was deployed. And my brother, theoretically. I had no idea where he was. Liam had shown me how to send origami birds with messages written on them, enchanted to find someone, but we'd never heard back, not to the wedding invitation or the birth announcement, so I had no idea if they'd found him.

And Ridoc, of course.

A text from Ridoc popped up on my phone, letting me know he needed to talk to me. I smiled at that. He'd surprised me, disappearing with Bodhi the day before after we packed the storage unit, but I wasn't going to complain, either. Bodhi had always seemed like a sweet guy, and Ridoc deserved good things.

"Who was it that spoke to you?" Isaac asked as I let Ridoc know I'd see him in a little bit.

"Not someone I've met here or seen in my dreams before," I told him. "She said her mother was the land here, and her name was Andarna."

Rebekah snapped her bag shut. "I'll need to reach out to Rory about it, but we can talk tonight, okay, dear?"

"Rory?" Isaac asked her. "Not Fen?"

"Fen's got his hands full with-"

"Oh, of course," Isaac agreed. I wasn't even sure I connected the names correctly, so I let the conversation and their goodbyes wash over me. Sloane came downstairs for her own breakfast and I chatted with her and Isaac while we did the dishes.

"I think I'll take Claire for a walk this morning," I told them when I finished. "I'm going to meet Ridoc later, but I want to find someplace for this little bunny to do some hopping around."

“Have you been to Playdate Cafe?” Sloane asked. “It’s in the same building as the Cardulos’ bookstore.”

“I think so? I remember the bookstore but not the cafe.”

“It hasn’t been open long, they might’ve still been building out last time you were here. It’s got a big play space and there’s an area for babies sectioned off.”

“That sounds great, I’ll be sure to stop in.”

I cleaned Claire up, made sure there were sufficient diapers and snacks in her diaper bag, snapped Tairn into his harness, and tucked her into the sling. “Ready, doodlebug?” I asked, and she babbled at me, waving her arms. Tairn wagged his tail.

It was a beautiful October morning, bright and crisp and chilly enough that I zipped up Liam’s Seahawks hoodie over Claire as I stepped off the front porch. I’d started wearing it when I was pregnant and none of my coats would zip over my belly, and now that the summer was over it was useful to cover a baby in a carrier.

The Mairis’ house was about two blocks off of Main Street in a neighborhood of similar Craftsman bungalows, interspersed with the occasional ranch, and a Queen Anne or two brooding over their neighbors like swans among the ducks. There were tidy lawns surrounded by hedges, by flowerbeds, by literal white picket fences. I allowed myself two entire minutes to picture the might-have-been where one of these yards had flowers and herbs I had planted, and Claire’s bicycle dropped in the driveway next to some project motorcycle Liam was working on.

Two minutes was too long; I cut myself off after about thirty seconds when it was that or cry all over Claire, and I was trying not to do that. There was no point torturing myself with what we couldn’t have. Flowers were okay. Herbs - maybe a magical herb garden like my dad talked about growing once Mom retired. He’d never gotten the chance, but I could plant one in his honor. No project motorcycles, but Claire could have a bicycle in the driveway. Tairn could have a backyard to do his business in. It would be small, but it would be theirs.

Tairn shook, causing his collar tags to jingle and shaking me out of my daydream. There were some days I would swear he could tell when I was getting too wrapped up in my thoughts and he was attracting my attention on purpose.

“Can I pet your dog?” We’d reached Main Street, and I was being addressed by a teenage girl with dark curls and bright eyes, accompanied by a group of other girls who were clearly her friends group. There was something about her that reminded me of someone, though I couldn’t quite place her.

“He’s working right now, but maybe another time,” I suggested. It was my go-to response in Seattle, but it occurred to me that in Aretia I would probably run into her again.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize,” she said, taking a polite step away from Tairn. “You look familiar; have you been to Aretia before? Are you one of my uncle’s friends?”

“From what I know about Aretia, I probably am. I’m Violet Mairi.”

“Uncle Liam’s wife!” she said, grinning, and then her smile faded as if it had been doused. “I’m so sorry for your loss. Nana Tavis is very excited that you’ve come, though.”

“That’s why you look familiar, you must be a Tavis,” I said.

“Yes, ma’am,” she nodded. “I’m Lisbet, grandchild number two.”

“Nice to meet you, Lisbet. This is Claire,” I stroked her downy-soft head and she chirped up at me, “and Tairn. We’re going to the cafe.”

“Oh, don’t let me keep you, then, it’s almost storytime. If you need a babysitter, let me know!” She and her friends soared off, talking fast enough that they sounded like a flock of excited birds.

I was really going to love it here.

Playdate Cafe, when I arrived, had a sign in the window advertising storytime on Saturdays at ten, which it almost was. I opened the door to a wave of noise - people talking, kids screaming enthusiastically, a coffee machine hissing. Most of the tables were occupied by parents and the detritus kids leave behind: juice boxes, sippy cups, packages of half-empty fish crackers. There was another cluster of people near the counter, hovering in the way that people who are waiting do, but there wasn’t anyone waiting by the Order Here sign.

I walked over to the sign and immediately caught the eye of a beautiful dark-skinned woman with braids twisted up on top of her head. “Be right with you,” she said.

“Take your time, we’re here for storytime.”

There was a flash of panic on her face. “I’m sorry, but storytime will probably be late today; my colleague who handles it is running behind but we’ll get started as soon as she gets here.”

“Can I help?” The offer came immediately and reflexively; I had worked enough customer service jobs to understand the nightmare of other person is late for her shift. “I love to read to kids.”

“Are you serious?”

“Absolutely serious. It’s no problem at all.”

“Gods above, you’re a lifesaver. If you go right through that archway,” she pointed, “into the bookstore, there’ll be a redhead at the counter. Tell her you’re there for the storytime book and she’ll give it to you.”

I nodded. “Be right back.”

The redhead at the counter turned out to be Braelyn Tavis, who looked mildly surprised to see me. “I’m helping with storytime,” I said. “She said you’d have a book for it?”

“Didn’t you just get here? Like… yesterday? Or the day before?”

”Yesterday,” I agreed.

”And you’re already diving in to help. Ma will be tickled.” Braelyn ducked behind the counter and rustled around for a minute, reappearing with a book in her hand. “Here you go.”

”Dragons Love Tacos?”

”You’ve never read it?” She beamed at me. “You’re in for a treat.”

I took it back to the cafe and found the Story Tree, where a comfortable adult-size seat was built into the climbing structure that was painted to look like leaves and branches. “Dragons Love Tacos,” I read, and kids started migrating over, settling onto mushroom-shaped cushions and stools that looked like stumps, “by Adam Rubin. Illustrated by Daniel Salmieri.”

"Good luck realigning your worldview, Ridoc," Imogen said as she walked us out of the back room. "Braelyn can recommend some picture books about how magic works."

"Might take you up on that," I grinned at her. "It worked for learning all the other important stuff."

She looked up at Bodhi's beautiful, dark eyes and somehow didn't swoon. I know she's a married woman and all but come on. "I saw your cousin this morning."

I didn't think I'd ever seen tension on Bodhi's face like that, but I guess it had only been about 24 hours and I was doing my best to relax him for at least half of that time.

My hand was on his forearm before I realized I was moving, and took a minute to admire his warm, tawny skin. Maybe I was being too forward? But then he looked at me and a smile broke across his face like the sun after a storm.

"You okay, Sunshine?" I asked him as we stepped back into the noise of the bookstore. "Family stuff?"

"I haven't seen my cousin in years, but we might as well have been brothers growing up. He…” Bodhi sighed, shook his head. “It’s complicated.”

"If you need some time to deal with family-"

"Nope," Bodhi cut me off. "I'll talk to him but I'll wait until he reaches out. He always hated the gossip mill. Besides, you have homework."

I made a face and he laughed, the sound settling warm in my chest like a bird. A really sexy bird. But not a showy bird like a peacock, and I wasn't sure what made a bird sexy anyway.

When I paid attention again, Bodhi was asking the redhead behind the desk whose name I'd already forgotten for the "new in town booklist."

"We don't have any copies of So You Want to Be a Wizard right now, fourth grade is reading it, but otherwise we should have everything. Do you want to grab something to eat at the Cafe and I'll round them up for you?"

"Thanks, Braelyn. Put them on my account." And he ran a tab at the bookstore; he really was the perfect man.

Wait. "Did she say fourth grade? I thought the comment about picture books was a joke." I asked as we waited for a small river of tiny people to pass the walkway between the bookstore and the cafe. Just as I wondered if Violet knew there was a play cafe in town, she appeared in my peripheral vision.

"Not a joke. There's a picture book or two from a small press in Chicago." He ordered lunch for us while I waved Violet down. We made some small talk with Rhiannon behind the counter, where I learned that she was also relatively new to both Aretia and magic, having only been here about a year.

"The picture book really does help," she promised as she handed us sandwiches. "If you want a study group, I've been working through the list with another guy who's pretty new."

"Ask me again when I've been here more than one day," I laughed.

Rhiannon blinked at me. "Really? You seem like you've been here longer than that."

That made me smile, and Bodhi ruffled my hair, which made me smile harder.

We grabbed a table as it emptied, the three of us sliding into chairs. I sat Violet's food down in front of her spot and then slid into the chair next to Bodhi.

"So, Violet. If that even is your name." I tried and failed to keep a straight face as she sat down across from me. Tairn settled at her feet. I reached for Claire and she handed her daughter to me automatically, sitting her in my lap. Claire squealed at me and patted my face. "You were holding out on me this whole time?"

Violet looked back and forth and then her face lit up as she figured it out. "You talked about magic!"

"I had a consultation with a level three energy professional." I tried to sound important, but I was also bouncing Claire on my leg so the effect was probably not very effective.

"We met with Imogen," Bodhi clarified.

"Apparently Bodhi and I were fated to meet, so I'm living in a romantasy novel." It felt weird to say the words out loud. "Also I've always been magical and you never told me."

"Liam and I weren't exactly secretive. You just never picked up on anything, and I can't diagnose like Imogen does." She sipped at her coffee. "Be careful with her, Rids, she just ate."

"I didn't know you were putting anything down, how was I supposed to pick it up?" I laughed. It was hard to even pretend I was annoyed with Bodhi sitting next to me, his thigh pressed against mine.

"Here's the thing," Bodhi said, giving me a slow, warm smile. "Human brains work very, very hard not to see the things they don't want to see. Magic being worked under your nose is no different than your crush being uninterested, as far as your brain is concerned. If you can ignore one, you can ignore the other."

“Fortunately my crush is very interested so I guess it makes sense that I’m seeing magic now too.” Claire must have gotten tired of me bouncing her because she spit up all over herself-- and me.

Violet immediately picked her up, wiping her with a burp cloth and tossing another in my lap. I looked down at the thick, white stain and then up at Bodhi. "This isn't usually a problem I have," I managed to choke out before I lost my breath laughing.

I knew he was my dream guy because he didn't smile at me despite the terrible joke. He was grinning at my terrible joke. "I only brought an outfit for today," I admitted. If I had to go back to Seattle and to real life because of laundry I might very well cry.

"One of the often-overlooked benefits of being gay is that when your friend's baby throws up on you, there's a pretty good chance your partner's clothes might fit you reasonably well," Bodhi offered.

"Somehow that hasn't come up often for me, despite this adorable little fluids generator." I finished wiping off my pants as decently as I could in public and tucked the burp cloth into Claire's wet bag.

"I'm just going to take her home and change her," Violet said, grabbing the ring sling out of the diaper bag and pulling it on, settling Claire into it. "There's a perk of small town life I hadn't put on the list. Are you still planning to leave today, Ridoc?"

"No!" Bodhi answered for me with a force that surprised me, though I guess it probably shouldn't have. He started to stumble over an apology for answering for me, and I pulled his face down to kiss him.

"I feel the same way," I told him. "I don't know what my plan is yet, but I'm not ready to be away from you."

"You two are adorable," Violet said as she finished zipping up the diaper bag and reattaching Tairn’s leash. "Let me know what happens, okay?"

"Of course." We wished them a good afternoon and began tracing our steps back to Bodhi's house.

I was trying not to be self-conscious about the stain on my pants but it was a little bit like being back in high school in the worst way, especially since people still seemed to be interested in Bodhi talking to someone.

After the first awkward conversation, he pulled off his sweatshirt and handed it to me. "Here, tie this around your waist if you want."

He looked distractingly good in just his t-shirt, the warm, brown skin on his arms apparently unbothered by the fall chill. Definitely distracting, because he actually had to wave his hand in front of me to get my attention. Whoops.

"Sorry," I said as I tied it around my waist, arranging the knot so the sleeves covered most of the stain. "Aren't you cold?"

"Nah, I don't run as hot as Garrick does but power does tend to make heat available when you need it."

"Well that sounds useful." I'd lived in Seattle since college, in three different neighborhoods, but before that I grew up in the western part of the state. I knew small towns, or I thought I did. When I went home to visit my dad, yeah, people I hadn't seen since high school tended to want to catch up, maybe trade a couple of sentences, and then we both went on with our days.

This was different. Maybe it was because Bodhi was someone they saw every day, not just someone who only appeared at holidays, but I'd swear somehow that in the short walk from the coffee shop back to his little house I was introduced to more people than I typically saw in my neighborhood in Seattle. It probably just felt like that because nobody in Seattle stopped me and asked how I was liking their town and winked at me while they did it.

"Is it just me, or is everyone really invested in your love life?" It was a gorgeous fall day and I was walking with a gorgeous man and I didn't really mind but even by small town standards it was starting to seem like a lot.

"It's complicated, but… yes, kind of? Almost everybody else my age from one of the families has married or left. All the other lines have an heir, and," I saw his eyes get darker, "until yesterday I was it for mine."

"Your cousin?" I remembered. "That sounds complicated. Probably a lot more complicated than my dad still sort of hoping I'll want to take over the cranberry farm some day."

He looked thoughtful, his head tilting just a fraction, and my heart swooped around my chest all over again. The list of people who take me seriously is painfully short- understandably so, but still, very short- and considering I knew nothing about any of this I wasn't going to hold it against him if he laughed at the comparison but he didn't.

"That's actually a really good comparison," he said as he let me into his house. "There's half a dozen family lines that have been here a century or more and have a relationship with the land. For the relationship to continue, there's got to be someone from each line or it gets complicated."

I couldn't help thinking about the farm then, the way I knew the land around the house where I'd grown up, the sense of belonging I still got when I went down to the creek. I didn't want to run a cranberry bog, not really, but the idea of my dad selling the place did make my chest hurt in a way I'd never put a name to.

Bodhi picked a couple of things out of his closet for me and I got changed while he threw my clothes in his washing machine. "Thanks again." I smelled like him. I was wearing his clothes and I smelled like him and it felt so right that it made me a little dizzy.

"Considering how many friends I have with kids? I'm just paying it forward. I'm pretty sure I have at least three or four sets of clothes in a closet at Imogen's house. It happens."

“We left before the books came, though. Hope that redhead isn’t mad.”

Bodhi snorted. “If she is, she’ll get over it. I can text her and she’ll have one of her boys run them over.”

“Better than Amazon, considering I didn’t have to actually order any of them.”

“I bet Amazon doesn’t use little red wagons, either.”

“Hipsters on bikes, sometimes, but no little red wagons that I’ve ever seen.”

I flopped down on his bed, pressing up against his side as he sat there. I kept shuttling back and forth between thinking about what I wanted to do and trying not to think about what I should do. There was a part of my brain that wouldn't shut up, insisting I needed to go back to Seattle and my apartment and stop… stop what? Stop being stupidly obsessed with a guy I met yesterday? Stop being in one of Violet's romantasy novels? Stop thinking maybe magic could be real?

"So now what?" I asked, not sure what I expected him to say. He seemed on board with the whole fated meeting thing. He seemed as into this as I felt. "I was supposed to go back to Seattle today but I don't want to. Like, it scares me a little how much I don't want to. It's- can I be creepy for a minute?"

"Please, go for it." His smile was so indulgent that it gave the Greek yogurt place in Pike Place Market a run for their money.

"This place- the town, I guess, but your house, your life, it feels like you've invited me into this incredibly perfect blanket fort. It's warm and snug and I feel like I could just curl up and stay here with you and a couple of books and my Switch and never want to leave. But it feels super creepy to say I want to curl up and snuggle in your life."

"Let's do this," he offered, rubbing my back. "You stay one more day, and then decide how you feel tomorrow. Right now, I am feeling a lot of things and a significant part of me wants you to curl up in my life like you're a rabbit and I'm living in a hollow tree. I don't think worrying about red flags or creepiness is going to help. Let's just take it day by day for now."

I rolled onto my side, wrapping myself around him. "How do you make calling me a homeless rabbit sound sexy?"

"Pretty sure that's just how you listen." He rearranged himself so we were both lying on the bed, not spooning but twisted a bit together like breadsticks. I was in exactly the right location to kiss the back of his neck, so I did. The way he shuddered slightly when I tightened my fingers in his curls? The little gasp that escaped him? It went straight to my dick.

"So I'm leaving tomorrow for tomorrow…" I leaned over so my mouth was nearly on his ear. "Is it too early to talk about tonight?"

"Definitely not."

I knew Imogen would be late coming by for lunch since she had her appointment with Xaden, and I tried not to dwell on it while I took the kids to the park in the morning. I knew my odds of running into him were probably not great, not unless he wanted to be run into, but I couldn't help it. My head was on swivel all morning anyway, and I ended up taking the younger two home early because it was exhausting, leaving Gwen with one of my brothers and his kids.

"How is he?" was the first thing out of my mouth when Imogen came in.

"I guess I've got another surprise for you." She knew I'd be waiting when she came home from the shop to change. "Xaden's coming for dinner tonight after the girls are in bed."

"Really?" My eyes must have gone wide, or maybe I just sounded like a kid who'd been told we were getting an early Solstice present.

She laughed at me. "Yes, Gare. I told you I'd let him know you wanted to see him if it went okay. Are you that surprised?"

"No, Mims, I just... wasn't getting my hopes up, I guess. I thought you were going to be more cautious, maybe."

"I'm not sure he could hurt us if he wanted to, right now. I have to warn you, he looks like shit and he's been through a fucking wringer. We didn't get into the details of what his ex did to him but I think he's in a good position to recover. He's not the guy he was when he left, though, and he's going to need his friends."

"None of us are who we used to be," I said, and Imogen looked like she was going to argue with me. "Look, I know he won't be the same and I won't ask him to be. I want my best friend back but I know it's not that simple, okay?"

"I miss what we had too." It was a quiet acknowledgement, but I appreciated it. I was far from the only one who'd lost Xaden when he left, and Imogen and I were lucky that we'd had each other. If anything, it had probably forced us to work through shit we might have left unsaid.

Now that she was back in her usual work clothes- jeans, t-shirt, a cardigan for the fall- she kissed me on the cheek and hurried to get out of the house before naptime ended.

I spent the afternoon letting Lyn and Avery distract me and adjusting dinner plans in my head. It was so nice now that Gwen was old enough to go off with her cousins, the gap when she'd stopped napping but was still around when her sisters *were* napping had been hard on her.

I'd been planning to do something on the spicy side for Imogen and I originally, but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like maybe it would be better to go simple. Imogen hadn't said exactly what had happened, but if Xaden was recovering from something? I wasn't the cook that my mother was but I knew a few recipes that might help.

When Gwen got home, I bundled her muddy feet into an early bath and then used the promise of blueberry cobbler to get her and Lyn to play a game where they had to find as many toys as possible on the first floor of the house and put them away.

Did I maybe overdo it in the kitchen because I was anxious about seeing Xaden?

Imogen didn't say anything about it when she got home from the shop, but I saw her eyes cataloging the soup pot and the dutch oven on the stove, the cobbler and the fresh soda bread on the counter, the full pan of baked macaroni that was mostly intact even though I'd already served the girls.

I started to say something, but she just cut me off with a kiss. "I know it's your love language."

Reaching around to pull her tight against me, I whispered, "it's not my only love language."

She just laughed. "Trust me, I've given you three kids, I know that too."

The oven timer gave a ding and Imogen gave me a look as she stepped out of the way. "What else do you have cooking? Even for you, this is a lot."

"What else?" I grinned as I pulled out the cake pan. "My mom's recipe."

Before she could say anything else, I heard a shriek from the kitchen table behind me. "Cake! You made Nana Cake!" Both girls were up from the table before they'd even really sat down, swarming my legs like the adorable little anklebiters they were. Even Avery got in on the yelling action, hollering until Imogen picked her up to nurse.

"Cobbler's what I promised you and cobbler's what you're getting," I told the girls as I hustled them back to the table. "Assuming you can get through your dinner without swarming us like mice, I might be persuaded to give you a lick of icing, though."

Once I had them settled and eating again, Imogen put Avery in her highchair and sidled up to me. "Chocolate cake, really? Gare, what did I say about not getting your hopes up?"

"My hopes are fine," I insisted. "You didn't give me a lot of details, but everything here's spelled to help one way or another." Yeah, okay, my chest was a knotted up mess and had been since yesterday, but that wasn't hope. Mostly wasn't hope, anyway. The ache there was the same love and worry I'd held for Xaden since he left, only closer to the surface than I usually let it get.

Gwen and Lyn each got a spoonful of chocolate icing alongside their blueberry cobbler, and Ims didn't stop giving me that skeptical eyebrow as she ate a piece. She only stopped giving me knowing looks when she had to leave the room to get the girls into bed so I couldn't see them anymore.

A few minutes spent emptying the dishwasher and re-loading it, stopping to lick the icing bowl clean in between, helped calm me back down. I took a quick look around, straightening some of the toys that hadn't quite made it out of the room after all, either because the girls had been playing with them or because they were actually my toys and they hadn't even noticed them. I was still scooping a small pile of stones and some engraving tools off the living room sideboard and into a basket when I felt the buzz of the wards letting me know we had company.

I left the basket immediately and went over to the front door, pulling it open before there was any chance of the doorbell getting the girls' attention.

The porchlight threw dramatic shadows across Xaden as he approached. I was pretty sure I recognized the hoodie he was wearing, but it hung so weirdly on him that it looked more like a cape at first. The night air had gotten properly cold and it felt good across my bare arms as I waited for him to make his way up the stairs.

"Holy shit, man, you're really here." I could feel myself grinning so wide that it hurt.

"Didn't Imogen tell you I was coming?" Fuck, I missed that tone of voice so much.

I reached out, but he leaned away from my hand and I pulled it back. "She did, but it's different seeing you. Come on in, take your shoes off, relax." It was a challenge trying to get my fill of looking at him and convincing myself he was real without actually staring at him. He hesitated at the threshold and I felt the house wards ripple, so I took Xaden's hand firmly and pulled him through.

The wards stopping him, or at least making him hesitate? Weird. "Not sure why they're doing that," I apologized. "They should only do that if-"

"If I'm a threat," Xaden said, staring at his feet. "I should go."

"Do you think you're a threat?" I asked him, stepping closer.

He didn't look up. "I'm-"

"Do you think you're a threat?" I asked again, putting an arm around his waist to tug him away from the door. He was insanely thin, so much so that I could feel his fucking hip bone. I was going to send him home with fucking leftovers, so help me.

"Come on in and sit down," I told him again, waiting as he slid his feet out of worn-down combat boots that weren't even tied. He wasn’t wearing socks. I set my hand against the small of his back and led him through the great room to the kitchen table.

"You look like a stiff wind would knock you over, Xay. I'm not saying I don't remember when you beat me for the wrestling title in high school, or the way you mastered the spellwork they threw at us in school, but right now I'm worried you're going to hurt yourself."

"I don't want to be a threat," he started, and coughed so hard I had to hold him up for a minute. "Fuck."

He started to say something about not deserving to be back in our lives and I couldn't stand it anymore. I pulled him in for a hug. Xaden went still in my arms like he'd been spotted by a predator and thought maybe I wouldn't see him if he held still, but I just held on until I could feel him start to relax into me, just a little bit.

"Are we eating or are we moving on to extracurriculars already?" Imogen asked as she came down the stairs and through the door behind him.

He visibly startled at her voice. "Fuck, Imogen, you don't have to scare me."

She laughed. "Don't be so easily startled, then."

"Sit," I said again, resisting the temptation to push him into the chair.

Imogen stayed a little further back, probably so he didn't feel cornered, but she didn't back down either. "You have to start somewhere, Xaden. It might as well be dessert."

He sank down. "I don't have much of an appetite these days. Just… so you know it's not you."

"Since when do you turn down chocolate cake?"

Excitement crested over his features like a wave, and just like a wave it washed back out again. "Everything I eat tastes like ash."

"How long?" Imogen asked him. I watched her demeanor shift into work mode, even in a t-shirt with her hair back in a messy braid. She sat next to him, immediately in control. Fuck, it was sexy to watch.

"Around the time Willow was born," he said. I busied myself cutting a generous slice of cake for him and traced an extra rune in the icing. "I figured at first it was just because I wasn't getting a lot of sleep."

She nodded. "I suspect you were a means to an end and she decided that she didn't need you anymore at that point. She just started draining you dry."

"Here," I interrupted, setting the slice of cake in front of Xaden. "Eat."

He glared at me and I glared right back at him, crossing my arms over my chest. While he'd been gone, I'd learned to stare down stubborn Cardulo girls over dinner at this table.

Finally, he relented, grumbling as he picked up his fork. His face was closed off, and he looked so resigned to disappointment I had to send a quick prayer to Amari that it worked. The wait while he chewed was the longest since I gave Imogen her engagement cupcake.

The grin that spread across Xaden's face made a knot in my chest relax.

"Fucking hell, Gar. Did your mom make this?" He didn't even bother to wait until he finished asking to take another bite.

"I made it." And it felt so fucking good to see it work.

He took two more bites before he looked up at me, and for a minute I thought he was going to cry. "It's amazing."

I looked over at Imogen and raised my eyebrows with the question, should we just let him take his time? She nodded. For a few moments I watched her watching him, the way her eyes roamed over the spaces around him or seemed to be looking through him as she studied his energy and the way he responded to the magic in the cake.

While she studied him, I went ahead and plated the rest of dinner for the three of us. Imogen didn't look up as I sat a piece of casserole in front of her, and I slid the bowl of stew in front of Xaden just as he finished the slice of cake.

He looked like he was going to argue. I gave him the look that works on Gwen when she doesn't want to do what she knows she's supposed to do.

He started eating the stew.

Satisfied, I sat down in the chair on his other side, opposite Imogen. I tore open the soda bread, offering each of them a piece before starting in on my own dinner.

"So what's different?" Xaden finally asked when he'd finished most of the stew and about half of his casserole serving. "I'd thought getting away from Sage might help, but when my dad put food in front of me last night it tasted as bad as anything."

"Your dad didn't learn to cook from my mom," I told him frankly.

Imogen rolled her eyes. "Your dad's never known what to do with you, Xaden. Not since you stopped hero worshipping him."

"I guess so. But he showed up when I called him; that should mean something."

"Not when it comes to fixing your channels," she said. "It's just not his skill set. That's why I've got this-" she pointed to the swooping vines and branches that started at her wrist and grew up her arm until they disappeared into her shirt sleeve, "-and he's got his own mark."

Xaden stared at the mark on her arm. "Fuck, you really are grownups now, aren't you? When I left there was barely more than a bracelet on you."

"My mom's retired, so someone was going to carry it, and Braelyn's amazing but she's always been happier on the business side." Imogen tried to brush the attention off like she always did; there was more than one reason she wore sleeves and sweaters to work, though everyone in town knew her anyway and Braelyn was nothing but proud of her sister's achievements.

He turned around to me. "I noticed yours went pretty far earlier, but I wasn't sure what to say."

The Tavis mark wasn’t so delicate as the Cardulos’, with wide swoops and curves like the bark of a tree or the pattern of a stone, and we don't carry it like Cardulos or Mairis or Riorsons either. Imogen's spread as she grew into herself, but she's the only one who wears it in our generation. It's the same for Sloane and Bodhi.

But our ancestor spirit is different. Maybe because she was a shapeshifter, she doesn't believe in limiting herself and we're sure not going to tell her otherwise. Not everyone gets one, but Dad's got a brother and two cousins who share his with him. Mine goes from wrist to shoulder, wrapping like marbled agate, but Derik carries one, and so does my cousin who runs the tree farm outside of town. I've even got a niece who's started hers and Derik's boy who keeps trying to slip off in fox shape has had one since he was a toddler.

"What happened to yours?" Imogen asked. She wasn't worried about niceties when there was information on the line. "When Bodhi's came in my mom said she wasn't surprised but she didn't know of much precedent for it either, and I always wondered."

Xaden pushed his chair back a few inches and pulled off his hoodie. The black tank he was wearing underneath made it even more obvious how much muscle he'd lost. The skin above his collarbones held deep ravines of shadow.

I didn't let myself look away. The grey in his hair was more obvious inside the house, and his hair hung longer than I'd ever seen it but limp and not soft like it should be. Tattoos ran up both arms and across his chest, some purely artistic and some with alchemical symbols and runes woven in that looked like they were originally magical, but I didn't feel anything from them.

I didn't feel much in the way of energy from him at all. All evening I'd been ignoring the fact that energetically he had more in common with corpses I'd moved than with the man I'd known before he left.

Underneath the ink on his left arm, I knew where his own mark used to sit. He'd been proud of the sharp, slashing lines that showed his responsibility, once. They'd shifted like dominoes or snowflakes, a map of all of the people who fell under the pact with the land, crossing his arm in patterned bands interwoven with long spirals for the land herself and her river.

All that remained of it were the land's spiral, puckered like it had been an angry infection that had finally healed, and a few flashes of paler, shinier skin like scar tissue that showed in the space between some of the ink.

"I started getting tattoos because I couldn't stand seeing my arm without it there." Xaden didn't move as Imogen leaned in, her hands tracing the scar. "I had a few good magical ones, but they never felt right. And then they didn't feel like anything."

"Well, duh," Imogen rolled her eyes at him, and Xaden gave her a small smirk- such a familiar scene that it made my heart sing. "She drained you dry, there's nothing powering them right now. But I've got some ideas."

He looked skeptical, but that was familiar too. "I'm listening."

"You used to have an insane reservoir of power in your core, and you never had to learn a lot of the basics because the power you needed was right there." She poked him in the torso. "Now no matter what you generate, that void means you can't hold onto it. You're starting from scratch to build something back that you were born with. Think of it like magical instead of physical therapy."

"And here I was hoping it would be more cake."

"Well…" she snorted. "Exposure seems to help. You're doing better now than you were before you ate. You perked up inside the wards in the store today, too. It probably wouldn't hurt to have Garrick or his mom cook for you a couple of times a week until you get a baseline reset."

"I need to apologize to Mrs. Tavis for the way I acted last time I saw her anyway," Xaden nodded.

"You do. You also need somewhere to put those reserves once you start building them up, which means a little more muscle mass and a little less… Victorian wasting disease."

"I can help with that," I jumped in. "Come by tomorrow with Willow and I'll get you started doing babyweight workouts with me and the girls."

"So far you've just prescribed diet and exercise." He pulled his hoodie back on, but something was different still. Maybe he was sitting taller? It was still loose on him but it no longer gave the impression that he was drowning in it.

Imogen brought her hand up to her face, studying him as she thought. "I need to talk to Isaac, but I think I want to start you on runes."

"Mr. Mairi? Is he even going to want to see me after I missed Liam's- everything?"

"Believe it or not, I think he was too busy with other things to care if you were at Liam's funeral." Imogen's voice was a slap this time. "Some people are going to be rooting for you and some people are going to have complicated feelings or stay pissed, but you cannot just assume the worst of everyone like that. It's not going to help and it makes you sound self-centered as fuck."

"I'm just used to thinking everyone can see how much is wrong with me. What kind of monster I am. That was one of the reasons it took me so long to call my dad; I wasn't sure I could come home."

"Even if you were the monster she convinced you to be, you'd be our monster." I told him. "I wouldn't let you in the house where my children sleep if I didn't love you."

"And I wouldn't have invited you over if I wasn't confident I could kick your ass," Imogen agreed.

"Thanks," Xaden's face opened up. "So, how about you tell me about your girls?"

Claire’s fussing woke me, and I sat up, looking toward the clock as I dried my own tears. I still wasn’t used to waking up alone, and it was worse after dreaming about his hands in my hair.

It was just after five, the October darkness giving no hints as to whether it was morning or evening. “You took a long nap,” I told my baby girl, picking her up out of her crib. “It was a busy day for you, hm? Lots to process.” Tairn stood up from his spot by the door and nosed the switch, flooding the room with light. “Thanks, Tairn.”

I changed and nursed Claire, confirming on my phone that it was PM, not AM. Hopefully that meant it was a good time to talk to Rebekah about my dream, and being a Speaker, whatever that meant.

Halfway down the hall, I caught my reflection in the mirror beyond the open bathroom door. “Liam,” I murmured, reaching up to touch my hair with my free hand. It had been down in a simple long braid when I’d gone to sleep, and now it was pinned up in the coronet-style braid I’d worn in college. He loved braiding my hair when he was alive, and he still managed to do it when he visited.

Two dream visitors in the same day seemed significant.

I heard voices in the living room and poked my head around the corner. Rebekah and Isaac were sitting on the couch talking to a huge broad-shouldered man with silver threading through his dark curls who was taking up most of the love seat. “Violet! Excellent timing,” Isaac said, nodding to me. “You remember Rory Tavis?”

”Good to have you home, Violet,” Rory said with a smile. “We were worried about you in the city.”

“Thank you. I appreciate how welcome everyone’s made me feel.” It was the only way I could think of to respond to sentiments like that. They meant well, and they were just trying to make me feel like I belonged here, even if I wasn’t sure that I belonged anywhere.

”If what I’ve heard is correct, you belong even more than we thought you did.”

”Come sit down,” Rebekah invited me.

I walked in and took a seat in one of the armchairs, putting Claire on my knee. Tairn settled at my feet, watching everyone.

”May I?” Rory asked, reaching for Claire.

”She’s a little hesitant around men she doesn’t know,” I started to say, but she reached back, squealing with excitement.

”Babies love me,” he assured me. “It’s a Tavis gift.”

I handed her over, and she babbled excitedly at him, patting his face. He started making faces at her, and I relaxed almost immediately. “That must be why she liked Garrick so much when we brought her for her naming day.”

He grinned and nodded. “That would be why. His older brother Jay has to be careful walking through the playground or he accidentally steals kids.”

Rebekah laughed. “Only once,” she said.

“Because after that he was more careful,” Rory replied, shaking his head. “But I didn’t come over to talk about my kids, much as I love doing it. I came to talk to you about your visitor.”

For a minute I thought he meant Liam, and then I remembered. I described the dream, and what Andarna had said, watching his expression.

“Most of the time, when someone says ‘Speaker,’ they mean one of the Riorsons - Fen, or Bodhi,” he said when I had finished. “The Riorson calling is Voice of the People. They speak to the land for the people, they help the people speak to each other. But at Founding, there was a family whose calling was Voice of the Land. My understanding was that the spirits of the land and the river would speak in dreams, or sometimes use their body to speak directly. But we haven’t had a spirit-chosen Speaker in three generations.”

“What happened to them? If I may ask,” I added.

“World War II,” Isaac sighed. “He’s one of our boys who didn’t make it home, and he didn’t have any siblings.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said, biting back the overwhelming sense of loss the sentence brought me. I knew how it felt to have someone not come home when they were supposed to, and the Mairis might have found themselves in the same position if it hadn’t been for Sloane.

“We’ve just been going without since then, hoping that one day the land spirits would choose a new family, and here you are,” Rory jumped back in. “You have any brothers or sisters, Violet?”

“One of each, both older. My sister’s in the Army and is as uninterested in magic as my mom, and my brother disappeared years ago. The closest family I have now is in this room.”

“And this one is every inch a Mairi,” Rory chuckled, bouncing Claire. “Firstborn of each generation is usually the one who’s called to the Gift.”

“Liam wasn’t,” Rebekah pointed out tartly.

“Well. The land has a plan, as my own ma used to always say,” Rory shrugged. “The spirits move in their own time and in their own way, and not on human schedules. You ever speak to land spirits before?”

“Little ones, when I was a kid,” I admitted. “I used to talk to the flower fairies and the garden spirits everywhere we lived. And the trees, of course, but they never had much to say.”

“We move much too quickly for them,” Isaac nodded. “The greater Spirits only talk to us because they’ve practiced it, I suspect. Or maybe they’re closer to humans because they had a hand in our creation, once upon a time. Hard to say.”

I was trying not to feel overwhelmed. “What will I need to do?”

“As the Speaker for the Land? Mostly pay attention to your dreams, listen for messages. There are records and journals in the Town Hall if you wanted to look over them - like I said, we haven’t had one in three generations and there aren’t many left alive who remember there being one. And of course anyone who married in as an adult wouldn’t have met the Speaker anyway, which drops a few off the list. Grandmother Telery’s still with us; she might be willing to talk to you if you’re interested.”

“I would love to, and I’d love to review any records you’ll let me look at.” Records sounded great. Interviews weren’t my strong suit but I could manage talking to one old lady, certainly.

“Oh, and Bodhi’ll have to take you down to the river and make a formal acknowledgement to the spirits. No great rush, but the weather’s not going to get much better before spring and the best we can really hope for is a nice afternoon. I’ll let him know and he’ll tell you when it works for him, if that’s okay?”

I nodded. “I have a distinct lack of schedule right now; I’m happy to go whenever he’s available, as long as I can bring Claire. And I’m not a native of the Pacific Northwest, but I’ve lived here long enough that rain doesn’t bother me much.”

“Glad to hear it.” He looked down at Claire again. “I’m sure this wasn’t what you had in mind when you came to Aretia, Violet, but I appreciate your willingness to do the work.”

“I don’t know what I expected,” I admitted, “but I like having something to do.”

I wasn’t naturally a creature of habit; too much of the same thing turned boring in a hurry. It was one of the things I liked about my job - there were constantly new things coming in to worry about.

Sundays were different, though.

I’d been doing the same thing every Sunday morning ever since I’d moved into the little house by myself. It didn’t feel boring, it felt… comfortable. Mom suggested that I think of it as a ritual, rather than a habit, and I liked that. It had become the way I prepared for the week. A long run, stopping by the bakery on the way home to grab a couple of bagels that I would eat after my shower.

But every other Sunday I’d woken up by myself.

This morning, there was a gorgeous man in my bed, and I wasn’t sure what to do about my ritual.

“Ridoc,” I murmured in his ear. He groaned. “Do you like to run?”

“I only run when someone’s chasing me,” he mumbled.

“Do you mind if I go for a run, then?”

“You run, I sleep.”

At least, I was pretty sure that was what he said as he pulled my pillow over his head.

It was cool and damp as I left the house, that kind of Pacific Northwest autumn morning where it wasn’t raining, there was just water in the air. It felt good to run in it, though by the time I got to the bakery there was water dripping down the back of my neck. I shoved my flattened-out curls out of my face as I walked through the door. “Hey, Quinn.”

“Morning, Bodhi! Happy Sunday!”

“Same to you, blondie. You got any bagels left?”

“This early? You know we do. Jax made blueberry ones.”

“Ooh, my favorite. Two of those, definitely.” I frowned, looking at the bagels in the case. I didn’t even know if Ridoc liked bagels. We’d only eaten four meals together so far, and only one had been breakfast. “What kind of bagels do you recommend if you don’t know what kind to get for someone?”

“What kind of flavors do they like? Or are you buying for a group?”

“No, just one person, but I don’t know him very well yet.”

“Hmm. Our best sellers are cinnamon-raisin, jalapeno cheddar, and everything. Or you could get plain bagels and flavored cream cheese?”

I ended up getting one of each flavor and four different flavored cream cheeses because Ridoc seemed like the sort of person who liked… options? Combinations? I could always take the leftovers to work.

As I was headed home, my watch vibrated and I looked down to see a text notification from my mom come in. I shifted the bagel bag to the other hand and pulled out my phone.

Mommy: And why do I have to find out from Alda Cardulo that you have a boyfriend?

Me: Because I’ve been too busy banging him to talk to you

Me: We only got out of bed to talk to Imogen about fatebonds

Mommy: What I’m hearing is you’re bringing him to dinner tonight

Me: Yes, Mother

Me: Will Xaden be there?

Mommy: He didn’t give me his calendar. He DID give Fen a grandchild

Me: MOTHER.

Mommy: He wants to know if he can come over. Shall I tell him you’re too busy not giving me a grandchild?

Me: I specifically chose to be gay so as to deny you grandchildren

Me: He can come over as long as he gives me twenty minutes to shower and put on pants

Mommy: He says please wear pants

Mommy: See you at 7?

Me: We’ll be there

Me: Wearing pants

Mommy: Love you, Boodle

Me: Love you

I jogged up the steps and let myself in, hanging my keys on the hook by the door, tucking my running shoes into the shoe cabinet, and leaving the bagels and cream cheese in the kitchen.

Ridoc was sitting up in bed, poking at his phone, and he looked up as I came in. “Did you wake me up and say something about running?”

“I asked if you like to run,” I said, pulling off my shirt and using it to get some of the water out of my hair. “You said only when someone was chasing you.”

“Yeah, that’s accurate.” He grinned at me. “But if I get to watch you get all sweaty, I might start to like it.”

“Or you can lie in bed until I get back and take a shower with me,” I suggested.

“That also sounds good.” He dropped his phone on the bed and hopped up, coming over to kiss me hello. “Do you run a lot?”

“Most mornings. Sundays I run about ten miles. It’s getting late enough in the year that I’m going to have to switch to the treadmill before too long, but I’ll enjoy it while it lasts.”

He followed me into the bathroom as I turned on the shower and stripped out of the rest of my gear. “What else do you do on Sundays?”

I explained to him about the running and the bakery and the shower as we got in and took turns washing each other, trying not to get distracted because it would be just like Xaden to show up early and get irritated because he had to wait on the porch.

“Then I usually work until somebody needs me for something else,” I said, grabbing my towel and handing a second one to Ridoc.

“On Sunday? Are you a workaholic?”

“Maybe,” I admitted. “Okay, probably. Is that a problem?”

”Work-life balance is important,” he scolded, lips twitching as he fought a smile. “If we’re going to be a - um - whatever we’re going to be? What does being fated mean, besides feeling like we belong in a romantasy?”

I shrugged. “All a fated connection actually means by itself is that our lives have touched before. The stronger the connection, the more times they’ve touched, and the clearer the impact, the more times they’ve touched in a particular way. Have you ever met somebody - other than me, obviously - and just felt like you’ve known them forever?” I cracked the window to let the steam out and hung my towel up.

”Oh, yeah. Violet and I were like that when we met in college. We ran into each other at a party and stayed up all night talking, and it was like we were just picking up a conversation we’d already been having.”

I nodded, pulling out clean clothes. “That’s a fated connection. You and Violet have probably been friends before.”

”How does that even work? Like… over lifetimes?” Ridoc picked up his outfit from Friday where I’d left it folded on my grandmother’s hope chest after taking it out of the dryer.

”Sure. Nature fundamentally works in cycles, right? The cycle of the seasons, the rotation of the planets, a comet’s return - it’s all happened before, and it will all happen again.”

”Did you just quote Peter Pan?”

”Yes.” I grinned at him as I put on boxers. “There’s dozens of phrases and passages like that in literature and poetry. Science, too - energy can neither be created nor destroyed. And what’s a soul but a manifestation of energy? We’re not any different than anything else in nature, and our inclination is to do more or less the same thing over and over. Habits and routines. So you and Violet have been friends before, and when you saw each other again, you recognized your friend.”

”And you and I have been in love before,” he said, grinning back. “It’s not love at first sight, it’s recognizing the guy I already love.”

”It’s also love at first sight. Because it’s the first time I’ve laid eyes on you this time around. It’s the first time that Bodhi Riorson Durran, attorney at law, has fallen in love with Ridoc - what’s your middle name?”

“Aloysius.”

“It is not.”

“No?”

“I’m going to tell everyone that your name is short for Ridiculous and they’ll believe me. I’m very trustworthy.”

Ridoc laughed at that. “It’s Tiberius. Because my dad’s an enormous nerd.”

“I love it. It’s the first time that I’ve fallen in love with Ridoc Tiberius Gamlyn, programmer extraordinaire, and decided that I want to build a life with him. Because that’s important, too. Not just what came before, but what we’re choosing now, together, in this life. Just because we’ve done it before doesn’t mean we’re automatically going to get it right.”

”Well, shit.” His sunny enthusiasm vanished.

”What’s wrong?” I reached out and cupped his face.

”I’m good at fucking stuff up. Really good at it. And I thought maybe this? Couldn’t be fucked up.”

“Anything can be fucked up if you try hard enough. But a fated connection does make it harder to fuck up.”

“That’s - reassuring?”

I laughed. “The thing about all your failed relationships? None of them were with me. Maybe you were just waiting for me to come along.”

Ridoc’s smile came back like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. “I like that idea. I’m not bad at dating, I’m bad at dating people who are not you.”

“And I’m not disinterested in relationships, I’m disinterested in relationships with people who aren’t you.”

“Because you’re definitely interested in a relationship with me, right?” His tone was light, but I saw the worry pressed against his mouth.

“Absolutely. My mother invited us to dinner tonight because she wants to meet my boyfriend.”

“You told her about me?”

“Well, Imogen’s mom beat me to it, because the only thing faster than the speed of light is gossip, but I told her that I was too busy fucking you to text her.”

“You said that to your mom?”

“We’re close like that.” I shrugged, zipping my jeans. “Stereotypical only child of a single mom; she’s one of my best friends.”

“That’s sweet! I love that for you. I’ve never met anyone’s parents except for when I was in high school and I already knew their parents. This is exciting.” He stopped with his shirt halfway on, one arm through and the other up to the elbow. “Would it sound weird if I said your tattoo looks different than it did yesterday? Like I swear there was a blue part?”

I lifted my head and peered down at my left arm. “Oh.” The smile crept across my face as I turned my wrist, confirming what I was seeing. “Xaden’s home, then.”

“What?” He stuck his other arm the rest of the way into the sleeve and pulled his shirt down.

“This,” I tapped a cluster of stripes, “isn’t a tattoo. It’s a relic.”

“Okay… what’s a relic? Besides an old leftover thing, because your arm is too hot for that.”

“It’s a magical mark. Aretia - well, the town was founded by a group of magical families. We made a pact with the land to live here peacefully and respectfully. Sustainably, to use a modern buzzword. Not like European settlers. Each family serves the land and the people on it in specific ways, and each generation has a representative whose responsibility it is to - perform that service, for lack of a better description.”

“And the representative gets a relic?”

I nodded, talking over my shoulder as we went down the stairs. “Of course, I say a representative, but it’s not always just one. There’s always a few Tavises, because they have a big family and a big job. There’s only one Cardulo - Imogen, in our generation; and one Mairi - Liam’s younger sister Sloane.”

“And you.”

“Yeah. The Riorsons are the Speakers - we speak to the people, and we speak for the land. Uncle Fen’s basically the mayor - he’s in charge of listening to everybody’s problems and helping them solve them. I work with him; that’s the reason I went to law school. Being trained as an attorney gives me a lot of tools for solving problems. I like that part, and I’m good at it. That’s what this part of the mark means - each stripe is a person in Aretia that I’m responsible for.” I pulled out the containers of cream cheese, spreading them out on the counter. “I hope you like bagels.”

“I love bagels. Do you know how many there are?”

“Bagels? Thirteen.”

“No, stripes,” he laughed.

I nodded. “Today, there are one hundred and seven.”

“Tomorrow it might be different?”

“Probably not tomorrow, the town doesn’t change that fast, most of the time. Baby Avery was the last new one before Friday. On Friday,” I touched his cheek, “I got three.”

“Violet and Clarity….” He peered into the bag.

“And you.”

He blinked. “Does that mean you knew this was going to happen?”

I shook my head, grabbing the bread knife from the rack on the wall and sliding the cutting board out of the cabinet. “Fuck no. I just knew I had three new marks when I woke up on Friday. I happened to know that Violet and her baby were coming, but that was because Isaac told me, not any great mystical knowledge. I didn’t know they were bringing you along, I didn’t know anything about you when I saw you except that you were smoking hot and I desperately wanted to take you home.”

“I’m so fucking lucky,” he sighed, handing me a jalapeno cheddar bagel to slice. “Does that mean I’m going to stay, then?”

“It means you belong to Aretia, whether you stay or not. The land has claimed you and made you the responsibility of the Riorson line. Silverware’s in that drawer by your hip, plates are behind you.”

“Does Mayor Uncle Fen have stripes too? Or is it just you?”

“Yeah, he’s got way more than I do. We’re each responsible for our generation and the ones that follow. Uncle Fen’s got my hundred and seven, plus everybody in his generation. And he’s got the border and the river, too. So did I, until sometime last night, but if it’s gone it must be back on Xaden’s arm where it fucking well belongs.”

“That’s the long lines that’re gone now?”

“Yeah. The blue one represents the connection to the land spirit, and the black is the river. It’s a map of sorts. But it’s always the eldest Riorson of each generation that the spirits claim. The people can be shared - my mom takes on some of them sometimes, when she’s doing work for the Assembly - but the land-bond was never meant to be mine and she allowed me to have it reluctantly at best. I got my relic when I came back from Stanford and when I realized I had the land and the river I honestly thought it meant Xaden was dead.”

“Is Xaden the cousin Imogen mentioned yesterday?”

“Yeah, the one who’ll be here any minute now. Can you hand me a chocolate chip bagel for him?”

Ridoc handed it over and I sliced it, putting on a plate just as there was a knock on the door.

“Here we go,” I muttered to myself.

“Do you need me to take a walk? Or hide upstairs?” Ridoc asked with a worried frown. “I know family stuff can be weird.”

I shook my head. “I want you here. I’m done hiding parts of myself to make Xaden more comfortable.”

“Okay, but I want that story as soon as he’s gone.”

Xaden and I were cousins who looked more like brothers than actual brothers I knew. That was a fundamental fact of my life. Looking at him was like seeing a mirror out of the corner of my eye.

Which meant that looking at him on my porch was like looking at myself if I had terminal cancer.

“Hi,” he said. I realized he had his kid - the grandchild Mom had mentioned - in a carrier on his chest. Three stripes, I thought. Not Violet; Violet’s appeared the first time Liam brought her home after they started dating. Clarity, Ridoc, and… Xaden’s son. Now that I saw him, I could feel the mark on my arm humming in recognition.

“Hey,” I said, stepping back to let him in. “You look like shit.”

“Well the fuck aware,” he growled, not moving. “Everyone keeps telling me that, like I might forget.”

“Bye-bye,” the kid chirped, waving at me.

“He means hi,” Xaden explained. “He….”

“That’s fucking adorable,” I said. “Hi there, baby cousin.”

“His name is Willow.”

“Hi there, Willow. Come in, Xaden, I’m sure you didn’t walk over here just to stand on my porch.”

Xaden stepped through the door hesitantly, as if he expected the wards to object. They didn’t even ripple. “Garrick had to pull me through their wards,” he explained as I shut the door and leaned back to close the baby gate, blocking the stairs.

“You’re a Riorson, and so is Willow,” I shrugged. “You’ve been walking through this door since you could walk. You can put him down; the living room is toddler-proofed.”

“I didn’t hear that you had kids,” Xaden said, unbuckling the carrier and letting Willow down. He made a beeline for the basket of toys in the corner.

“I don’t, but there’s no shortage of people who do. I like to make my guests feel comfortable. Have you eaten? There’s a chocolate-chip bagel for you.”

“Why is everyone constantly trying to feed me?” he grumbled, but he took the bagel from me and put strawberry cream cheese on it.

“Probably because you look like you haven't eaten in weeks,” Ridoc suggested.

I grinned. “My boyfriend Ridoc, who’s not wrong. Ridoc, my cousin Xaden. You want coffee?”

“Your - boyfriend?” Xaden furrowed his brow.

“My boyfriend. Fated love. Hot piece of ass. Whatever you want to call him, he’s mine.” I held his gaze, daring him to say anything. “Coffee?”

“Nice to meet you,” he said instead. “I didn’t know Bodhi had a boyfriend.”

“Neither did Bodhi. We met on Friday, and, well. Here I am, Bodhi’s boyfriend. Who likes coffee, if you’re making it, Bodhs.”

“That fast?”

“It’s a little weird, but it’s right. Well. It’s a lot weird. I didn’t think love at first sight happened in real life? But trying to fight it felt worse, so we're going with it."

He looked weirdly sad as he took a tiny bite of his bagel. "Hey, this is good," he said with genuine surprise and took a bigger bite.

I busied myself with the coffee maker. "Yeah, Jax is a fantastic baker. She makes a mean chocolate cake, almost as good as Ma Tavis's."

"Is she new?"

"Jax? Yeah, but she's not an outsider, she grew up in Tirvainne and went to culinary school in Lewellen. Her girlfriend is a PhD candidate at Basgiath."

"Is she…" he scratched his arm while looking at mine.

"Yeah, when they bought the bakery."

"So it's not just when people move to town?" Ridoc asked, looking back and forth between us.

"Not always," Xaden said. "Sometimes people belong to a different land spirit and they never become ours." I could see him thinking about his mother and my father.

"But when they bought the bakery, they committed to building a life in Aretia, and the land accepted them."

"Speaking of the land," Xaden said hesitantly, scratching his arm again.

"She never wanted me," I shrugged. "You're the eldest, it's your job."

"I just - I mean, I didn't intend to just… saunter back in and take your… anything."

"Oh, no, I no longer have to go down to the river in a foot of snow and say nice things in the freezing rain, how terrible for me. I'm sure that I'm devastated at the loss." I poured three cups of coffee, got out the sugar and creamer.

"You're not. Upset," he said slowly.

"No. If you'd… sauntered back in, as you put it, and took my people? That would've pissed me off. But the Wise Ones never wanted me, they just settled for me because you weren't around. If you couldn't come back, I guess we would've gotten used to each other, but I'm glad we didn't have to."

Xaden shook his head as he stirred creamer into his mug. “I keep expecting people to be mad at me. You’re not, Garrick and Imogen weren’t. I don’t understand.”

“Why would we be mad at you?”

“Because I left?” His brow furrowed. “I missed everyone’s… everything? I let everyone down?”

“People leave, Xay. It happens. And now you’re back, and obviously you weren’t having a great time.”

“Everybody was mad last time I came home,” he pointed out.

“Not at you, asshole. We all hated your girlfriend. Hate to break it to you, Xay, but you’ve got the worst taste in women.” I looked at him, then down at the toddler banging blocks together on the rug. “She’s….”

“Willow’s mother, yeah.”

“Are you working with Im?”

He nodded. “And Garrick.”

“Then there’s nothing I could say that she hasn’t already told you, I’m sure. Except… Willow belongs here. And so do you. No matter what she might have told you.”

He looked like he might cry for a minute. “Thanks, Bodhi,” he said finally. “That means a lot.”

I dreamed of walking into the woods and never stopping, never getting anywhere. Just being… peacefully lost, I suppose.

Will woke me up to let me know when he was ready for breakfast by pulling on my hair. Aside from the wake up call, it was nice to know he's still my little escape artist. While I got him dressed I made a note to ask about wards that keep kids in cribs.

When we went downstairs, I joined my aunt at the kitchen counter. She let me cut grapes and waffles into Will-sized bites without trying to make small talk, which I appreciated.

My father was not in the same mood when he arrived. "Got in late last night just like old times, eh? I hope you're not planning to make it a habit."

"I got home at eleven. Auntie Aoibhe was still up, even."

My dad sighed into his coffee cup and just like that I might as well have been fifteen again, back from sneaking out to see Garrick.

"It's just that you have responsibilities now," he continued as he sat down across from Will. "I don't want you to get… overwhelmed." That was clearly not what he'd originally meant to say, but I looked over my shoulder in time to see Auntie Aoibhe staring him down.

"Believe it or not, I've been with Willow the entire eighteen months since he was born. I didn't pick him up for the first time at the airport. Do you see the sippy cup lid?" I looked to my aunt. She handed it to me and I set the plate and the cup on Will's tray.

Once he was happily eating, I dug into the fridge, rearranging the half-dozen rune-decorated glass containers the Cardulos had sent me home with so I could cut myself a slice of the leftover cake.

"Chocolate cake for breakfast?" We were bordering on exasperation and it was still so early in the day.

"Amari knows he could use the calories," Aoibhe murmured to him without looking up from whatever conversation she was having on her phone.

Fifteen year old me would have lowered my eyes and tried to argue with him, but this was not how things were going to be now. I looked my father square in the eye as I took a large forkful of cake, put it in my mouth, and swallowed.

"First of all, Dad, thank you again for coming to get me at the airport when I called you. I really appreciate your support, please know that. But I don't want to use up my entire pool of energy arguing with you before I finish breakfast."

My father looked over to Will, then to Auntie Aoibhe, then back to me with another long sigh. "You're right," he said finally. "It's going to be hard for me, but yes. You're right."

I nodded and went back to eating. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed something, now that I was awake. Starting from my wrist, there was a thread of blue working its way among all the black ink on my arm, and a ribbon of black that had been a scar before.

Auntie Aoibhe was the first to notice what I was looking at. "I suppose you really are home now."

My dad smiled, shaking his head. "I'm surprised they found room on there."

"As if they can't find a way when they wish," she tsked at him and looked back at her phone. "You'd best talk to Bodhi today. He'll be glad to see you."

I felt sick to my stomach again despite the cake. "Did he go to- is he working at your practice now?" I asked my father.

"Yes," Dad answered. "He enjoys it." I wasn't sure how to take that. Did Bodhi really enjoy it? Or had he just gotten stuck because I ran, and he made the most of it?

"We're having a family dinner at seven." Auntie Aoibhe looked at me, raising an eyebrow. "You'll be there to say hello to Bodhi, won't you?"

"Yeah, I can find room in my incredibly packed schedule." But I didn't want to start with Bodhi with my father watching over us. "Would he mind if I swung by to see him early? I need to go over to Garrick's anyway."

She typed away while I finished my cake.

"What are you… tell me, what kind of plans do you have?" my father asked, choosing his words. There was a buzz of controlspeak in there, but I used the trick I'd learned protecting myself from Sage. I didn't have the energy to fight the compulsion, but if I paid attention I could make sure it didn't stick. Instead it ended up in the black hole where my center used to be and disappeared.

It rankled, mostly because I was going to tell him anyway. "Physical training," I told him. "I'll take Will with me, don't worry."

"Bodhi doesn't mind company, he just says to give him twenty minutes if you want him to have pants on." Auntie Aoibhe jumped in before I could get properly mad.

I shook my head, laughing, and it felt good. "Definitely in favor of pants. I have to get Will ready to go and actually walk there anyway."

It seemed likely the Cardulos' house would have most of anything I could need for Will, so I just tucked some spare diapers into the pocket on the carrier and clipped his silver bell and his dangly bird to the shoulder harness where he could reach them. Once he was strapped in, I found a little knit hat in one of the boxes that had appeared and pulled it over Will's head.

He tugged it off twice before I gently tipped his head up to look at me. "It's cold here, sprout. You gotta wear the hat."

"No hat!"

"I can put you in a hoodie but you'll have to have the hood up then." Sometimes I felt like I was walking the line between explaining, which the books I'd read said was good, and negotiating with a toddler, which seemed ridiculous.

"No! No hat!" He was close to screaming now, so I dropped the hat back in the box and loosened the carrier enough to wrestle him into his little blue hoodie with the rabbit ears. Once the hood was up and I'd flopped the bunny ears in his face, he happily pulled one into his mouth and started chewing on it.

"He's old enough for commandspeak, you know," my father said from my bedroom doorway.

"Even if I could do it, I wouldn't. I'm never using command on him."

"Never?" I looked up to see my dad arching his eyebrow the way I had learned, matched with that slightly disbeliving tone. "We'll see how you feel in few years."

"Maybe to save his life. Nothing less. And I expect you not to use it on him either."

"Xaden…"

"My kid, my rules, or I'll…"

He waited, still watching me.

"I'll move in with the Cardulos," I finished, wondering where that had come from almost as soon as it left my mouth.

Dad crossed his arms but he was smiling a little again. "In that little house? They're already running low on space."

"I'll kick you out and move them in here, then, I don't know. Just don't do it, Dad, please. It's important to me."

He was back to frowning. "Are you saying I shouldn't have-"

"Well, Bodhi's waiting for me, I'd better go. I'll see you at dinner," I cut him off and swept past him, taking the stairs as fast as I dared to. I remembered taking them three at a time when I was a teenager, but between my dizziness and my son it felt reckless simply not putting both feet on each stair.

Will called "byebye!" as we went.

I regretted the hasty exit almost as soon as we were outside, because I'd grabbed too light of a hoodie for the last of the morning chill. I didn't have any warmer hoodies; I'd forgotten the range of temperatures and layers needed this far north. I used to run warmer anyway.

Walking helped, and I told myself it was only a short walk to Bodhi's place anyway. As we walked I looked around, pointing out place to Will regardless of how much attention he was paying. "That's the- oh wow, that's a yoga studio now. I bet you'd be good at child pose. There's the library. We'll have to get set up with a library card and find out when they have storytimes, huh? That's a yarn-"

"Holy shit, Xaden? Is that you? I heard you were back in town!" A loud voice cut off my conversation with Will, and I looked up. I knew who it was before I met her eyes, though. I took a deep breath and counted to four as I looked for someplace to escape, but nothing nearby looked promising. I gave in and turned to face my ex-fiancee.

"Cat, hi."

"I almost didn't recognize you, you look like shit." The smile on her face didn't move as she said it, which was pure Catriona. Nice to know some things didn't change.

"I know." I tried to look for a bright side. If I could get through this conversation with Cat, the whole town would know whatever I told her by the end of the day. It could cut down on awkward conversations. "I'm working on that."

"And you've got a little grub, how cute!"

Will always knew when he was being talked about, and he untucked his head where he'd been laying against my chest. "Byebye?" He looked up at Cat with his big, dark eyes and for just a second I thought I saw something like an actual emotion flash across her face.

"Leaving so soon?" she asked him, but the singsong in her voice was enough to make him smile.

"He says byebye to everything, like it's aloha," I told her, unable not to smile when Will was smiling. "Cat, this is my son Willow."

She hadn't actually looked back up at me. "He's pretty cute. He must have gotten his looks from you because you don't have any left."

Okay, there was making it right and there was putting up with this. "If you just want something for the gossip mill, you can tell folks I'm back and I'm going to fix things. I'm actually on my way somewhere, so if you're just insulting me for old times' sake I'll be going."

She took a step back like I'd burned her. "Fixing things with that attitude? Yeah, that sounds like Xaden Riorson."

"I'm not sure what reparations you think I'd need to make with you. You gave as good as you got with Sage and we were already broken up by then. Or are you just enjoying that I was taken down a few pegs?" I was shivering in the chill now.

Cat sighed. "Fun was watching you self destruct at the time. That screaming match with your dad that half the town heard? That was great. Your ex making an ass of herself while you were stuck defending her? Effervescent. Looking at you shuffling around like an old man? Not fun. Depressing, really."

"So sorry for disappointing you," I said, keeping my voice even. Clearly Garrick and Imogen were a fluke and I needed to be reminded this morning that I was a fuck up. Fine. "I have to go, I don't want Will to get cold."

The whole conversation left me feeling off balance, and I arrived at Bodhi's house expecting the worst. I hesitated on the porch even when I couldn't feel the wards pushing back on me, just becuase I thought they should be.

But Bodhi welcomed me in like it was easy. Already had room for Will without having met him. Introduced me to his boyfriend like he wanted me to care about what he was doing.

It was so much easier than Dad's house was, and so then I thought maybe it wasn't that the Cardulos were an outlier. Maybe it just meant that these were the people I'd been able to breathe around before, and I still could.

By the time I left for Garrick's house, I was promising embarassing Bodhi stories to his boyfriend at dinner and feeling slightly less frozen inside.

The Cardulo house was starting to feel nearly familiar already. Will hadn't wanted to go back in the carrier so we'd walked the first block, and then Will had decided he wanted to be carried after all so I was just holding him against my hip when I knocked.

"Good to see you, man," Garrick greeted me, pulling me through the wards for another bone-crushing hug that somehow managed to avoid squishing Will at all. "Ready to get started?"

"No," I said honestly, but he just laughed. Today Garrick had me come in the front door and turn straight down the stairs to the basement where the kids were playing. While the space Imogen had met me in at the bookstore looked clean and professional, like any of the offices our parents' kept, and the parts of their home I'd seen afterward were a comfortable, lived-in kind of house, the basement was clearly the girls' domain. There was toddler-sized gymnastic equipment, a tiny kitchen, a pre-school's worth of baby dolls and the piles of books you'd expect for kids whose family owned a bookstore.

Will squirmed to get down immediately, drawn to the promise of new toys and new playmates. I set him on the floor and he toddled about five steps before stopping to look up at the girls. His head tipped so far back he fell, sitting down heavily on his bottom.

"Girls," Garrick got their attention. "this is Willow, and his dad Xaden. They're going to be spending some time with us. Play gently with Will, okay?"

"Xaden, Will, this is my oldest, Gwen-" the taller girl grinned at us and bowed like she was being introduced in a show. She was a dead ringer for Imogen at that age, except that her pale hair was as curly as her dad's. "My middlest, Lyn-" who was already taking Will's hand and helping him up, before leading him over to the tiny kitchen. She looked like a Tavis, with dark hair in a mess of curls framing her round face. "And baby Avery." Younger than Will, Avery was sitting up and very intently studying a set of stacking blocks as she moved them into a row.

"I'm not surprised you guys already have three," I let myself smile a little. "They're adorable, Gar."

"Yeah, I know." He was clearly proud of his family, just like his parents always were. I remembered his mom's kitchen at least as well as my father's. Probably better; I'm sure I spent more time there, especially after my mother returned to her home when I was ten. Ma Tavis was on the list of people I needed to apologize to, but the list was so long it threatened to overwhelm me when I thought about it.

I leaned against the oversized couch in the middle of the space. "So what did you have in mind?"

"Well my goal is to reintroduce you into your natural habitat," he grinned, "but first we have to rehabilitate you."

I rolled my eyes. "I'm not playing wildlife sanctuary, Tavis, come on."

"Hey, it's a metaphor but it's a good one!" he insisted. "Look, once you're feeling better you'll be in a better position to want to talk to people again. Not to mention you're about as skinny as I was when I was twelve and that is not a good look on you."

"I'm not..."

"You really kinda are. Come on, let me show you my workout routine these days."

I wondered if he had a weight room tucked back somewhere, though I didn't see many doors. The walls were painted with different colors and giant flowers bloomed on all four walls. When I looked closer, I could see runes worked into the design, making up the detailed center of each flower. Looking at them too long threatened a headache.

"I didn't exactly dress for this," I said, looking dubiously at my jeans. "I had an argument with my dad and left a little faster than I meant to. Are we going somewhere?"

"Nope, I do it right here." He clapped his hands. "Girls! Workout time! Bring Will and Avery over please." Gwen carefully picked up Avery and Lyn giggled as she walked Will over.

"Avery gets to play today?" Gwen asked, sounding surprised. "I thought she was too light for you."

"Xaden's going to start with Avery and work his way up."

Now that seemed unnecessary. "I carry Will around every day," I pointed out.

Making my point for me, Will toddled away from Lyn and raised his arms. "Ups!"

"You can switch to Avery when you get tired," Garrick said lightly, almost dismissively, and I did feel a flame of the old competitiveness between us. We'd always pushed each other; it was hard not to, when I was only a month older than him and our dads were partners, best friends, whatever, it meant we were around each other all the time.

"Switch? Wait, what are we doing? Where's your equipment?" I was starting to feel like this was a joke I wasn't in on, and it was getting old.

"You've heard of bodyweight workouts? This is a babyweight workout." Garrick got down in a position to do pushups, gesturing for me to follow him. I did as he instructed, and when I looked back over at him I saw the two older girls had climbed up to sit on his back. "You can do this part without anybody on you though, just to start."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "Will, backpack."

Will obediently started to stumble toward me, laying across the back of my neck. I reached behind me to adjust him so he was laying between my shoulders, his arms wrapped around my neck. He giggled.

The girls were also giggling, and Garrick was smirking. "If you insist. Okay, here we go-"

Despite my certainty that I would be fine, my muscles started to burn sooner than I was ready to admit defeat. Garrick called it before I had to, though, which I appreciated. Not that I'd admit it.

"Now on your back," he said, and Will climbed out of the way before I flipped over. "Will, can you get on your papa's legs?" It was leg lifts, and somehow again Garrick stopped us both just before I had to worry about dropping Will. Then it was time for bench presses, and I finally admitted that this was harder than I'd thought.

"You're really okay letting me do this with your baby?" I asked him. I was almost hesitant to pick her up. She was bigger than Will had been at her age but smaller than any baby I'd handled in a while.

"If you're worried about it," he said, making sure it was clear he wasn't, "I'll spot you, okay?"

I realized I didn't have eyes on Will, though it only took a second to spot him at the play kitchen with Garrick's girls. Gwen seemed to be giving a cooking lesson, and something about the way she had one hand on her hip and was waving a wooden spoon with the other reminded me so much of Imogen that it startled me. Avery was starting to fuss and when I looked back at Garrick there was concern on his face.

"Where'd you go?" he asked.

"The way Gwen's giving orders over there, it was like looking at mini Imogen." I laid back down, setting Avery on my chest for a moment while I stretched my arms.

"Yeah, I see so much of her mother in her every day." Garrick's face went soft. "You sure you're good? We can pick up again on Tuesday."

"Garrick, if you imply again that I can't lift a literal infant I will punch you."

He laughed. "You can try, honey bear." He showed me how to arrange my hands so I was supporting Avery on both sides, and just like he'd promised, his own strong hands were never more than an inch away from mine. When he stopped me, my arms had started to burn again, but it felt good.

He scooped Avery out of my hands and I sat up. I expected him to move around me, maybe to offer me a hand to help me up, but instead I felt him pressing against my back. He was so warm and solid, like a sun-warmed rock I could lean against on a summer afternoon, and it was easy to let my thoughts drift away while I watched Will play with the girls.

By the time I realized I was half dozing and half wanting more physical contact, I was glad he was behind me so he couldn't see whatever blush was on my face.

"How do you usually do that lift? I can't imagine Gwen's that much of a challenge by herself." I needed to distract myself before I got too comfortable.

"Sometimes Lyn sits on Gwen and they have to balance, and sometimes I use actual weights."

"Sometimes he lifts Mama!" Gwen demonstrated that she was listening.

I desperately wanted to raise an eyebrow at that, but since I wasn't facing him, Garrick couldn't appreciate it. "I wouldn't have thought she was into that."

"That one time was because Gwen wanted to know if I could," he said. "But… I think she was more into it than she expected, too."

"Sometimes I practice picking up Lyn so I can be strong too." She demonstrated by putting her arms around her sister's waist and hauling her off the ground. Lyn kicked at the air until she got loose and dropped to the floor, yelling the whole time. She disappeared behind the beat-up couch, but Gwen was paying attention now, her eyes curious. "Can you lift Willow's daddy?"

I snorted, fully expecting Garrick to laugh too, but instead he made a sort of thoughtful sound. When I turned to look he was considering me. "I doubt you weigh much more than Imogen at the moment, Xay, I bet I could bench you without breaking a sweat."

My heart raced a little more than was probably healthy. "Bet."

It was only seconds before he was on his back again, guiding me to lean backward in the strangest trust fall I could remember doing. All of the kids were watching now; Lyn had come out from behind the couch and even Avery seemed riveted.

"Just hold your core tight. It's like doing a plank," Garrick advised as he nestled one hand between my shoulder blades and the other under my ass.

Fucking hell, stop making this weird, I yelled at myself, trying to keep my face as rigid as my muscles as Willow and the girls started to keep count. I hadn't reacted to Garrick like this for years even before Sage was in the picture. He and Im had three kids. Why couldn't my body get the memo? I must have been even more touch-starved than I realized. Suddenly I was glad I'd worn jeans after all.

I don't know how long he was planning to go on; my body shook from the strain of holding the pose before he was even close to seeming tired. He set me down gently and I found my head on his chest, not quite sitting up on the floor next to him. The girls took this as their cue to jump on us and Willow followed their example.

The tickle fight that ensued was vicious and we were badly outnumbered. Finally Garrick tapped out for both of us. Willow was past his nap time and he climbed up onto Garrick's chest next to me before falling dead asleep. Lyn must have followed; I couldn't see her from my position but I heard a second small set of lungs breathing in and our next to my head. Gwen murmured something about not being tired, which I assumed meant she was going to nap too.

Avery crawled over to me and pushed herself up enough to climb into my lap. I tried not to think, until the sound of Garrick snoring joined all of the others.

Well, I couldn't exactly get up then, could I? I let myself doze and not quite think so much as watch my feelings float by. I was starting to feel properly relaxed when I heard Imogen's voice.

I startled awake, realizing she was laughing. When I looked over, she had her phone out and pointed at us.

"Well that's my new lockscreen," she said, looking very pleased with herself. "I'd ask you to stay for dinner, Xaden, but I hear you're eating with Bodhi and the new guy tonight."

"Thanks anyway," I told her as I shook the sleep out of my head. "Come on, Will, let's go home to grandpa."

ig @ridoculous

[photo of absolutely scenic woods that I took on the way into town with Violet]

So guys.
Guys.
Guys, I think I'm in a Hallmark movie.
I'm moving to the woods like a fucking hipster.
But isn't it gorgeous here?

—

unlockyourheart: traitor! I can't believe you're going to abandon me to (checks notes) drink good coffee and make fun of tourists all by myself
donansclimbinggym: Blink twice if you've been kidnapped by faeries. We'll rescue you.
ridoculous: I don't need to be rescued from fairies all the fairies I know are in Seattle
sisterpiersmorgaine: if you need rescuing the fairies will ride to your rescue, dear.
ridoculous: I love you all so much and I find it worrying you all think I need to be rescued

—

r/seattle

hey guys!

I'm joining the masses packing up and moving to the country and that means I need to clear out my apartment and storage unit. Furniture, kitchen stuff, all the boring shit- if you need it or know someone who needs it, hit me up for a Wednesday pickup, otherwise it's all going to Community Warehouse on Thursday.

I've also got some stuff they won't take, because I'm not expecting to be running stuff for Safe Kink Seattle anymore too, so if you need a box of demonstration dildos, I'm your guy for that too!

—

#general, Safe Kink Seattle discord

visionaryvaren: @ridoculous explain your post in r/Seattle right now

ridoculous: I think it's pretty clear? oh shit did I forget to finish my sentence again?

visionaryvaren: Ridoc you can't abandon us! And by us I mean me! I can't run all these kink demos by myself and nobody shows up reliably like you do.

ridoculous: I'm sorry! It's too far for me to go back and forth all the time though

visionaryvaren: I want the box of dildos

ridoculous: Of course you do. Never doubted you.

visionaryvaren: AND I want to see you before you leave, dildos or no dildos! What the hell are you doing in the country anyway?

ridoculous: Moving to the country gonna eat a lot of peaches. Well, one specific peach of an ass.

visionaryvaren: Ohhhhh it's for a new SO? I'll just hold onto the dildos for now and return them when you end up back here in six months.

ridoculous: Fuck you Tyvon

visionaryvaren: I would be up for it but you're moving away.

—

I paused before continuing to argue with him and looked toward the half-closed door of Bodhi's office. Okay, Tyvon was right that the six months we dated was a personal best for commitment. That didn't mean anything. Everyone else just wasn't Bodhi.

While I hadn't run into anything I couldn't do on my phone yet, not having my laptop handy was grating on me just a little bit while I had to keep track of conversations on discord and messenger and I was sure I was forgetting something…

Oh! I opened up a text to Violet.

—

Me: hey Vi can I borrow your mom car this week?

Vi: I thought you were going to rent a car to get home?

Me: I was… but it seems silly to rent a car and then rent a uhaul just to come back.

Vi: Ridoc! That explains why I've gotten texts from three different people asking if you're being held prisoner.

Me: I mean why not? I've done crazier things for less sexy reasons

Vi: You're never allowed to make a uhaul lesbian joke again.

Me: he's taking me to dinner to meet his family tonight

Vi: Oh Riorson Sunday Dinner? Good luck with that.

Me: why did you say it like that

Me: vi?????? whyy did you say it like that?????

—

With no response from Violet and not wanting to defend my honor any further online, I opened up one of the books about magic, a picture book about cute foxes with strings connecting them. It didn't say much about magic by name, but I figured I'd get there later.

"Thank you so much for making time for me today, Mr. Riorson, I can't tell you how much I appreciate it," Bodhi's client was saying as he walked her out of his office.

His smile at her was so soft and warm I couldn't help smiling just looking at him. I was happy he was done, though, so I could have that smile turned back on me.

"Time to get ready for dinner?" I asked him once the door was closed.

"We have a little time before that, probably…" his mouth stretched into a wider, sexier grin. "If you're not too busy with your phone."

"There is literally nothing on my phone I'm more interested in than your cock," I said, nearly knocking over the chair in my eagerness to get up.

While we were showering after, it took all my self control to keep my hand from drifting down Bodhi's body again. How was this man so perfect? "What am I going to do with myself when I go back to Seattle to get my stuff?"

"I was thinking I'd ask my boss for a few days off to help," he said casually. "I'll see him tonight."

"Right. Uncle Mayor Boss Fen."

"Technically I report to Rory Tavis and Noah reports to Uncle Fen, just to make it a little less awkward," Bodhi clarified. "But Rory will be at dinner too."

"Does that mean you're also a Tavis?"

"A couple of generations back, but so's everybody. That's not why they come to family dinner. Mom and Uncle Fen and the Tavises are close, and between me bringing someone and Xaden being back, they'll want to be there."

Oh, this was going to be so much more complicated than I'd pictured it. "What if I'm bad with names?"

"You met Xaden and Willow, and my mom's name is Aoibhe and she and Uncle Fen both kind of look like an older version of me, and the only other people there should be the Tavises."

"And yet I'm going to forget their names and embarass myself, aren't I? I probably am."

Bodhi turned around to face me then, his body blocking the water as he looked at me. "Ridoc. You're wonderful and you'll be fine, but even if you… I don't know. Even if you asked my mother if she was Uncle Fen and then tripped and pulled the tablecloth and all of dinner on the floor on top of you, you'd still be perfect."

"I appreciate your confidence in my perfection," I said, meeting his eyes as he leaned in to kiss me. The warm water washed over his shoulders, running down his collarbones and then onto me, and washed my anxiety away along with it.

Well, not all of my anxiety, but most of it. Enough of it.

Between the laundry and borrowing from Bodhi's closet, I managed to get into what he called presentable shape. "I've never met somebody's parents before. Well, not while I was dating them, anyway," I admitted, sitting on my hands to keep myself from wanting to peel him out of an absolutely deliciously-fitted dark green button-down shirt.

"Does that mean you met them before, or after?" he asked as we stepped out onto the adorable porch of his adorable house again.

"Well, I dated in high school but that was a pretty small town, so parents I knew before. And I met Violet's mom like twice ever, which was twice too many." I wondered if his plan was to keep me distracted while we walked over to his mom's house so I couldn't get anxious again. It was sunset when we stepped outside and we were walking directly west; I had to keep shielding my eyes so I didn't get blinded. "And I never met Liam's parents until Isaac came out to help Violet move."

"Yeah, folks here don't tend to leave town much," Bodhi said, as vaguely as possible.

"I did notice the thing where they had a family-only wedding thing that I was specifically told not to mention around Violet's mom," I admitted, dredging up the memory. I hadn't asked questions because they clearly didn't want me to ask questions, but I had definitely noticed. And it was the same when Clarity was born and they went to introduce her to Liam's home town, which sounded entirely different now that he'd heard the way Bodhi and his cousin spoke about the land itself. And Liam's funeral was out of town and then we had the celebration of life.

When I wandered back out of my thoughts, we were standing in front of a big-ass gingerbread house that looked like it was the bed and breakfast the main character was staying at in the Hallmark romantasy movie that was now my life.

I leaned over to Bodhi. "So… how many people live here?"

"Four, now that Xaden and Willow moved home."

"That seems… overkill." Especially if it was just Bodhi's mom and uncle last week. Sheesh, who wants to clean that much house?

Bodhi just shrugged. "Mom suggested I move out when I started butting heads with Uncle Fen a few years ago."

"No, I don't mean just- even with you there it seems huge."

"Do me a favor, love? Don't say that to Uncle Fen."

Ohhhh shit. Now I was going to be thinking about not saying that all evening, wasn't I?

Bodhi had already started up the walk so I hurried to catch up to him before he had to look for me. He didn't bother knocking, just stepped inside and slipped his shoes and hoodie off inside the door, so I followed his example.

Will was in the living room, pulling a wooden toy on wheels around and around his father while he yelled. It took me a minute to catch the "dragon roar!" and see that was what the little wooden figure was.

"Uh-oh, Bodhi," I said when I saw Will had noticed us. "There's a dragon in the living room."

Bodhi and his cousin both immediately burst into laugher. Way more laughter than the comment deserved, even as Will announced to me that he was the dragon, which somehow made them laugh harder. I assumed it was an inside joke and brushed it off.

"Good to see you again," I told Xaden, and then looked back at Bodhi. "Should we just get comfortable in here or what?"

"Dinner's ready and the Tavises should be here any minute," Xaden answered instead. Before I could ask anything else, the door opened again and an older couple bustled in with a pair of toddlers holding hands between them. Xaden nodded. "Looks like they brought company for Will."

Bodhi had already gone back over to the door, taking their coats while they told him he didn't have to and greeting the toddlers that he obviously already knew. The two little kids were set loose to join Will in the living room and Bodhi waved me over.

"I won't keep you waiting for an introduction," he was saying to them. "This is Ridoc Gamlyn, who's going to be moving to town this week. Ridoc, this is Rory Tavis, my boss, and his wife Lea."

"You can call me Ma, dear, everyone does."

I looked at Bodhi. "Everyone?" I hadn't even had the chance to tell Bodhi about my mother dying when I was a kid, and somehow the sudden prospect of someone telling me to call her Ma was much more overwhelming than I'd expected.

If she noticed, she was too polite to say so. "Aside from my grandkids, of course! They call me Grandma."

"That'd be weird if they didn't," I nodded, trying to keep myself from being awkward. Bodhi and Rory were talking quietly about days out of the office and appointments as a woman came in from another doorway and called for everyone to make their way to the food. She had the same warm skin tone and smile as Bodhi did, so it was easy to recognize her as his mom.

Behind her was the man who could only be Uncle Mayor Boss Fen, and while the smile on his mother's face looked more like what I expected Bodhi's future might be, I decided I at least would not be disappointed if Bodhi also resembled his uncle at that age.

I shook my head as I sat down. Since when did I daydream about the future with somebody? Maybe I was being kidnapped by fairies. Shit, what were the rules in fairy tales?

Be polite? I was doing my best. Don't take any food or drink? Well that ship had sailed already, and dinner smelled amazing…

Ah, fuck it, if I was in a romantasy I could do worse than being kidnapped by a handsome fairy, right?

Dinner started with an unbelievably awkward apology from Xaden to the Tavises, and thankfully they cut him off and put him out of his misery faster than Bodhi had earlier. Nobody wants to listen to a guy who looks like he's dying apologize for getting cancer, which is about what it sounded like. I was incredibly curious about the dirt with his ex, but I focused on making a good first impression.

That didn't mean no gossip, of course. It meant the right gossip.

I managed to cajole a story out of Bodhi's mom about how she used to catch him reading after bedtime and they ended up in a war of mutually assured magical destruction where he taught himself new and different types of magic flashlight spells and she tried to dispell or negate them until he managed to make his bed glow brightly for a week and he had to sleep in the guest room until it wore off.

Bodhi and Xaden spent a few minutes talking about embarassing things each of them had done as kids- the time Bodhi locked himself out of the house and panicked, the time Xaden locked himself in the house and panicked, and several stories from one or the other of the Tavises that started "we had the boys in the kitchen and-"

When Bodhi's mom asked about me coming into town with Violet originally, I took the excuse to turn to Bodhi. "Did you know I introduced Violet and Liam?"

His eyes sparkled as he answered. Sparkled like a god-damn fairy prince. "I don't think it ever came up beyond knowing someone had introduced them."

"Yeah, I dated both of them and then I had the urge to third-wheel myself." Everyone at the table laughed at that, and I gave myself a point. I was going to get a good grade in Meeting My Boyfriend's Mom, something that was both normal to want and possible to do.

"Have you met Violet's family, then?" Mrs. Tavis asked. (I wasn't ready to call her Ma yet.)

"Sort of. She doesn't have a lot, just her sister and her mom. Her sister's pretty great, I met her a couple of times. Her mom…" I trailed off, not sure if it was quite the first impression I wanted to make.

I looked at Bodhi, trying to convey the question with my eyes. Because it's entirely normal to expect your eyes to be able to say 'is it weird if I say bad things about Violet's mom to people I just met, even if they're true?' But he just nodded, like he knew what I was thinking and wanted me to go ahead.

"Right after Liam died, when she came back from- oh, right, that family-only funeral would have been here." I plunged straight ahead, trying not to let it get awkward. "Anyway, Violet didn't want to get out of bed at first. Her sister flew in and the two of us basically tag-teamed her to take care of Claire and make sure Vi ate and showered. She looked so lonely in her bed though, even with Tairn curled up at her feet, and we had the celebration of life for Liam coming up, so I went in and laid down next to her so she at least had company."

"Aww, that's sweet of you," Bodhi's mom said, encouraging me. "Just her sister, though?"

"Her mom finally flies in that afternoon, the day before the celebration. She stomps in and the first thing I hear is her complaining about Violet's support dog and her support gay sharing the bed with her."

Fen coughed like he was choking on something and Mrs Tavis gasped, but it was too late to stop now so I just had to hope for the best. "I told her, that's support bisexual slut to you, thank you, and someone who just got here a month after Liam died and is flying out again on Monday doesn't get to judge Violet's support network."

It was quiet for a minute- really just long enough for me to decide I'd ruined everything- and then Mrs. Tavis tsked and shook her head. "Oh that poor girl. I'm so glad Cass and Isaac are taking care of her."

"To think she'd say something like that about a cù sìth," Fen sounded downright offended, but not at me, and I didn't know what a kooshy was anyway.

"Good thing she had you to look after her too," Bodhi's mom nodded, and now she was sparkling a little bit like her son. The conversation moved on to what the Mairis were doing and then on through whatever else was in progress in town. Most of it didn't sink in and I was okay letting it wash over me. I noticed that Bodhi and Xaden were both largely quiet, so at least it wasn't just me.

After dinner, I picked up one of the small Tavises automatically, the way I often did with Claire when I was with Violet, and followed the conversation back into the sitting room. Xaden sat on the floor, pulling out some blocks for Will and the other boy to play with.Bodhi took an armchair and I sat at his feet almost automatically, talking to the toddler. It turned out she had a lot of strong opinions about what shapes things should be, so I was perfectly happy letting her explain about bad squares and good circles to me until Mr. Tavis got my attention.

"So, Ridoc… how are you feeling about everything?" He gestured at himself and his wife, Bodhi's mom and uncle, and then widely in the direction of Main Street. "I imagine it's a lot at once for someone new to our lifestyle."

Xaden made a sound that might have been a snicker or might have been him choking on a peanut, it was hard to tell.

"It's interesting! Apparently there's picture books to start with and I met the lady who runs Playdate Coffee and she offered to study with me." There were nods from several of the… I kept wanting to think of them as the adults even though I was also an adult. Clearly they were adultier adults.

"Aren't you worried about leaving your family and friends behind?" Fen asked, leaning foward, and I realized very suddenly that there was probably a right and a wrong answer.

"Well, I- I mean, Violet's here, and Seattle isn't that far and my dad isn't that much farther, and as far as I know social media still works here…?" I tried to look up at Bodhi, but the toddler in my lap put her hand in my mouth and pulled my head back down. Dang that kid was strong.

Mrs Tavis called the girl over to her, freeing my jaw just in time for Aoibhe to ask, "Are you close to your family?"

"I usually go see my dad two or three times a year, but it's just the two of us. Sometimes I help out with the harvest, if he can't find enough help to clear the bog." Did that make me sound like a hick? Was sounding like a hick good to people in a small town?

"But you're not attached to the land there?" Fen asked, a little more pointedly, and suddenly I realized I was reading this wrong. They weren't worried that I wasn't good enough. They were probably worried I was going to convince Bodhi to run away with me, or get bored and go back to Seattle and break his heart.

"Uncle Fen, I'm carrying his mark, he's not claimed anywhere else," Bodhi said, and he rested his hands on either side of my neck. I relaxed, closing my eyes and leaning back against his legs. "He's known me three days and he's moving here, I don't need you pushing him."

"I'm not pushing him," Fen said, and I wasn't looking but someone must have stared him down because he followed up a minute later with "What? I'm not."

The next voice was Aoibhe and I was pleased with myself for recognizing it already. "Have you got any questions about magic so far?"

"Auntie Aoibhe teaches theory at the university," Xaden explained, his voice quiet. "Her classes were some of my favorites."

"Oh, that's sweet, thank you dear."

"I don't think I know enough to even have questions," I admitted. "I read the picture book with the foxes and the string. It was cute." I opened my eyes, the better to be ready if there was going to be a pop quiz or something.

Bodhi's mom looked approving. If it was a test, I supposed I was doing okay so far. "That's a good start. Strings are a popular visualization for new learners, they're easy to picture and to manipulate."

"Like pulling on them, in the book? Or like a guitar?" I could picture a magical guitar, that was easy. I wondered about magical air guitar for a minute.

"Probably more like a piano or a harp," Fen interrupted my thought. Air piano didn't have the same vibe. "There's a lot more than six. But once you can pull on the string you can do basic magic like using a rune to keep yourself warm."

Aoibhe spoke over him. "Not just pulling on them. You can take strings and bend them or knot them into shapes called runes; there ought to be a primer on those you can try when you're ready. And there's other ways you can use strings to create what you want."

Okay. That made sense. "Like amigurumi."

"Like what?" Rory leaned in. "I didn't catch that word."

"Amigurumi," I repeated, slower, since I tended to smush the syllables together. "It's a kind of crochet where you make little people and animals and things. My friend Aurelie taught me a couple years ago. She made a life-size version of herself once for a gallery show. She said you can make anything if you have enough time and enough string."

Aoibhe looked approving. "You'll do just fine, dear."

Later when we were walking back to Bodhi's house, I shivered.

"Watch," he told me. He pulled a little string of light out of… somewhere? His belly button? His chest? Thin air? And then twisted it up like a paperclip and pressed it into my my jacket. The light disappeared, but the mark stayed like it had been burned onto the fabric, and a moment later I realized I wasn't cold anymore.

Bodhi took my hand and we kept walking.

"If you think about it, we're all made of string," he said quietly, swinging my hand a little with each step. "Blood vessels and nerves and muscles and tendons."

I nodded. "And intestines."

He kissed my forehead. "And intestines, sure. There's also the channels in your body that magical energy moves in, your meridians."

"And the strings outside my body, connecting me to other people. Connecting me to you." I leaned into him. "I like those better than intestines."

I peeked in at the girls one last time on my way to the bedroom. Gwen and Lyn were cuddled together in Lyn’s bed, Lyn’s teddy bear crushed between them, sound asleep. Avery had rolled over in her crib and was tucked up in child pose with her thumb in her mouth. When Gwen was a baby, I probably would have rolled her back over and ended up accidentally waking her, but I was a lot more relaxed about everything three kids in, and I let Avery be.

I changed into pajamas, brushed my teeth, and was in the middle of brushing and re-braiding my hair when Garrick came in. “That didn’t take long. Wards behaving themselves tonight?”

"Yeah. Everything's quiet. Somebody likes having Xaden back." Garrick snickered to himself as he started changing out of his day clothes.

“Besides you?” I asked, arching an eyebrow. His excitement was still palpable hours after Xaden and Will had gone back to Riorson House.

"And you?" He dropped his shirt on the floor, caught my eye, and immediately picked it back up and threw it in the hamper.

“The energy is already improving.” I tied off the end of my braid and slid under the covers, sitting up against the pillows to watch him. “I can’t remember the last time you all took a nap in the middle of the day.”

"I figured I'd have to make it up after dinner, but nope." Garrick smirked at me as he stripped down to his boxers. "Should I even bother putting on sleep pants, Mims?"

Dread pushed against my good mood. “Depends on how you feel when I say we should probably talk about Xaden.”

He put on the sleep pants and turned off the light before climbing into bed beside me. "What part do we need to talk about?"

“We were kids, and now we have kids, and… I don’t know, I feel like we should talk about…” I shifted down until my head was on the pillow. “What we want? What we need from each other?” I was starting to regret starting this conversation, which meant that we really did need to have it.

"Shouldn't Xaden be part of the conversation, then? If he doesn't want anything-"

“No,” I blurted. “No, we need to have this conversation first, because I don’t want any of us to feel pressured to make a decision to not disappoint somebody else. Because what Xaden does or doesn’t want doesn’t matter if we’re not open to it. And also… straight men don’t cuddle with their friends like that, I’m told.” Thinking about the nap pile brought the smile back to my face.

"I hope you're not expecting me to no homo my best friend," he grumbled, and then his voice softened. He put his arm around me. "What are you worried about?"

I didn’t reply right away, staring up into the darkness and breathing in the warmth of his scent. “I know you loved him first,” I whispered. This was a negotiation I never expected to have to have.

"I loved both of you. Love both of you." Garrick tugged me closer until my head was laying on his chest. "If it was up to me there never would have been a choice. But I love you and the girls more than anything, and I won't risk that for anything. So if you have a hard line, tell me where it is and it's solid."

“Nothing that will hurt the girls,” I said. “So even if it goes sideways, we have to still be friends, because… well, Aretia.” The fact of small town life, the larger truth of our responsibilities to the town and the land. Our families had to cooperate.

"What could I possibly do that would hurt the girls?" he asked with genuine confusion.

“Run off with Willow’s daddy and leave them behind?” I suggested mildly. My training had emphasized the importance of saying the worst possible thing, because not saying it gave it a creeping power.

Garrick choked. "You can't think I would do that!"

“You asked what you could possibly do, not what I thought you would do, Gare. I don’t think you would, no. But you wanted to know my hard line, and that’s it. I want this to lead to more people loving the girls, not fewer.”

"Yeah, but I said I wouldn't risk you and the girls and that was why I wanted to know your line, Gen. I'm not going to hurt the girls, I wouldn't ever leave them, but I want to know what would hurt you."

“Running off with Willow’s daddy and leaving me behind. I’m not worried about anything rational, just not being important to you any more.”

He stroked my head the same way he would comfort Gwen after a nightmare. "You've been right here with me the whole time. There were times you were my whole world, and sometimes when I hold you it still feels like you are even if that's not fair to the girls. I can still love Xaden like I did when we were teenagers because he hasn't been here, and that sounds fucked up but it's true. But you've been with me at my worst, Gen. If you stop being important to me, it's because I died." His voice rumbled under my cheek, warm and growly.

“I told you it was irrational,” I muttered. “What’s your hard line?”

"Why would I need a hard line?" Garrick paused. "Does that mean you want to- to be all in? Or you're open to it?"

I considered this. “What’s your ideal situation look like?”

He snorted. "I don't know. All three of us in a big house with all four kids? Maybe five? Maybe… I don't know. I feel like I don't know the words for what I want. How am I supposed to want something and not know what it is?"

“That’s something. I’m wondering if that’s why we’ve been feeling like our family’s not complete but trying for another baby isn’t the answer.” This was close to saying what I hoped for, and while my trained and rational mind could see that speaking something could make it more real, there was an anxious part that worried about scaring it away. It was a delicate new hope, fluttering damp wings in my heart.

"Maybe." He stared up for a long minute. "You okay, though?"

“I think my brain is grabbing onto irrational fears to keep me from getting too excited, or having expectations? Maybe he’s not interested in anything.”

"He's got a lot to work through, so I figured I'd just see what happened. Today surprised me, though. He seemed to want closeness more than anything. So we can start there, you know?"

“Yeah. That’s why I wanted to have this conversation tonight - not because I think anything will happen any time soon, but I want to start the dialogue so we’re ready if and when it does. I love you, Gare, and you’re not a fast processor; I want you to have time to think about everything first.”

"Slow and steady wins the race, babe. That's why you're the one in my bed." He rolled onto his side, shifting me so that he could press his lips into mine.

Mommy: Drive careful, Birdie

Me: I will, don’t worry

Me: And Ridoc already said he’ll drive in the city

Mommy: My hero, taking care of my boy

”You ready?” I shoved my phone in my pocket and double-checked that I had my wallet.

”Yep,” Ridoc nodded, pulling on his Legend of Zelda hoodie. “Vi’s waiting for us.”

”Let’s go, then.” I grabbed my own Stanford hoodie and my keys and led the way out the door, pulling the wards tight as I locked up. “I can’t even tell you how long it’s been since I’ve been to Seattle.”

“Ooh, we should do something you can’t do in Aretia while we’re there. Do you like karaoke? Or drag?” He turned and walked backwards to face me, watching my expression with bright eyes.

”Drag… racing?”

Ridoc laughed. “You went to college in California as an out gay man, don’t try and convince me that you don’t know what drag is, Bodhi Riorson.”

“Okay, you got me,” I grinned at him. “I do like drag; I did it a couple of times in law school. Friend of mine convinced me it would cure my fear of public speaking.”

”Ohhhh, I need all the details. Are there pictures?”

”A few. Not on my phone, though. I’ll show you when we get back.” We turned down the Mairis’ street, and I caught sight of Vi and Sloane hanging out at the end of the driveway. Sloane waved, and I waved back. “We can talk about it in the car?”

”You don’t want people to know?” His grin faltered and his brows drew together.

”I don’t want some people to know. There are reasons, and I’ll tell you everything in the car.”

”I’ll hold you to that.” He dashed off to give Violet a hug, murmuring something to her that I didn’t catch but that made a sudden flood of jealousy swirl in my stomach. He’d dated Violet before she met Liam, and she was far from the only woman he’d been with; what if he wasn’t content with just me?

I kept my misgivings to myself and smiled at them. “Thanks for letting us borrow your car, Violet,” I said, reaching into my pocket and unhooking my key fob from the rest of the keys. “If you need to drive anywhere while we’re gone, feel free to use mine.”

“Really?” Sloane demanded, whirling on Ridoc. “Have you been brainwashing him, or what? Bodhi never lets anybody drive his car.”

“I’m just that good in bed,” he grinned back, winking at her.

“I don’t need to -” Violet started.

I held up a hand to forestall her. “I just don’t want to leave you reliant on anyone else because you’ve graciously let us borrow yours,” I protested. “Babies know when it’s the absolute wrong time to have an emergency, and that’s when they’ll have one. And nobody else needs to drive my car.” I handed Violet my key fob on its Kirby keychain and gave a sideways look at Sloane. “Don’t let mini-Mairi drive my car.”

Violet laughed and took it, handing me her keyring in exchange. I clipped it to the rest of my keys with the green carabiner I kept attached to them. “I will treat it as the great responsibility it clearly is.”

Sloane grumbled, and Ridoc laughed, and then he and I shoved our bags in the back and got in - well, I started to get in but I had to adjust Violet’s seat back as far as it would go before I could actually get behind the wheel, and then adjust everything else to nearly the opposite angle from where it had been, and it’s one thing to recognize that a woman is significantly shorter than you and something entirely else to try and drive that woman’s SUV.

Eventually, I got everything adjusted, and we waved to Violet and Sloane as I pulled out of the driveway and started heading out of town.

Ridoc started fiddling with his phone, and it took me until I was pulling into the gas station by the freeway to realize that the stereo had automatically connected to it and he had put the music on. “Road trip mix!” he grinned.

“Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his pie hole,” I retorted.

“Ooh, are we going for a brotherly vibe? Kinky!”

“Never mind. The music is all yours,” I groaned. “Road trip snacks?”

”Always. I am a master of road trip snacks.”

”I don’t know what that means, but lead the way.”

Ciaran looked up as the bells on the door jangled. “Hey, Bodhi.”

”Hey, Ciaran,” I waved. “This is my boyfriend Ridoc.”

”Nice to meet you. New in town?”

”So new,” Ridoc said. “Just got here on Friday.”

”Welcome to Aretia, then. You guys heading somewhere?”

”Gotta get my stuff from Seattle, clean out my old apartment.”

I started wandering the snack aisles as they chatted, picking out a bag of pistachios and some dried fruit, then grabbing a bottle of cold brew before coming back to the front. At no point had Ridoc stopped talking to Ciaran, but he had five different kinds of candy, several bags of chips, and a giant cup of soda piled at the register. “How did you -“ I started to ask, then shook my head. “Never mind.” I added my snacks to the pile and laughed at the size of the bag Ciaran filled as I paid for all of it. “By ‘master of road trip snacks’ you mean ‘headed for a sugar high,’ right?” I asked as we got back in Violet’s SUV.

”Sugar highs are a myth spread by Big Parent to stop people from eating snacks.”

I burst out laughing at that, shaking my head. “I love you.”

“I love you too.” He tore open a bag of Skittles and held them out.

Sighing, I reached in. “These are… smaller than I remember,” I said, looking at them in my palm.

He held up the bag triumphantly. “They’re little! Little Skittles.”

”Oh, fuck, I have no resistance to small food.”

”Right? Small food is the best. Now, tell me about your drag life and why you don’t want people to know about it.”

I pulled onto the highway headed west. ”It’s not that I don’t want people to know about it, it’s Sloane in particular, because I don’t want her to try and recruit me to her crazy theater-kid antics.”

”Oh! Okay.” He laughed, visibly relaxing. “I was worried -“

“That I was trying to hide my shameful drag past?”

”Well… everybody seems cool so far, but…”

“Honestly, if I’d done it long enough that I felt like I could do my own makeup, I wouldn’t even worry about telling her. But I didn’t, and I don’t want to try and figure it out with YouTube tutorials or episodes of Drag Race, you know?”

“You can learn a lot from YouTube makeup tutorials, but I get you. But did it work?”

“Pardon?”

“You said drag was supposed to cure your fear of public speaking. Did it work?”

“Oh! Right. Kind of.”

“Kind of?”

I nodded. “Turns out that Miss Coco is a natural performer, but she didn’t help Bodhi Durran in class or in court. Because she’s not me.”

He frowned at that. “Wait, I thought your last name was Riorson.”

“It is. But also it’s not. That’s the trick.”

“Now you’ve lost me.”

“Sorry. My last name is kind of complicated.”

“I’ve got time,” Ridoc said, grinning at me.

“My mom and Uncle Fen are twins. Riorson is their last name. My dad’s last name is Durran. So the name on my birth certificate is Riorson-Durran. But that’s a mouthful, so mostly I used Durran. I was supposed to be the spare, you know?” I scratched my forearm where the Riorson mark swirled.

“After Xaden?” He dug around in the snack bag and produced a bag of small M&Ms. I took some when he held them out, and then some more when there weren’t any green ones.

“Yeah. He was supposed to be the Speaker, like Uncle Fen. I majored in public health as an undergrad, because I expected to support him and Imogen like my mom does for Uncle Fen and Auntie Alda. But then he fucked off and I ended up going to law school.”

“I don’t want to sound like your therapist, but how did that make you feel?”

I laughed. “I was pissed, at first. But turned out I really liked law school, and I really like practicing law, and I think Xaden would’ve been miserable. So it worked out.”

“Except for the fear of public speaking.”

“Right! So Miss Coco could perform, and that meant that there was a way I could perform. Except that I hate being the center of attention. So I invented a persona. Bodhi Durran,” I pointed to myself, thumb against my chest, “is quiet, soft-spoken, hates being the center of attention. Bodhi Riorson,” I gestured outward one-handed as if I were presenting myself, “wants to be listened to, is a good attorney and a leader in his community. When I put on my lawyer clothes, Bodhi Riorson performs. And it turns out that Bodhi Durran is a good listener and works well with clients. I can get them to trust me and talk to me in ways a more… traditional… attorney can’t.”

“Have I mentioned that you’re a genius?”

“Only in contexts involving my mouth.” I smirked.

“Well, it turns out that you’re a genius in contexts not involving your mouth, too.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

Our conversation drifted through dozens of topics, telling each other stories about our histories and friendships and adventures. I found myself genuinely falling for this delightful, enthusiastic man. We were already wild about each other, and the chemistry was unlike anything I’d ever felt, but this - I liked learning about him, and I wanted more.

“So you have a storage locker just for hobbies?”

“Hobbies that require equipment, at least. My pickleball paddle is in my coat closet, but my SCA tent wouldn’t fit, and there’s a bunch of kink stuff I don’t need to access on the daily, you know?”

“What on Earth is pickleball?”

“It’s like less ambitious tennis.” He launched into an explanation, which I suspected was only interesting because Ridoc was enthusiastic about it.

“Wait, so you play pickleball because of an ex-girlfriend?”

“Nadine got me into it, and we kept playing even after we broke up.”

“And your ex Tyvon got you into Safe Kink Seattle, right?”

“Yep!”

“Do you have any hobbies unrelated to exes?”

“Video games? Oh, except I dated the kid who got me into them, but it was after.”

I considered this. “Does that mean you’re going to get into running?”

Horror splashed across his face. “Hard no. I have some boundaries.”

“Good, I’m glad to hear it. Not that I don’t want you to run with me, it’s just - boundaries, yes, and bringing you bagels after my run was nice.”

“Showering with you after your run was also nice.” He grinned.

“I could definitely get used to that.”

I forced my attention back to the road. Traffic was getting heavier as we got closer to Seattle, and I needed to pay closer attention to it. “Let me know when you want to swap,” Ridoc said, shifting in his seat.

“I will,” I assured him. “My mom was very relieved when I said you were going to do the city driving.”

“Because I know where I’m going, not because I don’t think you can do it,” he clarified.

“I know,” I smiled. “She just worries. And I really hate driving in traffic.” It was hard to admit; the small-town boy who hates big cities and too many cars felt like the kind of walking stereotype I detested.

“Doesn’t everybody? And don’t get me started on worrywart parents! My dad freaked when I said I was going to school in Seattle. He thought the Tri-Cities were dangerous.”

“Have you told him you’re moving to Aretia?”

Ridoc bit his lip. “Not - yet,” he said hesitantly. “I’m trying to think of the best way to explain it to him so he doesn’t think I’m being wildly unreliable.”

“Wildly unreliable seems like a very specific criticism,” I observed.

“Yeah, it’s kind of his thing. He doesn’t care that I’m pan, or kinky, or play pickleball, or can’t keep a relationship. He only cares that I’m a good friend and a respected member of the community, no matter what the community I choose is.”

I blew out the air in my lungs. The description reminded me of Uncle Fen so much it made my skin crawl. “Fuck, Ridoc.”

“Yeah, he’s great! Very supportive.”

Shit. Criticizing his dad was probably not on the table, then. So I needed to be careful how I phrased this. “You’re well on your way to being a respected member of Aretia, and I wouldn’t have met you if you weren’t such a good friend to Violet.”

“That’s true. I’ll have to remind him that Violet is here, so I can help support her, and you’re very into community and being a good friend. Your living room is baby-proofed and you don’t even have kids.”

“Of course it is? My friends have kids, my clients have kids, I want everyone to feel comfortable and safe in my house.”

“Yeah, my dad’s going to love you.”

Nope, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut any longer. Blame Bodhi Riorson, I guess. “Please tell me if this is out of line, but… I don’t hear much room for you in his expectations, just how you are for other people.”

He ran his hand through his curls, scrunching them until they matched his expression. “It’s not that, it’s just - he doesn’t judge me for being me. I can do whatever makes me happy. But connection is important to him - small town, you know? And one of the things he was really worried about was that I wouldn’t find my people in the big city. So it’s his way of checking that I have them.”

“If you can do whatever makes you happy without judgement, then he should be happy about you falling in love, even if it is… wildly unreliable.”

“You’re right. I just - my friends kind of flipped out, and I’m worried about my dad reacting the same way, I guess.”

“I can’t blame them. My friends understand how fated connections work, otherwise I’m sure they’d be just as freaked. It hits all the relationship red flags, just existing, because the rest of the world sees love at first sight as possible love bombing. Maybe I’m Hans from Frozen, pretending to be obsessed with your sandwiches.”

“I do make a mean sandwich,” Ridoc nodded. “Though you haven’t eaten any of them yet.”

“We have so many things to do together,” I said, merging into the exit lane.

“We can check road trip off the list!”

“Successful road trip, at least so far,” I nodded. I pulled into the nicest-looking of the gas stations and filled Violet’s tank while Ridoc went to the bathroom.

“The difference between Violet driving and you driving is wild,” Ridoc said after we’d gotten back in the car. He was adjusting the seat and the mirrors, and I was scrolling the rest of his road trip playlist. “It’s like the exact opposite of each other.”

“Remember I couldn’t even get in the car without adjusting the seat,” I laughed. “Can you?”

“Nah, not really. Vi’s tiny, unless you’re comparing her to Claire.” He pulled back into traffic with an ease that I admired.

“Most people are big, compared to infants. Even Willow’s big, compared to Claire.”

“Can I ask you a weird question?”

“Always. I love weird questions. And sandwiches.”

“Nobody’d seen Xaden in years, right?”

“Yeah. He left not long after Garrick and Imogen’s wedding.”

“Nobody knew he had a kid?”

“Right.”

“So… if the gifts are family based… what would you have done if Xaden hadn’t shown up with a kid?”

I sighed. “My mom kept hoping I would meet a girl who’d be my exception, but Imogen and I were already talking about her being a surrogate for me in a couple of years. And the bakery lesbians - Jax, Quinn, and Eya, that is - had asked me about the possibility of being their donor after Quinn finishes school.”

“I should’ve guessed you were already on top of it. You seem like the kind of guy who’s always thinking about his five-year plan.”

“Yeah, I guess so. The community’s five-year plan, if not mine specifically.”

“Even better. I hope you don’t expect me to have a five-year plan, though, because I don’t. Not beyond ‘job I like.’ And you, now.”

“Honestly? I’m glad you don’t, because the kind of person who makes detailed long-term plans is not the kind of person who drops everything to move halfway across the state to live with a guy he met on Friday.”

“It’s not halfway across the state,” RIdoc pointed out. “Only partway. But you’re right.”

“Braelyn likes to say that a relationship only has room for one type-A personality, and I knew enough couples in law school who’ve since split up to know that it’s certainly easier if both of you aren’t intensely dedicated to a high-demand career. Then again, I don’t actually know how high-demand your career is, except that you didn’t seem to be compulsively checking your email all weekend.”

Ridoc shrugged. “My job goes in cycles, and it’s a slower part right now. But I’m not equipped to work 97 hours a week, either. I need breaks.”

“Yeah, me too. There’s a reason I’m not at a prestigious firm in LA or SF, and it’s not just my family ties to Aretia. If we’re still at the office at 6:00, Ma Tavis shows up to drag Uncle Rory home, and she won’t leave until we’re all walking out the door together.”

“I have a feeling she’s going to be my favorite, then,” he grinned. “As long as I don’t actually have to call her Ma.”

“Only her actual sons call her ma; the rest of us call her Ma Tavis. But you definitely don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“Yeah, it’s just - I lost my mom when I was a kid, and….”

“Oh. Babe, no, she wouldn’t want you to call her that if it upset you. Never.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t say something sooner, I just - I didn’t want to bring down the mood before dinner, meeting everybody for the first time….”

“No, it’s fine, I get it. Do you want me to let her know you’re not comfortable, or would you rather talk to her yourself?”

“Can I think about it? I feel like there’s a correct answer but I don’t know what it is.” He slid gracefully across three lanes of traffic and took the next exit, turning into what felt to me like a quiet suburban neighborhood, mostly single-family homes.

“Of course! I’m not going to call her up right now and tell her, it can wait until we get back to Aretia at the very least.”

“Right, sure. I’ll try and figure it out before then, and if not… we can talk about it?”

“Yeah, definitely. I’m happy to help you figure out how to talk to anybody, especially the people I’ve known literally my entire life.”

“Thanks. Hey, can you grab my phone and open the Storage Locker app? Should be on the second screen.”

“Sure thing. Does that mean we’re almost -”

He turned a corner, and we were suddenly next to a big yellow building with a yellow wrought-iron fence behind it. “Yep,” he grinned, turning into a driveway that led up to a gate. I handed him the phone, and he did something in the app that caused the gate to beep and swing open.

Emptying Ridoc’s storage locker was basically the reverse of filling Violet’s, except there were fewer boxes labeled BOOKS and more boxes labeled DILDOS and GARB and POKEMON.

“How are you going to fit anything from your apartment in here?” I asked, closing the back of the SUV, which seemed pretty full to me.

“Oh, I’m not keeping everything, or even most of it,” he assured me as we climbed in. “Tyvon’s picking up a bunch of the kink equipment, and Pierson’s grabbing the garb and camping gear, and there are some other folx getting other stuff. There’s a couple of boxes I’m definitely keeping, and some stuff I might bring if you’re into it because I don’t know how easy it would be to replace it.”

“Is it makeup?” I asked, arching an eyebrow.

“No, spreader bars,” he replied, winking at me as he got back on the freeway. “Tyvon’s only getting the kink stuff that belongs to Safe Kink Seattle; I have some of my own. How do you feel about bondage?”

“I don’t know, I’ve never tried,” I admitted, my cheeks heating. It had been a long time since I’d felt inexperienced as a sex partner, but Ridoc’s casual discussion of tools I was barely aware of sent me back to my second frat party in college, pressed against the wall by another guy, being kissed for the very first time.

“Well, I’ll see what’ll fit - probably once Tyvon grabs his stuff I can repack what’s left into one box, or maybe even just shove some of it under the seat.”

“Depending on what you’re bringing, you can also mail it to yourself,” I pointed out. “Probably not the box of dildos? But if you’ve got books or something.”

“Have I told you that you’re a genius? Because you’re a genius.” He took the next exit, and we were suddenly in the city, tall buildings and narrow streets and parking meters. I was hit with a wave of nausea that I chalked up to carsickness now that we were stopping every few feet because of a stop sign or a red light or someone trying to parallel park.

“You live… here?” I peered around, trying to make sense of what I was seeing.

“Belltown? Yeah. I pay a stupid amount for rent, but I love it.”

“It’s very… different from Aretia,” I said, as casually as I could manage. If this was the kind of place he loved, how could I even pretend that he’d be happy in tiny little Aretia long-term? There were probably more people living in this block than there were in the whole county.

“Wildly,” he said, pulling into a parking lot and finding an empty space. He reached over and opened the glove box, pulling out a hang tag and sticking it on the mirror. “Come see my place.”

The minute my feet hit the pavement I was struck with another wave of nausea and dizziness so bad that I staggered. Ridoc was walking around to grab our bags and didn’t notice, fortunately.

“You ready, peaches?” He had my bag in his hand and his up on one shoulder, and the smile he gave me made it impossibly easy to give him one back.

“Lead the way,” I said, reaching for my bag. He swung it away from me, shaking his head. “You’re not going to let me carry my own bag?”

“You’re carrying a bunch of stuff for me today; let me carry this for you.”

“Oh - okay, if you insist.”

“I do,” he replied, beaming. He led the way across the parking lot to the building towering over us, pulling out his keys and tapping a black rectangular pad by the door. It beeped and the lock clicked. I grabbed the handle and swung it open, standing aside to let Ridoc go in first.

The other side of the door proved to be the mailroom. RIdoc stopped and checked his mailbox, which was empty, and then led the way through another door into a lobby with an elevator marked Residents Only.

“How many doors do you have to unlock to go home?” I asked as he swiped his keys again.

The sleek silver doors slid open, revealing an equally sleek elevator. “Um… main door, elevator… three? Although if I come in through the front entrance there’s just my apartment because you have to go past security to get to that elevator.” He pushed the button for the tenth floor and the elevator shot upward, leaving my stomach behind. “You okay, Bodes?”

“Fine,” I said, swallowing hard. “Just - wasn’t expecting it to be that fast.”

“Ooh. Yeah, sorry about that. Vi had the same problem when she was pregnant.”

“Definitely not my problem. Probably ate too many tiny M&Ms.”

Ridoc laughed at that and patted my shoulder as the elevator doors slid open again, revealing a well-lit hallway lined in doors and neatly framed pictures of the city. My feet sank a little into the plush carpet, much nicer than any apartment hallway carpet I’d ever seen. “I’m corrupting your body and your stomach.”

“My stomach is part of my body, last time I checked, babe.”

“You know what I mean.” He paused. “You do know what I mean, right?”

It was my turn to laugh. “Yes, I know what you mean.”

“Oh, good. Because when I say something like that and the other person doesn’t know what I mean, it’s never a good sign for a long relationship. By my standards, at least.”

“Not only do I know what you mean, I love the way you talk.”

“That’s a big green flag,” he said, stopping at a door labeled 1042, unlocking a deadbolt and the doorknob with two separate keys. “Come on in.”

The apartment had a dizzying view of the city, which distracted from the fact that the whole place was smaller than my living room. “Nice view,” I said.

“It’s why I picked this apartment,” he nodded. “You get views of the Sound on the other side of the building, but it’s like $500 more and if I want to look at the Sound it’s five blocks away.”

“Reasonable decision.” I looked around, expression softening. The bones of the place were clearly high-end and minimal, the sort of place that suggested furnishings of metal and glass and leather, but instead it was filled with battered hand-me-downs and thrift store finds that somehow still clearly belonged to Ridoc. The couch was a faded brown plaid, covered in bright purple throw pillows with a fuzzy green Kermit the Frog blanket draped over one end. It was flanked by pressboard bookshelves crammed with board games and roleplaying books and battered science fiction paperbacks stacked in haphazard piles of no particular order or direction wherever there was space. A half-done Zelda puzzle was spread across the coffee table, slightly obscured by gaming controllers from several different consoles. The consoles themselves were stacked precariously on the floor under the TV, which had been mounted on the wall. Aside from the TV, the walls were covered in framed prints of characters from movies and comic books and video games side by side with pictures of Ridoc with various people. I noticed Liam and Violet in many of them, from baby-faced undergrads to Ridoc holding a very tiny Claire.

“Sorry about the mess,” he said, looking around. “I wasn’t expecting company.”

“Your whole life is shoved into a space the size of my undergrad dorm room,” I said. “I promise my house is only neat because it’s too big for me.”

“You say that, but your kitchen is fucking spotless and mine looks like somebody dropped a bowel of Spaghetti-Os on the floor and didn’t clean it up very well. Because I did.”

I laughed. “Okay, yes, I’m a tidy person. But I’m also pretty sure that tidiness is inborn in the same way being outgoing or a morning person is, and I lucked into the one that society considers valuable.”

“So you’re not going to be mad that I’m a total chaos gremlin?” He looked over his shoulder at me, one hand on the doorknob that I guessed led to the coat closet.

“As long as you won’t be mad that I pick up after you. Although - probably we’ll have some tiffs about towels on the floor, because mildew.”

“Tiffs?” Ridoc laughed, opening the closet cautiously and looking genuinely surprised when nothing fell out. “Who are you? Tiffs, fuck.”

“Tiffs? Minor disagreements? I don’t - I’m not - Imogen and Garrick used to have screaming fights about socks when they first got married, but I’m not a yeller.”

Ridoc reached into the closet and started pulling out folded cardboard boxes, piling them on the floor. “Do you know how to put these together?” he asked, voice muffled.

I picked one up. “Are these - oh, yeah, we use these in the office all the time.” I started assembling them, building a file box pyramid as I went.

“I like them because it doesn’t use tape and you can’t overfill them, even if it’s hardback books,” he said, backing out of the closet with a stack of lids. “Because every time I move I lose the tape within the first five minutes.”

“I have that problem when I wrap presents,” I said.

“Yes! You lose the tape, and then you find the tape but now you’ve lost the scissors. And then you find the scissors but now the tape’s gone again, and meanwhile the pen is missing every single time you need it!”

“Well, I clip the pen to my shirt whenever I’m not using it, but otherwise exactly. What goes in the boxes?”

He pointed to the bookshelves. “All of that. Do you like board games?”

“Every other Saturday night a bunch of us get together to play board games,” I said. “We trade off hosting depending on whether Im and Garrick have a babysitter.”

Ridoc’s eyes widened and his smile got even bigger. “We really were meant for each other! I’ve been trying to get something like that up and running for ages, but people are so flaky and nobody’s got enough space to do it in their house. Including me, obviously.”

“No longer the case,” I smiled back, leaning over to kiss him. “Benefit of living in a small town, I guess; there’s not a lot to do so we make our own fun.”

“You pack the games, then, and you can put any dupes on the coffee table… as soon as I put this puzzle away. Do you like puzzles?”

“Puzzles are for winter,” I said. “But Braelyn will be thrilled to have a new puzzle friend.”

“Who’s Braelyn again?” He moved to one bookshelf and I took the other, and we started packing.

“Imogen’s sister. She’s married to Garrick’s next-oldest brother, Derik.”

“Garrick and Derik? Who’s next, Aaric?”

“No, Aaric is Sloane’s Canadian boyfriend. Jay, Noah, and Dan are the other three.”

We continued packing, making short work of the bookshelves, then moving on to the electronics, art, and clothes. Every so often he got a call from the lobby and I got to meet another of his friends, who mostly proved to be friendly and cheerful. Nadine decided that I wasn’t a field of red flags and told me so as we went through the kitchen; Pierson and I ended up having a long conversation about camping in the national park that Aretia backed up to and the SCA group getting started at Basgiath as we emptied half the living room furniture and two-thirds of the SUV into his battered pickup; Tyvon ignored me completely as he and Ridoc talked about Safe Kink Seattle and moved the gear into his borrowed car.

“I don’t think he’s over you,” I said as he finally pulled out. I sagged against the bumper of Violet’s SUV once he was out of sight. Being glared at for the better part of an hour was exhausting.

“Who? Tyvon?” Ridoc shifted back onto his heels, looking back at me. He was sorting what was left, organizing it into fewer boxes that took up less space. “Nah, he’s just pissed that I won’t be able to do events any more.”

I shook my head. “Pierson is upset that you won’t be camping with him in the spring. Nadine is pissed that she’ll have to find a new pickleball doubles partner. Both of them are over the moon that you’ve found someone who makes you happy, even if I am dragging you away from them. Tyvon… is not having that experience.”

He handed two empty boxes out to me. “He broke up with me, though.”

I shrugged. “I saw what I saw, love.”

Ridoc climbed out, locked the car, and we went back inside.

By the time the sun was setting, we’d cleared out the majority of Ridoc’s apartment, either into the SUV or into the backseats and backpacks and bike bags of Ridoc’s various friends and neighbors. I flopped onto the bed, which someone was coming to get in the morning, and stared at the ceiling.

“You look very tempting,” Ridoc said as he came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel.

“So do you,” I replied, sitting up to admire him.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come?” Ridoc had left an outfit unpacked and he started putting it on - sinfully tight black jeans, a black tee that clung to his abs, and a pink sequin dinner jacket.

“I was going to say something gracious, like you should have fun with your friends and not worry about me, but if you’re going to look like that I think I ought to go to make sure nobody tries to make off with you. I’m going to have to beat them off with a stick.”

Ridoc laughed. “I’m not interested in going home with anybody but you, I promise - but it would be nice to go out and know who’s taking me home at the end of it.”

“You’re right, that does sound nice.” I forced myself to get up. “Let me jump in the shower real quick and I’ll get dressed.”

By the time I was out of the shower, Ridoc had laid out my clothes - the nice jeans that I’d brought, tight but not quite as painted-on as the ones he was wearing, and a pink collared shirt that must have come from his closet. “Oh, my turn to wear your clothes, hm?”

“I’d put you in my leather pants but your legs are long enough that I don’t think they’d fit,” he said.

“Probably not,” I agreed.

I got dressed, letting Ridoc fuss over rolling up the cuffs of my shirt just so and petting my curls into place. “There,” he said finally. “You’re gorgeous and everyone will be wildly jealous of me.”

“Especially Tyvon,” I growled in his ear.

“If you say so,” he laughed, taking my hand. “Let’s go.”

"Welcome to the greatest and shittiest karaoke bar in Seattle!"

I tugged Bodhi over to the side as we walked in so we didn't hold up the small line of people trying to get in behind us. It wasn't like the Crescent was hugely popular, because it's not, but it's a literal hole in the wall and so getting in means walking in practically single file.

All I wanted to do was watch Bodhi take it in. In a way the bar was a capsule of everything I loved about living in the city. It wasn't the only place I went and karaoke wasn't the only sport I did and I had plenty of friends who didn't go there, but it was the best venn diagram of all of those things.

Bodhi still looked a little ashen- I hoped he really was feeling as much better as he'd said- but his eyes were scanning the room like he was cataloging it. Maybe it was a lawyer thing, having to take in all of the evidence or whatever, but I'd seen a similar look on his face when we went into my apartment. I liked the idea that he was trying to take in as much information about what mattered to me as he could.

Maybe he could interrogate me for evidence later… no, that's police, lawyers don't interrogate for evidence, and the whole 'inmate phone call' thing didn't present any sexy roleplay ideas, so I would have to think about it.

I gave Bodhi a peck on the cheek and stepped up to the bar, grabbing his hand to pull him with me. "Hey, Betty, can I get an apple hard-on for myself and a-" I looked at Bodhi.

"Just a beer is fine," he said, leaning in probably closer than necessary, but I wasn't complaining.

"Whatever the good IPA is this week," I nodded, turning back to the bartender.

"Bringing us a new friend again, Rizz? I tell you every time there's no referral program," Betty grinned, and I could see her looking Bodhi up and down. She liked what she saw, making a show of winking at him, and I can't blame her.

"Rizz?" I could just barely hear Bodhi snicker beside me.

"Not exactly, Bets. Turns out this is my last night in town."

Betty froze mid-pour, which I wasn't going to complain about. More whiskey for me! "You're kidding! How did you keep moving a secret? You're the worst at secrets."

"I didn't keep it a secret, it just happened on short notice. Tomorrow I am being whisked away to greener pastures." I slipped my arm around Bodhi's waist, pulling him against me.

"Well, that explains what Tyvon is in such a mood about tonight," she said, dropping her voice so there was no chance of it carrying. Not that the Crescent didn't run on alcohol and gossip, because it did, but probably as a favor to me. She slid two glasses across the bar. "First round is on the house."

"Awww, I'm gonna miss you."

"You're going to miss my loose pours."

"That too." I pushed myself up as I leaned over the bar to give her an approximation of a French kiss, my feet pinwheeling behind me. Then I handed Bodhi his drink and pulled him with me as I made my way to the end of the bar. I paused there, dropping his hand to fish in my pocket for a few shiny things I'd found when I was packing. There was a small shrine to Freddie Mercury among all of the posters, art, and pinned up trophies on the wall, and I left the shiny things on his little shelf.

I turned back to see him watching me thoughtfully again, like I was the most interesting person in the room. I didn't think I'd ever get tired of that. I pressed my hand against the small of his back and directed him over to my favorite table.

"Freddie Mercury?" he asked when we'd sat down. I leaned back, taking in the crowd tonight- Tyvon was in his usual spot in the back corner, and I waved and made kissy faces at a few of my other friends as we settled in.

"Bisexual icon in a karaoke bar, why wouldn't he have a shrine? Pretty sure he's at the very least the patron god of bad karaoke, because it's so hard to do his songs well and that stops absolutely no one from trying them." I picked a couple of karaoke slips out of the little container on the table and laid them out in a row, considering what I wanted to sing for Bodhi.

There was an art to picking karaoke songs in general, and when you're on a date in particular. If you're not thinking about the song as a whole, it's easy to pick something where there's a long guitar solo where you're standing up there looking awkward, or something where you think you know the words but you only really know the chorus and maybe the first verse. Even with the words on a screen, you had to actually know them to perform it well.

And that was the thing, really; karaoke is performance. That's why all the regulars here had stage names, even though most of us know each other outside the bar. I'm Rizz because that's who I am, confidence and style. Rizz thinks about what he's doing, which I usually don't. It's why I understood Bodhi's explanation of Miss Coco and Bodhi Riorson yesterday. You have an audience. To do it well, you have to remember you have an audience. Rizz does things for an audience, picks songs because the crowd will like them. Cares if they go over well. It's like doing standup, or improv comedy. You have to work with the audience.

So: an opening number that was fun for the audience. I went with Pink's 'Raise Your Glass' because it's fun and most people know the chorus so I could get them to sing along. A song for whoever I came with because of course. That's the hard part. And a song for whatever's going on; in this case I was thinking N*Sync's 'Bye Bye Bye.' A little retro, a little pop culture even if Deadpool was like, six months ago, and a very me way of saying goodbye.

I had the first and the last slips filled out, and I was dithering over what I wanted to sing for Bodhi.

I looked up and he was watching me, his face still a little grey along the edges and a line between his eyebrows that I wanted to reach up and smooth away.

"If it's too loud, we can go," I told him again. "I really don't mind, I promise."

He looked like he was thinking about it, but he sees something and shakes his head. "I want you to have fun."

I turned to follow his line of sight and realized Tyvon was right there, talking to someone. And by talking to someone I meant probably keeping an eye on me. I hated that now that Bodhi had pointed it out to me, I couldn't unsee the way Tyvon was acting, the way he's always acted. I never thought about it because he broke up with me, so I figured it was on him if he wanted to get back together. It had never occurred to me that maybe he wanted me to… what? Approach him?

Sometimes I thought that was why none of my relationships lasted. I liked sex. I liked friends. I liked making friends and having sex with new people. I'd never been good at understanding drama and agendas and the thing where people want you to do secret things that have a right answer and I don't even know there's a quiz going on.

I just wanted to take care of my friends.

Anyway, I handed my first slip in to DJ Pryor and got the night off to a good start. The crowd was happy to join in on the chorus of raise! your! glass! and when I went back over to our table Bodhi was smiling like he was proud of me.

It made me a little weak in the knees, the way he was looking at me like I was the only guy in the room. I wobbled into the booth next to him and pressed up closer than was strictly necessary in the space, but Bodhi didn't seem to mind me invading his personal space. If anything, he was pressing right back into me, his thigh firm as I rested my hand on it.

I was still trying to think of the perfect song to sing for Bodhi and rejecting everything that came to mind- too cheesy, didn't work for karaoke, reminded me of someone else. Apparently the downside of bringing all of your dates out is that then you've already used all the good songs for other people.

"What, can't think of anything?" he asked as I stared at the little slip of paper.

"I'm trying to think of a song to sing for you," I admitted. "But it has to be perfect."

"You're overthinking it, babe." Bodhi kissed me on the cheek. "We're just having fun, isn't that what you said?" He crossed his arm over mine so he could rest his hand on my thigh.

"Yes and no. Karaoke's not usually a competition, but I still want to get this right. It's our first real date, after all." Not counting dinner with his family, and I loved how inside-out everything was but it made it harder to decide how to handle the usual things when the stakes were already pretty high.

"I liked that first one. You could do another one like that."

I blushed a little, curling up so I could press more of myself against him. I was close enough to smell my shampoo on him from his shower earlier. "But it needs to be romantic."

"Do you always do karaoke at someone?"

"On a date, yeah. The rest of the time, not usually."

"Is that not why Tyvon is pointing at you, then?"

Somehow when I was right next to Bodhi it was easy to forget that I was in a crowded bar, but I looked up to see that yes, Tyvon was definitely singing at me. "It's not supposed to be a competition," I protested again as he reached the chorus of Adele's 'Rumor Has It.' I laid my face down on the table and dug my hands in my hair, embarassed by the display Tyvon was putting on and by his choice of song.

It was offensive, really. I mean, he could nail Adele, that wasn't the problem. It just wasn't a good song for the situation, because there were definitely no rumors Bodhi wasn't into me. It didn't make sense as a choice, and Tyvon ought to know by now that that mattered to me. So even if he thought he was going to accomplish anything with this display, all he'd done was show me he didn't actually get me.

Meanwhile when I looked at Bodhi I found myself thinking, that's the man I want to spend the rest of my life with. It was something I'd never felt before; Violet had been the closest I'd come to that feeling.

The perfect song choice came to me and when I raised my head to write it down, I realized Bodhi wasn't there. Tyvon's song had ended, thank the gods, and somebody was doing a mostly-decent job giggling her way through Journey. I scanned the room, feeling like an idiot for not even noticing that he'd slipped away from me.

Was he over by the bathroom? No. Getting another drink at the bar? No. Was he not feeling well and he went back to my place?

Just as I was starting to really worry, DJ Pryor sent the giggling, probably-drunk girl back to her table and started the transition to the next performer. "Up next we have the mystery man who's stealing our Rizz away, well, not stealing, but maybe enchanting? Convincing him away doesn't have the same ring to it but maybe it's a better description?"

Bodhi was up there next to him, a little smile on his face and something in his eyes I hadn't seen before.

"Anyway," Pryor finally got it together and looked down at the little slip of paper, "please welcome Miss Coco- oh no, did I get your pronouns wrong? I'm so sorry. I can do it again if you want? No? Okay, if you're sure… please welcome Miss Coco, singing 'Somebody to Love'."

The first notes of the song started and I felt so many things at once I could barely start separating them out- the cringe that always came when someone tried to do one of Queen's more vocally challenging songs, then annoyance at myself for having that reaction when it was Bodhi, and then wondering what he was thinking and what Tyvon was going to say and-

and then Miss Coco started singing. "Each morning I wake up I die a little," came out in this rich, beautiful purr, not at all an impression of Freddie Mercury but her own voice, somehow unique from Bodhi's.

I wouldn't say it went straight to my cock, because it was also filling my chest with a glitterbomb of warmth, but it definitely ended up there.

The first chorus came around and he didn't just hit the notes, he belted them like a fucking angel, my own personal angel. Anybody who sang like this would normally have his pick of anybody in the bar, but I wasn't worried. Bodhi's eyes found me during the second verse, my own personal molasses flood, drowning me when the stage lights sparkled gold in his eyes.

Oh gods, I was going home with this man. I was the luckiest guy in the bar. No, in Seattle. In the whole state. Fuck geography, I was the luckiest guy in the world. Part of me wanted to look around and see what everyone else was thinking, but that would require taking my eyes off of Bodhi, and that wasn't happening. He wasn't just singing. He was commanding the room and he was doing something with the mic that would probably be against the law in Texas.

When he finished the song, he came directly back to me at our table, making it clear to anyone who hadn't noticed that he was all mine. He slipped into the booth and right up against me, draping himself over me like a blanket so he could kiss the top of my head. My face tucked perfectly under his chin like we were made to go together.

"I love you," I mumbled against the warm, soft skin of his neck.

"Damn, you're moving fast," Tyvon said. I looked up and realized he'd appeared at my elbow. "Usually he won't say he loves you until at least the third date."

"I'm not sure how we're counting dates at this point, but I feel confident saying it's been more than three," Bodhi said, meeting Tyvon's gaze. He had a calm confidence that made me think about our conversation in the car - was this Bodhi Riorson, defending me like he did his clients in court? It was hot as fuck, whatever it was.

"It was basically three straight days in bed," I added. "That has to count as more than one."

Tyvon rolled his eyes and moved on, and I finished my drink. Bodhi, I noticed, had only been turning his in his hands.

"I didn't even think about the whole 'saying I love you' thing," I admitted. "It just came out of my mouth." I was pretty sure it wasn't the first one, now that I was trying to think about it, but my mind had gone blank.

"I started it," Bodhi told me, shrugging. "In the car. It's not - I mean, probably I should have thought about it, but I kind of gave up on second-guessing what was going to come out of my mouth once we decided we weren't going to freak each other out, and it was really what I was feeling in the moment."

"It's what I'm feeling in every moment," I shrugged. "Do you want to get out of here?"

I could see Bodhi actually considering it. "Honestly? I feel great all of a sudden. No more dizziness. So we can stay if you want. You've got more songs to sing, don't you?"

That made me laugh. "You've earned Freddie's blessing, Peaches. But yes, I do have more songs to sing." I didn't pull myself away from him until DJ Pryor called me up to sing John Legend's 'A Good Night' for Bodhi, and then after a round of shots where Bodhi slid his to me I decided to sing 'You're So Vain' and definitely not look at Tyvon at all.

That earned me another round of shots from another one of Tyvon's exes and the night got a little blurry from there, but I don't think I embarassed myself during 'Bye Bye Bye'. There were a lot of hugs and kisses and threats that I needed to visit before I stumbled out into the very early Seattle morning with Bodhi on my arm.

Almost as soon as his feet hit the ground outside the Crescent, he swayed.

"Bodhi? You okay?" I asked, trying to think- he hadn't really had much to drink, so…

"Dizziness came back," he mumbled.

I pulled him against me so we were leaning on each other, his distress sobering me up somewhat. "Good thing we're going back to my place, handsome."

"I hope you're not disappointed," he mumbled.

"That I had a great night out? That I'm going home with the sexiest guy at the bar?" Seriously, how could he think I was disappointed? Clearly I was failing at… at wording how amazing he was. I'd have to work on that. Probably tomorrow, when I was more sober and better at wording things.

We made it back to my building, through all of the locks and up to my very empty apartment.

"Reminds me of when I moved in," I told him as I dropped my keys on the sliver of kitchen counter. "Liam helped me get that mattress up here, and my couch. I'm gonna miss that couch."

"Really?" Bodhi asked, drinking the last of the bottle of water on the counter and spitting it out into the sink. "We could have figured out-"

"No, not really," I mumbled, trying to figure out why my breath was all choppy. "I just miss Liam."

"Oh, babe…" Bodhi reached out for me.

And then I realized who I was crying to- someone who'd known Liam his whole life, someone who had way more right to mourn him than I did, and I started furiously wiping at my face. I forgot I was still wearing my pink sparkle jacket until I shoved sequins in my nose, and then I started laughing and pulled the jacket off, hanging it on the hook on the back of the door. I was a gross, choking, snotty mess.

Bodhi disappeared into the bathroom and came back a minute later with a damp paper towel. It was cool on my face as he wiped my eyes, kissing each eyelid with a gentle flutter, then my cheeks, and finally he let me wipe my nose. Which I appreciated, because the most beautiful man I'd ever met wiping my nose for me was a level of relationship seriousness I was not yet ready for.

"I shouldn't cry at you about him," I choked out as I blew my nose. "You're further in than me."

"Further… in? Are you talking about circles of grief?" he asked.

"Oh good, you know about them." I took a couple of deep breaths, trying to make sure I wasn't going to snot up again. "My dad taught me about them when I was a teenager, how to support and take care of people when they needed it, you know?"

"Ridoc, circles of grief aren't forever, and they're not meant to be some kind of precise measure. I knew Liam his whole life, but we never dated. Relationships are complicated and grief is complicated and… I don't have time to unpack all of that right now."

"I'm sorry," I sniffled.

Bodhi leaned in, resting his forehead against mine. "Don't ever apologize to me for having feelings. Even if you think they're inconvenient, or silly, or unhelpful. They're yours, and that makes them important to me, okay?"

"Okay."

"Now don't take this the wrong way but I really need to lay down."

"Fuck, Bodhi, of course." I didn't really want to let go of him, and he didn't seem to want to let go of me, so I sort of shuffle-walked him to the far side of the room where my bed was waiting in front of the window. Bodhi crawled into it, flopping onto his back with a groan.

"Do you want me to get you something?" I asked, watching his eyes close and his hand rub across his forehead.

"Water, if you have any that's cold," he rasped.

I did, in fact, have some bottled water left in the fridge from some event or another, and I brought it out to him, sitting down next to him on the bed.

Bodhi sat up long enough to drain half the bottle and laid back down. He looked out the window, then turned away and buried his face in my lap, wrapping an arm around my hip and across my lower back with a groan.

I stared out at the lights of Seattle, stroking his curls. I always loved the view at night; the way Seattle looked like a field of stars I could reach out and touch. I'd thought of the city as home for years now. But tonight, the constellations they made were as foreign to me as the jealousy on Tyvon's face had been.

Bodhi's shirt had ridden up when he rolled over, and I absent-mindedly traced the outline of his abs as I thought. It wasn't long before Bodhi's occasional groans of suffering deepend into something else.

"I can stop if you're not feeling up to it," I told him, playing with the hem of his shirt.

"Don't stop," he said, pressing his face further into my lap. I could feel his breath hot against my thighs through my jeans. "I feel better when you touch me."

"Do you need a medicinal hand job?" I laughed.

"Maybe." I couldn't see his face but I could hear the wink.

"Snugglng is also an option," I added quickly. We'd been having a lot of sex, and discussing a lot of sex, and between that and all of the drama with Tyvon I didn't want him to think sex was all I did. Which is unlikely since he also knows about the pickleball and the puzzles and everything else but…

Bodhi made a noise somewhere between a sexy groan and a sick groan. "I like snuggles."

"Bringing you home from the Crescent was fun and all, but I can't wait until you bring me home tomorrow." I hesitated - the house was his and we had only talked about the basics; it wasn't my house the way it was his, the way it was a family heirloom. Did I have the right to call it home yet?

But Bodhi only mumbled into my shoulder, "Mmm, yeah. Can't wait to take you home, unpack your games and set them up on the living room shelves. Set up all your consoles." His voice dipped. "Hang up your art."

"How the fuck are you making unpacking sound sexy?" I asked him, and he chuckled, deep and warm, and shifted to kiss me again.

"Because I'm talking about you," Bodhi murmured. "About taking you home."

"Yeah, I guess you are."

"Holy shit, Xaden, why didn't you tell anyone it feels like that to leave?"

We sat in the back of Playdate Coffee. Bodhi invited me to come along with Will while his boyfriend had some kind of study group with one of the women who ran the place and another guy who was pretty new to magic. I almost wondered if I should join them, but I let that thought go. I'd probably just mess up their practice.

"What are you talking about?" I kept my face as neutral as I could, not looking up from where Will was climbing around the play area.

"I didn't carry much of a mark when I went to Stanford, so it never came up, but when I went to Seattle with Ridoc I felt… unmoored? Dizzy, lightheaded, worse as I got into the city proper."

I didn't move but… "Oh."

"Oh?" Bodhi repeated. "Come on, Xaden, words."

"Dad never said anything about it, so I figured it was just… me."

"Noah's didn't come in until he came back from law school either. And I remember Uncle Fen bragging about how you'd got yours earlier, because he didn't get his properly until he came back."

"I never wanted to go to law school," I said quietly, still not looking up from the carpet. It was red and blue squares, the kind where you could replace single tiles if there was a stain. It was a little bit rough under my palm. A ball rolled into my field of vision, and when I looked up, Will was watching me with his big, dark eyes, waiting for me to roll it back. I smiled at him as I did.

"I know, Xade," Bodhi nodded.

"I didn't want to go away to school at all. I loved Aretia, I love the land here. I love the dragons of the earth and the water. When my mark came in, my dad didn't tell me he was proud. He told me I had serious responsibilities now. 'You should be focusing on your studies so you can take care of your people.' So I tried to. Before that I spent most of my time in the woods after school, you know? By myself, or with Ims and Garrick, or with you and Liam following us around too. And suddenly Dad didn't want me to do that." Will and I had a nice little rhythm going. Roll one way, roll the other. His aim was pretty good for his age.

"I remember Garrick having to talk you into staying on the sports teams," he said gently. "Before that, you were never home, and then after you were always fighting with Uncle Fen about what you were spending your time doing. I ended up staying home and doing homework more, having Imogen over to study, just because it felt easier."

"Suddenly everything I did reflected badly on him, and I wanted him to be proud of me. I wanted Aretia to be proud of me too." I looked up at Bodhi and the smile on his face was tired.

"I hope you figured out those are different goals by now," he said gently.

"I remember when Liam decided to go outside for college and how much it confused me. I missed him a lot, and I remember saying something to Dad that I didn't see what the big deal was, why anybody would want to go away to school."

Bodhi grabbed the ball as Will rolled it his way. "I remember that fight. He pointed out that you were going away to law school and just would not let it drop, even when my mom told him it wasn't worth it. I thought he was going to commandspeak you to leave right away or something."

"Not then."

Bodhi looked at me, missing the ball this time. Will said "uh oh" and pulled himself up to go and get it.

"Hey Will," I said as he went by, "teddy bear."

Will stopped and turned to me, losing his balance and hitting the carpet. He didn't seem bothered by it, though, and quickly crawled into my lap. I wrapped my arms around him.

"… Do you… Did you train your son like a support animal?"

"No? What are you talking about?"

"Garrick said you have a game where you say a command and he lays on you, and now you have one where he calms you down. I'm pretty sure that's halfway to Violet's dog right there."

"I wouldn't." I let go of Will, dropping my arms immediately.

Will twisted around to look up at me. "Da? Where's hug?"

I looked at Bodhi, waiting for him to… what? Accuse me of nefariously teaching my kid to hug? He didn't say anything, though, as I hugged Will again.

"Tickle please?" he asked and I shifted my arms so my fingers could ghost over his sides. He erupted in peals of giggles, and I couldn't help smiling.

When his boyfriend was ready to go, Bodhi leaned in to give me a hug before he stood up. "I didn't mean it like - like that. Just so you know. I can see you love him a lot, Xade."

"I know," I said. I had to let it go, because what else was I going to do? Bodhi was right, anyway. I knew he didn't really mean it like that. That fear was Sage's voice, still whispering the things I knew she'd say if she was here.

That was the hardest part, knowing I was out of Sage's reach and yet her fucking words and my own fucking brain were doing her work for her. I felt like a traitor to myself on top of everything else. Even as some things got better, and Imogen felt I'd be ready to start working with Isaac Mairi to rebuild my magic, I felt like I was never going to stop being this empty mess she'd taught me to be.

I didn't say it, because I didn't want to disappoint Garrick and everyone else, but I felt the way the wards on their house fought me every damn time. I didn't deserve them, I didn't deserve Bodhi's support, and I didn't deserve the relic the land and the river had seen fit to return to me even if I wanted them.

For days, I'd thought about going down to the river, but I didn't do it.

I made apologies to so many people in town. A week after Sunday dinner, Ma Tavis finally had me over and I knew I was forgiven there. Imogen outlined what she wanted me to work on with Isaac: recalling my magic and putting it into written spells: runework, talismans, anything that could hold a charge for me while I struggled with the black hole inside.

It ended up being over a week before I took Will down to introduce him to the River Tairn. While I didn't remember my own introduction, all of my very oldest memories of the river were in a park on the south end of town where the river was wide and flat and slow.

Leaving my sweatshirt, socks and sneakers on a picnic table next to the diaper bag and my towel, I picked Will up and started walking toward the edge of the river where I remembered jumping and running across flat rocks. There had been a few autumn storms but the water level was still pretty low, so they were mostly dry and easy to reach even with a squirmy sprout in my arms.

I was cold, but I was always cold, so I didn't mind it much. I'd just brought a second outfit and a towel and a blanket for Will, figuring he'd get wet no matter what I did.

"Dowwwwwwwwn!" Will howled, and I considered trying again another day. I decided I was too close, though; it'd be rude to turn around when I was already here without at least trying.

"I'll put you down in a minute, Will. Just let me get settled by the water," I told him. He was still fussing but he seemed at least willing to listen. Holding him tightly, I navigated the stones at the edge of the water until I found a large, flat one that felt right, and then I dropped into criss-cross applesauce and settled Will in my lap. I was suddenly grateful for Garrick and his workouts- when I left LA I wouldn't have been confident enough in my strength to hold a wiggly toddler while I climbed over river rocks.

Instead of asking my dad for the formal words, I'd asked Garrick how his family introduced their kids to the land and the river.

"Dad likes to say they chucked Derik in and that's why he learned otter," Garrick had laughed. "It's not a big formal thing, though, don't overthink it."

It felt like a big formal thing, though, at least to me. But if I'd wanted it to be one, I would have asked my dad.

Will seemed to settle more in my lap as I tried to find my center. I'd progressed from 'embarrassingly preschool level' to 'the same exercises as Garrick's six year old,' so I was at able to feel something when I did it. Send a spark into the earth; feel for an answer. I trailed my fingers in the shallows. Send a spark into the water; feel for an answer.

"Hi," I said out loud.

"Byebye!" Will added.

"I'm sorry it took me so long." The river whispered. I felt tingles on my arm where my mark twisted its way through my ink. "This is my son Willow. Will, this is Tairn, the river that takes care of us."

"Big bath time." Will leaned forward in my arms, reaching for the water, and I let him. I trusted the river more than I trusted myself anyway.

"No!" someone shouted behind me. I startled, pulling Will tight as I turned around. "Tairn!"

There was a dog running toward me– no, a cu sith, I could sense that much. Didn't Bodhi's boyfriend tell a story with a cu sith in it?

My thoughts weren't flowing fast enough; I was still half plugged into the land. "Are you yelling at the river?" I asked, figuring it would come to me.

"No, I thought," she started, then stopped, breathing hard. "The baby was falling."

"I had him," I assured her, and then in case that wasn't enough, "and the river would catch him if he got loose."

She looked at me like I was crazy, and I realized I must have miscalculated. She had a cu sith with her, and the river knew her well enough that it hadn't warned me about her approach, so I'd assumed she'd understand.

"Were you going to. Let him fall in?"

"Of course not." She looked like she was going to pass out or something, the way she was leaning against her dog. I stood up slowly, keeping Will balanced in my arms, in case she needed help. Probably she was fine, especially with the dog, but she was wearing a baby too. I'd done my best, and I was confident the land and the river had heard and met Will.

"You just said-" She finally stopped trying to talk through her short breaths and pulled out a water bottle.

Now that I looked at her, though, I could see she wasn't someone I should have known and had forgotten. She was small and pale, with elfin features that didn't match any of the bloodlines in town. Her hair was braided back, dark on top with color that faded at the bottom, and now I could see the little one in the sling was a toddler who was probably closer to Avery's age.

It was the baby that made it click, actually, blonde hair and blue eyes and the cu sith was named Tairn, and the woman was–

"You're Liam's wife," spilled out of me and the cascade of thoughts that followed made me dizzy. I hadn't had a chance to process anything about Liam, not really. I tried to shove the thoughts back; I just needed to get through this conversation and I could deal with that later, somewhere else, with someone who I knew.

"Liam's widow," she said quietly. Her eyes, her whole face crumpled for a moment, but I could almost see her put herself back together. It was so fast I almost doubted it had happened. "I'm Violet Mairi. And you are?" Now she was polite, distant.

"Xaden Riorson. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-" She cut me off with a sharp intake of breath.

"I know who you are," she said. "You made Liam cry on our wedding night."

Will was gently hitting my face trying to get my attention, and I couldn't make my mouth work. I'd said so many apologies this week, I should have been able to manage something, but the words were just gone.

Liam had looked up to me as far back as I could remember, and he'd always been the reason for my best behavior; I had to be careful because Liam was watching. It had felt like responsibility, in a good way, and you couldn't not love Liam.

His decision to go to college in Seattle had gotten all wrapped up in my head with the argument I'd had with my father afterward, but Liam had always been like my little brother. I'd had a huge fight with Sage about his wedding, and she'd made sure I couldn't go. When I got the birth announcement I let it go; by then I didn't want to leave Will alone with his mom if I could avoid it anyway.

"I've never told anyone - he didn't want me to - he still loved you. He hoped when we got married you'd come - and then when Clarity was born - and he - he -" There were tears streaming down her face now. "And here you are now trying to drop a baby in the river! Why he cared about you for so long- why he kept letting you hurt him-" She was taking great gasping breaths again, and the baby was starting to fuss.

There was no reason to think there would be no more chances to fix things with Liam until it happened. Even then, even when his death managed to crack the hold Sage had on me, I still hadn't made it out in time for his Rite of Passage.

"Violet, please -" I tried, but she wasn't done.

"He worried about you," she said more quietly. I tried to reach for her, not sure what else to do, but she stepped back and the cu sith moved between us and growled at me. The dog spirit was enormous compared to her and I was not in a place to argue.

What right did I have to seek forgiveness anyway? I was just a black hole wedging myself back into a place and relationships that had gone on just fine without me, soaking up love and life whether I deserved it or not.

I hadn't stopped to lock myself back down when I stood up and I was viscerally aware of it. I could feel the energy from the river, from the land beneath me, from the woman in front of me. I could see the magic that ran like lightning in her veins, the way the life of the spirits here was inside her.

I understood that the river Tairn had claimed her, had sent the spirit dog with his own name to protect her. The river loved her like the land used to (might again?) love me.

Jealousy reared up like a horse ready to throw me, and then the want was there. When I'd felt sick, empty, drained to dregs, to keep me from realizing that she was the one taking from me, Sage had taught me to take what I needed, what she said I deserved. I followed her example, drawing energy from classmates and townies, and after I dropped out and we moved to Santa Monica, from tourists and ocean spirits. By the time I realized she was draining me, Sage had ground my own resources down to the empty space in my gut and it didn't matter.

I didn't reach for the energy of the woman in front of me, but it was a near thing. I heard the river roaring in my ears, and the soft river stones under my feet felt almost porous, pushing energy into me. Was the land- was she trying to help? Or was I taking what wasn't mine? I couldn't tell.

"Down, Da! Down!" Will started howling, dragging my attention away from spirits and energy and back to what was right in front of me. Fuck. Fuck. I held onto him as he tried to kick me, walking over to where I'd left our things on the table. For a minute I tried to get him into the carrier, but his kicking only got more frantic. I wrapped him up in the blanket instead of trying to get him strapped to me.

His shouting only got louder as I rolled him up into a snug little burrito. Usually that was enough to start calming him down, but apparently today wasn't going to be that day. Maybe he could tell I was upset. Maybe he was already sensitive, and I'd practically torn him away from connecting with the river. Fuck.

A few feet away, Liam's child finally stopped fussing and started crying, thankfully distracting Violet from anything else she'd planned to say to me. Her anger and thinking about Liam and the noise and Will fighting me - all of it was too much. I shoved my shoes and sweatshirt into the diaper bag and just started walking. Cold or not, it wasn't far from here to the Cardulos' house. Fuck, hopefully Garrick would be home.

The woman - Liam's widow - Violet called after me as I walked away, but I didn't hear what she said. I didn't let myself run, but I didn't wait for her either, and she didn't follow.

Walking up to Garrick and Imogen's house was like walking through snow on my bare feet, a thousand sharp, angry pricks against my skin. Just getting onto the porch hurt more than it had even that first night, and as I rang the bell I hoped again that Garrick was home.

The door swung open and Garrick stood there, Avery on his hip. Behind him, Gwen poked her head into the doorframe. "Uncle Xay!"

Garrick's free hand held her back, and he pressed Avery into her arms. "Take Avery downstairs and keep an eye on your sister."

I held Will out to him. He'd managed to get one of his hands loose from the blanket and was reaching for me, but I didn't want him to touch me. I didn't trust myself. "Take Will, please," I pleaded, and he did. Garrick stepped away from the door with my son, letting it swing shut behind him.

Will was safe. I let myself sag to the porch floor. Being here still hurt, but I could live with that.

The door opened again, and it was just Garrick now. He left the door ajar behind him, stepping outside and crouching down next to me.

"I'm sorry, brother, I thought I fixed the wards," he murmured, reaching for me. He was like a fucking furnace next to me while I was wrapped up in the ice of their wards. Fuck, why hadn't I let myself see how much energy he had before? It was -

Fuck. No. I jerked away from him. "I'm - something wrong."

"Yeah, I can see something's wrong," he said, his voice full of concern I didn't deserve.

"No, Gare. I'm something wrong."

"I'm calling Imogen."

“He turned up here, barefoot in short sleeves, and asked me to take Will, and he says there’s something wrong with him. That he’s wrong. Our wards are freaking out; I’ve never seen them react like this.” Garrick’s voice was low and stressed through the phone.

“I’ll get there as fast as I can,” I said. “I love you.” I hung up, texted my sister to ask her to come back as soon as possible, and hung the “Be right back!” sign on the door before rushing into my office.

Something about the way Xaden’s missing core had resisted every intervention anyone had tried felt familiar - like a memory of a song I hadn’t heard in years, or a story I read once. An energetic core was more like a liver than a limb; the only way to destroy it permanently was… was to…

“Was to remove it,” I whispered to the empty room.

That was it.

If Xaden’s core had been destroyed by accident or injury, it would have begun to repair itself now that he was home. His channels were starting to heal, his Mark had returned, but the core itself was still unchanged.

Not just unchanged.

Gone.

I grabbed my portable healer’s kit and stepped back out into the bookstore proper just as Braelyn came in the front door. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Client emergency,” I said. “Thanks for coming back.”

“No worries, I dropped the boys on the corner and let them walk home. I’m here, you’re good.”

“Thanks, sis.” I put up my “don’t bother me” shields and forced myself to keep to a brisk walk, grounding with each step. The air was cool and smelled of damp leaves and woodsmoke, clouds overhead whispering the promise of overnight rain. I wasn’t as aware of the energy of the wards as Garrick was, but the town itself felt unalarmed by whatever threat Xaden posed. Our own wards were hypersensitive, the canary in the coal mine, but if he wasn’t setting off anything further, then I could handle it by myself instead of calling my mom for backup.

Xaden and Garrick were sitting on the porch steps with the front door open behind them. Sitting was perhaps an exaggeration; Garrick was sprawled back, leaning on his hands, while Xaden curled forward with his head between his knees like he was trying not to throw up. He was wearing shoes and his sweatshirt, at least. “I’m stunned your dad didn’t suddenly appear to lecture you about leaving the door open,” I said as I came up the walk.

“I’m listening for the kids,” Garrick protested. “And it’s not his electric bill.”

“That has never once stopped him from lecturing someone about it, has it, Xaden?” Xaden slowly lifted his head and blinked at me, and I knew what we had to do. “Call your mom and see if she can take the kids, Gare.”

He sat up, pulling out his phone. “I’m gonna check on them while you look over Xay,” he added as he headed inside, pulling the door mostly shut behind him.

I crouched in front of Xaden. “What happened?” I asked.

I watched him hesitate, his Adam’s apple bobbing with the words he swallowed. When I’d started practicing, I might have pushed - would have pushed, especially Xaden, if he’d still been here.

I waited.

Birds chirped. A car went by on Main Street. A basketball bounced, punctuated by the players shouting at each other in good-natured animosity. The wind rustled the trees.

“I took Will to meet the river,” he said finally.

I waited. That wasn’t a problem.

“I met Liam’s widow. She - thought I was going to hurt Will.”

“You would never,” was my reflexive response. The Cardulo gift was seeing connections, and the connection between Xaden and his son was as loving and healthy as the one between Garrick and any of our girls. He was a great dad, and Will adored him.

“You think so?” he asked, meeting my eye for the first time.

“I know so.”

“Bodhi said I was training him like an animal.”

“Humans are animals,” I pointed out. “But also, I’ll take Bodhi’s opinions on childrearing with a grain of salt, since he’s never done it himself.”

“You think… is Will okay?”

“Why wouldn’t he be?”

“Because - I - I - I’m broken, Imogen. I’m not connected to the land any more; I’ve been stealing energy from people and the earth itself. Not properly, from ley lines, just…” His voice choked off in a frantic, hitching sob. “I don’t deserve to be here.”

“Sage is a venin,” I said slowly, and it was only my training that kept the horror out of my voice. For most magical communities, venin were creatures out of legends or fairy tales; it was said the true inspiration for bloodsucking vampires were energy-stealing venin. And Xaden was one.

But if he was a threat to the community, he wouldn’t have made it past the wards, even escorted by Uncle Fen. I knew that. And standing - crouching - in my own front yard, I could tell our wards were reacting to his fear rather than any genuine danger. He wouldn’t have made it as far as the porch if he’d been a real threat to our family.

“Yes,” he said. “And so am I.”

“When this is fixed, I want the whole story,” I told him. “From when you left the first time.”

“You think you can fix this?” It wasn’t quite a challenge of my competence, but it was enough to set my teeth on edge.

“The land chose you twice, Xaden. It wouldn’t have if you were beyond saving.” The expression on his face was doubtful, but hope glittered in his shadowed eyes.

I stood to greet my mother-in-law as she stepped onto our driveway and the wards rippled in welcome. “Hi. Thank you for coming on such short notice.”

“Any excuse to see my grandbabies,” she replied, hugging me. “And Xaden barely puts his baby down long enough for me to get my hands on him. How am I supposed to spoil him rotten, I ask you?”

“I thought you couldn’t spoil babies, Ma Tavis?” Xaden asked, standing up slowly and accepting her hug with trepidation.

“These boys! They only listen when it suits them,” she grumbled, shaking her head at Xaden in mock-irritation. “I haven’t found a baby I could spoil yet, but I’m still trying.”

The front door flung open, banging against the side of the house, as Gwen and Lyn burst through it to throw themselves at their grandmother, shrieking in delight. Garrick appeared a few steps behind them, carrying Avery and Will, who both started wiggling to get down. “Na! Na!” Avery squealed, and Will started doing it too.

”Take it easy, kids, don’t knock your Nana over,” Garrick cautioned, lowering both the little ones to the porch.

“Oh, it’ll take a lot more than these babies to knock me over,” she replied, laughing. Will was standing at the edge of the porch with a frown of concentration just like Xaden’s as he watched Avery turn around and crawl backwards down the steps. He sat down, put his feet on the next step down, and scooted on his bottom to drop onto it.

”Good job, Will!” Gwen crowed, clapping for him. “Look at you!”

Xaden turned and saw Will scooting down the stairs. The alarm stole the exhaustion from his face and he started to lean forward to grab his son. I reached out, touching Xaden’s elbow, and shook my head. “What if he falls?” he hissed at me.

“He decided he can handle this,” I pointed out. “Let him.”

We watched as Will reached the bottom of the stairs and looked up at Xaden with a huge grin. “Down,” he announced, and then toddled over to join the girls.

I bumped Xaden with my shoulder. “Now let’s see what we can do about you.”

We got in the truck, leaving Ma Tavis herding the kids back inside. “Where you want to take him, Im?” Garrick asked as he backed out of the driveway.

“The woods,” I said. It was the first place that came to mind, and once I said it out loud it felt right. Xaden hissed in surprise, and Garrick chuckled, but neither of them argued.

We hadn’t been properly out to the woods since Garrick and I got married - it was a childhood haven, a teenage hangout, a hard-to-find place that we could only get to once we were allowed to leave shouting distance but which lost its appeal once we were old enough to have our own place.

Garrick passed the first turnoff - a gravel road leading to the trailhead we brought the girls to, the first hike kids walked themselves. The second turnoff, a paved road, had a parking lot bordering the most popular trailheads; it was where tourists and field trips and Scout groups went. Our turnoff, a rutted dirt track, was barely visible from the road; easily missable unless you knew exactly where it was. Garrick turned smoothly, truck tires crunching over fallen leaves, branches scraping against the sides as he pulled into an open space that wasn’t nearly as overgrown as it should have been. “Next generation’s found our spot,” he grinned, killing the engine.

“Of course they did,” I grumbled as we all got out. Garrick grabbed the summer bag from under his seat, winking at me. I’d suggested he bring the bag into the house half a dozen times since the fall rains had started, but he’d kept forgetting, and now I was glad it was there.

Xaden stretched as he got out of the truck, seeming to open like a flower. “How did you know this was where I needed to be?” he asked, voice cracking with amazement.

“This is where your connection to the land is the strongest.” I turned toward the path and found Garrick staring. “What?”

“I just - you’re amazing, is all,” he said, lips curling in a soft smile. “I’m lucky to have you.”

“Yeah, you are,” I replied, bumping against his arm and lacing our fingers together. “Let’s go.”

We walked together at first, hand-in-hand with Xaden a few steps behind, talking about other times and other ways we’d gone down this path together. At first, Xaden didn’t say much, but his laughs got louder and he started jumping into the storytelling - “Remember when Bodhi got poison oak on his ass?” was his first contribution - and then he took off running, Garrick right behind him, pounding through the leaves and yelling gleeful insults at each other.

I picked up the summer bag where Garrick had dropped it and kept walking, following the distant sounds of the boys as I’d done dozens, if not hundreds, of times before. I could hear Bodhi’s footsteps beside me, Liam crashing through the underbrush, Sloane shouting for us to wait up because our legs were longer. Before Garrick had a truck, we rode our bikes out here, dumping them in an unceremonious pile under a big pine tree. We traveled as a pack, and the times that it was just the three of us were special.

Xaden popped out of a bush about ten feet from where the river curled around our hangout, and I screamed and then punched him like we’d both left our adult selves somewhere along the path. “You watch out, Riorson; I’d hate to have to explain to Ma Tavis that I murdered you but I’m not entirely opposed to it.”

“It would make Garrick sad,” he pointed out, dancing out of my reach.

“He’d get over it,” I muttered.

Xaden’s mouth quirked. “Maybe, but you’d have to put up with him until then.”

“Ugh, stop being right!” I swiped at him again, and then I was chasing him too, until we both collided with Garrick - or, more accurately, Xaden collided with Garrick and I collided with Xaden.

“You know, when you heard your brothers talking about someone being built like a brick shithouse they didn’t mean literal bricks, right?” I glared up at both of them.

They both laughed, and Garrick took the summer bag back from me as he gave me a kiss.

“I do feel better,” Xaden admitted, looking around.

“Good,” I nodded. “Hopefully this will work, then.”

“Hopefully? You said the land wouldn’t choose me twice if it wasn’t fixable.”

“And I believe that. I believe there’s a way to restore your center, because if I didn’t, I’d be approaching the problem in a different way. Which also means it’s not hopeless, okay? If I run out of ideas, I can talk to my mom, and my grandmother, and dig through the journals of every Cardulo healer since the Founding, and once we’ve run through all of that, we can change the way we’re approaching the situation and do it all again.”

“Still the stubborn girl I remember,” Xaden said, and the smile reached his eyes.

“Damn straight.” I told him. “Now strip.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Garrick burst out laughing.

“You can beg, but it won’t change what I told you to do.”

“Immie, it’s October,” Xaden whined.

“If you wanted it to be warmer, you should’ve come home sooner, Riorson.” I crossed my arms and glared until he sighed and pulled his shirt off. “You can put your clothes in the bag so they don’t get muddy.”

Xaden toed off his shoes and stripped down to his socks and boxers, shooting occasional glances at me as he tucked his clothes in the summer bag next to the towels.

I waited.

He peeled off his socks one at a time, looking at me again.

I raised an eyebrow.

“If you just wanted to see me naked again, you didn’t have to take me all the way out here,” he smirked at me.

“I have three small children and a career in customer service, Xaden. Threshing starts on Monday. You don’t want to try my patience.”

“Threshing starts Monday?” he repeated, shoving off his boxers.

“It’s the third week in October,” I shrugged. “Be nice to me or I’ll put you to work.”

“She will, too,” Garrick nodded. “She’s had me unpacking boxes and stocking all week, getting ready for the herds.”

“Okay, okay, you’ve got me. Now what?”

“Remember how you always said it wasn’t fall until you’d pushed Bodhi into at least five or six giant mud puddles?”

“...Yes?”

“Consider this karma.”

One benefit to being married to a man that I’ve known my entire life is that we’ve achieved a level of mutual understanding that goes beyond words.

By the time I finished my sentence, Garrick had swept Xaden up and tossed him in the mud at the edge of the river.

I probably should have seen the mud fight coming.

Xaden had scarcely landed before he was up and flinging mud back at Garrick, who immediately reciprocated. Well, that’s one way to make sure he’s completely covered, I decided.

I grabbed the bag and ran for cover.

Once the shouts and the laughter had died down, I slowly came out of my hiding spot. Xaden and Garrick were leaning against each other on the bank of the river, beaming, both completely covered in mud. It was dripping out of Xaden’s hair, rubbed into Garrick’s beard, thickly coating their arms and hands.

“That wasn’t quite what I had in mind,” I said, laughing.

“This,” Xaden declared, “is your fault.”

“I bear no responsibility for the two of you turning into teenagers the minute we got out of the truck,” I retorted.

“You told me to throw him in the mud,” Garrick grinned.

Xaden whined, “Why did you tell him to throw me in the mud?”

“I didn’t think you’d willingly roll in the mud yourself, especially considering how whiny you were about stripping down.”

“Okay, but… why did you want me to roll in the mud?”

“To reconnect to the land,” I said. “It was 70 percent vibes, maybe 20% logical conclusion based on evidence.”

“What’s the other ten percent?”

“Hope.”

I sent them both into the river, which was deep and slow at this point, and told them not to come out until they were clean. While they splashed each other and yelled about how cold it was, I poked around until I found what was left of the fire pit and cleaned it out, gathering the dried leaves and fallen branches into the center, adjusting rocks to make a full circle again. I traced the flame rune into the leaves, and by the time they climbed back out of the water, I had a pleasant little fire going and had laid out the picnic blanket, waterproof side down.

Garrick had thrown his wet clothes onto the bank, and I shook them out and spread them over bushes by the fire, tracing warmth on each side to get them to dry faster. While I was at it, I pulled two beach towels out of the summer bag and traced warmth on them too, which the boys were glad to discover as they started drying off.

“How do you feel?” I asked Xaden.

“Wet,” he said cheerfully. “But good. Like that was what I needed. Did it work?”

“Too soon to tell. Ask me tomorrow.”

“Ready to go to the park, Tairn?” I asked as I tucked Claire into the carrier. He became one tremendous wag, wriggling with excitement as we headed for the door.

This had become our routine over the past two weeks; every day that it wasn’t pouring rain we walked to the park. I pushed Claire on the swing - her new favorite activity - and then Tairn ran giant looping circles around us while I walked laps around the perimeter. It was nice. Peaceful.

Except today, the minute I unclipped his leash, Tairn took off toward the river like his tail was on fire. I followed, cursing how out of shape I’d gotten since… since Claire had come along. Walking around the park was not the same as sprinting after Tairn. What was he doing? Running off was totally unlike him, even when he wasn’t working.

And then I saw what he was heading for. There was a strange-looking man, gangly and tattooed, sitting on a flat rock, and the baby in his lap looked like it was going to somersault right into the water. “No! Tairn!” I shouted, knowing that he’d catch the baby if it fell.

“Are you yelling at the river?” the man asked, half-turning to reveal dark curls shot through with silver framing even darker eyes. He sounded out of it, drunk or stoned or something, but at least he was holding on to the baby now.

“No, I thought,” I gasped, still trying to catch my breath. Tairn pressed against me, taking some of my weight. “The baby was falling.”

Now that I was closer, I realized that the baby was actually a toddler, much older than Claire, and probably twice as likely to tumble into the water if given the opportunity.

“I had him,” he said, “and the river would catch him if he got loose.”

Catch him and drown him, I almost said. Clearly this guy was blitzed out of his mind. “Were you going to… let him fall in?” I asked instead, trying to assess if the toddler was actively in danger with this guy. If he was - who would I tell? Did Aretia have Child Protective Services?

“No, of course not,” he told me, getting to his feet. At least he was getting away from the water now.

“You just said -” I started to say, and then stopped, pulling out my water bottle and taking a drink. It didn’t matter, as long as the kid was safe. But maybe somebody should know that there was an unhinged guy wandering around the park with a small child.

“You’re Liam’s wife,” he said.

Small town life, I guess. Everyone knew who I was, even if I had no idea who they were. “Liam’s widow,” I corrected, just in case he… didn’t know? Had forgotten? Was too stoned to remember? It didn’t hurt any less, having to say it. “I’m Violet Mairi. And you are?” I decided that I didn’t care; wondered how fast I could get out of this stupid conversation and go home to cry.

“Xaden Riorson.” He started to say something else - an apology, maybe? It didn’t matter, because I knew who he was. I knew exactly who he was.

I told him, and now I was furious, rage prickling across my skin like static electricity. “You made Liam cry on our wedding night.” There was never a random lightning strike when you really wanted one.

The memory of Liam weeping silently because Xaden hadn’t come to our wedding was even sharper knowing how little time we had remaining, that the second happiest day of our lives was marred by this careless man. I let the grief and anger pour out of me, a story I’d never shared with anyone, the knowledge that Liam’s love and trust had been so misplaced. He protested, and I could see that I had hurt him - maybe he wasn’t as heartless as I’d thought. Claire was starting to fuss, and Tairn’s ears were back and his hackles were up; if I didn’t get control of myself somebody was going to get hurt.

Besides me.

It was too late for me.

”He worried about you,” I said at last, letting my shoulders drop, swaying to calm Claire.

Xaden’s kid started crying, which made me feel worse about yelling at him, even before Claire joined in solidarity. Babies and animals were emotional barometers, and I knew better than to start shouting at someone with two of them - and Tairn - stuck in the middle of it. I started to say something - an apology, an excuse, something - but he hugged his screaming kid tighter and ran, grabbing at stuff on a nearby picnic table as he went.

”Fuck,” I sighed in my best everything-will-be-okay soothing mom voice, patting Claire’s back as I bounced her. “That’s right, baby girl. Mama fucked that right up, yes she did. Yes, she did.”

I started walking back toward the house, hoping the walk would help calm Claire back down. I needed to talk to - somebody. Somebody who knew Xaden, who could tell me if - I wasn’t sure. If he was safe, maybe. If the kid was safe, though I was less worried about him than I had been.

“Violet!” I looked up and saw Ridoc waving from the next block down.

“Ridoc!” I waved back and headed in his direction. Tairn’s tail started wagging for the first time since we’d arrived at the park, and he lifted his paws in the happy dance he used to greet his favorite people as we crossed the street.

I wasn’t sure which of the three of us were happier to see him, but I felt much better after he’d hugged me. “What are you doing wandering the streets in the middle of the day?” I asked, giving him an additional squeeze and reluctantly stepping back.

“Trying to solve a problem,” he grinned. “When I get stuck, I take a walk.”

“Smart,” I nodded. “It definitely beats staring at the screen until your eyes bleed.”

“Yep. So what are you doing wandering the streets in the middle of the day?”

“I took Claire and Tairn to the park. Still playing at being a stay-at-home mom, you know.”

“Hey,” he bumped his shoulder with mine, “taking care of a kid is important. I hope nobody’s giving you a hard time about it.”

I shook my head. “Nobody except me. I just - feel kind of guilty relying on other people for everything, even if…”

“Even if they begged you to come and are delighted to have you?”

“But what if they just said that and secretly they resent my freeloading ways?”

“Have you called your therapist?” Ridoc asked, narrowing his eyes at me.

I sighed. “No.”

“What would she say?”

I sighed again. “I have to believe what people tell me.”

He nodded. “I can say that any time anybody mentions you - which is a lot, did you know that? You’re very exciting - they all talk about how thrilled the Mairis are to have you.”

“Oh, gods,” I groaned. “I didn’t need to know that.”

“Small town life!” he crowed, busting out jazz hands. Claire shrieked with joy at the movement, so he did it again.

“Small town life,” I agreed. Ridoc bumped his shoulder against mine and we started walking together. “Weird question for you: have you met Xaden Riorson?”

”Bodhi’s cousin? Yeah, he was one of the first people I met after I got here. Why?”

”Is he - is he okay?”

“Okay how? Like I guess he’s all magically fucked up in some weird way, but he’s got his mark back and Bodhi’s really happy about it. Garrick and Imogen are working with him on the rest of his recovery and they think he’ll be okay but Mayor Uncle Fen is doubtful. Mayor Uncle Fen is kind of a jerk, though.”

“You never cease to amaze me,” I said, shaking my head.

”I’m pretty amazing, but what did I do this time?”

”All these people you know already. And not only do you know them, you know what they think about this guy I just met today. Meanwhile I thought he was some weirdo who was going to drop his baby in the river.”

”Wait, what?”

I explained our encounter, and his grin just kept getting wider as I talked. “What are you laughing about?” I finally demanded.

”I’m not laughing,” he protested. “Just - like everybody’s got an opinion about Xaden and his energy and his place in town and you’re just yelling at him for being an asshole. I love you, that’s all.”

”I love you too,” I said, squeezing his hand. “I think everybody walked away from the encounter in tears and I felt like a grade-A jerk.”

”He deserved it,” Ridoc shrugged. “Liam was a precious angel baby and anyone who made him feel bad deserves to feel worse. Except you, because you are perfect and without flaw.”

”You’re a little biased,” I pointed out. “Do you also think Bodhi is perfect and without flaw?”

Ridoc shook his head. “He’s magnificent in nearly all possible ways, but he’s a Niners fan.”

“How did that happen?” I’d never had much of an opinion about football, but Liam had been a rabid Seahawks fan.

“He went to Stanford for law school and they got to him,” Ridoc hissed, shaking his head. “His roommate was a fan. It’s a good thing he’s so incredibly good in bed; it could’ve been a dealbreaker.”

“Would’ve been awkward to figure out after you moved in with him, though.”

“Yeah, I’ve accepted it as the price of admission. At this point, as long as he doesn’t have bodies buried in his backyard I’m staying forever.”

“Liam still loved him despite his weird taste in football teams, so I think you’re probably safe.”

Ridoc laughed, nodding. “Ours can be a divided home one day a year. Or maybe I can find someone to watch the Seahawks with and he can sit home by himself and think about his choices.”

That made me laugh, which also made Claire laugh. “I should let you get back to your problem-solving walk,” I told him, squeezing his hand again. “I’m glad I ran into you.”

“Same,” he said, kissing my cheek and then Claire’s, and rubbing Tairn behind the ears one more time. “See you later, flowerpot. Bye, rosebud!” He waved to Claire and she waved back, gurgling baby farewells.

The nightmares were always of phones ringing. That made sense, because the real phone, the landline phone, only even rang if it was bad news. Teachers when there was a problem. Other kids' parents when I was in trouble. Aunt Lucy or Uncle James, when Dad's parents were sick. And then Violet, when it was about Liam.

Claire had a real knack for waking me up with her crying when I was having a nightmare. She'd been here two weeks and I'd gotten up for her four or five times at night, to check on her and take care of her if it was something I could do, or take her to Violet if it wasn't. Sometimes Violet beat me to it, or came in while I was trying to calm her.

They made for strange conversations, talking in the middle of the night about anything that came to mind, just because voices talking calmed my niece down. Violet thought it was because it had been so quiet in their place after Liam died, so her little mind might have associated silence with losing her father. I wasn't sure whether babies worked like that, but it seemed as likely as anything.

So we talked about books, or my classes, or the transcription work she was doing. We talked about anything, as long as it was nothing at all.

"Sometimes it doesn't seem fair." I choked down the rest of the thought. Violet was a guest - well, in some kind of nebulous space that looked like both family and guest in my mind. Mom and Dad seemed to have fully integrated her into family and I probably should have but...

"What doesn't seem fair?" Violet asked me, interrupting my thought spiral. "Aside from all of it."

I shouldn't - I knew I shouldn't, I knew the thought wasn’t fair, but the sob I was trying to hold back escaped as I put Clarity back down in her crib. "You have something left of him, someone that's him, and I don't." It was barely above a whisper. Even drowning in jealousy at four in the morning, I didn't want to wake the baby.

"Of course you do." Violet didn't look up, which I appreciated, since I was sure I was a red-faced mess from trying not to cry out loud. "In a way, you're as close as it gets to being someone that's him."

Claire's breathing was regular now, and my sister-in-law gestured for me to follow her into the hallway where we could speak a little more loudly.

"I'm not him," I snapped at her with a little more feeling than I intended, just because I'd been freed from the enforced quiet of the nursery room. "He was perfect. The only - the only good thing about him being gone is I don't get compared to him anymore."

"I don't think I phrased that well," she sighed. "I've been doing that a lot lately. I just meant - if Clarity's 'someone that's him' because she's half his DNA, then you're even more him than she is, because both of you got all of your DNA from the same place. And I do see a lot of Liam in you."

That was not something I'd heard much, if ever. "You do?"

"Liam hated being called perfect. He worked really hard at the things he was good at, and he was very aware of the things he wasn't as good at as he wanted to be. I've only been here a little while, but I've seen how hard you work - I couldn't do food service like you do, for one thing, and you're always doing homework or tutoring or practicing for something you're putting together."

"I guess."

Violet yawned. "I'm going back to bed. We can talk more later, if you want?"

I nodded and brushed her off - I wasn't sure I believed her that I had much in common with Liam. I loved him, I was always thrilled when he came home, he was the most supportive person I had ever had. I hated being separated from him when he moved to Seattle.

But I also saw how surprised people were when my mark started showing up, even though Liam had made it pretty clear he was happy in the city.

It was almost five and it was pretty clear I still couldn't sleep, so I figured I might as well head into work early. Cohen was always happy to head out and get some extra sleep when I did. I changed into my diner shirt and pants and biked the handful of blocks there.

As usual, Cohen greeted me with a handful of 'are you sure?' before taking off his apron and disappearing out the back door. I put mine on and started with the regulars, bringing around fresh coffee to top everybody off. Aside from them, there were two tables with a single person at each, more than I usually expected at this time of the morning but we were heading into Threshing - I mean, Homecoming - week and the harvest festival. Every place in town was booked up as usual, and I'd heard even the extra bedrooms in Riorson House had been rented out on Air B&B to help with the demand. Every year it got a little busier, and every year I told myself I was going to find another job before Threshing came around again.

Maybe next year.

The good thing about Threshing was that, bougie festival drawing in the tourists or not, it also brought back people I liked to see. Case in point, my first table's order came up and I brought a stack of pancakes with all the toppings to a blonde woman in cute red glasses who grinned at me.

"Sloane! You're still here!"

I had to laugh at that. "You know I'm not going anywhere, Yanny. Who'd work the morning rush if I quit?"

"You replaced me, someone will replace you. It's the circle of diner."

"I know, I know. I'm finishing my degree this year, so next time you come back to town hopefully I'll have a job that doesn't involve slinging syrup."

"It's about time!" she got quiet. "Can I ask - how're you holding up? For real?"

"I don't really want to think about it while I'm working," I cut her off. Sure, Yanny and Liam had dated in high school and she'd been my rock from the time Liam left for Seattle right up until she went off to medical school, but I didn't exactly want to cry before my shift had even really started. "You'll be here all week, right? We can catch up later."

"Of course, I'm sorry." Her smile was genuine enough that I felt a little bad cutting her off like that, but I figured she got it.

I moved on to the last table. I hadn't seen a ticket in so I put on my best Customer Smile and got ready to take an order. "Have you decided what you'd like?"

"Sloane?" he asked, and I blinked at him. He did look a little familiar, but nothing quite clicked. Pale skin, light brown hair, bright green eyes... I definitely thought I would recognize those eyes if he was somebody I'd taken classes with, and he definitely hadn't grown up around here. Who the heck was he?

"I'm sorry, I don't -"

"You look just like your avatar," he said, cutting me off. "I wanted to surprise you, but not like this! I'm Cam."

"Cam?" I tried not to squeal, but I don't think I sounded very dignified at all. I'd seen pictures of him but never very good ones - he said he didn't photograph well and fuck I had to believe him. In person he was fucking stunning, the kind of guy I wouldn't make a move on in a hundred years.

Lucky me we'd met playing Final Fantasy XIV and I'd fallen for Aaric, Miqo'te ninja, instead.

"I just started my shift, I can't really sit down, but let me get you your food - do you want to get together for lunch after?"

"How about tonight, late? I'm sure you've got things you need to do, and I'd like to take you on a proper date." He flashed a smile at me and I couldn't believe he was giving me that look while I was wearing my diner apron and polyester shirt.

We made arrangements to meet in the evening and I took his order back to the kitchen.

It looked like it was going to be a pretty good day after all.

Violet,

I wanted to apologize for our introduction. I have been struggling to find my words, and I'm hoping I can find a way to explain myself to you by letter, so I can take my time and find the right ones.

To get it out of the way: Liam was like a little brother to me, and while we weren't as close after he moved to Seattle, missing him - both the big life events and the too-little time there turned out to be - will always be one of my biggest regrets. Imogen says I can't keep dwelling on what I can't change, but he's the one I can't make amends to, and yet I probably owe him the most. He was the wakeup call that I needed. He saved my life.

I'd like to make amends with you, though. I wasn't in the right mindset at the time but I appreciate that you were concerned for Willow. His health and safety is everything to me. It's why I took him away from my ex and why I came back to Aretia. I know you're not local and wouldn't trust him the way I do, but I'm sure Liam had you come home to present your daughter to the Tairn, and he must be very fond of you too, sending the cu sith to you.

I'm not sure what I can offer you beyond my apology, but if there is something I can offer that would make you more comfortable, just ask. I'd love to hear about what Liam was like in Seattle, and the things I missed, but you might not be up for that. Have you had a chance to be introduced to the river properly? Have you been able to go out in the woods and meet the land? Or maybe I'll just see you at game night at Bodhi's house. He said they were inviting both of us so the numbers stayed even.

Respectfully,

Xaden

I didn't hear the front door open. The office was at the back of the little house, so that wasn't really a surprise, but I might have yelped like a cat when I felt a hand on my shoulder and I definitely swatted at my boyfriend when he laughed at the way I jumped.

"That's the infamous hyperfocus you promised me?" Bodhi asked as he stepped smoothly out of my reach. I stood up to greet him properly, taking my time to appreciate how good he looked in his Court Suit.

"Sure is," I leaned up to kiss him. "How was the commute?"

"I wouldn't call it a commute; I only have to go out to the county courthouse once or twice most months," he said as he took off his suit jacket. He looked even better in the pale pink shirt by itself, and I knew he'd look even better than that with the whole outfit on the floor.

I reached for him but only got as far as loosening his necktie before I heard a knock on the door.

"Nobody's supposed to be here for game night until six," I whined into his neck. "Not fair."

"Then it must be important." And there was another one of the things I loved about him; the way he thought about other people as easily as he breathed. "Let's go check."

I stretched, because this was also the first time I'd gotten up since my lunch reminder, and closed my laptop before I followed him through the living room and back to the front door.

"Violet! We weren't expecting you until later," he was saying as I spotted Violet through the doorframe. Her smile widened as she spotted me and I felt my chest flutter just a little at the attention.

"I needed to talk to Ridoc about something. Your advice would probably be good too." She looked back to Bodhi. "I know I'm early; if you're busy I can come back, but I wanted it to be before game night starts."

"It's fine," I told her, slinging my arm around Bodhi. "He was just going to get changed, and I need to put together one of my special 'ridocuterie' spreads but we've got plenty of time." I could feel him laughing softly into my hair, probably at my 180 when I saw it was Violet. But it was Violet!

Bodhi went upstairs to change without my help while I took Violet into the living room. "Is it good or bad?" I started.

"I think maybe good, but I'm not sure," Violet said as she sat down on the couch.

"So not a problem with Claire or anything serious, that's good." I sat down next to her.

She shook her head. "Claire's great, Isaac's watching her right now and we're trying out one of the Tavis girls as a sitter tonight so everybody gets a break. No, it's about the conversation I had with Xaden."

"Is it still bothering you? I know how you get when you feel like something went wrong, but it's like I told you-"

"No, it's – he wrote me a letter,” Violet laughed a little as she pulled the envelope out of her bag. I could hear the disbelief in it; I'd heard her laugh like that before when she didn't know what to do. “You’re in a romantasy but apparently I’m in a Jane Austen novel.”

As if she hadn't said 'Reader, I married him' a thousand times about Liam. I laughed at the idea of it, reaching for the envelope. ”Like a real letter?”

“On actual stationary. Written by hand.” She pulled the envelope away from me and took the letter out herself, setting the envelope carefully on the coffee table.

”Xaden wrote to you?” I heard Bodhi's voice on the stairs behind me and looked up automatically as his legs were coming into view. The man looked just as good in jeans as he did in dress pants and I wondered if I would ever get tired of thinking about those thighs of his.

Until I caught sight of the rest of him. ”How did you – is that my shirt?” I demanded, nearly feeling my brain short-circuit at the sight of him.

”I warned you I was going to steal it,” he grinned back, pausing at the corner of the couch. Looking like a fucking model, because he was good-looking enough to be a model. Taller and broader and darker than me, with my shirt practically painted over those pecs because even if I like my shirts a little loose, it's not really in his size.

”I didn’t think you were serious!” Because I didn't, because I knew it wouldn't fit him, and because it's one of my favorite shirts. It's stupidly, perfectly soft.

”It looks good on you,” Violet said. “You should let him keep it, Ridoc.”

”But it’s my Mario Kart shirt,” I whined. “I love it.” The endless battle that was finding clothing that actually felt comfortable on me warred with a new streak of possessiveness that was really enjoying seeing Bodhi wearing my shirt. No wonder he couldn't keep his hands off me when I stole his.

”And you still get to look at it if he’s wearing it,” she pointed out. “More easily than if you are, in fact.”

“True,” I admitted. “And it does look good on him. Not that everything doesn’t look good on him.” I would just have to keep stealing his shirts in retaliation; not that I expected any complaints at all from him when I did.

Bodhi dug his fingers into my curls, scratching at my scalp like I was a cat, and I leaned into it. “Your takeaway: believe me when I tell you things. Why did Xaden write you a letter, Violet?”

“Did Ridoc tell you about how I ran into him at the park?”

"Ridoc told me some things, and Xaden told me some other things, so I think I have the gist of it," Bodhi told her, and while I hadn't been there for the conversation with Xaden, it didn't surprise me that it'd happened. We'd had dinner over there again on Sunday, and I didn't particularly keep tabs on what they were talking about every minute.

I might have been distracted watching him play with Willow because hot damn does my man look good with a toddler in his arms, I have to say. I was never really interested in kids but between the quality time I've spent with Claire and watching Bodhi kiss a baby on the head, let's just say maybe I've got a biological clock after all.

Apparently small towns get to you fast. I'm going to be running a bed and breakfast or a Christmas tree farm or something if I'm not careful.

Now my cheeks were hot thinking about Bodhi and I could see Violet's were pink too, but she only really blushed like that when she was embarrassed, so I left my hand on her back while she handed the letter to Bodhi and then balled her hands into fists, working through her nerves. "Is he… is he okay? You have to know better than anybody would since you're his family, right? I thought I knew at least a little bit of everything I needed to know about magic, but the way he talked about the river…"

Bodhi nodded as she trailed off, reading the letter and then handing it back before he met her eyes. "Nobody drowns in the Tairn, Violet. Not in town, anyway, and especially not local kids. One of my earliest memories is slipping off a dead tree I was trying to follow Xaden onto and falling in. It scared the heck out of me, and I screamed bloody murder while my dad tried to dry me off with his flannel shirt, but I was never really in danger. The current just… pushed me up onto the bank."

And with that, I was firmly back in romantasy land.

I looked at Violet. "I guess they don't put that in the welcome packet?"

"Liam and I talked about moving here but I keep finding out about things that never came up." She leaned back against the couch with a sigh and I had to pull my hand back fast to keep her from landing on it. "Do you know what he means about Liam? About… missing things, and about Liam saving his life?"

"I think if you want to know, you should ask him."

I looked between Violet's confusion and Bodhi's obvious desire to protect his cousin. I could understand where both of them were coming from, but there was this gap between them.

"She's just trying to figure out what's okay to ask," I tried stepping in, hoping I wasn't going to shoot myself in the foot here. I'd gotten in trouble for trying to play peacemaker before. But I trusted Violet, and I trusted Bodhi, and I wanted them to both be okay having this conversation. "Your advice is helpful because you have a better idea what's too personal. She already hurt him in ways she didn't intend to because she didn't know what she didn't know." Violet flinched at my choice of words and I worried I was fucking it up.

"If I'm supposed to be a Speaker and he's already a Speaker, then we're tied together regardless," Violet said. "I just need to know how not to make it worse."

Both of them were quiet for so long my chest ached from the need to say something and fill the silence, so long I thought I would absolutely die of anxiety while they looked at each other, taking the measure of something I didn't see. It was the longest wait of my entire life. Probably three or maybe even four minutes.

"I specialize in family law," Bodhi said slowly, finally, and I watched confusion flicker across Violet's face. "Family law is complicated, not because the laws themselves are more complex than other branches of law, but because these cases are rooted in loss that's hard to make whole. It's one thing to calculate child support, to articulate custody schedules, to identify a difference in income and what it will mean to the newly divided family. I have clients who've missed attending a sibling's wedding because it wasn't safe for them to go. And if my client called her sister and said 'I can't go, it's not safe,' her sister would say, 'Just leave.' Like it was an easy choice. Like there aren't statistics showing that leaving an abusive situation is the most dangerous thing someone could do. Like my client wasn't still clinging to the memory of the man she fell in love with and hoping that he'd come back if she just did the right thing. But she was still missing at that wedding, and there's nothing she can do to make up that loss."

"So you're saying Xaden was in an abusive relationship?" I can see her doing the calculus in her head, because the guy is underfed and overweird but he's also at least a foot taller than her and... well, a guy. I did workshops that talked about intimate partner violence, too, I know what people assume. But I also know Violet is one of the most compassionate people I know. "That's why he didn't... Oh gods, we should have guessed, Liam was so sure he'd never want to miss... And I put all of that on him. I just hit him in the face with it."

"You didn't know," I reminded her, moving my arm from the back of the couch to wrap around her shoulder.

"He probably thinks he deserved it," Bodhi shrugged. "Xaden's always taken responsibility for everything. And - I don't know for sure that his relationship was abusive; he hasn't told me outright. But it explains things."

"Now I feel like an asshole for wanting to ask about... Well, in the letter it sounds like he kidnapped that little boy away from his mother."

Okay, that one had not been on my radar. But I wasn't a parent no matter how much I loved Claire and I definitely wasn't a mom, so I wasn't surprised I'd missed it, either. I rubbed Violet's back, wanting to help her calm down.

I looked back up at Bodhi. I didn't have an answer for that one.

"Legally, technically, it probably would be. If Xaden's ex wants to pursue it in the courts we'll... take appropriate measures. But Xaden said he's not worried about her doing that."

That was a definitely a sentence full of words that said almost nothing. Bodhi was probably just protecting his cousin's privacy but I was suddenly thinking about what it would look like if she did. A small town closing ranks around the mayor's son was the least awful thing I could picture playing out on the Seattle news stations. Suddenly I had a lot of questions for Bodhi too, things I hadn't really thought about because I trusted him and his explanations even when I didn't understand the theory behind them.

Violet scrubbed at her face. “I was going to say that I couldn’t imagine a mother letting her child go, but if my dad had taken us back to his hometown I don’t know that my mother would have fought him. He was always our primary parent.”

"He was the one who taught you magic, right?" Bodhi asked. "Do you know where your people are from?"

“The town’s called… Tirvan? I think? I don’t know where it is; Mom didn’t want him to talk about it.”

"Tirvainne," Bodhi said automatically, and it sounded entirely different in his mouth, not just a pronunciation difference but like the name itself was magic. "It's not far, just barely into Montana."

Violet startled when he said it. "Now that you say it, I think the Colonel mentioned the new mending professor was from there. Maybe… well, it sounds silly to say 'maybe he knows my family' but maybe I can talk to him about the town?"

"Maybe we can go visit? All three of us, maybe, see what we can find out?" I looked between them, suddenly afraid I was making this awkward. "Just… so Vi doesn't have to go by herself, and I'm not leaving you alone for the weekend. Not that you aren't both adults who can do stuff by yourself, because you are and you can, I'm the one being weird and codependent, but-"

"It's a sweet idea, but a little premature," Violet cut me off but she was smiling.

"I have some contacts up there. If you email me what you know about your dad or his family, I can see what I'm able to find out for you."

"That would be amazing." She turned that smile of hers on Bodhi and he responded with that hundred-watt grin of his and something warm curled up in my chest that I didn't think I'd felt since Violet and Liam went exclusive. Oh boy.

"So it's probably time for me to start on snack dinner." I hurried to my feet and into the kitchen before I could embarrass myself any more than usual. I'd already picked out the trays, so I just needed to cut up and lay out the cheese, and then make my little salami roses, and then cut the bread and get out the dips and… well, I may not have had space to host a lot of parties in my tiny condo, but I know how to throw a party, okay?

Bodhi followed me into the kitchen and laughed as I ordered him around, giving him strict instructions about which dips went where, and Violet joined us a few minutes later to help by putting chips and pretzels into the bowls Bodhi got down for her.

"So what are we playing tonight?" she asked as Bodhi dragged an honest-to-gods washtub in from the back porch. "Wait, what's that for?"

"Drinks," he said. "I'm going to fill it with ice and then put the bottles in."

"Ooh, can I? I think I've got this one!" My little impromptu study group with Rhiannon and Sawyer had only taught me two things so far, but one was the sign for warming that Bodhi had woven into my coat the first time we went to dinner with his family, and the other was the sign for cooling that inverted it.

Bodhi stepped back, clearly curious but not asking questions. I loved that he was willing to just see what I did sometimes. So few people were. I poured the water pitcher from the fridge into the washtub so I had something to work with.

"Ridoc! You're working on learning magic already?" Violet's eyes lit up. "Show me!"

I bowed with a flourish to my captive audience. "Nothing up my sleeves –" Violet giggled.

Then I closed my eyes, focusing on the buzz just below my ribcage that I was learning to identify as magic. The book Rhiannon had us reading suggested you pull the energy from your center, but that felt weird to me. There was nowhere to pull it from! And trying to picture it just made me think of surgical drains. Sawyer said he'd had better luck picturing it moving through his hands and that felt more doable, so I ended up settling on the image of Peter Parker (even though we all know Miles Morales is the superior Spiderman) shooting the webbing out of his wrist.

It worked, is the important thing. So I pulled the energy from my wrist like I was doing a magic trick pulling scarves out of nowhere, picturing it as clearly as I could, and then twisting the energy around into the rune for cooling. (Sawyer actually practiced with metal wire, which sounded cool as hell, but I hadn't had a chance to try it yet.)

I held the rune between both hands until I felt like my fingertips were going numb and then let it fall in the washtub. A blast of cold air blew back up at me, chilling my face and touseling my hair, and then I opened my eyes.

"Well, it's definitely frozen." Bodhi was looking into the washtub with a laugh.

"Maybe that needed a little refining," Violet added. "That's really good for a week, though!"

I looked down.

It was frozen solid and flat, a six-inch cylinder of ice.

Very frozen. Useless for drinks. I shook my head. What did I think was going to happen? I'd been in such a hurry to show off I hadn't actually thought it through. "Ah, hell, I ruined it."

"Not at all," Bodhi smiled as he reached down to the washtub. I didn't see anything, but when he poked it with his finger, cracks spread out from his touch through the ice. There were some groans and pings and then he grabbed the handle on one side of the washtub, raising it a few inches and letting it drop with a crash.

The cracked ice jumped and shifted, and then he picked it up with both hands, setting the washtub on the counter and in the process distracting my thoughts with how good he looked as his muscles tensed and flexed in my shirt.

"Ready for drinks," he announced, and I realized he was right. The tub was now full of crushed ice, ready and perfect to hold bottles of beer and soda and hard cider.

"You are amazing," I told him, leaning up to kiss him.

"Don't sell yourself short," Violet insisted as she joined me in loading the drinks. "You did half the work."

"Me? Short? Only next to –" to Liam, that line had always ended, but I caught myself. "Only next to Bodhi. Or Garrick. Or Xaden… what's in the water out here, anyway? Why are all the guys so tall?" Then all three of us were laughing and it felt good. I was really looking forward to game night.