EL BK5 | Chapter 38 - I Love My Weird Fae Family (Patreon)

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I woke with a small jolt, heart thundering in my throat and sticky with sweat in the early hours. It had been the same nightmare as always, the one where Radomir is dragging me across the floor by my hair and my baby is dying inside of me. The sensation of the knife sinking into flesh when I stab Molly makes me shudder, but it’s not until I burst out the front door of the cabin and fall into an abyss that I wake up. Such a stupid dream to make the ground disappear.

With a soft sigh, I rolled onto my back. The window was open, letting the cool night air into the room and early morning birdsong drifted in. My husband, Markos, was still beside me. Instinctively I curled toward him, wrapping my arms around his cool muscular torso and squeezing as tight as I could.

He made some disgruntled sound and turned over to return the cuddle. Relief washed over me as he hugged me to his chest. I was safe. He was safe. Hadrian was safe. Everything was fine. 

“Do you need me to do anything?” Markos asked without opening his eyes.

“No, I just wanted to cuddle…”

“Do you want me to rub your back?”

I hesitated, caught between yes and no. “... Maybe…” I admitted. 

With another Fae baby on the way, our fourth, my lower back ached more often than not. Markos keeps insisting that we take a break before the next one, but I want all the kids to be a similar age, no wild gaps. Hadrian is already way older than Rosé and Mikæl, because it takes me a while to pop them out.

Markos readjusted, turning me over so he could press his thumbs up the sides of my spine and into the base of my neck. That felt good… I closed my eyes again as he worked my muscles loose. His hands could have almost fit wholly around my waist, if my belly wasn’t starting to bulge with baby anyways. 

He got down to my glutes before a faint gurgle from the cradle froze us both in place. Mikæl, our youngest, had started to wake, and I needed to go feed him. With a resigned sigh, I began to get up. “I got this one,” I assured, knowing Markos had to get up for work anyway.

“I’ll get Rosé and Hadrian ready to go,” he kissed my shoulder before getting up with me. 

The man dragged himself out of bed like a zombie, hair a mess, pajamas wrinkled and partly unbuttoned. I wonder if he even noticed? He’d been the one to get up twice before when Rosé woke up and started crying. She ate flowers yesterday, and had a sore tummy after, not surprising. We made the mistake of thinking she was just playing with them, pulling the petals off and throwing them… It turned out she was also stuffing them into her mouth when we weren't looking. 

Fae babies are weird.

***

After feeding Mikæl, we took the kids to breakfast in the dining hall. Nathaniel and Eric were missing, no doubt still ‘busy’ with each other. Calla and Charles had already eaten and left, but Achaicus was waiting for us. He sat with Lucinde and her daughters, and got up to help carry the kids. 

“Good morning,” he greeted us with a bow like a high princely lord, and I stifled a laugh. His hair was tied and wrapped away in a bun, no doubt to keep it out of reach from little hands that liked to pull on hair.

Rosé reached for him impatiently in my arms, while Hadrian, no more than eight at the time, gave a small bow reflecting his uncle’s formality. I don’t know where he gets his rigidness from, sometimes I worry he’s hardly being a kid at all. 

Achaicus took the girl from me. She squealed in delight before scrunching her face with the realization that she couldn’t grab his hair and beginning to cry. He distracted her with a small star-shaped slice of toast with fruit purée and cream, ensuring quiet like a true war veteran.

Mikæl was too young for solid food, and when Markos helped Hadrian fill his plate I pretended to be preoccupied with something else. I didn’t want to see the bloody chunks of meat they were getting. You get used to it living with monsters, but with this pregnancy, it sort of made me want to heave. 

With breakfast finished, I left the two youngest with Achaicus, and walked with Hadrian to Markos’s office. It was part of our daily routine, we called it ‘walking daddy to work’. I gave my husband a peck on the cheek as goodbye, and we waved from the hallway in front of his office as if he were heading on a long voyage. Putting every ounce of enthusiasm into it just to make him squirm. It didn’t work, Markos was too used to the fanfare.

My eldest son is a delight, polite and careful; he inherited none of my chaos. But when left alone with me, he is especially quiet. Sometimes I catch him staring at the fading scars around my fingers where he once bit them off, and I think he’s afraid of hurting me again. In an effort to put him at ease, I leaned sideways into him, nudging him with my shoulder.

“Who are you training with today~?” I purred. 

His eyes went wide for a moment, as if he thought contact with me would break something, before awkwardly looking to the ground. “I don’t know… Maybe Calla or Charles?”

“Not Eric?” 

He shook his head, “Probably not… I think Uncle Nathaniel is training with him today.”

“Huh, archery it is then!”

We reached the edge of the training grounds, a flat grassy area with some very unfortunate straw men that looked like they needed a vacation from all the beatings they received. Charlie was matched with Calla, and they were dancing about with swords. My brother is getting good at that sort of stuff now. While Eric and Nathaniel were indeed sparring together, but further away. 

They were using magic, scorching the ground as they twisted and weaved around one another. From the sad droop of some of the trees behind them, it seemed not even the taller foliage was safe. As we watched, Eric ducked past Nathaniel in some slippery little movement I could barely see. I thought he might win the match with that, until Nathaniel blocked with a pulse of energy and caught Eric by the wrist.

When he tried to break free, he ended up pinned to the ground under Nathaniel. “I swear you’re cheating,” Eric complained.

“You’re just too slow with that movement,” the Fae gave a helpless shrug. 

“Arrogant. …You can get off me now.”

“And why would I do that? When I could-”

“Child present!” I called, cupping my hands around my mouth for effect. 

Eric flushed a bright red and shoved Nathaniel off. It was still rare to see him out of their room. I wasn’t fully sure I’d forgiven him yet, Charles had, but Calla was on my side; half-forgiveness… Not complete forgiveness. As a result, the man was as nervous as a kite in a hurricane whenever he saw me, shouting at them probably didn’t help. 

Charles turned to see what the yelling was about, and grinned when he saw Hadrian, earning himself a solid whack from Calla for his distraction. “Ow!”

“Don’t get distracted when you’re in a fight.”

“You stopped to look too.”

“Because I knew you would be distracted,” she explained with monotonous indifference.

The group made their way in to greet us. Charles, still rubbing his head, crouched to talk to Hadrian, something about training with him today. Calla waited to the side in the strange way she always did, anticipating, waiting for orders. Eric was the slowest to come close, holding onto Nathaniel’s arm subtly like he thought I might turn his fairy against him or something. Not that there was any worry about that.

“You’re getting fat, should you be wandering around so much?” Nathaniel commented rudely.

“I’m trying to hatch an army,” I corrected with a huff before adding, “One of us has to save your species.”

“Has Markos said it’s okay for you to be out wandering around?” he corrected.

“You think I’d be out here if it wasn’t? I’m pregnant, not dead.”

Honestly, Nathaniel was worse than Markos about this. Four kids in and he was still an asshole every time. Achaicus said it was because it was almost unheard of to have a second child after having a son, and then another after that. Apparently, it completely blew their minds that I kept going. All four of my kids were the only ones in 50 years.

“So long as you don’t go into labor out here.”

“She won’t…” Eric mumbled, he could sense stuff with his god magic and that helped keep the rest of them calm about this. 

“When are your cousins coming to visit? I wanna see Karyna!” I tried to ease his discomfort with as much pleasantry as I could.

“...I don’t know.”

“When I next allow it,” Nathaniel corrected.

“They haven’t asked to come see us again. Kári is busy fighting Selkies.”

I rubbed my belly absently. “Huh, he’s really obsessed isn’t he?”

“They killed his parents.” 

The answer is never something normal. I nodded politely, letting that line of conversation die. “Well, if you guys are all sparring, I’m going to sit in a spa. Calla, do you want to come?”

“If you wish for me to come,” she agreed, and we left the boys to their muscle man fighting. 

***

Away from everyone else, and soaking in water up to my chest, I exhaled the tension in my shoulders. It’s only when it’s just Calla and I that I don’t have to try so hard. Everyone else is exhausted. Charles is anxious, Eric is hesitant, and the Fae are basically walking statues. None of them understand anything… Not even Markos. Some days it feels like they all got an edition of ‘how to feed and water your human’ from the 1800’s or something, and just live by that.

If you hug them they look at you like you’ve just stripped naked, when you try to talk to them the conversation is like pulling teeth. Still… They're my family, and I know they would go to war for me. I just wish I could see them smile more often. What if my kids turn out like that? Stoic and silent?

“Calla…” I mumbled, sinking further into the water, “Do you think everything will turn out okay?”

The woman glanced over to me. Beads of water dappled her tanned skin, and her white hair swirled in the water around her. “What do you mean?”

“You know… Everything…” I flapped my hands expressively.

She considered a moment, then nodded. “Yes.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because there are no problems that our Fae cannot solve.”

“And my kids?”

Calla paused for even longer, fixating across the tub. “Hadrian is a good child. Rosé is very alike to you, and Mikæl is healthy.”

I couldn’t help but smile, “You think Rosé is like me?”

“Yes, she is headstrong and loud.”

The laugh that escaped me echoed off the ceiling, at least one of my kids would be.

***

At dinner, the hall was, for once, full. Markos sat to my left beside Nathaniel and Eric at the head of the table. My kids, in order from oldest to youngest, sat to my right with Achaicus on their other side, and Charles was between Eric and Calla. Minstrels played gentle music in the corner. A buffet of freshly cooked steaming food spanned the length of the table and I took a moment to appreciate the evening. 

Achaicus was hand feeding Mikæl and Rosé, taking it in turns like they were baby birds. I rested my hand on Markos’s thigh as he reached over the table to get food for Hadrian’s plate. Calla and Charles were engaged in some heated discussion over correct foot placement for sword stuff. Nathaniel and Eric were quiet, carefully exchanging food between their plates. Why they didn’t just pick what they actually wanted instead of having to swap every night was beyond me.

“Claire,” Markos’s voice interrupted my day dreaming.

“Yeah?” I answered with a smile.

He rested the back of his hand on my forehead. “Are you well?”

“Yes, everything is perfect…”

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