There is silence and then a gruff, “He is not.”
I feel a rush of anger on his behalf. “Your dad seems like an ass.”
Remus begins to cackle anew at my assessment. “My consort is smartandbeautiful.”
Thing holds out his arms but stays several feet away as if he’s being careful not to touch me and show me that he doesn’t intend to. “The dining table is this way.”
I blink, not expecting the soft words after the barrage from the others. But it makes it easier to follow where he directs me.
The calm moment doesn’t last, though. When I walk across the large, empty room to where the table is set up near the fireplace, the one with horns is there, along with?—
“Ba ba ba ba ba ba!”
I pause, a bit taken aback by the cute little baby with a puff of black curls, two little horns protruding from her head, and tiny silken black wings sitting in a wooden hook-on high chair attached to the table beside her much more intimidating father. Hannah hurries over to sit in a chair beside her daughter.
In the center of the table is a large roast of steaming meat. There are a lot of other unfamiliar dishes, the intense smells wafting my way and immediately making my shoulders tense.
I blink, feeling a bit overwhelmed.
“Where would you like to sit?” Thing asks.
“Beside me, obviously,” Remus answers, walking to one side of the table and sitting on a bench. He pats the space beside him, and I narrow my eyes. Yeah, he’s definitely shit at personal space.
Thing stomps ahead of me and sits beside Remus, pointing to an open chair at the opposite end of the table. “Don’t be an ass,” he grumbles at his brother.
Remus makes an injured noise. “I’m just trying to get to know my consort.”
“She isnotyour consort,” Thing growls as I start to feel stabby again. “Stop saying that, or I’ll rearrange your face. And I don’t mean just sending you to sleep.”
“Please,” Remus scoffs. “As if you have any control over when I wake and sleep.”
Thing turns to Hannah. “Give me the baby.”
Hannah makes an outraged noise. “You can’t use my baby as an on-off switch for your brother! It’ll give her a complex!”
“Ba ba ba ba ba ba!”
I slowly approach, about to take a seat where Thing pointed.
Thing jerks one of his many thumbs in my direction. “Our guest won’t be comfortable during dinner with him here.”
I pause before I sit. “I could just eat my dinner somewhere else. Maybe in my room, if there’s somewhere I can sleep for the night. I’m actually really tired anyway?—”
“Nonsense!” Hannah cries, then swings the baby out of her high seat and hands her to Thing. He stretches out his uppermost pair of arms and takes the baby.
“Hi, sweet Raven,” he says, making his voice sweet and gentle, which seems especially incongruous with how big and intimidating he is the rest of the time.
“Do I have no say in this?” says the large, goat-horned man from the head of the table.
“No,” says Hannah and Thing together as Thing plops baby Raven in Remus’s lap.
“You’re both being ridiculous,” Remus starts to say. “I’m not afraid of my own niece?—”
And yet, his words cut off as soon as the baby’s in his lap, and his hands shoot out to steady her. He blinks down at her once, twice, and then his head does that unnerving Exorcist-spin thing.
“Romulus, thank God,” Hannah says to the twin who blinks awake in Remus’s place. He’s much calmer as he smiles at the baby, lifting her in the air like an absolute natural and perching her on his shoulder to rub her little back underneath her wings. She coos and babbles away into his ear, her wings fluttering happily.
“You’re just in time,” Hannah says brightly. “Thing caught a lynx, and I made a feast.”
