“I stand by my position on dragons,” I tell her.
Hannah just shakes her head. “You’re all impossible.”
The courtyard is even more beautiful than I remembered. Potted lemon trees line the perimeter, their fruit bright yellow against dark green leaves. Flowering vines cascade down the stone walls, creating patches of shade over a massive wooden table that’s been set up in the center. The table is long enough to seat at least twenty people, though today it will only hold our family.
Abaddon is at the head of the table, and he looks up when we enter. His wings—those massive black wings that mark him as the mighty Pestilence—are partially unfurled behind him, catching the golden afternoon light.
“Brother,” he says, standing to embrace me. Then he turns to Phoenix. “Sister.”
Phoenix still gets a little awkward when my brothers call her that. We’ve been married for over a year now—a real marriage this time, not the farce we started with—but she’s still getting used to being part of the family.
“Where’s Raven?” Abaddon asks, looking around.
“She was just here,” Hannah says. “She landed on Layden’s shoulder about thirty seconds ago.”
We hear giggling from above. All of us look up to see Raven perched on top of one of the cypress trees, at least twenty feet in the air.
“I’m hiding!” she announces again.
“We can see you, darling!” Hannah calls up.
“No you can’t!”
Abaddon sighs. “She gets this from you,” he tells Hannah.
“She gets this fromyou,” Hannah counters. “I’ve never climbed a tree in my life.”
“You’ve never had wings.”
“Exactly my point.”
Phoenix leans close to me. “Are they always like this?”
“Always,” I confirm.
Kharon appears from inside carrying his one-year-old daughter Luna. She’s babbling happily, her chubby hands reaching for everything. Unlike Raven, Luna is entirely human-looking—no wings, no obvious supernatural features. But she inherited his power over realm-hopping, which is going to be… uh… interesting, to say the least, when she’s older.
Ksenia, Kharon’s wife, follows behind them with a bottle. She catches sight of us and her severe face softens into something approaching a smile. Ksenia isn’t big on displays of emotion, but the fact that she’s smiling at all is significant.
“You came,” she says simply.
“We promised we would,” Phoenix says.
Luna makes a grab for Phoenix’s hair. Phoenix, showing reflexes I didn’t know she had, dodges smoothly.
“She’s fast,” Phoenix observes.
“You have no idea,” Kharon says wearily. “Last week she somehow got into my study and knocked over an entire shelf of books about necromancy. We’re still not sure if she was trying to read them or eat them.”
“Both,” Ksenia says. “Definitely both.”
Luna chooses this moment to sneeze directly into Kharon’s face. He doesn’t even flinch, just uses his sleeve to wipe his face clean.
“That’s the third time today,” he says.
“She’s getting better at aiming,” Ksenia notes.
The last to arrive are Remus and Romulus—my conjoined twin brothers—along with their consort Lauren. The twins are in one of their rare synchronized states where both heads are awake at the same time. This generally means they’re about to argue about something.
