Kieran took a tentative sip of the freezing tea, thankful that Tarley had overseen the preparation and not left it up to Lark, who had served water laced with candy last time.
“Oh,” Lark leapt from her chair and pulled Kieran to her height so she could whisper, “pretend your tea tastes funny.” She rushed back to her seat.
He took another sip and scrunched his face, to Lark’s amused giggle.
“There is something off about this tea,” he commented.
“Then it’s a good thing I didn’t have any,” Sera mumbled, biting morosely into her toast.
Lark went to him again, pulling him down to add, “Now, pretend it was poisoned.”
Kieran paused, then clarified, “Poisoned?”
“Yes. I’m pretending it’s an assassination attempt against you and then I have to avenge your death by finding the assassin, who is,” She made a cringy face as she pointed discreetly at the doll with pink yarn for hair.
“I see. And where, exactly, did you learn about poisons and assassination attempts?”
“Uncle Gideon,” Lark supplied happily. Then she went back to her seat.
Kieran now returned his own pointed stare on Sera, who shrugged. “I’m not in charge of what he does when he watches her.”
“Now, daddy,” Lark anxiously pointed at his cup, desperate for the next phase of her game, “don’t forget to pretend,” she stage-whispered through her hands.
With a sigh, Kieran lifted the cup to his lips, took a generous sip, and then promptly spit it across the table. Sera jolted backward. Lark erupted in laughter. And he… very much hated the resulting mess. But, dedicated to his character, he held his throat and sputtered.
“Wait… was that… poison…” He considered falling over the table, but the mess of his tea and the food prompted him to adjust his chair so he could crawl to the floor and lay flat. He gave one final anguished gasp, and then closed his eyes.
Lark took a moment to stop laughing, then continued. “Oh no! He’s been assassinated!” She slammed her hands on the table. “And everyone here is a suspect.”
Sera attempted to keep a straight face through her interrogation, but she was not as good at controlling her laughter as Kieran. After twenty minutes, the culprit was revealed and Lark raced off to do battle in the garden. Kieran opened an eye.
“May I return to the living?”
“Yes, I think you’re safe for now.” Sera helped him back into his chair and they moved so that they could lean on each other as they watched Lark dart among the hedges. Contented silence spanned between them as they peacefully observed their daughter viciously attacking her doll to avenge Kieran’s murder.
“We need to speak with Gideon about his choice of games,” Kieran murmured.
“Die! Die! Die!” Lark mimed cutting off the doll’s arm. “Ah! No! Blegh!” She voiced the doll’s distress and then continued to dash about with the boundless energy of youth.
“Yeah, I’ll speak to him,” Sera agreed, wincing at a particularly gruesome display of Lark attempting to make the doll eat her own severed limbs.
Once the game had ended, and Lark’s energy spent, they prepared for the family dinner on the terrace. Gideon and Rachel would be there soon, as well as Varian and Seth. It had become a tradition every Friday, though they now rotated between their three homes.
Sera set up some of the smaller lava stones around her seat, generating a small field of warmth. Lark, it seemed, could tolerate both extreme cold and human levels of heat. She had inherited Kieran’s fae gift, sensing Death on those around her and, for the first year or so after they learned of her power, Kieran had anguished over her life looking anything like his had before Sera.
He had tip-toed around Lark’s power, tried in equal measure to insist she ignore it or simply avoid telling her what it meant. In the end, it was Sera who found the necessary balance. Lark could sense Death in others, whether anyone liked it or not. But smothering her power or lying to her wouldn’t help her deal with it. Instead, they had simply approached it with calm rationality. They explained what she was seeing, answered any questions that popped into her head, but did not imply in any way that it was something she needed to see or look for. They attached no importance to the ability one way or the other. How Lark chose to use it in the future, would be up to her. But she would not be compelled by a need to serve others. And she would not fear love or affection at the risk of losing her Sense.
At least, that was the hope.
As night drew on, Lark’s eyes grew heavy and Kieran carried her to her bedroom. The family wing of his home had been completely aired out and refurbished. Gideon and Rachel often stayed for a few days to spend time close to their niece and there were rooms available for Varian and Seth. Sera had one of the master chambers all to herself, as well as the room she shared with Kieran. And Lark had her own bedroom. The room that had once belonged to Jerica. It was not an easy transition, but leaving the room covered in dust and rotting away the years wasn’t helping anyone.
All his life, he'd worked to severe all connections and emotional attachments to those around him. Sera was the first time he'd ever allowed himself to feel for another person since his family, but Lark had stolen his heart from her first breath. He could not have stopped loving her if he tried and from there, allowing himself to let others in had grown easier. Though, his reputation as a stoic, cold no-nonsense politician had remained.
Kieran opened the door, no longer hit with the wave of awful memories or crippled by their sting. Instead, he felt peace. This room had made his sister happy while she was alive and now it served his daughter. There was something healing in the embracing of change and moving forward.
They tucked Lark into her bed, a pile of dolls and books taking up most of the space—though Lark had hollowed out a nest at the center that she deemed was ‘plenty comfortable’—Kieran still bent to remove the pointed edges of books from near her face.
Hand in hand, Kieran and Sera crossed the hall to the master suite, the room they shared. Sleep was the first cold-vs-human challenge they overcame. Sera was happy to snuggle into his body heat, wrapped in a thick blanket, and Kieran couldsurrender his arms or legs so long as most of him remained uncovered.
