“W-what?” Cyrus sputtered.
“Your shirt, I want it.”
“Ender!?” the Fate squawked.
Killian snickered. Well, if he was going to struggle to find things to wear, at least he wasn’t going to do it alone. “You heard the man, give it to him.”
The Fate sighed and took the shirt off, tossing it lightly at the crazy snake.
Ender smiled way too happily as he crawled onto the bed and started to add his stolen goodies to the nest.
Shaking his head, Killian pulled out one of his few remaining tops from the dresser that had been moved in for them to use, and put it on as Cyrus tugged on what he assumed was another borrowed one from who the hell knew who.
The Gorgon finished his arranging and weaving with a happy hum. Turning back to them, the man seemed to be about to say something likely unrelated, when his eyes suddenly narrowed in on their new tops.
“No, Ender, no,” Cyrus stated firmly. “You just added more, you don’t need these.”
Killian decided on a different approach. “At least, let us wear them today. You’ll like them better that way anyway. They’ll have our scent on them then.”
Ender tended to unbury and toss out clothes, and whatever else he had in there, once the scents on them had faded. It helped that they were sleeping so near, but he’d had a few of his clothes returned due to it. Of course, they hadn’t been returned for long, since the sneaky thief tended to take them right backonce they’d worn them. But things drenched in their scent tended to last longer, or stay permanently.
Ender looked towards his nest almost sadly, his lip popping out a little bit, before grumbling, “Fine.”
Killian smiled at that. The man was a nut.
“Let’s go eat, shall we?” Killian ushered the Gorgon out of the bed and the room. Cyrus followed silently as they headed for the dining room.
“You two need to buy more clothes,” Ender huffed after a moment. “I’ll give you both a card. I suppose I should have done that sooner.”
Cyrus hummed. “We do have cards for off-grid use.”
Ender pausedin step as he looked up at the Fate. “Why?”
Killian shrugged. “For me, it just made sense, considering my family, though it was his parents that insisted. There is quite a bit stored, since it wasn’t just us adding money. Though Cyrus’ has a bit more than mine, as his parents started it long before he was born, while mine was started when I was fourteen.”
“And fourteen was when you moved in with them?”
“Yes.”
Killian’s existence before eighteen was pretty much blank. Ender could piece shit together pretty easily based on what he’d heard and knew, but someone had done a good job of hiding the Siren. Though, to be fair, he doubted there were many records to hide before Killian had escaped the ocean. Afterwards, it's likely Cyrus’ parents had Severo’s help them with the endeavor.
“While you having access to money off-grid would only be logical, it is curious that they had an account set up for Cyrus.”
For what reason would they think Cyrus would ever need to go off-grid? Ender doubted they anticipated him knocking up a criminal. He couldn’t think anyone would have ever guessed that, or that a straight-laced man like Cyrus would do anything illegal, such as…changing the timeline. Something that had definitely resulted in his pregnancy. Either way, he hadn’t found much when he’d looked into Vivian and Orion Grimm.
Well, that wasn’t completely true. But it was more what he didn’t find. There was…a stretch of five years that was curiously blank for them. As if they’d completely fallen off the grid for those years.
More worryingly…that time was oddly blank for Ender as well, memory-wise. It shouldn’t be odd, because it was about three hundred and fifty years ago. Yet he could recall enough from the years before and after, that when he thought back and found a sudden stretch of nothing, it made him certain thatsomethinghad happened then. It all just meant he needed to dig deeper.
“Neither of us really questioned it. Though, I didn’t find out about mine until I reached adulthood. I know what they did for Killian was to protect him, not that his father didn’t eventually track him down.” The Fate reached out and took the Siren’s hand, pressing a kiss to it. “But they were driven away.”
Killian wrinkled his nose. “Yeah, turns out, being royalty in the ocean doesn’t mean shit once you're on land.”
Ender chuckled. “A lesson I’m guessing they still haven’t fully learned, since they are still trying.”
“They’ve been trying to bring me back and marry me off since I was fourteen. The word ‘learn’ is not in their vocabulary.”
He hissed in disgust. “Those bastards are still trying with that child marriage bullshit? As if that will solve their fertility issues.You’d think, with all the technology available today, they’d be able to solve at least some of it without continuing to devalue and chattelize part of their damn population.”
