“I made you a lich. You’ll have to feed on the life force of others.”
“Yeah, okay,” he said, sidling around to my side. He pushed my self into my lap, twining his arms around my neck. “I don’t think you were selfish for saving me. The feeding thing, I am not going to lie. I have a real problem with that unless they’re evil villains. I have zero problems feeding off them. Hurt kids, animals, or old people, and I’ll chow down. I mean, you don’t go around looking for people you can sneak up on and grab them for a snack, do you?”
I blanched. As a lower level member of the Family, that was exactly what I’d been left to do. Dad patted my arm. “As the prince and prince consort, you can make changes in how things are done.”
“Wait, you did do that?”
I cleared my throat. “I didn’t want to.”
“But you did.”
“It was either that or become a desiccated thing that couldn’t move.”
“Ugh. That’s gross.” Shannon wrinkled his nose. “Okay, so, that was a thing, but what about now?”
“Legacies are provided meals, though how they are obtained may not always meet with your approved criteria,” Dad admitted.
“But he’s all of a sudden your prince and so am I, so we can change that.” Shannon looked at Dad, his gaze challenging.
“Yes. Arrakus named you both as his and gifted you with some of his essence. We can feel it emanating from you. He claimed you, sending out to us all an image of a crown on you both, to make sure we understood. He’s made River our prince, his official mouthpiece. He’s over all of us from Arrakus’ line. You’re River’s, so he claimed you, too, though River Made you if what I’m sensing from you is correct.”
“It is,” I stated baldly. “Arrakus bolstered me, but I did the making.”
“Right,” Dad mused. “So, River’s your Maker and your lover, so that makes you the Prince Consort. You can co-rule, basically, but can’t enact changes on your own, while he can if they are the will of Arrakus. Arrakus can talk to him telepathically because they’re bonded.”
“Right. Back to this eating thing. How often do I have to do the suck the soul thing?” Shannon changed the subject.
“At least once a month, optimally. You can go five to six weeks before you look deathly ill.”
“Oh, goody,” Shannon said sarcastically. “And you say the Legacies, the ones at our school, are all members of the Family.? And you choose among them who gets to be Made undead and who doesn’t.” He shook his head in disbelief. Sliding off of my lap, he wandered over to the patio windows, looking out to sea. “You know looking out there, it’s hard to believe there’s anything like him in all of that. Or that beings who suck life out must do it or decay. So they slurp it on out of people, then go about their lives like they’re normal. Take you for example, Mr. Montgomery. It’s apropos, don’t you think? Your company takes decaying buildings and neighborhoods and revitalizes them. It’s like a metaphor.”
He turned around.
“Am I right in thinking that as ya’ll have all been landed with us as royalty to run things on behalf of Arrakus-”
“Lord Arrakus,” Dad corrected.
“Excuse me, Lord Arrakus, we will be staying here?”
“It’d probably be best,” Mom agreed. “There are online schools, I’m sure the college can make arrangements to do that for you.”
“I’m sure,” Dad agreed. “We certainly endow them enough, and there are special extenuating circumstances. Be handy to have another architect on board, too.”
Shannon sighed in frustration., throwing his hands up in the air. “You know what? Fine. Sign me up for online classes. I am not giving up my degree for anybody. “He pointed at me. “Make those changes! We now only eat those who are evil!”
“Okay,” I agreed.
“I’ll make sure this trickles on down where it needs to,” Dad said. Thank fuck for that. I had no idea what to do.
“Okay, I’m dealing for now. It’s probably going to take decades before I’m okay with it all deep down and not just superficially, though.”
“I still struggle with it,” I admitted.
His face softened. “We’ll make sense of it together, yeah? They tossed you into the deep end of the pool, and you had to learn to swim, same as me.”
“I was the one tossing you, though,” I said guiltily.
“No, Roy did that when he…,” he hesitated, “hurt me,” he finished.” You saved me, my handsome prince, You are my fucking hero. Now, let’s go to bed and hope that in the morning, it feels more normal.” He walked across the sort expanse of the living room to my bedroom door. I followed him. “Night,” I wished my parents.
