“Lunch is ready,” I called.
“Coming!” Seri gave Brummy one last scratch behind the ears and rose, brushing grass from her jeans. Z followed, casually draping an arm around her shoulders as they walked back to the blanket.
Cas joined us last, carrying a small bunch of wildflowers that he offered to Seri like a botched drug deal: Hand thrust out, eyes averted, petals trembling.
“For.” He cleared his throat. “For you, my love.”
“Thank you, Simmy.” Seri cradled the blossoms like newborn birds, and her kiss landed just shy of the flush creeping up his collar.
Zane and I exchanged side eyes, barely holding back snickers.
We ate in a comfortable quiet, a concept I’d never fully understood until Seri. Our wife. Our beloved. Still a miracle I couldn’t quite believe.
Then, “You’re hogging all the salami,” Zane accused, reaching across the blanket to snatch the plate from Cas. “I need protein, too, you know.”
“You need manners more,” Cas retorted, but surrendered the charcuterie without further protest, too busy enjoying Seri’s attention as she fed him a blueberry.
“Did you try the brie?” I asked her, breaking off a piece and offering it on a cracker.
Her gray eyes met mine as she leaned forward to take the morsel directly from my fingers, her lips brushing my skin. A current went down my spine, a live wire igniting nerve endings I didn’t know I had.
“Mmm,” she hummed, closing her eyes. “Delicious.”
Zane launched into a story about the time we hunted a wood booger in the Appalachians, complete with dramatic reenactments that had Seri giggling until tears gathered at the corners of her eyes. My brother had a gift for storytelling; any mundane incident could become an epic adventure filled with villains and heroic triumph. Most of it was bullshit, but still entertaining.
“And then,” he continued, waving an olive for emphasis, “Cas got fed up and shot it. Damn thing dissolved before Ko could get it into a containment orb.” He tossed the olive high, catching it in his mouth with a satisfied squish. “Didn’t get paid a penny because we had no proof we killed it. Fang-rotted rip off.”
Still smiling, Seri hesitated, fingers halfway to Casimir’s mouth with another blueberry.
“You’re so different from what I thought vampire princes would be.”
“Bet you pictured white frilly shirts open to our navels, huh?” Zane grinned with an eyebrow waggle. “I can arrange that.”
“No.” A blush stained her neck, and I wanted to kiss it away, to trace the faint blue veins with my tongue until she made that little gasping sound I’d discovered the other night. I shifted on the blanket, grateful for the looseness of my cargo pants.
“It’s just, everything I ever read described vampires as emotionless and above things like picnics and walks in the woods and playing with wolf pups.”
“Tell that to Father when he loses at chess.” Cas snarked. “He once threw a rook through a century-old stained glass window.”
I remembered that day. The delicate tinkling of colored glass falling like rain, Lucian’s thunderous expression, the cold silence afterwards as servants swept up the shards.
Our father did not take losing well.
And certainly not to one of his bastard sons.
“But you, um, served him, didn’t you?” Seri’s brows pinched together, creating that little furrow.
The air shifted. A cloud passed over the sun, throwing us into momentary shadow. My fingers strayed to the hilt of my ankle dagger, wanting the comfort. Cas stared at the forgotten blueberry in Seri’s fingers. Even Z stilled, his humor retreating like a tide from shore.
“There’s serving,” I said, “and there’ssurviving.”
They looked at me, Zane startled and Cas wary. We didn’t talk about this, not even among ourselves. Our father was a wound we’d learned to live with, but Seri’s gray eyes held no judgment, only that quiet hunger to understand us, and that coaxed my words loose.
“When we were boys, Lucian saw loyalty as a cage.” I stared at the pickle pot rather than meet anyone’s gaze. “Everything was a test. Fail, and the punishment followed. Succeed, and the expectations tightened.”
The memory of those years weighed on me like stones. Each mission, each kill, each perfect bow while blood still crusted my fingernails. I’d been thirteen the first time. A minor noble who’d spoken against King Isaac. I still remembered how his eyes had widened in disbelief when he saw who Lucian had sent.
“Try being the son who failed Latinandfencing,” Zane smirked, saving me from my thoughts.
