Dec turns a pretty pink. “Ah, apologies. I’ll be ready in ten minutes. Where am I needed?”
Greeley laughs, a grating sound that means he’s partially shifted to stone right now. He looks Dec up and down, enjoying the sight of his bare knees far too much. “You’re not needed for anything specific. Mr. Simms was looking a bit forlorn without you, which set off a search for the elusive butler. I’ll call off the rescue mission.”
“Feun, if you don’t walk out of here right now, I’m going to rip your wings off.” The warning comes out of me as I wrap my wing around Dec, hiding him from my brother’s view.
Greeley stares at me, surprised by the threat in my voice. “Aye. I’m gone. Uncle’s called you a few times,” he tells me, keeping his eye on me as he backs out of my room.
“I’ll be there,” I promise, watching him until he shuts the door to my room again.
It takes me a full ten seconds to release Dec from my wing because I have to convince myself that Greeley isn’t going to come back.
As soon as I do, Dec turns to face me with narrowed eyes. “You just encased me in stone without my consent. If it was anyone but you, I would not be nearly as calm as I am right now. You don’t do that. That’s a line for me. Cross it and this is over.”
Stone erupts on my arms and chest, but he’s right and I bow low, ensuring my head is lower than his. “You’re right. I apologize. I won’t react that way to my brother’s goading again.”
Dec takes a deep breath and relaxes. “Ok, good. Thank you. I don’t mind it when we’re asleep as long as you wake up when I do, and of course that would be fine if there was a threat or someone’s shooting at me or something. God, I hope that never happens.”
I smile, reaching out and pulling him in close. “Thank you for clarifying your permissions,” I say, dipping in close for a kiss. “I’ll see you when I return.”
Dec opens up for my kiss and responds as beautifully as before, tightening his grip on me and pulling in to press himself as close as he can. I soak myself in the taste of him, reaching under my shirt to squeeze his ass. The whimper that my hands on his butt elicits is music to my ears, and when I finally pull back and release him, the dazed look in his eyes makes me decide it’s about time to take a few weeks off work.
Dec deserves my undivided attention.
I see him off, walking with him until our paths diverge, then I leave him, following my uncle’s summons to the conference room, where all of my brothers have gathered. I’m the last to arrive, but no one says a word about it. Clearly Greeley has let them know I’m not taking shit about Dec yet.
As soon as Uncle sees me, he pulls up a holographic display of the solar system. It’s a live representation of the system in a model that discounts the vast space between the planets unless we need it. He zooms in on the Kuiper Belt directly opposite of the Earth. “We’ve detected tinkral ships dropping out of FTL in the Kuiper belt. They aren’t arriving en masse like they usually do, but we’ve detected four ships in the last week.”
The tinkral use faster than light travel to come here all the time.
“That’s a normal number of tinkral ships making stops in the Kuiper belt,” Ethan points out.
Uncle runs his hand down the orange plaid weave suit he’s wearing, frowning. “You’re right, but they stop in the belt, gather a rock, and leave. These ones aren’t leaving.”
I grind my teeth together as I consider our next actions. “I can teleport over—” I stop mid thought as two more ships drop out of FTL in the same region as their compatriots.
We all watch the display as it analyzes the ships, coming back with the result of two invasion class carriers. Each of those ships carries ten million tinkral soldiers that they can deploy in under ten minutes.
“Fuck,” Ethan rasps. “They’re not mining.”
“Those ships can be here in seconds. It’s a tiny jump to get from there to here,” I remind my brothers. There are not enough soldiers in both ships to take the entire planet without heavy losses, but they’re likely not the only ships coming, and we’re not going to let them get that close. “We need to talk to them, warn them that they’re not going to get as close as they’re hoping, and turn them away. If that doesn’t work, we knock out their FTL drives and call a tow.”
Uncle smiles at us. “There are six ships; one for each of you and someone to coordinate here with me. Thoren, which ship is yours?”
I scan the specs on each ship and point to one of the carriers. “That one.” The mission leader is on that one, I guarantee it. It’s slightly newer than the other, and the tinkral are strict about their best and brightest getting the newest and shiniest.
I pull my deck from the pouch I keep it in, shuffle it, and deal seven cards in two lines of three with one in the middle, then I deal a sideways card over each of them. I’ve dealt this formation exactly like this for every joint mission my brothers and I embark on. Each of the cards beneath represent my brothers, and without deviation for the last two hundred years, they’ve been in order of birth from top to bottom, youngest to oldest, with me in the middle: The Star for Faulkes, The Sun for Hawthorn, The Moon for Ethan, The World for Walker, The Magician for Greeley, Justice for Reeves, The Lovers for me, and at the last second I move my card up and deal another one below it for Maxime: The Empress.
The cards know what I’m doing, but I say it aloud to make sure we’re on the same page. “Will we come home?”
I start dealing the response cards sideways over the other cards: Three of Swords, Five of Swords, Six of Swords, Seven, Eight, Nine...
I look up at the worried faces of my brothers, hesitating before dealing the response card over mine.
“Deal it,” Reeves insists.
I put down the Five of Wands.
“Mine too,” Uncle adds.
