Amanda chuckled. "Poor Nancy. I don't think she has it in her to fight these two monsters. We need to get her an assistant with the temperament of a drill sergeant."
"I love Nancy," Syssi defended the daycare's teacher. "She is sweet and loving, and the kids adore her."
Amanda shook her head. "Kids need rules and discipline, especially strong-willed ones like ours. We are not doing them any favors by coddling them."
"You are right." Syssi sighed. "I wish it wasn't like that, though. I wish hugs and kisses and sweet words led to perfectly well-adjusted kids, but the reality is that we all need some form of restriction to do better."
"Yeah, but Nancy and her staff are all too sweet for their own good."
Syssi laughed. "That's who we hired, so we need to take the responsibility for the outcome."
The daycare center at the university had been Amanda's brainchild, a facility attached to the neurosciences building where clan members who worked on campus could leave their children during working hours. Amanda and Syssi brought their daughters every morning, and Karen, who worked in administration, brought her twin boys. It was a small operation, staffed by two very patient human women who had been carefully vetted and thralled to ignore the peculiarities of immortal children. Not the boys, because they would have to wait to be thirteen to go through the induction ceremony, butboth Allegra and Evie had transitioned already, which meant that any cut or bruise healed much too fast to be normal. Thankfully, they would not develop superior strength until they reached puberty as well, so they were not dangerous to the boys who were still human.
"I feel so bad about Arezoo," Amanda said, merging onto the exit that would take them to the road leading to the village.
"Yeah. Yesterday was rough. I didn't expect her to actually cry over having to wait two more weeks."
She and Amanda had sat down with Arezoo and Ruvon to explain the situation that many of the Guardians would be absent, and Drova couldn't attend because she might be part of the operation. They couldn't tell Arezoo what the operation was about, only that it had to do with the Doomers' island and rescuing more people from there.
They had been as gentle as possible, framing it as a postponement rather than a cancellation, emphasizing that it was up to Arezoo and Ruvon and that it was only a suggestion to postpone the wedding. They could still go ahead with it this Saturday if they wanted.
Arezoo had said that she couldn't get married without Drova attending, and Ruvon had said that saving people came first, and waiting two more weeks so everyone could attend was the right thing to do.
But Syssi had seen the way Arezoo's lower lip had trembled for just a second before she got it under control, and the way Ruvon's hand had tightened around his mate's. A few minutes later, Arezoo had excused herself to the bathroom and had come back with eyes that were a little too bright and smelling of tears.
Arezoo had been pouring every ounce of her energy into making her wedding perfect, and now it was being pushed back because the world had the terrible habit of not caring about anyone's personal timeline.
"I was right about Drova being the deciding factor," Syssi said. "Arezoo would have gone through with it even with everything else going on, but not having Drova there was the one thing she couldn't live with."
"I get it." Amanda cast her a fond smile. "I wouldn't have wanted to get married without you there either. It just wouldn't have been the same." She tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. "But I've been thinking."
"Oh, yeah? What's brewing in that brilliant and devious mind of yours?"
"Thank you for the compliment." Amanda grinned. "I was thinking that we can still give Arezoo and Ruvon a party."
Syssi turned to look at her sister-in-law. "What do you mean?"
"Instead of a wedding, we can have a cocktail reception." Amanda said it the way she said most things, as if the idea had arrived fully formed and required no further discussion. "It's common practice in human weddings. The couple has an engagement party or a cocktail reception before the actual ceremony. Drinks, appetizers, music, dancing. All the fun of a party without the formality of a wedding. Arezoo gets to celebrate with everyone who is still here in the village, wear a beautiful dress, feel special, and then in two weeks, she gets the full wedding with Drova and all the Guardians."
"She would still be disappointed," Syssi said.
"Of course she would. But she'd be less disappointed than having no party at all. This way, she has something to look forward to this weekend and something to look forward to in two weeks. Two parties instead of one. What twenty-year-old doesn't want two parties?"
"She's nineteen," Syssi corrected.
"She's almost twenty."
Amanda had a way of finding solutions to seemingly impossible situations and finding a compromise where there seemed to be none.
"I think it could work," Syssi said. "We should go and tell her the idea right away. She probably needs to get another dress for the cocktail party, provided she likes the idea. She might not want two parties."
"She'll want it. What I worry about is my mother presiding over their wedding. If Khiann doesn't make it, she will be in no condition to do anything, and there will be no one to lead the ceremony. Perhaps I should have a talk with Edna so she can prepare just in case."
The judge was a good alternative, but Syssi didn't want to even consider the possibility of Annani not getting her mate back.
She crossed her fingers in her lap and sent a silent prayer to the Fates.Please let Khiann be found alive.
"Have you tried having another vision about him?" Amanda asked. "To see if he's alive?"
