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Edward looks at me for help. The vulture taps once more, then lifts one wing dramatically as if overcome by abandonment.

I sigh. “He may come into the courtyard.”

Lazarus beams.

“Not the kitchen,” I add.

His face falls. “Olive.”

“No vultures in the kitchen,” I explain.

“Cruel woman,” Laz states in defeat.

“Yes.”

Edward turns the eggs onto a plate with an expression of cautious triumph. “They are not burned.”

Alcott studies them. “No. Merely wounded.”

Edward glares, but I hold out my plate. “I will take the wounded eggs.”

He brings them to me himself, then sets the plate before me, and pauses. “Tea?”

“I have tea.”

“Different tea?”

“I have nearly a full cup.” I remark, looking up at him. He peers back, earnest and ridiculous yet so full of love it makes my chest ache.

“I am all right,” I say softly.

Lazarus opens the back door, and Thanatos immediately swoops into the courtyard with all the subtlety of a falling curtain rod. Morrigan darts after him, then something crashes outside.

Alcott closes his eyes. “That sounded expensive.”

“It sounded like Lazarus’s responsibility,” Edward says.

Lazarus, still near the door, points at himself. “Mine?”

I take a bite of eggs, they are too salty, but wonderful. I eat another bite. Edward watches while trying to look as if he is not. Lazarus returns to the table and steals half a biscuit from Alcott’s plate. Alcott allows this, then steals Lazarus’s spoon, the morning continues, chaotically messy, but alive.

No one mentions revenge or Austria. No one mentions scars, nightmares, or cellars.

Not because we have forgotten. It sits with us, like quiet ghosts at the edge of the kitchen, less powerful in daylight but present all the same. I lean back in my chair and look at them, Edward at the stove, Lazarus licking jam from his thumb like a criminal. Alcott repairing the pocket watch he absolutely broke on purpose, to figure out how it works. Morrigan outside with stolen bacon as a angry Thanatos stands in the courtyard fountain like he has conquered it. My strange, constellation of a family.

My home, a warmth rises behind my ribs, and I smile before I can think better of it. Then I realize peace is not quiet after all. Peace is a kitchen full of terrible eggs, stolen jam, arguing men, judgmental animals, and the astonishing fact that no one is leaving.

I pick up my tea.

“To breakfast,” I say.

Lazarus lifts his biscuit. “To jam.”

Alcott raises his coffee. “To organized crime by feline.”

Edward looks at all of us, then sighs with the tired fondness of a man who has accepted his fate.

“To bloody breakfast,” he says.