Chapter 122
Haiden
I left those two in the kitchen with a plate the size of a shield between them, Envy humming like a content cat, Xavier pretending he wasn’t counting the seconds between her happy noises. Mum’s cake does that to people. I kissed Envy’s cheek, got swatted for trying to steal the last raspberry, and solved the problem by cutting three fresh slices.. One for me (quality control), two for the gremlins currently masquerading as angels in
Elliot’s room.
Talen paced inside my ribs as I walked the moonlit corridor, his mood stretched between satisfied and go check the pups. He’s never subtle.
“On it,” I told him, nudging the ward rune with my knuckles. It purred and lifted, the door
easing open.
Elliot’s room always gets me. Layah lay at the foot of the bed, alert but lounging, chin on paws: guardian at half–mast. She thumped her tail once at the cake.
“Bribery,” I said, and set a saucer–sized crumb by her paw. She accepted it with dignity befitting a queen who has standards. What I did not expect was the new… architecture.
“Okay,” I breathed, grinning. “You’ve been busy.”
Elliot popped out from behind a velvet curtain with the kind of smile that splits a face in half. He wore a paper crown scissored from star–maps and a cape fashioned from one of my old black shirts, sleeves safety–pinned into a proper swoop. “Daddy Haiden!” he announced, grabbing my wrist with sticky fingers. “Come quick. There’s a situation.”
“How dire?”
“Princess Macey is in a tower,” he said gravely, and tugged me around the bed.
He’d grown a tower in the corner, the little menace. Not tall, just high enough to impress a small wolf pup, spiraling up from the floor in pale stone veined with silver. There was a balcony with twinkly lights, a banner bearing a hand–drawn wolf, and a door halfway up that looked suspiciously like it required a password. The whole thing had Elliot’s signature: useful, beautiful, and a little dramatic.
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Macey leaned over the balcony with Fergus under one arm and a ribbon in her hair that matched the banner. She gasped when she saw me. “Sir Haiden! Help! There’s a dragon!”
Layah lifted her head exactly one inch and blinked at me like, do not judge me, however, unfurled with interest. “I’ll be the dragon.”
“Seems we’ve found our cast,” I murmured, and let a little rumble thread my chest. Not scary, stage thunder. “Rawr,” Talen contributed, a bass purr that rolled under the floorboards. Macey shriek–giggled and clutched Fergus tighter.
Elliot planted his fists on his hips, hero stance: perfected. “I will save you, Princess Macey,” he declared, then looked up at me, nervous–proud. “I made a real working tower,” he whispered. “It feels like stone but it’s soft if you fall.”
I knocked the wall with my knuckles. It sounded satisfyingly castle–y. “Looks up to code,” I told him. “Any rescue protocols?”
“There are three trials,” he said, deeply serious. He held up fingers, sticky with glitter somehow. “One: pass the guardian. Two: answer the door’s riddle. Three: kiss of true…
um… friendship.”
Macey went scarlet and hid behind Fergus. Right. Cake first, mortal peril second.
I set the plates on a little table Elliot had conjured into existence and cut the slices into smaller squares. “Fuel for feats,” I announced. “Heroes and princesses don’t rescue well
on empty stomachs.”
Macey’s eyes went round. “Is that Nana’s cake?”
“The very one.” I forked a bite and held it out. She accepted like a princess. Elliot tried to look cool and failed, opening like a baby bird whenever I flashed a fork in his direction. We lost two crumbs to Layah’s strategic tail thump; she maintains it was an accident.
Fortified, Elliot wiped his face with regal dignity and turned back to the tower. “”Trial one,” he said, squaring up to Layah. “Guardian, may I pass?”
Layah considered him, then me, then the cake. She huffed and rolled to her side, offering her belly for scratches as the toll. Elliot paid in full, both hands, sound effects included. Satisfaction achieved, Layah lifted one paw, permission granted.
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“Trial two,” Elliot declared, stepping to the door halfway up the spiral. “Riddle!”
The door glowed faintly and a tiny face formed in the wood. The voice that came out was Elliot doing a very serious accent. “What has a heart that does not beat, a face that never sees, and gets smaller the more you use it?”
Macey bounced. “I know! Cake!”
“Incorrect,” the door intoned. “Though a strong guess.‘
Elliot looked at me, eyes bright. “It’s… it’s a…”
“Pencil,” I said, letting the answer hang like a question.
“Pencil!” he echoed.
The door beamed and popped open with an audible ding. “Proceed.”
He scampered up the last steps and reached the balcony, but paused, glancing down at me. “Can she…?”
“Trial three,” I reminded, and folded my arms, mock–stern. “Terms?”
He swallowed, brave and shy at once. “Kiss of true friendship.”
Macey didn’t even hesitate. She leaned over, smacked his cheek with a kiss, then grabbed
his sleeve and hauled him onto the balcony. Fergus got squeezed between them like a
third wheel. Layah’s tail thumped again, punctuating the triumph.
“Rescued!” Elliot crowed.
“Hero!” Macey insisted, pointing at his paper crown. “And you’re my knight.”
Talen, who pretends to be a creature of pure violence, did something undignified in my chest. “Ours“, he said, soft as he ever gets. It does things to me, that word.
We did cake round two on the balcony, Macey fed crumbs to Fergus, Elliot accidentally got honey on his crown and didn’t care. I sat on the step below, watching, trying to memorize the precise angle of light on their ridiculous tower. Not letting my brain wander to threads and cords and the word child said by something that didn’t know how to mean it. Not right now.
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Chapter 122
“Did you make the tower to feel safe?” I asked, casual as fruit.
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Elliot followed my gaze to the seam where his warding vines wove into the stone. “I made it because she said she wanted to be a princess and I wanted to be the one who knew how to climb,” he said simply. Then, quieter: “And also so she feels safe.”
He shouldn’t have to think like that. He does. We teach him to do it well.
“Good planning,” I said, and flicked the banner to make it ripple. “Also good aesthetics.”
Macey leaned over the railing, hair ribbon glinting. “Haiden?”
“Yes, your highness?”
“Can we keep the tower?”
“You built it in a kingdom that listens to you,” I said. “It’s yours until you decide on a
pirate ship.” (Elliot’s eyes went wide. Note to self: ship–building tomorrow.)
We cleaned fingers, stored plates and I herded them back down the spiral as dusk drifted across the ceiling–sky. Layah rose and did a perimeter loop, two steps, a sniff, satisfied. I
checked the wards, a reflex, a prayer, felt Levi’s neat net under Elliot’s vines, my own
touch layered in, and let the coil in my shoulders ease.
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