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“I missed you, Papa,” Vanna said in my ear.

“Where were you anyway?” Mirobhail asked.

“Vanna hit me,” Aein said.

“Me too,” Friel said.

“He’s a liar.” Vanna was still hugging me, but her eye roll was almost audible.

“Heylel already talked to her about it,” Mirobhail said, pulling away with a casual shrug. “They’re fine.”

“You gonna write me a report on it next, eh?” I asked him. His head tilted. I laughed. “It was a joke, esiasch.”

“But I didn’t hit Friel, Papa.” Vanna hauled back, giant green eyes wide and serious. “He made that up.”

“Nuh-uh,” Friel said.

“Uh-uh, she hitme,” Aein said.

“Alright, let’s not fight about fighting.” I straightened, only lifting Vanna to my hip because the others weren’t holding on. “You all hungry? You wanna go get something to eat?”

Ayes,anaye, and half a dozen suggestions sounded as I started down the stairs.

For a moment, things didn’t feel so bad. My children wouldn’t understand what’d happened this week, and I didn’t want them to. This was the type of information I planned to protect them from.

And while they bickered, and while I mixed the batter, and while I heated the skillet, and while Vanna braided Aein’s hair, and while Mirobhail yelled at his brother for stealing his toy, I got to protect myself from it as well.

* * *

Véa woke from the smell of meat on the pan, and she smiled when she made it to the kitchen. We pretended everything was fine as we ate. When the children asked where we’d been, we only told them we had business to attend to.

That brought reality back, but we dismantled it quickly by tickling the child who asked until theyforgot their question. We played a few songs on the instruments scattered around the living room. We sang, and the children danced, and we did our best to focus on the moment we were in.

Until Heylel arrived.

Then came reality.

As he sat down with the children, we put on our coats, kissed them all goodbye, and lapsed to the Elder’s Hall.

We’d built it when we first arrived. It was where we met when we had something important to discuss. Some topics were as simple as one land needed grain, and another had a surplus of it. What were the logistics for moving it?

We’d modeled this place after the Conclave Hall on Matriaza. The only difference, really, was that our ceiling was painted with intricate depictions of our homes, while the Conclave Hall had one made of glass.

As Véa and I sat in our usual spots at the center of the table across from one another, I tilted my head back and looked up.

I wondered if the snow would ever blow through the black conifer trees again on Matriaza like it did in that portrait. Plant life there had always been scarce due to the extreme cold, and I hadn’t seen one pine still standing when I was there. I wondered what it’d take to reform the castle of ice at the edge of the painting. Pa said it had taken our ancestors nearly a thousand years to construct.

Was there any use in rebuilding it if the land was tainted?

The images of Morduaine hurt more. It looked like a fantasy beside Matriaza’s black and white landscape. Every color shined like its own sun. The dragonflies, honeybees, and pixies fluttering through the atmosphere were dream like. The green clover beneath that tangerine sky brought me joy with just a glance.

It ached when I remembered the images Véa had shown me.

Morduaine, the land of the Fae, reduced to nothing. For some reason, it’s destruction hurt more than Matriaza’s. I’d been king of the latter, but I was born on the former. Morduaine’s standards of society built my ethics, my way of life. That world made me the man I was.

The Fae believed in equality for all. Honoring women was a pillar of the culture. Protecting and cherishing nature was no different.

Matriaza had been opposite in every way when Véa and I had taken the throne from my brother.