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Someone had changed her into ivory lace-trimmed pajamas. Needle-like claws pressed into her skin through the fabric as he scurried up her arm to settle on top of her head.

“This is Calcifer.” His long tail curled around her neck, and his ears stuck up over her hair like a tufted black bow. “He’s not dangerous,” she explained quickly. “Skye, tell them.”

But Skye only leaned against the open doorway with his arms folded and a smile on his face as he soaked in the ambient hostility.

Taly turned back to Ivain and Sarina. “Actually, never mind.”

Ivain’s aether rippled and tore at the air around him. “Taly, do I take it to mean you know what that thing is?”

Why was everyone always asking her that?

“Oh, she knows,” Skye said. “She’s been feeding it.”

Through the flames, Sarina looked aghast.

Taly shot him a glare. “You’re not helping.”

Skye smiled right back. “Wasn’t trying to.”

Shadow mages weren’t easily startled. It took a moment for Ivain to recover from it. But sensing no immediate threat, his aether finally banked.

Taking her cue from him, Sarina doused her flames with a wave of her arms. The smell of smoke lingered.

“Taly,” Ivain said, wary but also curious, in a morbid kind of way. “You have one minute to explain what that thing is doing here, and then I’m removing it. I did not just get you back to watch you be devoured.”

Taly had never been worried that Ivain and Sarina wouldn’t see Calcifer’s utility—and his cuteness—despite his unique nutritional requirements. But after Skye’s reaction, she figured it might be best to prepare.

One minute was more than enough. Holding out her hand, she used what little aether she had left to tug open a seam in the Weave. From nothing, a small remote fell into her palm.

Ivain blinked. “I’m sorry, you just…” He searched the ceiling like he might find a hole. “I suppose I’m going to have to get used to that again.”

An aquamirage projector—it used a water-based glamour matrix to project images. Taly turned to a blank wall and clicked a button. On the first slide, it read: Why Keeping My Interdimensional Time Beast is Beneficial for Me and Our Family.

“Shards almighty,” Sarina murmured, rubbing the space between her eyes. “Taly, we’ve talked about this—you can just ask us for things. We don’t always need a slideshow.”

“When did you have time to do this?” Skye asked, one brow arched.

“Shut up,” Taly said to them. “You know I compensate for worry with meticulous, heavily researched overpreparation. Stop cutting into my time.”

She clicked to the next slide. It read: Meet Calcifer. Beneath the title was a picture of him as a hatchling curled up in his teacup.

“Known scientifically as an Eldritch, a class of interdimensional beings that exist outside of traditional concepts of time, Calcifer is a unique creature with the ability to shapeshift and traverse dimensions. During a difficult time, he provided companionship and emotional support. He’s smart, well trained, and besides a few regrettable accidents when he was teething”—Taly quickly clicked through graphs detailing growth patterns and aether consumption—“he’s never taken more aether than what I give him. ”

Claws dug into her neck as Calcifer adjusted his grip on her.

Taly winced. “All those stories that paint mimics as bloodthirsty monsters”—she clicked to an illustration, weathered and yellowed with age, depicting a fearsome creature hidden in the shadows of a dense forest—“are grossly prejudiced overexaggerations. He refuses to feed when my aether is low. You could cut me open right now, and he wouldn’t drink a drop. ”

The next slide read: Demonstration.

Three people rushed forward at once, though it was Ivain who reached her first, took the dagger as it fell into her hand, and said, “That won’t be necessary. You’re sturdier now, to be certain, but perhaps let’s save the bloodletting until after you get some of your color back.”

Sarina pressed a hand to her mouth. It took Taly a moment to realize she was… laughing.

Not the reaction she was expecting, but they also weren’t coming for Calcifer with pitchforks, so she took it in stride.

“I have more slides,” Taly said. She clicked through to one that read: Safety Measures.

“That… won’t be necessary.” Ivain blinked, seemingly even more bewildered when Calcifer blinked back with those pupilless, unnervingly blue eyes from over the top of her head. “I think we’ve heard enough.”

“He’s my friend,” Taly said, ready to beg if need be. “Please don’t send him away. I’m all he’s ever known. He can’t survive without me.”

Ivain’s expression softened. “You know that face makes me crumble.”

She did. She also knew it worked on Skye too.

“It does seem… loyal,” Skye said grudgingly. She flashed him a grateful smile, but he just shrugged. “What? It’s smart enough to have figured out not to kill off its only food source. That’s not necessarily a point in its favor.”

Ivain sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m remembering what it was like living with time mages.”

“Never a dull moment,” Sarina murmured. They shared a look. She smiled. “Our daughter tamed a mimic. Not even Tess managed to pull that off.”

Ivain chuckled. “No doubt she would’ve made it her life’s mission if she knew it was possible.”

Sarina did two things next.

First, she crossed the room and engulfed Taly in a tight, bone-crushing hug. “You’re remarkable,” she whispered against her hair.

Taly’s ribs ached, but she endured it, pressing her face into Sarina’s shoulder and breathing her in.

Second, after Sarina pulled away, she held out her hands.

“May I?” Then, gently, she pulled Calcifer off Taly’s head, cooing, “Well, aren’t you the cutest little thing?

” Calcifer’s chest puffed out. “Oh, tell me we can keep him, Ivain. Taly’s Fey now.

The little beast would need to go to a lot of trouble to do any real damage. ”

Skye said, “I’d actually like to see the section of the presentation on safety measures.”

Taly tossed him the projector. Presentation was over. She’d won. He could look over the research himself.

Ivain stepped forward, more cautiously than Sarina. He glanced at the ceiling where Calcifer had appeared. “Where did he come from?”

“Just now?” Taly said. “The In Between. Though if you’re asking where he came from, that I’m not too sure about. I found him as a hatchling.”

“How old is he? What tricks does he know?” Sarina’s eyes widened. “I’m going to teach him how to breathe fire.”

Calcifer’s tail wiggled, the little tuft on the end out of sync with the rest. That’s how Taly knew when he was really, truly, and absolutely delighted. She said to Sarina, smiling, “He likes that idea.”

Ivain held out a hand for Calcifer to sniff, then lick. He immediately sneezed at the aether on his skin.

“I don’t think you taste as good,” Taly said.

“No, I suppose I don’t.” Ivain huffed a quiet laugh, still bewildered but coming around to the idea of an Eldritch as a pet as he scratched beneath Calcifer’s chin. “He must not be too fond of Skye either.”

“Oh my Shards, you have no idea. It was hate at first sight. Calcifer refuses to leave me alone with him. We’ve barely been able to escape long enough to—” Taly stopped herself, realizing that she was about to go into far too much detail.

But Ivain’s smile had an edge of awareness that was hard to miss. So did Sarina’s.

Taly looked to Skye for help but he’d retreated into the other room. Like a coward . “Can we, uh, just skate past that?”

They both shook their heads, grinning like devils. Ivain said, “It sounded to me like you were about to say that you finally put that poor boy out of his misery. And a good thing too. He’s so in love he can’t tell up from down anymore.”

“I heard that, old man,” Skye called from the room.

Ivain called back, “I was beginning to genuinely worry for you, my boy.”

“Oh, look at that smile,” Sarina drawled merrily.

Taly wasn’t—smiling. At least she tried not to. “I guess we were the only ones that didn’t see that coming, huh?”

“You were testing the limits of my faith in your intellect,” Ivain said mildly, one corner of his mouth twitching.

“Just so you know, you have our full support. And while I understand young love leads to the occasional fit of unbridled passion, try to keep it behind closed doors. Just because I know it’s happening doesn’t mean I want to see it. ”

To the Fey, there was no shame in sex. It was a natural urge to be indulged and satisfied and a necessary means to bolster their flagging population.

Taly must have retained some of her human sensibilities, however, considering that at that moment, she wished for nothing more than the floor to open up and swallow her whole.

And they sensed it, like blood in the water. Parents were worse than sharks.

“You do understand the mechanics?” Sarina asked. Even Calcifer, cradled in her arms, had a sly look in his eye. “I must admit, I may have been a touch lax in your education. Oh, my dear, there’s so much more I can teach you now without the constant fear of teen pregnancy looming over our heads.”

“The trick,” Ivain said, wrapping an arm around Taly’s shoulder, “is to make him wait for it. I mean, really drag it out. From desperation springs obedience. I know how much you like to be in charge.”

The sound that came out of Taly was somewhere between a groan and whimper—a grimper. It was a sound of pure pain.

Sarina took her face in her hands. “Indulge us, sweetheart. We need to make up for lost time. And this is the first boy you’ve brought home. Granted, he lives here, but you’re not so much brother and sister as to make it improper. Unless that’s part of the appeal? You tell me.”

Skye was howling with laughter so loudly, Taly half expected him to suffocate. If he didn’t, she vowed to speed the process along once she got free of the inquisition.