"Aurora. His other lover." A beat, and a playful glance slid toward Quinlan. "Well. One of many."
"Many," Cela repeated faintly.
"You should have seen us at the Square, you know~" Aurora went on, warming to the subject with scientific enjoyment.
"Yeah, yeah!" Lucille giggled, eyes shining.
"Huh?" Cela gasped.
Aurora had a sly smirk as she explained, "We walked in right behind him. Ten masks, perfectly synchronized. We were very proud of that walk."
Cela’s eyes went wide like saucers, searching the most vivid memory of her life and finding, at its very edges, a smear of masked figures she had never once looked at directly.
The procession had held eleven people, and her memory had kept exactly one.
"I... may have been looking elsewhere," she admitted to her apron.
Lucille and Aurora traded a look of deep, sisterly understanding. "We understand," they said in unison.
Robert, meanwhile, was busy sizing up Quinlan with immense worry evident on his face, still standing between the villain and his wife.
"Don’t worry, my friend." Quinlan showed him an open palm. "My hands are already full."
Lucille, on his arm, beamed up at him in a way that made the statement a criminal understatement.
Quinlan crossed to the counter and offered Robert his hand. "You look good, Robert. This new life seems to suit you."
Robert stared at the offered hand like a summons from the tax office. Then he took it, and shook it, firm and brief, one honest grip between the man who had lost Lucille and the monster who had taken her, and if his knuckles were white through the whole exchange, nobody present was rude enough to mention it.
By the wall, Alexios Valorian stood watching with interest as the anomaly he kept hunting all across the continent was currently shaking hands with an innkeeper. One more page of tonight’s running ledger quietly rewrote itself.
"Mavena."
Quinlan turned last to the young woman still standing guard over Cela’s crate, and the room’s temperature changed in a way that had nothing to do with frost.
Up close, the brown hair had her mother’s caramel in it, and the green in her eyes was hers outright, but the look in them belonged to nobody but her. A knot sat on her face: wariness wound around anger wound around a hurt that had been waiting months for somewhere to go.
The man she remembered had been huge and frightening and human. He had filled the doorway of their shabby inn in Braedon, back when she was young enough to listen at doors and cry at what she heard. This one felt as if he filled the doorway of the world.
Stories had reached Miri Town the way they reached everywhere, each one taller than the last, kingdoms and monsters and armies of the dead, and every story wore the face that was currently smiling at her like a favorite uncle. The Primordial Villain, her mother’s man, the man who had walked into her family and taken half of it away.
"You’ve grown into a wonderful young woman," he said.
"That happens, I guess..." Her voice came out steadier than she’d feared and sharper than she’d planned. "It’s been some time."
"It has. I owed you a visit a lot sooner. I’m sorry I took so long," Quinlan bowed his head, looking truly apologetic about his lack of visits.
"..." Mavena kept eyeing him, tense. Then finally she exhaled. "Why are you apologizing? You’re not my dad. I liked how you never visited. Why do it now?"
"Ouch. You definitely inherited your mother’s bite," Quinlan chuckled while Lucille pinched his skin. He then pulled out the chair across from Mavena’s, uninvited, and sat. "So. How’s Miri Town treating you?"
Mavena returned to her seat slowly, because she was a grown adult who would not throw a hissy fit.
"Fine. Good." She turned the teacup once on its saucer. "The inn does twice what the old one did, especially now that you’ve allowed some people from New Whisperfield to visit. The roads are safe. Everyone’s fed." She hated how much it sounded like praise. "Your governor... she’s very effective."
"She’s a treasure, isn’t she."
"Mm."
"Friends?"
"Some."
"A boyfriend?"
The teacup clicked against the saucer.
"That’s none of your business."
"Ooh, there is one?" Lucille had drifted in behind Quinlan’s shoulder, hands clasped, glowing like a lantern. "Sweetheart, you never said! Who? Is it the fletcher’s boy? Tell me it’s not the fletcher’s boy."
"Mother."
"Because you can do so much better than..."
"Mother...!!! Not in front of this scumb- your boyfriend, husband, or whatever."
Quinlan laughed, low and genuinely delighted. He reached across the table and ruffled Mavena’s hair before she could duck, one big warm hand mussing it as if she were still six years old.
"I’m not twelve!" She batted it off and dragged her hair back into order, face burning. The hand had been warm, easy, utterly unafraid of her anger. Some traitorous corner of her had catalogued it as kind. That was the worst part.
She looked at her mother instead, looking for the ally that word was supposed to summon, and found Lucille draped against the monster’s back, chin resting on his shoulder, wearing a smile that belonged on a girl half her age.
Her mother. The quiet woman who had folded linens and stirred stew and gone grey around the edges in a shabby Braedon taproom for Mavena’s entire childhood, boring the way bread is boring, safe the way bread is safe. Hanging off the arm of the most dangerous thing on two legs and giggling.
Mavena’s knot pulled tighter, and she was still deciding whether it was fury or grief or seasickness when Quinlan’s head tilted a fraction, the way a hound’s does at a sound the room hasn’t heard yet.
His grin arrived before his explanation, which was to say, no explanation arrived at all.
"Everyone. Let’s hide." He rose, soundless for a man his size, eyes bright with holiday.
"What?" said four people at once.
"Footsteps are approaching." He was already herding, one arm scooping Iris out of the chair she’d just sat down in, earning himself some almighty frowns, the other waving the king of Vraven toward the kitchen doorway like a stagehand clearing a set. Aurora giggled and followed after, while Cela and Robert hid behind the counter.
The room emptied of its monsters in four seconds flat, and mother and daughter were left blinking at each other across the table.
Then the door banged open without a knock.
The young man who filled it was built like a hay wagon and confident the way only eight beers can make a man. His shirt was good quality and worn open one button too far, and his eyes found Mavena with smug delight, as if his trap had already sprung.
"Knew the light’d be on." He let the door swing shut behind him and came on in, uninvited, past the sign that said closed. "Saw your da head up hours ago. e on, Mavena. One drink. You keep saying no and I keep not believing you, so one of us has to be wrong, eh?"
"Get out, Tobin." Mavena didn’t stand. "We’re closed, you’re drunk, and I’ve said no eleven times. The number doesn’t reset at midnight."
"Aw, don’t be like that." He reached the table. His hand dropped onto her shoulder, big and warm and entitled, and squeezed. "You’re the prettiest thing in this town and you know it. Girl like you, it’s time..."
He noticed Lucille.
The change in him was instant and gross. He straightened, chest out, grin widening to include the second woman at the table, the slim caramel-haired beauty with the teacup, and his eyes did a slow, frank tour of her that would have earned him an instant death sentence if Quinlan wasn’t in a good mood.
"Well now." He looked between them, delighted with his own luck. "Who’s your friend? You’ve been holding out on me." A wet chuckle. "You know what, forget the drink. I’m a generous man. I’ll take you both dancing, how’s that? Plenty of me to go around."
"That," Mavena said, flat and resigned, already watching the cart roll toward the cliff, "is my... friend."
Tobin barked a laugh. "Your friend. Right. And I’m the Primordial Villain." He gave Lucille a wink. "Sister, maybe. What’s your name, gorgeous?"
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