“Paper and ink,” Seth requests, walking into the attic workspace and looking around for his short list of items.
No, not walking, more like springing.
“You had my book,” I accuse, holding up the manual – which now features notes from not just Seth but Killian and Pax too. “And Pax – Pax can’t read this.”
Seth taps the cover as he speaks, “Not yours, technically ours, and Pax was reading it – I took it off him before he got to the part about reproduction. He’s a slow reader, and most of his notes are ordering us to destroy the thing.”
I growl. “He can’t read it.”
“I know, that’s why I took it off him. You need to keep it more secure, down your braies or something.”
“Kitten will kill us if she finds out we’re making notes about her.”
“I told you, down your braies,” he says, patting his ass and returning to pacing around the room.
I pop the book open to the last lot of hand written notes. Where the original author talked about remedies for things I never want to encounter again. Mostly things that end up causing issues in the bedroom. The bottom most is an instruction for: prolonged soaking in an acidic liquid…
Under which Seth has written, Like that time in the Crimson Castle. Remember the blonde? And she wasn’t even mortal - Seth
Followed by Killian, I remember - Darkness
Hastily I add, Not important - RCDE
“You realize this was printed thousands of years ago and this author was either drunk on Silvari wine or high on Yaganda leaves or both?”
“Yep – but some of it is true. How do we work out which is which when we know so little about mortals? Before Vexy, I had never even held a conversation with a mortal.”
I groan, the problem is some of it does make sense – some of it I’ve already removed – and Eydis’ notes at the back are important.
“Just make more space in there for us to add our own information,” he shrugs, like the solution is obvious.
“That’s what I was doing.”
“Not your facts, Roarke. I mean, yes, your facts, but the rest of us can add our own stuff, memories and ideas and things. Just don’t get rid of the bedroom stuff, I want to use that.”
I growl, snapping the book closed. I know the pages he’s talking about, and I very specifically skipped over those so Kitten wouldn’t see the accompanying illustrations. Heat rises inside me just thinking about it.
“Paper and ink,” he repeats.
Distraction – yes. “Why?”
“Pax wants a map.”
“I’m sure your ass is in exactly the same place it has always been,” I mutter, putting the small manual in my back pocket before pulling some rolls of parchment off a shelf.
“Hehe, very funny. It’s not my ass he’s looking for. He wants a map of the domain, every rock and twig.”
“She’s almost out of ink, but she’s got plenty of chalk. What else does he want?” I ask absently, unwrapping the oversized charts and diagrams.
“I’m pretty sure cleaning house is on someone’s list. Thanks to you and Killian dragging mud through the place.”
“Uh huh,” I agree, putting the scrolls on the bench.
“And Vexy. But our fearless leader isn’t going to make her wash mud off the furniture.”
“That’s true,” I say, unraveling moon phases and plant life-cycles.
“Pax is escorting the Sabers back in. Hopefully Rose will start preparing the meat,” he says. “It’s now almost lunch time, and I’m starving – but at this rate we won’t have good food until after dark.”
I mutter a sound in agreement.
“One day I’m going to stick a frozen sausage in your ear.”
I open instructions on maintaining the plumbing system… that one seems rather unimportant, so I roll it in the reverse direction to flatten it out.
He grips the end of the scroll, pausing and making me look him in the eye.
“You didn’t hear any of that, did you?” he asks.
“All of it,” I say with a slow smile, the script replaying – all the bits I heard but wasn’t paying attention to making themselves clear.
“House getting cleaned, meat getting cooked. Is someone going to bring our clothes in too?”
He gives me a lopsided smile. “I can deal with the clothes. You just tell me that we’re close. That we almost have this solved.”
“I’m not fond of lying to family,” I deadpan.
He nods, taking the scroll from my fingers and giving it a flick. It unfurls, with a paper-on-paper swish, then springs back up a little. With his head tilted to one side, he inspects the diagram.
“We’re putting a map that could save Vexy’s life on paper that already features a septic system? That sounds like a shit idea.”
I groan, while on the inside my chest relaxes just a little. “On the back.”
Seth has that effect. Like the guy can absorb tension, sucking it right out of the room, or something similar. I gave up trying to understand his power when we were kids.
He would do things to piss Pax off, the two of them tearing through the castle in an enraged game of cat and mouse with almost deadly results. But so long as Pax’s energy was spent on Seth, and Seth’s energy was spent on Pax, both of them had an outlet. Balance.
Harmony.
It doesn’t always work out that way now that we’re not young princes with a palace to play in, but it was certainly a part of our foundations.
I hunt around the room, finding four paperweights that I’m not already using, then help him pin the paper down on the floor before stepping back to watch him work. With a piece of black chalk in each hand he moves, squats, kneels, and crawls around the paper. His eyes are a little glazed like he’s seeing something in the air and simply adding a mark to an existing – but invisible – outline.
It’s the only time Seth ever does anything that intrigues
