Vachlan swam through the submerged streets of Bimini, ignoring his exhaustion. After his meeting with the CIA, he had chartered a private flight directly back to the Bahamas. Now, as he made his way to the house on the outskirts of town where Visola stayed with the kids, he could not keep away the sick feeling in his gut. He wondered what complications the future would bring. Approaching the windowless little dome-shaped structure, Vachlan punched in a code on the keypad to gain entry. He looked around cautiously before entering the house, and slipped inside rapidly, shutting the door behind him.
With a frown, he took in the common room where toys were chaotically strewn everywhere. He knew that the kids would be sad that they had to leave many of their favorite things behind, but there was no time to properly pack. Moving over to the twins’ bedroom, he peered in to check on them. The room was pitch black, but his eyes were sharp as a nocturnal predator, and he could make out their sleeping figures in the dark. He was a bit disappointed that they were asleep, for he would never grow tired of their screams of excitement and ferocious little tackles as they welcomed him home. Carefully closing the door, he headed to his wife’s bedroom. Visola had fallen asleep with a globular lamp on the bed beside her, and a waterproof laptop. Curious to see what she had been doing, he swam into the room and reached over her, placing his finger on the touchpad to wake up the hibernating laptop. A smile came to his face when he saw that Visola had a document open, and it was one of his; a screenplay he had completed a few months ago. She had been reading his story.
Every time he truly believed that his love for her had reached a maximum, and that he could not feel any more strongly toward her without having a hernia, she somehow managed to inflate his emotions without causing anything to rupture inside of him. She was surely a witch, as her ridiculously red hair proudly announced. Only a sorceress could possess such total control of all of his organs, and all of their functions, more so than even his own brain. Only an experienced enchantress could hold him in the grip of her spell for so many centuries, causing such irreparable damage to his person and repeatedly destroying his insides, only to let him live for more sweet torture.
He fondly smiled down at her. Being a writer, his eyes returned to the laptop where he could not help taking note of the point at which she had fallen asleep, just to make sure there was not too much of a lull in the story. It was about one third of the way into the screenplay, after a small skirmish between the main characters. He nodded in satisfaction—at least she had not fallen asleep in the middle of the fight! Vachlan was startled when he felt a sharp serrated edge pressed under his throat. He looked down to see a giant knife lit by the screen of Visola’s laptop. She did not even have her eyes open, but she had turned to attack him out of rote reflex.
He quickly reached down to squeeze her other hand, allowing her to feel his identity through the firm, familiar pressure. Her eyes remained closed, but he could see the relaxation in her facial muscles. Her lips moved in speech and he read the words as they filtered into the water.
“Oh, it’s just you. Okay.” She turned over and went back to sleep, hugging her knife against her chest.
“Viso,” he said, putting his lips very close to her ear so she could hear him through the water. “Viso, you need to wake up. We have to leave Bimini.”
She batted away the bubbles dancing around her ear, for they created an annoying ticklish sensation. Turning to look at him in the soft lamplight, she pried her eyes open with a reluctant frown. “Under attack?”
“No, darling. But it seems that…” Vachlan was interrupted by his wife tossing her giant knife aside and reaching up to intertwine her arms around his neck. She hauled him against her, wedging and locking a leg between his. She nuzzled his cheek happily as their bodies began to float a few inches off the bed, into the water-filled room. Apparently, she considered him a more comfortable bedmate than her machete, and knowing how fond she was of the primeval weapon, he found this rather flattering.
“Sleep with me,” Visola mumbled into the water. “You’re always so busy.”
He became temporarily distracted from his purpose, although he was sure that it was an important purpose. Ignoring the flashing red lights in his mind, he allowed his hands to circle around her body, combing his fingers through the short red hair that was glowing in the white laptop-light as it calmly floated all around Visola’s head. Lowering his face to her neck, he pressed a kiss against a sensitive spot—if anything on Visola could ever be considered sensitive. He breathed in the scent of her skin, which even the water, as much as it tried, could not dilute to render less intoxicating.
She stirred, torn halfway between dreaming and responding to his touch. “You’ve been gone too long,” she complained.
“It was less than a day,” he told her softly, unsure of whether she would be able to hear his voice in the water. He was unsure of whether he wanted her to hear, and be awoken from what seemed like a peaceful half-slumber. Warmth began to spread through his chest, and he admitted to himself that it felt nice to be missed. He found it endearing that she still overreacted to his every miniscule absence with childlike clinginess that rivaled the enthusiasm of the twins.
“Hundreds of years,” she said, and Vachlan realized that she was fumbling to undo the button of his pants. “Make up for lost time.”
It seemed that he found her a bit too endearing, for Vachlan’s body had been conveying a message to Visola that she understood quite well, even half asleep. He pulled away from her and cleared his throat. “Not now, Viso. We have to evacuate…”
His protests seemed to wake her up completely, for she loved a good challenge. Grinning, she pushed her laptop and her globular lamp off the bed, and both floated to the ground. Grabbing the front of his shirt, she forced him down onto the mattress where his screenplay had been a moment before. She pressed her mouth against his as she climbed on top of him, laughing at his objections. “You want to evacuate me? I’ve never heard that one before. Evac. Vach. Mmm, yes. Evachlanate me.”
He coughed on the water he was breathing as a clump of it seemed to get stuck in his throat. Visola give the impression of being fully awake, but it sounded like she was talking in her sleep. He wondered briefly if he was misreading her lips, but he knew her lips too well to mistake their intentions. She did not seem to be in a mood for reasoning, so he tried to wrestle her into submission. Of course, she was prepared for him. Laughing, she twisted his arms behind his back and locked his limbs into immobility. She smirked as she slid down the length of his body, dragging her chin along his torso.
“Hey, Vach. Vacuum cleaner. Let me play with your hose.”
“Viso!” he knew that if her chin went an inch lower that he would be unable to stop her. “Stop that right—” His body lurched as her lips connected with his most sensitive area. Vachlan bounded backwards and shoved his foot into Visola’s shoulder, kicking her clean off the bed.
She went tumbling away, doing a somersault in the water. Grabbing the bedpost to steady herself, she looked at him in surprise. “Is something really wrong?”
“Raincheck!” he blurted out zealously. “Raincheck, please!”
“Sure,” she said with a confused shrug. She watched as he refastened the button on his pants. “I thought you said we weren’t under attack, tiger paws?”
“Not exactly an attack,” he said in sign language, since he needed his mouth for deep calming breaths, “but we are in danger. It’s best that we get the hell out of this place and take the kids to Adlivun. I have a plane waiting for us on the surface. The CIA has been spying on you.”
Visola began to chuckle gleefully. She wrapped her arms around the bedpost to hold herself up as her body rocked with laughter.
“I’m not kidding, Viso. I think they might want to capture you to use as leverage against me. It’s what I would do if I were in their position.”
Her laughter subsided and she released the bedpost to swim back toward him.
“Have I been a bad girl?” she asked him with a little pout as she rested her elbows on his chest.
“No,” he said. “It’s about me. They traced the epidemics in Asia back to what I did in Damahaar—or at least, they’re threatening to get me in trouble for that if I don’t help them with their current agenda.”
“That actually explains a lot,” Visola signed thoughtfully. She nodded as she pushed herself away from him and retrieved her suitcase from beneath the bed. Opening a few drawers, she hastily shoveled guns and knives into the travel bag. Grabbing one of her long dresses, she wrapped her laptop up before sticking it into the same valise. She had already begun zipping it closed when she realized that she was only in her nightgown. Slipping out of the pretty garment, she stuck it into the same luggage before moving over to her dresser to retrieve and pull on a pair of armored pants. She noticed that Vachlan was lying on his side and staring at her body, so she turned to give him a better view, proudly exposing the scars from her caesarean section, and from trying to kill herself in front of him many years ago. “I know they’ve been spying on me,” she informed him dryly.
“You do?”
“Of course.” She retrieved a metal bra which she quickly tossed on and clasped behind her back before pulling on an armored vest. “I didn’t know it was the CIA until last month. That’s when they started to annoy me, and I decided to annoy them. They usually wait ’til you’re busy in another part of town, or at home writing, and then they position themselves around me. I find it really insulting—it’s like they think you’re an expert warrior and I’m a useless woman.”
“Viso…”
“I’m glad to know they finally confronted you about it. It’s been going on for about six months and I’ve been constantly on edge. I’ve been getting really antsy about this,” she admitted as she stooped down to tug on a pair of armored boots.
“Please tell me you didn’t alert them to the fact that you knew they were—”
“No,” she said ruefully, staring down at her metallic toes.
“Viso!”
“Vachlan. I only killed three of their spies this week.”
“You killed—you killed them!” Vachlan rubbed his forehead in frustration. “Thanks a lot, darling. You really fanned the fire.”
“I have children!” she shouted, gesturing to the next room. “Fuck anyone who gets near me with a weapon. I don’t care who the fuck they are! Fuck the CIA. Fuck MI6. Fuck the fucking Taliban!”
Staring at her for an unblinking moment, Vachlan finally nodded. He scratched his ear in puzzlement. “You could have told me that we were being targeted, love.”
With a carefree smile, Visola picked up her suitcase and signed with one hand. “No way! And ruin the surprise? Besides, you were so busy rebuilding the city of Bimini, and you were so focused on your writing in the evenings. I know how much you need to concentrate on your stories, and I didn’t want to distract you.”
“Best wife ever,” Vachlan said fondly, getting out his own suitcase. “Go gather the kids, and I’ll be over in a minute.” Frowning as she left, Vachlan collected a few of his own personal effects. Checking to make sure Visola had exited the room, he moved into the corner and reached behind the mirror to collect a small USB key that had been hidden there. He shoved it into his pocket before grabbing his suitcase and moving after his wife. He was not surprised to see her trying to comfort Ronan as the little boy wailed.
“I don’t want to go, Mama!” the little boy complained as he rubbed his little fists into his eyes. “I like it here. It’s warm!”
“We have to go, munchkin. Remember the bad guys mommy put to sleep at breakfast? Daddy says more are coming.”
“Why?” Ronan asked morosely. “Did they wake up and tell their friends you were mean to them?”
“Something like that,” Visola admitted.
“I told you not to be so mean,” Ronan said, adding emphasis by sullenly sucking on his thumb.
Vachlan immediately felt a rush of pity and regret. It was one thing to learn that the children had been regularly witnessing their mother “disabling” spies, but another to cause them needless stress by moving them around. He felt it was very important to have a certain kind of stability in childhood. He hated to have to yank them out of their beds in the middle of the night and drag them to Adlivun with such urgency. Ivory noticed him standing in the doorway and a giant smile overtook her face. She swam directly at him, nose-diving into his abdomen.
“Daddy, daddy!” she said in excitement as she tugged at his clothing eagerly. “Did you get me a present? You said you were going to get me a present!”
“Hey, sprite!” He grinned as he picked Ivory up and spun her around in the water rapidly, until she was giggling and waving her arms dizzily. For the grand finale, Vachlan reached out to horribly mess up her pale red hair. “I have presents waiting for you in Adlivun, and you’re going to love them.”
“Oh my god! Did you get the thingy I wanted? The big thingy?” Ivory asked in sign language, making extravagant gestures with her arms to indicate size.
“Even better,” Vachlan said as he positioned her in the crook of his arm, “but we have to grab a few of your toys and special belongings and take them to Adlivun now so that we can meet your new friend.”
“I don’t need to bring anything,” Ivory said as she bounced in excitement. “Let’s go, let’s go! What’s his name? Does he have a cool name? Does he have a brother or sister for Ro-Ro?”
“Of course, kiddo,” Vachlan said as he moved around the room, grabbing some of Ivory’s odds and ends. She was a very low maintenance child when it came to toys, clothes, and jewelry, but she did have a fascination for books and animals. He frowned when he came upon a bowl of exotic tropical fish hidden under a pile of clothes. There was even a seahorse in the bowl. “Uh, Ivo, I don’t think we can bring these with us. It will be too cold for them…”
“No, please! Please daddy, I carefully picked them each one by one. They’re called the Spice Fish! Cinnamon Spice, Mustard Spice, Chili Pepper Spice, Mint Spice, the seahorse is Horseradish Spice, and… the ugly fish is Salt.”
“Salt?” Vachlan asked in confusion. “That doesn’t seem as… interesting as the other names.”
“Duh. Ronan named that fish,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “It’s the stupid one.”
Vachlan smiled at this, and tried to balance the fishbowl in his left arm, which was also holding his suitcase and a few bags, while carrying Ivory with his right. “Well, when we get home to Adlivun, you can meet your new pet dolphin and give him a clever name, because you’re really good at that. Maybe Ronan will let you name his dolphin as well.”
“Wait, what? Dolphin!” Ivory complained. “I don’t want a dolphin!”
Vachlan adjusted her in his arms as he indicted to Visola that he was ready to leave. “I know sweetie, but it’s a pygmy killer whale—a special kind of dolphin!”
“Daddy, I don’t want a killer whale. I told you already so many times. I want a narwhal!”
Vachlan sighed. “Why, kiddo?”
“Because the narwhal has a sword on his nose.” Ivory reached up and touched Vachlan’s nose to emphasize her point. “And the sword is made of ivory. Like me!”
Vachlan smiled. He leaned down to gently squash his nose against his daughter’s, rubbing back and forth in a playful Eskimo kiss, until she giggled. “Then we’ll get you a narwhal, sweetie. The best narwhal in the world.”
“Goodie!” she declared, hugging him around the neck. “I think I’ll name him Tuskany. You know, because of his tusks? And like the city? Then when I ride him, we’ll be Ivory and Tuskany. Cousin Vari’s gonna be soooo jealous.”
This was the last thing she said before she began to doze off against him. Vachlan saw that Visola had also finally gotten Ronan to quiet down, and was also balancing him masterfully with her suitcases.
“Let’s go before I decide I want to pack more stuff,” Visola mouthed. She was so weighed down that she walked to the door more than she swam, and awkwardly raised her leg and used the toe of her boot to punch in the code on the keypad. When they exited the dome-shaped house, she stood still for several breaths. Vachlan felt a chill as he saw Visola’s senses sharply take in her surroundings, and acknowledge an unsavory presence. She turned back to him by only a few degrees, allowing him to see the profile of her face. When she whispered into the water, the words he read on her lips were concise and to the point:
“Kill or run?”
He hesitated, glancing down at the little girl in his arms. While the kids had grown up learning how to fight, playing at war as though it were a game, he was not sure that he wanted to expose them to the brutality of real battle. He knew they had seen a few unsavory things, and that they were resilient enough not to be bothered by the respective occupations of their parents, but he did not want to disturb them more than necessary. He wanted them to feel safe.
Vachlan wondered if knowing that one’s parents were cold-blooded killers, who could casually slaughter scores of even mildly threatening attackers, would enhance an illusion of safety. He noticed then that Ronan was not asleep, and the little boy was peering nervously over Visola’s shoulder at him. There was an expectant fear in the boy’s observant green eyes. Those vigilant little orbs drank up every one of Vachlan’s motions.
Although Vachlan was an advisor by profession, he had a feeling that when it came to fatherhood, his son would be following his example in the years to come far more than his words. He knew that he had to act with a little more caution and clarity than usual, for Ronan was learning about the world from studying his father’s every movement, interaction, and initiative. Vachlan could not do anything he did not want his son to eventually do; and did he want Ronan to face off against a dozen armed operatives when he had the option to quietly slip away?
Visola had grown irritated with Vachlan’s lack of response, and was about to take matters into her own hands. After fumbling quickly for a piece of technology under her bulletproof vest, she reached for the arsenal in her suitcase. Vachlan dropped his own bags, diving forward to place a hand on hers to arrest her movement.
“Swim away,” he whispered. “Don’t attack unless they display aggression—they won’t hurt us with the kids here. They’re allowed to watch us.”
“Who are you?” Visola mouthed angrily. “They’re watching us with weapons!”
“I don’t want to massacre innocent American spies in front of the children.”
“Then we should tell them to close their eyes.”
Reaching out to grab Visola’s metal bra strap, Vachlan used it like the handle on a piece of luggage as he kicked off the ground, towing her behind him as he powerfully propelled them to the surface. Visola glared daggers at him, but she could tell that he was serious. She pulled away and began to swim on her own. Only then did she notice that Ronan’s arms were clenched unusually tightly around her neck. The little boy was scared; and the worst part was that Visola was not sure whether he feared the CIA more, or Vachlan and Visola disposing of them.
Dodging glowing, tropical jellyfish, they began to approach the starlit surface of the sea. Visola was just starting to accept her husband’s wisdom in having made the right decision, when a few scuba divers began to close in on them. Every swimmer was dressed in black, with an automatic underwater rifle, flare guns, and electric weapons at their disposal. Visola wrapped both arms around Ronan as she pivoted in the water, assessing their numbers and positions. She could not refrain from sending Vachlan an “I-told-you-so” look.
Gritting his teeth together, Vachlan released Ivory and placed her between Visola and himself. The girl had woken up from their sharp movements, and she grasped the armor on her mother’s thigh nervously as she peeped around at the men with guns. With the two toddlers hanging off her, Visola could do nothing else but toss her suitcase filled with weapons at her husband. She reached into her armor, searching for something she could use to defend herself.
“You seem to be leaving in a hurry, royal advisor?” one of the scuba divers signed with the awkwardness of someone who had just learned sign language.
“Unfortunately, my family being constantly watched by armed spies has made this city a bit unlivable for me,” Vachlan explained.
“It’s really suspicious that you would decide to leave Bimini immediately after speaking to Agent Poole. How do we know that you won’t disappear into the ocean, never to be found again? We’re going to have to take you into custody.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Vachlan told the man with a frown as he shared a brief communicative look with Visola. “I will be in Adlivun with my wife and children—that’s where the CIA can find me if necessary.”
“We can’t take your word on that, sir. Please put your hands up and allow us to handcuff you.”
Vachlan scowled, seeing no other options. There were at least a dozen guns pointed directly at him; if it had been only him, this would not have been a problem. If it had been only him and his wife, it might have been a fun little joust which they could have considered date night. But the kids were not ready for this kind of fight. He knew that if he allowed himself to be taken into custody, there would eventually be a moment he could use to escape, so it seemed the lesser evil.
“I’ll come with you as long as you let my wife and kids go free,” Vachlan bargained.
“Sorry, but we’re going to have to take her too. The lady is far too dangerous to release.”
Visola smiled, lifting her free hand to blow a kiss to the scuba diver graciously. “Thanks for the compliment, buddy. Would you like a demonstration of how correct you are?”
Turning to her husband, Visola switched to her mother tongue. French was not safe, and neither was Russian or Japanese, but the Viking language was long forgotten by most. She knew that Vachlan recognized a few words of Old Norse, and hopefully just enough to understand her. “Fram prír, vér hlaup,” she whispered in the ancient dialect. It meant: “On three, we run.”
He squinted in mild confusion, but gave the tiniest of nods. He had no idea how Visola intended to create an opportunity for them to flee, but he trusted her implicitly. If she said they would run, then they would run.
“Einn,” she whispered in Old Norse, lifting her arm above her head. “Tveir,” she said, clenching her fist. “Prir!” Opening her hand, she ducked down to grab her children, holding the twins close as gunfire exploded all around them. She did not wait for a fraction of a second more as the sea was clouded and churned up by great surges of opaque dust, pushing Ivory toward Vachlan in the darkness and darting through the water in the direction of the airport. Visola knew that she and her husband could easily outswim any scuba diver, especially ones who had just had their oxygen tanks shot and disabled by her own armed guards. She grinned as she found herself hitting the beach, and able to stand up to her waist in the water. Once the water was only up to her knees, she deposited Ronan on the ground and took his hand, leading him to the waiting airplane. He dug his heels into the sand, refusing to move.
“Mama, what happened?” he asked with a quivering lip. “Is Ivory okay?”
“She’s fine, pooh-bear. Daddy’s got her.”
“Where are they?” Ronan demanded tearfully. “Where are they?”
“Right behind us,” Visola assured him as she tugged on his hand, leading him to shore. “Come on, cranky pants!”
She was too strong for the child to resist moving for very long, and he ended up reluctantly moving along with her and sniffling as they walked. Sure enough, Vachlan soon broke through the water behind them, just as Visola was lifting her son into the airplane.
“What the fudge was that, Visola?” Vachlan demanded. “Did you not think it was important to let me know that you had ordered the men who surrounded us to be surrounded by your men?”
“I wanted to see you squirm,” she admitted with a grin as she climbed into the plane. “Isn’t it nice? I used to be a bodyguard, but now I have bodyguards. Really moving up in the world.”
“Did you kill them?” Vachlan asked as he lifted Ivory into the plane and followed. He signaled the pilot to take off. “It seemed like you just had their oxygen tanks shot.”
“They’ll be fine,” Visola said as she buckled her kids into their seats on the plane. “My people will handle it.” She grasped the back of a chair as she caught her breath from the brisk swim, and fought the queasiness in her stomach from taking off over the water.
“Are we safe?” Vachlan asked quietly. “I’m sure they have anti-aircraft weapons…”
Visola grinned. “You forget that they need you alive, super stud.” She then noticed that Vachlan had managed to save her suitcase. “Yes! You rescued my laptop!” she said cheerfully, whisking it out of his hands. She immediately sat down across from her kids and pulled the computer out of the bag of weapons. “This means I can catch up on my reading while we fly home. I’ve been dying to know how this ends.”
“My screenplay?” he asked in surprise. “You like it that much?”
“Yeah! The whole time we were trying to escape from the CIA, I kept thinking that I’d rather be finishing this story. Is that weird? Am I getting old?”
Vachlan stared in dumbfounded shock. “You would have preferred to be reading one of my stories about fighting to actually fighting?”
“Well, yes,” she admitted, after some puzzled reflection. “I suppose I usually know how my own battles are going to end before I even get into them, but I’m not part of the fights in your stories, so I can’t influence the outcome. That’s kind of exciting.”
Vachlan sighed happily, about to express his gratitude for her compliments, when his son began to cry, startling the adults out of their conversation.
“Ivory’s bleeding!” Ronan said, pointing at the little girl’s leg. “Daddy, Ivory’s bleeding! Make it stop!”
Ivory had already begun snoozing again, but her brother’s loud cries woke her up. “For Sedna’s sake!” she said in a very grown-up way. “It’s only a flesh wound, Ro-Ro. You don’t have to announce it like it’s some big deal.”
Vachlan had sprung to her side and was rolling up her pant leg. “Dear god. Viso, she’s losing a lot of blood. I’ll tell the pilot to turn around so we can get her to a hospital…”
“For Sedna’s sake!” Visola said, echoing her daughter and realizing exactly where the little girl had picked up that phrase. “Ivo’s right. It is only a flesh wound.”
“Visola Ramaris!” Vachlan barked. “Your five-year-old daughter has been shot! She needs medical attention!”
“She scrapes her knee sometimes too!” Visola said with exasperation. “Honestly, Vachlan, don’t you think I know anything about anything? My sister is the lesbian Dr. Frankenstein, so I think I can manage basic first aid. The bullet barely grazed her thigh. I’ll give her a few stitches and that’s that.”
“It needs to be disinfected,” he argued, rubbing Ivory’s forehead gently. “Ivo, baby, are you okay? Does it hurt? Just hold on. Daddy’s going to make it all better, I promise.”
Ivory looked up at Vachlan with a combination of anger and sadness in her eyes. “I don’t care about my stupid leg, Daddy! You lost the Spice Fish!”
Vachlan was stricken when he remembered dropping the little aquarium outside their house as they fled the city. “I promise you’ll get the Spice Fish back, sweetie.”
“No, I won’t,” she said resentfully. “Horseradish is gone forever.”
“And Salt too?” Ronan asked with worry. “I miss Salt!”
Vachlan sighed very deeply, placing one hand on the shoulder of each child. “I solemnly vow to you, Ivory and Ronan Ramaris, that I will rescue the Spice Fish. I swear on my life.”
“Cross your heart and hope to die?” Ivory said hopefully.
“Yes, you little scallywag.” Vachlan looked up to see Visola grinning down at him gleefully. She had managed to find a bottle of gin somewhere on the plane, and was already helping herself to generous sips. He patted Ivory’s good leg. “Now sit still and let your mother fix your injury!”
“This is mommy’s special grown-up medicine,” Visola explained upon chugging a quarter of the bottle. “It fixes grown-ups on the inside, but it fixes little people on the outside.” With that, she turned the bottle over and splashed a fair amount onto her daughter’s leg.
Ivory yelped in surprise at the burning pain. Ronan watched curiously as Visola bent over his sister with a first aid kid and began to sew up the injury.
“With any luck,” Visola told the girl, “this will leave a little scar, and you can tell people the story of when you got shot by the CIA. You can tell them how brave you were, and how you didn’t even cry. Would you like that?”
“Yes, Mommy,” Ivory said, trying very hard not to cry. “It doesn’t hurt at all, really. I could get shot all the time, if it’s this easy.”
Vachlan’s deep, throaty laugh filled the plane. “You’re lucky our enemies don’t have your mother’s aim, squirt. When Mommy shoots someone, she does it in all the places that hurt the most; and she always hits her target.”
Visola paused in stitching up her daughter’s leg to send a glance over her shoulder at her husband. Her lips curled in a secretive, sultry smirk.
“Can I go back to napping when you’re done?” Ivory asked with a yawn. “Ro-Ro woke me up.”
“Because you were bleeding,” Ronan said defensively. “What if you bled to death when you were sleeping and woke up dead?”
“I wouldn’t wake up then, stupid!”
“Yes, you would!” Ronan argued. “Auntie Zuri did!”
“Hey, hey,” Vachlan chastised. He had moved forward and begun running his hand along Visola’s spine as the kids argued, trying to distract her from her handiwork. His hand grazed over her back from the nape of her neck, where her short, wet hair clung to her skin, down over her armor to her lower back. He slipped his hand beneath her armor and drew circles on her tailbone as he watched her fingers create tiny, even stitches in their daughter’s leg. “You kids should stop arguing and be happy that you’re both alive,” he advised. “How would you feel if your brother got shot, Ivory? I bet you’d be worried about him too. Don’t be upset that he cares about you!”
Ivory became grouchily silent at this as her mother finished up the stitches.
Leaning forward, Visola placed a giant kiss on her daughter’s cheek. “All done, darlin’! When we get home I’m going to tell Auntie Zuri and Cousin Vari about how bold and fearless you were tonight. Then we can show them your bloody pants. Cool?”
“Very cool!” Ivory said with a smile and yawn. She leaned to the side and rested her head against her brother. “I wanna sleep now.”
“Go ahead,” Visola said, planting an equally generous kiss on Ronan’s forehead. “Dream of colorful Spice Fish, playing guitars and singing you a rock ’n’ roll lullaby.”
Visola was startled when she felt Vachlan’s hand slip into hers, pulling her away to a far corner of the large and empty plane. He pushed her into a chair before crouching to the ground before her, as if he had something private to say which he did not want the kids to hear. After a moment of trying to find the words, Vachlan allowed his head to fall forward and rest in Visola’s lap. Her armored pants did not make the most comfortable pillow, but her presence and nearness did. She wordlessly reached out to stroke her fingers through his black hair, combing along his scalp to ease his stress.
“Did you want to talk about that fight?” she asked softly. “I’m not sure why they were using oxygen tanks and not Sionna’s serum, but I’m sure it’s a mistake they won’t make again. We should make Sionna’s serum unavailable to them, if we can—I know we’ve been trying to control the distribution, but there is a growing black market for knock-off imitations of the serum. Luckily, most of these aren’t effective, or at least not military-grade effective. Either way, I want you to know that I signaled my men to…”
“Shh, Viso,” Vachlan said, raising his head from her lap. His grey eyes looked up at her gravely. “That’s not what want I want to talk about.”
He had changed—or perhaps something new in her mind was altering his appearance. Although Ronan had Visola’s green eyes, Ivory had her father’s smoky grey irises. Visola no longer saw the tragedy of losing her first daughter when she observed her husband’s face. She saw the promise and potential of her second daughter, and the worrisome intelligence of her little son. She was not sure how it was possible, but she understood Vachlan a little more because of her children; they were helping her to forgive the things she thought she would never forgive, and on some days, hardly remembered.
“I want you to know that I’m sorry for making a mistake back there, and saying we should run instead of fight,” Vachlan said softly. “If it weren’t for you, we would have been captured.”
“Don’t worry—” She was cut off by a finger pressed against her mouth. He had more to say.
“I got us into this mess,” he admitted. “I knew that it wouldn’t be easy to turn over a new leaf and go from being the destroyer to a creator. I knew my past would always find a way to catch up with me, and you knew that too when you married me.”
“Vachlan,” she began, but he pressed his entire hand over her mouth to ensure she would keep it closed.
“For most of my life, I thought that having kids would be unreasonable. It was whimsical, ludicrous fantasy. I was cruel, but I drew the line at being so cruel that I would subject children to this kind of life, and to seeing the kind of things I did. What godforsaken, ghost of a man like me would ever consider tormenting children by the simple knowledge of who their father was and what he had done? It was absurd. Vachlan, the Destroyer of Kingdoms, a dad? It was outrageous, even comical.” He removed his hand from her mouth and moved it to rest against the breastplate of her armor. “And then I met you.”
Visola rolled her eyes skyward, emitting a bashful chuckle. “Shucks, I know I’m awesome. You don’t have to tell me.”
“Yes, I do. What just happened back there—Visola, you’re the only woman on earth I would trust to be the mother of my children. If it weren’t for you…”
“Pffft,” Visola said, turning away to look at the window to hide her blush. “Don’t be ridiculous. All I did was press a button. With the amount of… evacuating that you’ve done, there are probably hundreds of little… vacuum cleaners running around that you don’t even know about.”
“No, actually. And you know me better than that,” he said seriously. “I don’t take very much seriously in life. I think the world is a fickle, changeful thing. Every person, every state of affairs, every emotion is fleeting and pointless. Why should we bother caring what happens or getting attached to anything? But you changed me. You showed me differently, because you have an undying loyalty and strength that I’ve never seen in anyone else—”
“Okay, I get it! You think I’m hot and you want to do me. You don’t have to go on and on about it like this is a special moment in one of your plays or movies. There’s no audience here, just us. You can touch my boobs without asking permission.”
“Ignoring everything you just said, I’m going to continue with my speech of gratitude—”
Visola tossed her head back and groaned. “Sedna save me. Why did I marry a writer?”
“I take fatherhood very seriously,” he said simply. “It’s very easy to be a military strategist, or a mercenary, or a king, but much harder to be a father. More than anyone I’ve ever met, you saw the best in me, and you had faith that I could be a good father. I failed you once, and I don’t want to ever fail you again. You deserve better than me, Viso. You didn’t deserve having your daughter murdered because of me, and you don’t deserve having to work so hard to keep the twins alive because I—”
A sob shook Visola’s chest then, as she pushed her hands against her eyes to conceal a sudden waterfall of tears. Like a gunshot in the night, her emotions flared up, and just as quickly, they were gone. She reached out and hit Vachlan in the face. The satisfying feeling of her bone connecting with bone prompted her to hit him again. “I can’t think about this,” she warned him. “I can’t reflect and examine and remember like you—I just do. I think as quickly as I can, and then I do. Whatever needs to be done, you can be sure that I’ll find a way to get it done, however crazy or difficult that way might be. I don’t care. I don’t need anything from you. I don’t need your kind words, Vachlan. I don’t need your romance or your sweetness—I just need you to be here.”
He rubbed his sore jaw, looking up at her in misery. “I want to be more than just here.”
“You are,” she whispered, reaching out to hook her wrists over his shoulders in a relaxed way. “I realize now that maybe you always were. If something happens to either one of us, the twins will be fine. They won’t feel the loss so strongly, because as long as they have one of us, they will have both of us. So you shouldn’t worry, tough guy.”
Vachlan smiled, grasping behind her calves and sliding her down off her chair. He caught her before she could land on the ground and kissed her bottom lip, tugging it into his mouth and holding it there in a long, serene kiss. They stared at each other from this close vantage point, conversing quietly with only their eyes. Vachlan finally pushed Visola to the ground between the rows of airplane seats, and began to hastily dispense with her armor.
“Are you going to evachlanate me now?” she whispered teasingly.
He growled in response.