Homelands Pt. 11 Ch. 01

Nick shrugged. "Makes sense, doesn't it?"

"I guess," Frank said. "I've no idea what the hell she wants. And neither do you. She could be planning the first Miss Homelands Beauty Pageant for all any of us know."

"Guess we all can just go home then," Eric replied, before spitting into the fire.

"I think it's safe to say she's got something more malicious in mind."

"That's just the thing," Frank said. "Wanting to visit a world we all thought we grew up in but have never actually seen isn't malicious. Selfish, sure. Foolish even, given that the ancients won't tolerate it. But I don't see how it poses us any threat."

"Well, she's trying to drag us all into a war against the Sun and Moon," Eric said pretty condescendingly, "telling us that we're all involved when in fact she's the only reason they give a fuck what's going on out here in the lands of the lesser immortals."

Was he kidding? Or just dumb? "So why not just take that message to all the courts, make sure everyone knows that the war she's hard at work provoking has nothing to do with us, and let the ancients fuck her up for us?" Frank asked.

Nick and Eric looked at each other, asking without words whether he was serious.

"Are you that afraid no one will believe you?"

"Should we not be?" Eric asked. "Your Matriarch is allied with her. You tell us what the fuck made her think that was a good idea. We're the ones who haven't bent the knee."

He sighed. "I'm not sure exactly what made her do it." In his heart, that story started and ended with Kaitlin. The thought that there was anything more to it than that was one he dared not contemplate. Unless she was setting herself up to do some damage from the inside, though Frank feared that might be giving his sister too much credit. No, more likely she was a scared little girl in a grown woman's body who'd gotten herself in over her head and didn't know if she could dig herself back out again. "But she's under no delusion that Daphne's cause is ours, I'll tell you that much."

"Can you talk to her?" Nick asked, though apparently only because he felt he had to. The look on his face said that he was no longer impressed with the man they'd been sent to help. Because he'd never heard of the Trilateral War, or thought the woman responsible was called the Shackled Maiden, or whatever. Not that he was wrong to lose faith.

Eric looked at Frank expectantly. This one's faith wasn't yet shattered.

"I doubt that would do any good," he said.

Sorry, Eric.

"Why not?" the blonde asked.

"She's afraid of Daphne. As she probably should be. I don't think she's loyal to her, but neither do I see her taking a stand. She made me promise I'd take my family and leave Autumn, never to return. Find somewhere beyond Daphne's reach, like the Hinterlands."

"But you didn't," Nick said. It was almost an accusation, as if coming to Winter to kill as many of Daphne's children as he could was an act of cowardice.

Which, granted, his mother might say it was. According to her, Frank was afraid of giving fatherhood another try, after having failed Josh and Val so miserably. And she wasn't entirely wrong. But Nick didn't know that, so fuck him sideways.

"But I didn't."

"So what's the plan then?" Eric asked, tapping a log from the fire with his boot.

"Isn't it obvious?" Nick said. "He doesn't have one."

It would have been easier for Frank to take offense at that if the guy was a little more wrong. It wasn't like he had no idea what he was doing, but he didn't have a great reason for doing it. Or a plausible argument as to how it would help anyone in Autumn or Spring.

"We don't even know what her plan is," Frank said. When Nick rolled his eyes, he added, "No, seriously. Fuck the beauty pageant. We need more information before we decide how to stop her." He drew a deep breath. "I say we kidnap one of her children."

Neither said anything.