Homelands Pt. 12

Oberon had promised to find them, and that had offered some reassurance. Her prince was not a man to make promises lightly, and he was even less prone to breaking them than other fey were. Like she herself, he hadn't yet internalized that the notion that they'd never been fey to begin with. That all the constraints they'd operated under were self-imposed. Or forced on them by his mother. So when he told her she had his word that he'd return their children to them, she knew it meant he'd not hold anything back.

But she couldn't stop thinking that the city of First Retreat, populated by refugees from Faerie, Summer, and Autumn, was not home to the only immortals in the Hinterlands. That someone had taken the two of them, who wouldn't just run off like that on their own.

When other children started going missing, she knew something had to be done. So she arranged an informal meeting with a select few. Powerful immortals, with no children to raise or at least none left in First Retreat. And Iva Farrier, who had one on the way.

"We've no choice," she said. "We have to send them away."

No one argued. But they all wore the same expression. And why not? This was supposed to be their safe haven. The place they went to escape the worst of the Homelands. Where they could raise their families in peace, all the while trying to forget what they'd left behind. And those horrors being endured by those who weren't fortunate enough to escape. Yet here they were, contemplating the need to create an oasis where their children would be safe.

"At least until we know what's out there," Caronwyn said for her.

Aeife smiled at her daughter, and the handsome grandson beside her. Having those two there made this easier. And, hopefully, would make the task to follow easier as well. Caronwyn especially. If she and Iva, who seemed to have a strange sort of chemistry, couldn't figure out what was going on and how to fix it...well, then there wasn't much hope.

"We know what's out there," Flori Hardt said.

Her husband, whose name Aeife thought was Randy, gave her hand a squeeze. The gesture seemed to be equal parts reproach and reassurance. Aeife liked him a lot, and not just because he was one of the people besides her that Oberon spoke to on a daily basis.

"Not exactly," Iva said with a frown. She'd done more to explore the Hinterlands, without ever truly leaving the walls of First Retreat, than any of them. "But, yeah, it seems pretty safe to say that this is where all those who've faded away went."

"And it doesn't seem like they're too keen on open borders," a man named Bobby said. He was one of those Orwins with Walker blood in him. He reminded Aeife of Richard so much it hurt. He was quieter than her late son. Less confident too. And almost too nice. But he had roughly the same build, was about the same height, and had the same auburn hair, matching beard, and pale gray eyes. "I'm with Aeife," he said, mispronouncing her name. "An `oasis' is exactly what the children need."

She was surprised the support wasn't more enthusiastic. In the end, they weren't talking about anything all that different from the Dreamings, playgrounds, and echoes they'd all grown up in. They could even arrange for time to pass so rapidly that the families they'd have to say goodbye to so shortly after ferrying them to supposed safety returned.

"Are we going to talk about the other people here?" Olivia Moody asked. "I don't mean whoever, or whatever, is lurking in those overgrown, prehistoric forests. I mean from our courts. Like Hank and Nina Fisher, and Mocha-"

"Macha," Aeife corrected.

"-Dreamsmyth," the bronzed blonde finished. "And everyone they've got with them."

Flori frowned. She, for one, obviously would have preferred not to have another reason to worry about blood being spilled inside the city walls. It was bad enough that Eric and Frank had nearly come to blows twice in as many days. Aeife couldn't blame her. Oberon was the only Dreamsmyth she had any interest in sharing space with.

"Not yet, I think," Aeife replied.

Iva didn't seem to like that answer. She wanted everyone to be one big happy family, it seemed. Except when she didn't. Sometimes, she was preeminent peacemaker. Others, she stared daggers at anyone who so much as spoke to her. Like she couldn't decide if she wanted everyone to die or might be happy to give anything for the common good.

Aeife had liked her at first. But she grew less and less sure over time.

"A vote," Oberon said, speaking up for the first time. His deep voice rumbled across the basement tavern. The oak table at which they sat didn't really shake, but Aeife wouldn't have been surprised if it had. She tried not to smile. "Yea or nay?"

One by one, all the hands went up.

"And who'll volunteer to remain behind?" Aeife asked next. Her heart started to beat faster. She knew what the outcome would be. What it would have to be. Someone had to make sure there was a city to come back to, and she'd chosen who to invite to the meeting most carefully. But she was still nervous. Mostly because Frank Orwin wasn't there, and that didn't sit well with Iva Farrier.

This time, the yeas came in more slowly. And while Iva's wasn't last, it was certainly the least enthusiastic. But in the end, the second vote was unanimous as well.

"So it's settled then," Aeife said.

"We're the Guardians of the City," Olivia said.

Oberon smiled at that. Aeife elbowed him in the ribs, partly to be playful and partly because he'd sort of mocked the proceedings. Granted, she'd still tear his clothes off every bit as eagerly once the meeting was over, as she had whenever she could since he'd returned from Winter. But still. He'd all but asked for it.

"I can't wait to share the good news," Iva said with a hint of bitterness.

Aeife frowned. She couldn't blame the woman, really. But she could hope that her jealousy of Ellen Orwin didn't keep her from doing her part to serve the city.

*****

The moment he stepped through the open archway separating the quasi-pueblo-style dwelling shared by Skye and Ismail from the open air, Frank bumped into Iva. Literally.

"Were you just standing there waiting for me?" he asked, backing up.

"No," she said. "Maybe." She whirled away and look out over the three stories stacked unevenly below them, brown eyes sort of focused on the city square and yet not really seeing anything at all, if he had to guess. "That's not how this conversation started in my head."

"Figured I'd head straight? Stead of rounding the corner?"

She snorted and smacked his arm. "You know what I mean."

Well, sort of. He actually wasn't sure why she'd expected get off on a less awkward footing after ambushing him like that. To say nothing of the many other reasons things were awkward between. Like the whole forced impregnation thing. Or how the last time he'd seen her before that, they'd done their best not to talk about the fact that she'd conspired to kill him with a mother he had Devoured when the two of them tried to execute the plan.

For starters.

Damn, but she looked good in that baby blue dress though. It hung loosely about her, concealing a figure that he kind of wished hadn't grown so much more appealing over time, as she'd acquired more and more power. He still remembered a time when her face was very pretty but not quite unbearably gorgeous, when her waist had been generous by Homelands standards, her breasts merely large, and that bubble butt that looked so good beneath the soft fabric of her dress had been smaller and flatter. It still didn't quite serve as the perfect counterweight to her chest, which had become rather epic, but there was no mistaking the fact what had once been her only physical shortcoming was no longer much of one. Not that he was staring at her backside or anything. Just sneaking a glance, really.

What he noticed even more was how her outfit made her look more innocent than he knew her to be. The white knit half sweater she wore atop it had much the same effect. And her hair looked sort of unassuming worn ash blonde instead of burnished gold. It was like she was doing her best impression of her sister, a woman who was far easier to overlook.

That, and the familiar hint of vanilla.

"So how're your cousins?" the woman he now thought of as a sister more than an aunt asked, with obvious disinterest. She tilted her head and those beautiful brown eyes met his briefly, but she kept her body aimed away from him. Towards the center of the small city she'd appointed herself unofficial protector of, despite the fact that she couldn't really stand most of its inhabitants. A gentle breeze picked up, tugging a lock of her pale hair free to whip gently behind her along with the hem of her dress and Frank just about died.

"They're fine," he said.

Well, no, they weren't. Not really. They were almost irrationally concerned that their baby would be snatched away from them the moment it was born, even though the only children that had disappeared so far were much older than that. And he'd had no success convincing them that they ought to take some small consolation in that fact than he had his mother or his sister. The fact that he found their perfectly natural reactions so puzzling probably said a lot about how prepared he was to give fatherhood another try. But Iva wasn't really asking about any of that, so he gave the non-answer she was looking for.

"Good," Iva said.

Frank stepped up beside her, a bit closer to the edge of the roof than most people would have been comfortable with, and regarded their new home of First Retreat. It was a strange little city, and not just because it was populated by such very different people. Some of whom, he'd discovered, were close relatives of the grandfather he barely remembered. Not that he'd have guessed, based on their strange customs and beliefs. It was almost like they were a different race entirely. Setting aside the differences between the fey and the rest of them, or the hyper-machismo of Summer's menfolk-or at least one of them-the whole dang place would take some getting used to. Someone had decided the city should look like a pre-modern dwelling, with dirt roads and stone houses and a pump well in the corner of the city square. He missed Autumn's nightclubs, cheesy as they were, to say nothing of the book stores and coffee shops.

And fall itself. From the pumpkins and apples to the cool weather that this prehistoric place sometimes flirted with but never quite offered, to the beautiful foliage.

They were surrounded by forests, which he liked, but they were nothing like those of Autumn. The trees were so tall they made him feel small and insignificant, and their leaves lacked color. Everything here was lush and green and vibrant, almost pulsing with life. The insects were as big as his fists, and he'd seen a few snakes that had almost made him react the way Nat did to spiders. He felt like they'd stumbled into a world in its infancy. It almost wouldn't surprise him to learn that the reason their children were disappearing was not that there was a cabal of old immortals seeking to communicate that the newcomers weren't welcome, but fucking dinosaurs, with a taste for flesh most tender.

Of course, the one didn't preclude the other. The supposedly uninhabited Hinterlands might well have been home both to some distant cousin of Tyrannosaurus Rex and a bunch of immortals who'd sought to escape the ways of their kind. Much as they themselves had.

"So, anyway, you've probably heard that most of you are leaving."

"What?" Frank asked.

"Oh," she said, fretting at her lower lip. "Guess not."

"No," he said.

His sister sighed as she wrapped her arms around herself. Which didn't make her heaving bosom seem even more massive. No sir. Those girls were in no danger of popping out of her dress, modest though its neckline was. And he wasn't experiencing the least bit of juvenile fascination therewith. Had hardly even noticed, really.

He suddenly felt the need to cover himself up a bit. Frank was not fond of wearing shirts, but he conjured up a tight white T and a black silk dress shirt to go over it, the top few buttons of which he left undone. That better fit the signals they were sending one another.

"And `most of you' means...," he said.

"Yeah," she said. "Someone's got to make sure there's a city to come back to. Maybe see if we can't get the children back while we're at it."

She said it so casually, like it was no more than a tertiary priority. And she'd resigned herself to the odds of that being quite long. He wasn't sure if that was sarcasm speaking or cold indifference. Sometimes, he felt he understood Iva better than anyone else in the world, and vice versa. Other times, it was almost like she was a total stranger.

No, that wasn't fair. They had too much in common for him to say that. Who else had seen the inside of the Forgotten Tower before earning themselves a throne they later abandoned? Who else had not only invaded Winter and lived to tell the tale, but made love atop a cold bed in a colder room with the coldest woman alive while there? They were not the only members of First Retreat who'd Devoured one of their forbearers, but that definitely made them members of rather small club. And he didn't think anyone else really understood what it was like to both love and hate a member of your own family, and then later hate yourself more than you ever had them for feeling a sense of relief upon their death.

Heck, the way they both struggled with the gender roles that had been forced on them, roles they ultimately fit far better than they were comfortable with yet not well enough to satisfy everyone else, was itself a stronger foundation than many a relationship had been built upon. Iva was one of the few women Frank had ever met who didn't make him feel as though his penis shrank a little bit, in her mind, every time he failed to exhibit sufficient "confidence" or dared show too much concern for her needs. Not only didn't she punish him for that sort of crap, but the fact that he didn't try to dominate her, and was perfectly content to make love for hours without penetrating her once, was a big part of why she was attracted to him. And that couldn't have been a bigger turn on. Similarly, he loved knowing that she felt comfortable with him. That he was one of the few men she'd ever met who didn't think her willingness to sleep with men who weren't complete jerks meant that deep down she really wasn't into women after all. Who saw how girly she could be in certain ways, with her fondness for pink cocktails and obsession with shoes, and thought the contradiction between that and her expressed dissatisfaction with conventional notions of masculinity and femininity was cute, rather than indicative of the latter's insincerity.

Somewhere, in another world, the two of them were having a very different conversation.

But his mother wasn't part of that world. Couldn't have been. Any reality she existed in was one where Iva could never claim dominion over his heart.

At least, he thought that was still true. He wanted it to be true. Or thought he did. Fuck. Why did his sister have to confuse the hell out of him like that? Why did she have to be so perfect for him, and yet so scary at the same time? How was it okay that even she thought there was an outside chance that Daphne was right about her?

"This is where you're supposed to offer to stay and help," Iva said. "I mean, I'd have to insist that you go and raise your children. Because that's what'll make it okay when I tell you that you've got to help me raise ours after you get back. And it's probably the right thing anyway. But still. You could've at least suggested it."

Frank laughed. "Doesn't quite sound like you need me for this conversation."

She rolled her eyes at him. "I'm serious."

"About what? Wanting me to propose something you're gonna shoot down?"

"About wanting you to need it to be shot down," she said. The look in her eyes was...not menacing. But it certainly told him to proceed with caution.

Then suddenly the tension evaporated, the way the humidity that sometimes made the air here as thick as wool could vanish after a heavy rain. "I know, it doesn't really work if I don't even give you a chance to speak before getting upset. But you have to remember that this is like my fifth time running through this part, so I can't help forgetting that it makes perfect sense for you to forget your lines," she said with a smile that was absolutely adorable. "I'm not making any sense. But you just have to deal with it."

Frank did the only thing he could do then. He kissed her.

Not the way he wanted to. Or even the way she wanted him to. Something wouldn't let him. His mother, maybe. But their lips met and he tasted vanilla and sugar, and the weirdness between them melted away for a few sweet moments.

Eventually, she pushed him away, gently.

Then, staring up into his eyes with a longing that made his heart ache, Iva said, "You really can't stay though." There was an invitation to object there, yes, but it wasn't quite like before. Less demanding, if no less needful.

He nodded. "I would, you know."

"Bullshit."

Was it? He honestly didn't even know. And he hated himself for that. Though, at the same time, he'd have been lying if he said the tension wasn't at least a little bit exhilarating. He wanted to be free of one of the ropes pulling him in two opposite directions. And yet he really didn't. Which was terrible, but true nonetheless.

"What are you going to do about the cravings?" he asked, remembering how often Lily had needed servicing when she was pregnant.

His mother and sister had been even worse before he'd left for Winter. At least it had seemed that way, with with the two of them in constant need of more energy. They probably weren't quite through that phase yet either, come to think of it. He really hadn't been gone that long, though it had felt like it.

He really couldn't take care of all three. And he'd impregnated his mother and sister first. Voluntarily, at that. It only seemed fair to put them first, even setting aside all the romantic complications. But vast as Iva's Libido was, if their child drained her dry, her needs would be considerable indeed.

"I'll...figure something out," she said.

She seemed rather fond of Caronwyn. Was that reciprocal? And would it be enough?

"Anyway," his half-sister continued, "we've created an oasis, and thrown it far enough out that time will move so fast that our child will only have just been born when you return."

"Really?"

She nodded.

That wasn't exactly hard to believe. At all, in fact. But somehow it still surprised him. Maybe just because the idea of getting to raise his mother's children as well as Iva's seemed too good to be true. Which, he supposed, meant he was ready to be a father again.

"I don't like it any more than she'll like sending you off with me when you get back, but I can live with it," Iva said. She didn't add, "And she will too. Or, if she doesn't, that'll really tell you something." But there was no need. The look on her face said it for her. "The real question is what happens after that. When all your children are fully grown."

Was he supposed to know now what the answer to that question was?

"Jerk," she said, pinching his nose.

Frank laughed. "I'm sorry. That's like forty years away. And, you know, let's not forget that things haven't been so great between you and me lately."

"Pffft," she said.

"Really?" he asked, still laughing. The response was too cute to draw more of an objection than that, but the events to which he was referring were not so easily dismissed.