Hi Darlins!
Just an FYI, Paradise is out today! Book Two in my "space dads getting their shit together so they can be a family while the rest of the universe is prepping for war" series is here! Yeah, this is the wedding book, yay!
https://www.amazon.com/Paradise-Liminal-Space-Book-Two-ebook/dp/B0DFVH3Y2F
Notes: Let's introspect a bit more, shall we? Back to action soon!
Title: Lord of Unkindness Ch. 22
***
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ciro dreams about magic.
Well, not exactly. He dreams about flying, but flying to him has always represented his magic. When he manifested his first familiar as a child, only seven at the time, his mother had taken one look at the pair of birds on his shoulders as he’d walked proudly into the dining room that morning and come over to him, kneeling down and hugging him around the waist so that she didn’t disrupt his birds.
“Look at you, Le Le,” she’d said, pressing her lips close to his ear as she whispered. “Look at your beautiful magic. You can go anywhere with magic like this, Ciro. Absolutely anywhere.”
“Like your fish, mama?” He’d always loved her koi, such powerful swimmers for all that it was hard for them to get around inside the Tower.
“Yes, Le Le, like my—”
“Mei, for god’s sake, stop coddling him,” his father had snapped, and heavy hands had come down on both their shoulders to pull them apart, scattering Ciro’s birds into the air.
The dream scatters with them, and a moment later he’s looking out of the eyes of his familiar as they fly over a landscape delineated in shades of grey, roads and bridges giving way to trees, then rocky desert. In the center of this barren landscape is a single great tree, its branches bare of leaves but moving with the rustle and preen of a great unkindness of ravens.
Even as he lands among them, Ciro is awed by the sheer breadth of power these birds represent. He flits among them, stopping to touch every now and then, comforted and calmed even though he knows now, without a doubt, that this is the most wishful dream he’s ever had. No one since the Pied Piper of Hamelin has had so many familiars, and the way bloodlines are diminishing it’s not likely that anyone else ever will. He certainly won’t be contributing to that mess.
Nephele had been congratulated by his father for manifesting the beady-eyed, swarming little bastards she called her “squad”—big, fat rats that harkened back to the originator of their family name. His father liked it, both for its nod to tradition and because the rats weren’t as intimidating as his dogs. It had taken Ciro a long time to understand just how much of his father’s worth was tied up in his manifestations, the way they looked and behaved, how menacing they could be. Dogs were fierce, predatory; dogs were something he could take out in the street without getting stares. But birds?
“Strange. Somewhat cowardly. But useful,” he’d concluded after testing young Ciro’s abilities. Ciro still remembered how it felt to have his father grip one of his familiars in his hand while pulling its feathers out with the other, watching how they turned to smoke and returned to Ciro before touching the floor. It had hurt, even though the magic had come back to him. Hurting his familiars was as good as hurting him.
Now, though, managing that pain is second nature. Normal witches, with their single familiar, they have barriers between them to prevent spillover, but people like the Hamblys leave those connections wide open to help them manage their magical creatures, to guide them and guard them. And, occasionally, lose them.
No wonder Annette screamed so loud when hers were killed.
Unable to confront his own memories any longer, Ciro takes off from the tree and flies up into the sky. The rest of the flock goes with him, spiraling up into the air on a thermal like a group of vultures instead of what they are. There are so many of them that, when Ciro looks down at the ground, it’s nearly blotted out with black bodies, all of them swirling upward, higher and higher, delighting in flying with him. His own magic surrounds him, strengthens him, and Ciro caws with joy as he flies straight toward the sun, heat shimmering on his feathers and lifting him ever higher. It’s pure bliss, and when he finally wakes up, he’s got a smile on his face and grit in the corners of his eyes.
And his stomach is rumbling like a rockslide.
7:45 in the morning. Holy shit, he’d slept most of the day and night away since Angelo left. No wonder he’s so hungry. He reaches blearily for his phone and checks to see if he’s missed any messages. There’s only one, sent last night at 9.
See you tomorrow, babe. Nice and vague, but there was a limit to how specific Angelo could be under the circumstances. He must have been successful, must have found Annette and got her to agree to come back.
Shit. Ciro might as well eat before he wasn’t capable of keeping anything down anymore.
He got to his feet and his raven immediately flew to his shoulder. The bird felt weighty, solid in a way he hadn’t felt for some time. It was big, too—almost big enough to make two ravens. “That must mean we’re feeling better, huh?” Ciro says idly to his magic as he heads for the kitchen. Angelo stocked the fridge with all sorts of things, colorful and flavorful and healthy. It’s funny how decadent it feels to make a thick slice of toast, cover it with mashed avocado, and throw an egg on top. A few scallions and sliced tomatoes later, it and the coffee are ready.
Ciro eats slowly, savoring each bite he takes as he heads out to the little garden space at the back of the house. He opens the door and steps out into the cool morning air, breathes in the fresh, clean scent of plants and water—not so much fragrance with the blossoms shy in the darkness, but it’s still wonderfully relaxing. His raven flies over to the wall that separates their little slice of safety from the rest of the world, and Ciro thinks nothing of it. It’s fine, everything is fine, and then—
The raven flies off.
“Wha—” Ciro chokes on his last bite of toast and ends up coughing most of it into a hydrangea bush. He washes the crumbs down with coffee even as he reaches out for his magic.
Get back here!
There’s no response. He can—he can still feel it, it’s not like his magic is gone, perse. It feels like it does when it flies across a room without him, or when it’s working in another part of the city, but this is different. He doesn’t have any of the rest of his birds with him right now, and familiars are independent enough to be tricky on the best of days.
Ciro’s magic has just abandoned him, flown off into the morning sky, and he has no idea why. He does know it’s not safe out there, though. He tries again to command it back to his side, but he can’t because he has no magic to make the idiot bird listen to him. Shit, shit, shit… He runs back inside, dumps his mug into the sink, sprints to the front door, flings it open, and—
A familiar woman with curly red hair wearing a pale blue sundress is just pushing a pair of sunglasses up on top of her head. Ciro freezes, his breath solid in his lungs. Oh my god.
“Ciro.” Annette smiles tentatively. “Hi.”
Notes: I just had to visit with my girl. Couldn't keep away. Back to regular programming next week!
Title: Hadrian's Colony: Interlude: Lizzie
***
Interlude: Lizzie
Lizzie ran the odds. She observed the results, changed variables, re-ran the statistics, looked at what she was left with, and then…
If she could have cried, she would have. She was given to understand that many species found crying cathartic, and it seemed like she could use some catharsis now. As it was, she had a bunch of numbers that might not even mean anything, too many emotions for her to put a name to, and a deep sense of loneliness and loss that made her think crying was really the only way out.
It really didn’t surprise her when the lights began to flicker. She ought to pull out of her room’s electrical grid, but it was satisfying—if only slightly—to see something responding to her distress. It wasn’t like she had any other recourse. All she had was herself and this terrible knowledge, no Kee and where was Elanus and Catie wasn’t talking to her and she always talked when Lizzie reached out, Catie was never silent and it was awful, awful, awful knowing why she wasn’t now, and—
“Lizzie?”
She went still, every algorithm freezing for a moment as Ryu walked into the hangar. Shoot, she should have locked the door, or at least made sure it was closed so he couldn’t see her freaking out in here. But now he was stepping over to her, his eyes roving her hull like he was searching for some sort of damage, which was strange and very human behavior because obviously she was fine.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m fine.” Oof, that didn’t come out in the right register. Ryu raised an eyebrow at her and tilted his head in a way Lizzie knew meant “pull the other one,” whatever the other one was supposed to be.
“You aren’t. I got an alert for power disruptions in the house’s grid. Imagine my surprise when I found out that it wasn’t an unknown coder trying to hack their way in—it was you.”
Double shoot. Lizzie knew, technically, that Ryu was in charge of the house while Elanus and Kieron were away. Xilinn couldn’t be because she wasn’t a citizen, and Pol was too young, and Lizzie was just a well-built ship as far as most people were concerned. But functionally, she took care of herself and the house. It was easy. Ryu wasn’t even supposed to need to look at things like power consumption levels and blips…
Except Elanus had programmed access to the house’s coding into Ryu’s implant, and abnormalities set of a literal alarm in his brain.
Triple shoot. She’d forgotten that, too. She wasn’t supposed to forget things.
“Lizzie.” Ryu didn’t have Kieron’s soothing voice or calming presence, but there was something comfortingly take-charge about him. It occurred to her for the first time that Ryu…was an adult. He was the adult, and she could tell him things, share things with him, and ask him for advice rather than having to figure out everything on her own. He might even have something useful to say. Probably not, but…
“Talk to me, or I’m running the antivirus software.”
No, she couldn’t let him do that right now! That would put her to sleep for hours! Kieron needed a solution right now!
“I was contacted by Kieron.”
Ryu’s stern expression brightened a bit. “Oh, good! It’s been a while since they reached out, I was beginning to think something was wrong with them.”
“Something is wrong. Something is very wrong.” Tersely, Lizzie recounted her conversation with Kieron and the clues he’d given her to indicate that things had gone horribly awry on Hadrian’s Colony. Telling the whole story made Lizzie feel even worse. “I should be there with them,” she said at the end of it. “I should have asked Kee if I could go.”
“You did,” Ryu pointed out, one hand stroking his chin as he stared at Lizzie’s hull in thought. “He told you that he preferred for you to stay here and help manage the house and Elanus’s affairs, and you’ve done just that. You’ve done a very good job of it, too.”
“But if I’d gone with them, none of this would have happened!” Lizzie finally let some of her emotions reverberate through her voice. Ryu winced and covered both his ears. Maybe not that much reverberation. “I could have been on hand to help them! I could have saved Catie and saved Elanus and saved Kee!”
“You have absolutely no way of knowing that,” Ryu said sharply. “In fact, odds are good that you’d be wrapped up in the problems they’re having now if you’d gone along. You were looking into the weather patterns, right?”
“Yes.”
“Because they got trapped on the surface thanks to not knowing they were about to be hit with an entire season of storms.”
“Yes, but—”
“No buts. That lack of knowledge wasn’t your fault, and neither was the lack of decent preparation that got them stuck.”
Lizzie fizzled a bit. Was he insinuating something bad about her fathers? It wasn’t okay to talk badly about her fathers! “No one knew.”
“Exactly.” Ryu’s voice had gone soft. “No one, not even Kieron who covers every angle, not even Elanus who’s genuinely brilliant, knew that things were going to go this wrong. Catie certainly didn’t, but you don’t blame Catie for being there and not responding quickly enough to save both of them, do you?”
Of course she didn’t! “No!”
“Then there’s no reason for you to accept the blame for yourself either,” Ryu said, and…but…if she’d only…if—
“No. Stop it. It’s not your fault. You’re smart, but not even you can see the future.”
“All right.” Lizzie could accept that…just barely. “But what should I do now? Kieron was in trouble, and he told me that the people he’s with think I’m in orbit above the planet right now, but even if I went there, I wouldn’t be able to land on the surface for another—” She ran the numbers again on the climate reports she’d been able to glean from ancient cruiser data, Catie’s own recordings before she went dark, and the faint sensors she could detect from the surface. “Three standard months.” Anything could happen to her family in that amount of time. What was she going to do, what was she going to do, what was she going to—
“Okay. Lights, Lizzie, lights, let’s get them to…yeah, there we go.” Ryu patted her hull. “Don’t worry. Let’s ask Xilinn to bring Pol home a little early from school, and we’ll all talk about what comes next.” He smiled. “You don’t have to figure it out by yourself.”
Lizzie had never been so happy to be less than perfectly competent before in her life.
Notes: Time for a personal reckoning. Sorry, Ciro, I don't make the rules (well, I do, but...)
Title: Lord of Unkindness Ch. 21
***
Chapter Twenty-One
Angelo leaves the next morning after a night spent clinging to each other, and Ciro can tell that it takes everything Angelo has not to lecture him about being careful or staying inside or remembering to eat while he’s gone. Like Ciro hasn’t been successfully living on his own for months now…although, fine, “successfully” might be overselling it, but he hadn’t starved and there was a roof over his head. A dank, dirty, mildewed roof, but…
Come to think of it, Angelo was doing a better job leaving Ciro without oversight than Ciro himself would probably be able to reciprocate under the circumstances. He lets his lover know he appreciates him with a long kiss and a longer hug. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”
“Maybe tonight, if I can convince her to pack quickly.”
“Don’t push Annette when it comes to packing,” Ciro advises. “She likes everything to be just so.” Or at least, she had. They’d once spent an entire afternoon together in her room, unsupervised. Ciro had thought they might get into making out, but instead Annette had showed him her system for packing a suitcase while making sure no cats weaseled their way into it. She was meticulous that way, like her familiars were—every curl twirled just right, whiskers washed until they were pristine.
Angelo smiles. “I’ll be good, I promise.”
You always are. Ciro can’t quite bring himself to say it, but he gives Angelo another hug, then shoos him toward the door. He leaves with a long backward glance, and Ciro watches out the window in the front as he gets into his sedan, then vanishes down the dirt road. Ciro is alone, just himself, his magic, and the power in this place for company.
It’s as good a time as any to see if he can figure some of this stuff out on his own, so he doesn’t frustrate the hell out of his ex-fiancee when she gets here.
Ciro makes a cup of tea—a strong black tea, but it’s got to be more calming than coffee, right?—and sits down on the rag rug in front of the couch. The music is back, chiming and plinking and generally blending into the ambiance of the place so well that Ciro might not even notice it if he wasn’t consciously trying to hear it. It’s way more calming than the tea, and he sets the cup aside and focuses on his own magic. His familiar helpfully flies down to the floor and settles in front of him, ruffling its feathers a bit as it gets ready for a nice preen.
Magical theory has never been Ciro’s strong suit. It didn’t have to be; he was powerful enough to make the things he wanted to happen without having to get too deep into the science of it all. It was one of the few places where he could actually tell his father took pride in him; Victor didn’t care to be challenged by his son in any way, but he appreciated that Ciro could do many magical tasks almost as well as he’d been able to at the same age. His father hadn’t brought him into the business side of things at all. Ciro had been made for two reasons: Victor needed an heir, and he wanted a loyal soldier who was capable of getting things done.
And now he has neither. Ciro smirks silently as he imagines how frustrated his father must be having to give Nephele delicate tasks like long-term surveillance and hacking. She’s a swarmer, a stormer, a hurricane made flesh. She’s never been good at the detailed work…which is probably why it was Magnus who found Ciro in the end. And then found his end as well, with a bird through the brain. Ciro wonders, with a pang of unwelcome guilt, if his uncle survived.
Focus, damn it. Actually, this is as good a place to consider magical theory as any. Ciro knows his familiars are physical expressions of his magic, beings who are capable of acting on their own in ways that are suited to their physical forms, but also capable of being used for raw power. Dissolving one of his familiars gives him a well of that raw power to draw on and turn into a spell of intention. That’s where things get tricky—Ciro has to be able to visualize exactly what he wants the power to do in order for it to make anything happen. Otherwise it simply reforms into a familiar.
It took a long time for him to learn how to wield it without the comforting form of a familiar as a conduit, and he still prefers to use magic one feather at a time, so to speak. But he can use that raw magic, once it’s there.
Good. Fine. So what happens when he can’t draw it directly from a familiar? What happens when he needs to fins another way to access it? Ideally, he’d do some experimenting right now, but Ciro’s down to one familiar. Just one. He’s not going to risk calling any more of the flock here, he’s not—he just can’t do it. It would put everything at risk. But he also doesn’t want to risk the single familiar he does have. So that leaves him with…shit, doing a bunch of nothing because he’s a coward sounds about right.
Ciro’s about to tip over into vicious self-recrimination when a distraction comes in the form of a knock on the door. He jostles the teacup as he reflexively leans forward, hunkering down just in case someone is looking in through the front window. No one should be, of course, and even if they do he’s pretty sure they won’t see this oasis of calm, but—
“Boss! Hey, boss, are you in there?”
Holy shit, that’s Maria. What’s she doing here?
“Boss! C’mon, Angelo, I need to talk to you!”
Ciro’s on his feet and crossing the floor on autopilot. It’s only once his hand is an inch away from the doorknob that he stops and actually considers what he’s about to do.
Angelo told him not to open this door. He mentioned it several times, in fact. Emphatically. Not for anyone, because no one else had any business being here. He didn’t call out Maria by name, and if anyone made sense as a visitor it was her, but again…Angelo hadn’t said she was an exception to the rule. Also, Angelo has a phone, so why has she driven all the way out here?
“Dude, come on, open up!”
He probably forgot to charge the battery. It was a reasonable explanation, one that Ciro could check if he wanted to when Angelo came back. In the meantime, though…despite the desperation in the young woman’s voice, despite how he truly wanted to open the door to her and see if he could help her, Ciro backs away instead.
“Angelo! I need your help!”
He goes to the bedroom and quietly closes the door behind him as soon as his familiar has flown inside.
“Angelo, please!” Her cry for help is muted now, but not muted enough. Ciro gets into bed and pulls the covers over his head like a child, and his raven perches on the backboard and caws gently, almost a croon, in time with the music. The music becomes louder, chiming and drumming and gentle strings enough to drown out the last remnants of Maria’s cry for help, and Ciro does the last thing he expected to do while Angelo was gone.
He falls asleep.
