Upon our return from our fight with the storm-daemon, we stopped for dry clothing and hurried to the inn to warm up in the scalding waters of the baths. Afterwards, we quickly returned to the castle, borrowing a few of Lin’s oversized umbrellas to ensure we stayed dry as we ran through the snowstorm. Avani promptly headed into the kitchen to fix us all something hot to eat and drink, while Dylas sat in one of the easy chairs and I lit the fire the butlers had laid earlier in the day. Soon the three of us were sitting before a roaring fire as we ate and drank, ravenous after the day’s efforts.
After sating the fiercest of her hunger pangs, Avani sat back and looked first at me as I sat next to her on the sofa, and then over at Dylas in his chair. “So tell me, what were the two of you doing out there in the wilds of Sercerezo Hill without your weapons?”
Dylas and I looked at each other sheepishly. “Ahh, well, My Lady, we….” I started.
“We… we were sparring. You know, just a little friendly combat practice. Nothing at all serious,” Dylas hastily interrupted.
“Sparring? On Sercerezo Hill? Without even practice weapons? In a thunderstorm??” she replied incredulously. “Why there? Why not the courtyard, or even just the plains near town? And why in the names of the Native Dragons would you spar in the middle of a raging storm?”
Dylas frowned, annoyed that she’d seen through his ruse so quickly. “Well, what about you? What the hell were you thinking, fishing in a storm like that?” he huffed in aggravation.
Avani looked at him reproachfully. “And you call yourself a fisherman? Everyone knows the fish bite better in the rain!”
“You were sand fishing,” he pointed out drily.
“Oh, and how much experience do you have sand fishing? Right, about as much as I do. I thought, if it worked with normal fish in the water, maybe it would work for sand fish, too. I figured it was worth a shot—I knew I could get back to town quickly if the weather got too bad. In fact, I was just packing up when I heard loud noises coming from the bridge, even over the noise of the storm. Imagine my surprise when I looked through the trees and found my husband and my best friend getting their asses handed to them by a gigantic monster! Seriously, you two? No weapons? Nothing? Come on, I know you’re smarter than that!” She folded her arms over her chest and glared at her former lover, who glared right back at her.
I sighed. “Okay, this is beginning to get childish. And none of us are being altogether honest, are we?” I reached over to Avani and turned her face towards mine, looking into her eyes. “I apologize, My Lady, for the things I said earlier. I swear I didn’t mean them, nor to hurt you. I was just taken by surprise, though I know that’s no excuse for my poor reaction. I don’t blame you at all for running off as you did, though the timing perhaps left something to be desired. Will you forgive me, my love?”
She snuggled up to me, giving me a kiss and smiling, her good humor once again restored. “Of course I do, Leo. I know you didn’t mean what you said. I just needed some time to cool off—I didn’t want to get into a fight with you, certainly not over something so… so trivial. I’d long since gotten over it by the time I decided I was done fishing. Though I do wish I’d been able to catch a rockfish!”
Dylas cleared his throat, and we looked over at him. His face was pink with embarrassment, and he looked away as he spoke. “I, uh… I’m sorry, too, Leon, for losing my temper. It’s just….”
“It’s okay, Dylas. I lost mine, too, you know.” I turned to look at Avani, and explained. “You see, after you took off, I went to talk to Dylas. When I found out about you never using birth control, I… well, I panicked. It occurred to me that maybe we former Guardians just can’t have children—that maybe being fused into our Guardian forms altered us in more ways than we had realized. And… and that was, well, upsetting, to put it mildly. So I wanted to see if he knew anything—if maybe there’d been something that came up in your time together that maybe you’d just forgotten about—but he didn’t have any more information than you did.
“Then he started asking where you were, and when I said we’d argued and you’d run off, he lost his temper—and then I lost mine. We both went in search of you, and we headed towards the sand pond since I remembered you mentioning to Barrett recently that you wanted to catch a rockfish. Except we didn’t go straight there, because we argued the whole way. By the time we were nearing the bridge to the sand pond, we were angry enough to start actually fighting—physically fighting, that is. We chose to settle our differences without weapons or magic—I don’t think either of us would ever get that mad at the other. So we left our things under a tree near the clearing where we started and had at it. Our fight carried over to the bridge, and that’s when we stumbled across that storm-daemon. By then, we were already tiring, and we’d left our weapons some ways back. I shudder to imagine what would have happened if you hadn’t somehow heard us through the noise of the storm.”
She looked at me, then at Dylas, an appalled look in her eyes. “You… you seriously mean that you two were fighting? Not sparring, but for real? And all because you and I had a stupid little spat?” She just shook her head slowly in disbelief, looking back and forth between the two of us, at a loss for words. She heaved a great sigh, then looked over at Dylas. “Okay. First of all, Dylas, it’s really sweet that you still worry about me like that. But when are you going to learn that I can handle myself? You don’t need to worry about me—you shouldn’t worry about me, not to that extent anyway. And you certainly don’t need to protect me from my own husband. You’re going to have to start backing off a little and let us work out things in our own time, in our own ways. I know you just want me to be happy, and I’m thankful to have such a wonderful, caring friend as you. But it’s not realistic to expect me to be completely happy all the time. I don’t think I’d even want to be, strange as that might sound. It would be like… like having cake for every meal, every day, for the rest of my life.”
Dylas grimaced, looking revolted at the mere idea, and she continued with a wry smile. “Cake is nice to have now and then, maybe even once a day. Or at least most of us would think so—I know you don’t. But very few people would really want to nothing but cake, and if they did have it all the time, they would soon sicken from such a diet. I need variety in my… I guess you could call it my emotional diet, same as with my regular diet. So please don’t try to push me into living my life the way you think I should live it. Let me make my own decisions and my own mistakes. You know I do the same for you, even though I want you to be happy just as much. And just like I’m here for you anytime you need me, I hope that you’ll be there for me, too, should I find I’ve gotten myself in over my head and need help. But I still need the freedom to make mistakes and to learn from them and grow. Okay?”
He looked away and nodded unhappily, then said, “Yeah. Okay. Sorry, Avani. It’s just that I… I can’t bear to see you hurt or unhappy. But I’ll… I’ll try to give you space to let you do things your way. I know it’s not my place to tell you how to live your life, anyway.” Then he looked back at her, his face schooled into a blank expression—all except for his eyes, which were profound with unspoken emotions. “And you know I’ll always be here for you, should you ever need me.”
He rose then, quickly, and saying goodnight, he left to return to his solitary room, grabbing one of the borrowed umbrellas for shelter against the still-heavy snowfall. He ran through the back garden towards Airship Way, his black clothing a startling contrast against the blanketing whiteness of the whirling snow as he bolted up the steps to the street above and disappeared from our sight.
Closing and locking the door against the icy winds, we returned to our seats on the sofa. Leaning her head against my shoulder as we watched the flickering flames, she said softly, “As for you, Sir Mr. Leo, I honestly am sorry if I upset you. But I was telling the truth—I really never once thought about birth control. I don’t know why. I mean, it seems like something I should have learned about at some point, so… but there’s nothing there. At least, nothing from before this morning. Neither Jones nor Nancy ever brought it up during any of my exams, which seems a little strange in retrospect—I guess they must have assumed I had it under control and that if I needed something, I’d ask. I don’t even know what one does… how you… what kinds of birth control there are.” She looked up at me helplessly, and if I’d ever truly doubted her veracity on that point, the stark bewilderment in her eyes would have quickly laid that to rest.
I put my arm around her and said, “Well, love, it doesn’t matter now, anyway, does it? And I’m hardly an authority on such things, especially in this era. You’d be better off asking Nancy or Jones if you really want to know about it. All that aside, though, I’m sorry for what I said. I never really doubted your honesty.”
She sighed and again placed her head on my shoulder. “You know… it really doesn’t matter to me that much. I mean, I’m very sorry it’s so upsetting to you, and sure, it’d be amazing to have a houseful of kids running around underfoot. But the important thing, to me anyway, is that we have each other. The rest is just the icing on the cake.”
I thought about what she said for a few minutes. I remembered the blind terror I’d felt upon finding her more dead than alive in the grimoire’s lair, the panic I’d felt watching her battle Typhoon while helpless to assist her, and of course everything else we’d been through together in the past year: Dylas’s infidelity, the terrible battle with Ethelberd, her heart-wrenching depression after Venti’s passage, my soul-searching as we unearthed Maria’s letter to me piece by piece, and of course our wedding and honeymoon. And I thought to myself… Dylas was right. I would take a lifetime with her—with or without children—any day.
And leaning down to whisper into her ear, I told her so.