There was a cardboard box of doughnuts on the counter: ah, Spudnuts. Probably Christy had brought them, but I took one out to eat anyway, as it was unlikely she’d poisoned them: she wouldn’t have known which one I’d eat.
I like most doughnuts, especially Spudnut doughnuts—but the glazed one I ended up with, covered with pink sprinkles, was not one of my favorites. But the point of eating was to give everyone time and reason to cool off.
“You kill Darryl, and I don’t think you’re going to walk out of here alive,” I said, conversationally, around a bite of glazed-with-sprinkles doughnut. I ignored Darryl’s indignant grunt when I agreed that Aiden might actually accomplish his death.
“I’ve faced creatures that would kill every living thing in this house without an effort, and I’m still alive,” he said grimly. “Try me.”
“Good doughnuts, Christy,” I said. Jesse put her finger to her lips when her mother would have said something. I licked my fingers—a waste of time until I finished the doughnut. “Look, Aiden, you are counting on our being enough that the Gray Lords back off, right? If the Gray Lords are afraid of us, don’t you think you should at least consider being afraid enough to back down from outright aggression into a position where negotiation can take place? If you aren’t worried about us, I might point out that the Dark Smith of Drontheim is upstairs.”
The tile under Aiden’s feet cracked with a loud pop, but he stood up from his defensive crouch. The tiles surrounding the cracked tile were discolored by the heat he was generating. It was ceramic tile. I wasn’t sure how much heat was required to crack ceramic tile, though I rather suspected that it was less heat than was needed to burn a house to the ground. We all stared at it a moment—even Aiden.
“My floor,” gasped Christy.
Yes. She had picked out the tiles in the kitchen, hadn’t she? I regarded Aiden with a little more favor than I’d felt before.
“Information first,” I said. “Does anyone want to tell me what happened?”
“I was watching the bacon,” Jesse said coolly. “And the next thing I know, the little creep was grabbing my butt.”
I trust I caught my instinctive clench of teeth before anyone saw it. No one touches my daughter without her permission—since Darryl had already made that clear, there was no need for me to come unhinged. Adam, whom I could sense listening from his office—he must have left his door open—apparently felt the same way, because Aiden was still breathing and Adam wasn’t in the kitchen. Yet. I started a countdown in my head.
“They were treating me like a child,” Aiden said.
“What does that have to do with anything?” I asked.
He looked at me as if I were an idiot. “Children are victims—I am neither child nor victim, despite what I look like. It was necessary that I do something to remind everyone that I might be in a child’s form, yet I own more years than anyone here.”
I blinked at him, so totally nonplussed that I was robbed of anger. That was an excuse I’d never heard before.
“So,” Jesse said in the same cool voice, evidently not as distractible as I was, “not regarding him as a child, I smacked his face with the spatula.”
That was my Jesse. She’d hit him hard, too, because, now that the flush of color he’d acquired while Darryl was strangling him had faded, I could see the rectangular red mark on his face.
“Mom had just come in with doughnuts, and we were talking, or I’d have seen him sneaking up on me.” She paused her story to answer the question on my face. “I don’t know why she’s here, Mercy, she hasn’t had a chance to say. She yelled at him—and that brought Darryl.”
Succinct, I thought, a little out of order, but with all the essential information.
“Grab my daughter’s butt again, and you draw back a stump,” growled Adam as he strode into the room two seconds after I expected him. He thanked Darryl with a nod but never took his eyes off the fae. “And I don’t care what you were trying to prove.”
“She’s your daughter?” The anger drained away from Aiden, leaving him looking like we’d just pulled the rug out from under him. “She was making food,” he said. “And I saw her carrying food and drink yesterday. I thought her but a servant.” He looked around, and indignation replaced his look of helpless confusion. “She called that woman ‘Mother,’ and I knew you were mated to this woman.” He gestured toward me. “How was I to know that you had two wives?”
Whiny, yes, I thought, wrong on many fronts, but also truthful. He was upset, not because he’d grabbed Jesse’s rump without permission but because it had been Adam’s daughter’s rump. Not a stellar individual, I thought, finishing off the doughnut, but look how he was raised. Feral didn’t begin to describe the likely result of being human and raised by . . . Underhill? The fairies? But he might still be salvageable.
I took the damp cloth from Christy’s hand and wiped my fingers with it. Salvageable by someone else. He was only going to be with us for another six hours or so.
Darryl flexed his hand, and bits of burnt flesh dropped to the floor, leaving his skin raw-looking but no longer charred. “Little man,” he growled, “you don’t touch unless you are invited. Not in this house—and if you are a gentleman, not ever. Servant, slave, or lady of the house.”
“I’ve broken my word,” Aiden said, gathering his dignity around himself. “I’ll leave.”
I almost let him go. But Zee had asked me—in the only way Zee would ask such a thing. I owed Zee.
“I knew I missed something,” I said. “I should have put in a clause about protecting yourself, right? Grandstanding is a very bad way to make bargains—it’s too easy to leave things out. But I can do that now. Let’s see.” I cleared my throat. “I declare that you can use the minimum force necessary to protect yourself until misunderstandings are cleared up—as long as you apologize right now and don’t do it again.”
Darryl gave me a look. Adam did, too. It was probably a very good thing that Aiden looked like a ten-year-old.
“Are you hurt, Darryl?” I asked.
He rubbed his hands together. “Not anymore,” he said.
“Darryl’s job is to make sure people are safe,” I said. “Did you disobey him?”
Aiden screwed up his face. “You are very strange,” he said. “I insulted your . . . stepdaughter, yes? Then I hurt the man who stood up for her honor.”
Jesse made a growling noise. “I stood up for myself, you little perv.”
Aiden looked at her.
She glared back.
“Okay, then,” I said. “Aiden, it is good manners to apologize when you offend someone. In your case, it means that you can continue to enjoy the protection of the pack for a few more hours.”
He turned to Adam, and said, sincerely, “Please accept my apologies for importuning your daughter.”
He turned to Jesse’s mother. “I am also sorry that I distressed you in any manner.” He bowed to Darryl. “I sincerely apologize for burning you. You weren’t hurting me, just scaring me. There was no cause.”
Jesse cleared her throat. He looked at her, and they eyed each other with mutual loathing. His lip curled. “I’m very sorry you don’t appreciate the honor I did you,” he said. “I won’t make that mistake again.”
He was lucky she didn’t hit him a second time, I thought.
“I’m very sorry,” Jesse said sincerely, “that I didn’t have a kitchen knife in my hand instead of a spatula. Next time, maybe I’ll be more careful.”
“Jesse,” I said, “your eggs are burning.”
I looked at Adam. “You take Aiden, and I’ll take Christy?” I mouthed.