Chapter 258: A Children-Free Castle, A Suspicious Wife, and the Miracle of Receiving No Bad News
Chapter 258: A Children-Free Castle, A Suspicious Wife, and the Miracle of Receiving No Bad News
The moment they arrived back in the Thalassar Domain, Caleth shook his head.
It was a slow, deliberate shake—the kind that meant he had been thinking about something the entire journey and had arrived at a conclusion he wasn’t pleased with.
"We need to go back," he said.
Faelyra turned to look at him.
The castle settled quietly around them, the familiar soft luminescence of the domain drifting through the open archways, the currents moving in their slow, patient loops along the carved channels in the walls. Everything was exactly as they had left it. Calm. Orderly. The particular peace of a space that had been, for a few hours at least, entirely free of small water demons with questionable decision-making.
"We need to go back," Caleth repeated.
Faelyra tilted her head.
"Why?"
He looked at her.
"Because the twins are in the royal palace," he said. "Unsupervised. In the royal palace. With the Queen."
"The Queen insisted they stay," Faelyra said.
"Yes, and the Queen has not met children like ours."
Faelyra considered this.
"She seems to like children," she said.
"She may like children," Caleth agreed, with the measured patience of a demon who had been making this particular distinction for years, "but liking children and liking our children are two very different things. One of them turned to stone today, Faelyra."
"Brixton turned to stone," she said. "Not one of ours."
He stared at her.
She looked back at him with an expression that was entirely too composed for someone whose children had just drugged them with a sleeping potion, impersonated them, traveled across the realm, infiltrated the royal palace, and triggered a crisis that had affected every lower demon in existence.
"That is not the point," he said.
"What is the point?"
"The point," he said carefully, "is that Retheris and Thalira are currently in the Queen’s bed, in the Queen’s chambers, in the royal palace, and we have absolutely no idea what they are going to do when they wake up."
Faelyra nodded slowly.
"That is true," she said.
Caleth exhaled.
"Then you agree we should go back."
"No," she said.
He blinked.
"I agree," she clarified, "that we have no idea what they’ll do when they wake up. I don’t agree that we should go back." She tilted her head slightly. "Think about it."
Caleth waited.
"The Queen likes children," she said. "We’ve established that. She was the one who insisted they stay. She didn’t ask us—she told us. Firmly. Twice." She held up two fingers. "When you begged her, she still said no."
"I didn’t beg," he said immediately.
Faelyra gave him a look.
He said nothing.
"She insisted," Faelyra continued. "Which means if something happens—if the twins do something, if anything goes wrong—is it really our fault?"
Caleth looked at her.
"The Queen was the one who insisted," she said again, pleasantly. "We asked to take them home. She refused. Therefore, if anything results from the children being in the palace—"
"It’s the circumstance," he said slowly.
"Exactly." She smiled. "The situation arising from the circumstance."
Caleth was quiet for a moment.
He looked at his wife.
At the particular expression she was wearing—composed, bright, entirely too satisfied with her own reasoning—and he felt, as he had felt many times over the course of their marriage, that the twins really took after her.
Not just the mischief.
The logic.
The ability to take a situation and rotate it until it faced a more favorable direction.
That was entirely Faelyra.
He loved her anyway.
He always had.
He exhaled, long and slow, and felt the last of the urgency drain out of his shoulders.
"It wouldn’t be our fault," he said.
"It really wouldn’t," she agreed.
"If something happens."
"If something happens," she confirmed.
He looked at her for a moment longer.
"Are you not worried at all?" he asked.
Her smile softened.
"I’m extremely worried," she said simply. "I have been worried since the moment the Queen told us they were there. I will probably continue to be worried until they’re back in this castle and I can see them with my own eyes."
She paused.
"But what can we do? The Queen insisted. Going back against her wishes would be its own problem."
That was also true.
"So," Faelyra continued, stepping closer and tilting her head, "rather than spending the rest of the afternoon standing in this corridor panicking about something we cannot control—" she reached out and took his hand, "—shouldn’t we appreciate the fact that for the first time in what feels like decades, we have a children-free castle?"
Caleth looked at her.
"...Decades?" he said.
"It feels like decades," she said.
He couldn’t argue with that.
The castle was quiet.
Genuinely, completely quiet in a way it almost never was anymore. No sounds from the corridor that shouldn’t be there. No sudden pulses of water where there shouldn’t be. No distant crashes that required investigation. No butler appearing at the doorway with that particular expression of a demon who was too dignified to panic but was very clearly panicking.
Just the soft hum of the domain. The slow drift of the currents. The faint luminescence shifting along the walls.
Caleth looked at Faelyra.
She was already smiling at him.
He pulled her closer.
She came willingly, which she always did, and when he kissed her, she kissed him back immediately, warmly.
They spent the afternoon together, quietly and peacefully.
It was, Caleth had to admit, rather nice.
---
When the twins returned, both of them tensed.
It happened automatically—the moment the familiar pulse of the twins’ water energy entered the domain’s range, something in Caleth and Faelyra simply activated. Shoulders straightening. Expressions shifting into a careful neutrality that was really just bracing in disguise.
They stood in the main hall and waited.
Caleth was already running calculations in his head: probability of damage, severity of incident, whether the Queen would ever allow them in the palace again, whether they would need to replace something, whether the Queen would send a formal complaint or simply a very pointed silence.
Faelyra was standing very still beside him.
But when the kids appeared, they were beaming.
Both of them. Completely, unreservedly, without a trace of guilt or destruction or the particular sheepish energy that usually accompanied them when something had gone wrong.
They were just—happy.
Thalira launched into an account before she had even fully taken a breath, her eyes bright.
"The Queen is the best demon ever," she announced.
Retheris nodded beside her. "Even if she’s not really a demon."
"Even if she’s not really a demon," Thalira agreed immediately, like this was a minor technical detail that didn’t affect the core argument.
Caleth stared at them.
He was waiting for the other part. The part that came after. The part where the smile cracked slightly and they mentioned something that had broken or flooded or briefly caught fire.
It didn’t come.
They just kept talking.
About the Queen. About how she had held them. About the way she had knelt on the wet floor without moving back. About how she had asked their names quietly and held their hands. About Ignivar appearing through fire and how impressive that was, even when you were scared. About the Queen’s room and how large her bed was and how it had smelled faintly of something sweet they couldn’t name. About how she played with all of them after they woke up and fed them snacks.
No reports of destruction.
No diplomatic incidents.
No bills.
Caleth and Faelyra looked at each other.
The same look they had exchanged in the office—the one that held entire conversations—but this time it held something different.
Surprise.
Genuine, unguarded, mildly bewildered surprise.
Then the twins came to visit the palace again.
And then again.
It became a pattern so gradually that by the time Caleth and Faelyra noticed it had become normal, it already was.