Chapter 238: Of Mothers, Mischief, and the Legacy of Unrestrained Chaos
Chapter 238: Of Mothers, Mischief, and the Legacy of Unrestrained Chaos
Faelyra exhaled slowly, swirling the contents of her glass as she leaned back against the silk cushions.
"I don’t understand them," she muttered.
The words were quiet, almost lost beneath the soft hum of the room, but the weight behind them was unmistakable.
She took another sip.
"They should have taken after Caleth."
That earned her a glance from Seraphielle, though the latter said nothing.
Faelyra continued, her tone somewhere between disbelief and reluctant admiration.
"Caleth is calm. Quiet. Thoughtful." She gestured vaguely with her glass. "He does not destroy things simply by existing. He does not walk into a space and leave it... altered."
Her brows drew together slightly.
"He is measured. Slow to anger. Predictable."
There was a pause.
Then she added flatly, "My children are none of those things."
Aurelixa’s lips curved faintly, though she did not interrupt.
Faelyra shook her head, a soft scoff escaping her.
"It is always something," she went on. "If they are not flooding a corridor, they are summoning a rock or turning someone into one. If they are not summoning something, they are convincing someone else to do it for them."
She took another drink.
"And the worst part," she added, almost thoughtfully, "is that they are not even trying to cause this... havoc."
That drew a quiet chuckle from Ysera.
Faelyra glanced at her.
"I am serious," she said. "They wake up, breathe, and something happens. It is as though chaos itself has decided to live inside them."
She leaned back further into her seat, eyes half-lidded now.
"I am proud of them," she admitted after a moment. "Truly. The ability to cause havoc so effortlessly... that is not a small thing. Many demons would envy that."
Her lips twitched faintly.
"It is a trait worthy of admiration."
Then her expression flattened.
"But they have no restraint."
She lifted her glass again.
"None."
And that, more than anything else, seemed to drain something from her.
"The havoc is not something they choose," she murmured. "It is something they are."
She sighed.
Then drank again.
Seraphielle said nothing.
She looked across the table at Ysera.
Ysera looked back at her.
Then both of them looked at Aurelixa.
The three of them shared a brief, wordless exchange that communicated several things simultaneously—among them concern, recognition, and the collective understanding that Faelyra could, if left uninterrupted, drink from that glass until something unfortunate happened.
Fox demon alcohol was not ordinary alcohol.
Drinking it continuously without pause had a way of catching up with a person in a way they would not notice until it was far too late to notice it sensibly.
Aurelixa set her own glass down.
She leaned forward, her posture casual, her expression untouched as her hand reached—light, almost absentminded—toward the glass.
It was a careful attempt.
One that might have worked.
If Faelyra had not, in that exact moment, brought the glass to her lips and taken another drink.
Aurelixa’s hand paused mid-air.
Then, without missing a beat, she redirected the motion—lifting her fingers to her hair instead, brushing it back as though that had been her intention all along.
Not a single flicker of embarrassment crossed her face.
"Your children are not the only nuisances," she said smoothly.
Faelyra lowered her glass slightly, blinking once.
Aurelixa continued.
"Zayrion," she said, her tone thoughtful, "is... manageable."
There was a very slight pause before the word.
"Sometimes."
Ysera snorted, making Aurelixa roll her eyes.
"Zayrion’s proficiency for tricks is getting out of hand. It has gone past the point where one can call it a phase... even though it was not before." She reached for a piece of crystalline confection from the dessert plate. "It is so bad that our butler almost fell for it recently. Almost."
She let that sit for a moment.
"And are you forgetting," she continued, looking at Faelyra, "what happened ten years ago?"
Faelyra frowned slightly. "What happened ten years ago?"
"When Xaleron and I went on a trip."
Faelyra nodded in understanding as Ysera chuckled.
"You find it funny now," Aurelixa said to Ysera.
"I found it funny then too," Ysera managed, still laughing.
"No one found it funny then."
"I found it funny then," Ysera repeated. "I simply did not say so because you were standing right there."
Zayrion had posed as his mother during their trip. Aurelixa and her husband had no idea until they got back to the Kitsunegawa Territory.
And the absurd thing was Zayrion copied her perfectly. He walked like her, spoke like her. He held himself like her. And because she took him to the businesses occasionally—because she had been foolish enough to let him see how things were run—he was familiar enough with the operations that no one questioned him.
To add salt to injury, the trip had been a quiet one, so very few people in the territory knew. One person who knew was Zayrion, who had said his parents were fake and he was the real one.
When Aurelixa and Xaleron had returned, they were treated like outsiders. Demons were hostile to them because, according to them, their ruler never left and she was an imposter, and even Xaleron was fake too.
"This was when he started altering policies, right?" Faelyra asked, unable to stop smiling.
The news had spread through the demon realm after all; every demon knew of the incident.
"Yes," Aurelixa said with a sigh.
Ysera was now holding her stomach as she laughed freely.
"He tried to convert half the alcohol trade into confectionery production," she said, laughing.
"He wanted to rebrand entire businesses for children. He claimed alcohol was bitter—mind you, that was when I found out my son had tasted alcohol, and not just once but numerous times," Aurelixa said with a shake of her head.
"According to him, why sell something as bitter as that when you could sell sweets? He almost got away with it too if not that Xaleron and I had come back," Aurelixa said.
The table was filled with chuckles now.
Even Seraphielle was laughing.