Chapter 12
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Sleepy little mornings with my wife.
Kyran
Sleep is…such a cruel mistress, and I do fear that I’m taken now, which is probably why sleep has stopped bullying me lately.
Or, maybe, it’s because after Morana and I learned that we are perfectly compatible—right down to how many kids we want—she took me into her room again, told menotto look at the shrine to me, and let me pick a stuffed animal from her collection.
To protect me.
From the baddies.
My sleep tonight has smelled like her, and my dreams tonight…
Well, let’s just say she didn’t tell me to stop in them.
I’m fairly certain a nightmare was blooming in the fog beyond her face as she loved me into an unrecognizable bundle of delight, but even with that edge of anxiety and promise of monsters on the horizon, every time I took a breath, my lungs tasted of her.
Awake now, feeling quite near rested, I peer through darkness brought on by my black-out curtains at the pink dumpling bear in my arms. Closing my eyes, I press my face to its soft body and inhale.
Morana.
I decide right here and now that when it stops smelling like her I will tell her that it’s lost its magic and I need a new one.
Who would have thought that the things I expected to keep me up even worse would be the very ones that carry me into sleep?
Freeing a tiny protest against myself, I drag my body from my bed and my Morana stuffie, pat Ender’s head when the cat rolls over to blink at me, and get ready for breakfast. For once.
Thefor onceexplains why my family, upon seeing me, does double takes.
Clara especially stops short as she piles the fluffiest pancakes I’ve ever seen onto Lukas’s plate. “Kyran,” she says, smiling brightly. “Good morning.”
“Mmph,” I offer, because whoever inventedbeing awake at this houris actually dead to me.
Settling into my usual seat, I resist the urge to face plant into a plate that appears in front of me.
Ever sweet, Clara in her heart of hearts acts as though she’s going to put pancakes on my soon-to-be pillow. Until, of course, my older brother’s raging insecurity issues ignite. Before she can deliver a softer landing place, he tugs her into his lap and traps her there, murmuring, “I don’t think so. The squirt can get his own food.”
This squirt regrets the fleeting moment when he thought that very thing. If he hadn’t, he would be enjoying a special Clara sandwich in several hours, at a more appropriate time for humans to be walking around and talking.
Ever the peacekeeper and never up to mischief, Kaleb says, “Thank you, Lukas, for sharing your wife’s skills with us. We, by no means, take your benevolence for granted.”
Lukas, having just been played, settles in the security that he “allows” Clara to do things and chillaxes. Like an insipid moron.
On the other side of the table, Crisis piles her plate high with pancakes, manages to flip a blueberry into her forehead whenshe reaches for the fruit bowl, and begins mourning Crimson’s absence as Viktor wipes off the juice.
So. This is breakfast, huh? It’s just like dinner…but earlier, I guess.
I find myself zoning out, staring at Morana’s usual seat at the table beside me. Morana’s notably empty seat at the table beside me. I murmur, “Where is she?”
Maelin hears my lonely heart’s cry and says, “Mora doesn’t come to breakfast much anymore. She’s rearranged her hours so she doesn’t start until later.”
My already not-thrilled-about-being-awake mood sours further. “Well then, what’s the point of having breakfast?”
Lukas’s feathers re-ruffle. “What’s thepointof having a meal tenderly prepared by E-clair-a?”
