If Coventry were to ever go to war (again) and Aron were somehow incapacitated, it would fall to me to command and direct the armies of Coventry. Fortunately we're in peace time so I don't believe I'll have to take over any of those duties any time soon.
Another one of my duties is being the Protector of the princesses, specifically Princess Artemis or as she's known on Earth, Alex Fielding. For the longest time it meant discreetly watching her as she grew up and protecting her from the Darkness. Nowadays, however, my duties mainly extend to overseeing Alex's magical education. It hasn't been easy, especially with Alex's college schedule.
And Ileana would tell you that she lets me think that I'm in charge at home.
Oh, you want more? All right, fine. It was about a year after Sarah had moved Alex and herself from Montana to Marble Bay. Alex had pretty much settled in at the public high school and had made a friend in Lucinda Delegadio. She was still writing stories but it had been a while since she had written anything about Coventry.
To be honest I had mixed feelings about that. I knew that she wrote the stories as a means of escaping her life in Crow Creek. But that had been back then. In Marble Bay her life had improved considerably over what it had been in Montana: Alex and her mother shared a nice apartment on the lower income side of town, she had friends and was doing quite well in school. There was nothing to escape from. But on the other hand I feared that she was losing her connection to Coventry and that when the time came she wouldn't be able to help her sister save it from the Darkness. And I almost wished for something to happen so that Alex would start writing about Coventry again.
Then, not three years later Sarah was diagnosed with lung cancer.
The country has been slowly but steadily rebuilding after the end of the war. Lord Aron and Lady Miranda have been spearheading everything, of course and for the most part they have the full support of Coventry. I say "for the most part" as there are those who insist on making things difficult.
Most of our problems seem to come from the Furies. The Furies are a group of young witches and warlocks, about the age equivalent of high school and college students on Earth. They enjoy the thrill of causing problems, just for the hell of it. My biggest fear is that they may be working with Vey and Tsuris, Aron's nephews by his youngest brother Fredo. After Fredo died Vey and Tsuris were raised by Thantos, which means his ideals are now theirs.
This was the year that I also became a father. Ileana told me about her pregnancy at the end of April. I'll admit, I was stunned and more than a little scared at first. I had so many questions, doubts and worries - especially worries.
But Nia is a month old, now, almost five weeks. I still have doubts and worries about fatherhood, especially now that she's here. But she's my daughter, and I love her. That's all that really matters, right?
Fireworks weren't a common sight in Coventry. It wasn't that the people there were incapable of creating them; anyone talented enough in magic could fire off their own at any time if they so chose. But fireworks were instead reserved for special occasions, usually Solstice celebrations and anything related to the royal family. There had been fireworks at Aron and Miranda's wedding, Karsh remembered. There were no fireworks on the night that the twins were born, though there had been one hell of a display the night that the duBaer family had been reunited.
So Karsh was more than a little touched when Aron decided to acknowledge and honor the birth of his goddaughter with a fireworks display.
Smiling, Karsh looked down at the lavender-swathed bundle that he cradled in his arms. Nia Alexandra Antayus, who had born earlier that evening as the full Snow Moon rose in the sky.
Ileana was sleeping, at last, leaving Karsh to take their newborn daughter on a quiet stroll through the halls of the castle's medical wing. Camryn and Alex had already been by to visit, as had the Lord and Lady of Coventry and probably about half of the castle staff. So when the chance to finally be alone with Nia for the first time presented itself, Karsh jumped at it.
They talked as they walked; or, rather, Karsh talked and walked as he carried her while Nia slept. He told her about their family, about the girls and that Earth wasn't half as bad as some citizens of Coventry made it out to be.
And Karsh felt his fears about fatherhood start to dissipate like a firework after it had burst across the sky.
How can I? I'm not a father yet.
Technically, I guess you could say I'm avoiding it instead of hiding from it. Ileana's due date is only a few weeks away. The nursery's been fixed up and decorated thanks to Cam and Alex. We've decided on a name for our daughter - Nia. For all intents and purposes we're ready to take on the job of being parents.
But aside from that...I'm not thinking about it. Or trying not to, at any rate. I'm not worrying about whether or not I'll be a good father. I'm not lying awake at night thinking up worst case scenarios for when Ileana goes into labor, having nightmares that neither she or the baby will make it through.
I'm fine. Really, I am.
And maybe if I keep telling myself that, I'll believe it sometime.
Such was my introduction to the woman who would become my partner, confidant and finally my wife.
I could lie and say that Ileana was unlike anyone I had ever met before. But at that time my parents had gotten it into their heads to marry me off as soon as possible. I was constantly meeting and courting eligible young ladies, women from families with legacies as long as ours whose only goal was catching a rich and powerful warlock for a husband. Women whose only concern was satisfying their own vanity.
Ileana seemed just like those women. Her concern seemed to be focused more on palace gossip and scuttlebutt and who wore what gown to which party rather than issues concerning the government and safety of Coventry. It was my belief at the time that the only reason she had gotten the position of one of Aron's advisers was because she was family.
But she surprised me. Ileana proved that she could be serious when it came to important matters like fighting against the Darkness. When the rest of us were quarreling over the best tactics to deal with it, Ileana was the one who reeled us in and made us think about those who had already become victims of the Darkness, those left homeless after it destroyed villages, orphaned after it took away parents. Astrum Domus Orphanage wouldn't even exist today if it hadn't been for Ileana pushing us.
Then came the birth of the twins, Aron's death and our flight from Coventry with the girls. Most of the time during our exile Ileana did nothing but drive me to distraction. But there were other times, just like at council meetings, where she was able to reel me back in and get me to change my focus when I needed it.
This is why I love her.
He never thought of himself as a great writer. Writing was just a hobby he had, a way of killing time. Sure he had impressed a couple of his instructors in school with end of term papers. And he had been able to get a few stories published in literary journals on Earth. But that was the extent.
Now Alex...there was a writer. Karsh remembered the first time he had read Alex's written account of the birth of her and her sister, how he had been drawn into the tale even though he already knew the outcome (after all, he'd been there). Sure, her Gift of Knowing allowed her to see the events of the past so that they could be recorded. But it wasn't the Gift that made the story so electrically charged, made it come to life so vividly.
It almost made Karsh wish that Alex wasn't a princess of Coventry. Because she was going to make a hell of an author someday.
Karsh looked up from the picture in his hands, the one that he had been studying intently for the past several minutes, to see Aron standing in front of his desk looking at him. The royal adviser chuckled. "A picture of my daughter," he answered.
Aron blinked in confusion. "But...the baby hasn't been born yet."
"I know. The girls convinced Ileana to have a sonogram done. See?" The picture Karsh handed to Aron was black and white, grainy. It didn't look anything like a baby, at least not until Karsh turned it ninety degrees.
"A...son-o-gram?" the Lord of Coventry repeated.
Karsh nodded. "It's a medical tool that mortals use, to determine how the baby is growing, how healthy it is and what the gender will be. And it also gives the parents a first picture of the child."
"And...how does it work?"
"Well, the doctor uses a machine called an 'ultrasound'. He places a probe on the mother's stomach that emits a sound, and transmits the echo to a machine that changes it into an image of the baby."
Karsh could almost feel Aron's skepticism as his friend examined the picture of the Antayus' future child. The people of Coventry had little use for Earth or "mortal" technology, and in the medical realm especially were still "stuck in the Dark Ages" as Alex so tactfully put it at one time. Originally Karsh had been content to leave his wife's pregnancy to the midwives and healers. But both Alex and Cam had been adamant that Ileana have the sonogram done, to satisfy their curiosity about the baby's gender if nothing else.
Then Karsh found Maia's ashes in his father's study. That was enough to make him change his mind.
Aron shook his head, baffled. "I don't think I'll ever understand," he chuckled.
"That's all right," Karsh assured him. "Just think of it as a way of knowing that your goddaughter is healthy."
2. How Father proposed to Mother.
3. How Father proposed to Mother, my mother's version. According to her not everything went as smoothly as Father always told me it did. But in the end she decided to marry him anyway.
4. After their wedding, my parents honeymooned on Earth. My parents. Honeymooned. On Earth. Still haven't quite wrapped my head around that one...
5. After Father found out that Mother was pregnant with me, he went out drinking all night in celebration with a few of his closest friends. Of course, that story doesn't compare to the one about his bender the night after I was born...
6. How Mother chewed out the headmaster at school after I was punished for something that either Thantos or Fredo had done.
7. How proud they were when I was appointed by Aron to be one of his advisers. Father bragged about it in our village for weeks, and Mother framed a copy of the announcement and hung it in the study.
8. After Ileana and I were reportedly killed by the Darkness, Thantos tried to get access to some of my private papers. He claimed that it was necessary for the war against the Darkness, so that he could advise Miranda properly. My parents refused and actually barred Thantos from our home.
9. My father's death. He died of a heart attack when the Darkness tried to take him.
10. My mother's death, two years after Father passed on. The doctor said it was natural causes but Miranda believes that Mother simply died of a broken heart.
Honestly? No. It's not. Sure, people like to believe that it's possible; there are still some people in Coventry who believe that the twins didn't have to kill Thantos, that he somehow could have been saved and turned back to the side of the Light. They believe that Minerva shouldn't have been banished for attempting to murder Miranda but counseled until she turned away from the Darkness. And for those people, I have two words.
Bull. Shit.
People like Thantos and Minerva don't change. They're not like the Furies, high school kids who do what they do for kicks and giggles. At some point in their lives they crossed the line between Light and Dark; it's reflected in their magic, for God's sake! They don't understand concepts like love and family and friendship anymore. It's impossible for them to cross that line again, and even if it were I sincerely doubt that they would want to.
A Light can be shined into the Darkness, but it can't change Dark into Light. So until that happens, my answer remains no.
2. That I hated being paraded in front of her guests at her parties.
3. The time that Aron, Thantos and I snuck to Earth on Halloween and what we did while we were there.
4. What it was like being trapped in the Darkness.
5. That I almost got into a fistfight with Issac Fielding.
6. That I was nearly run over by a car in Montana.
7. Why it took me twenty-one years to propose to Ileana.
8. That I thought it was actually a bit funny when Ileana turned everyone in our village into donkeys.
9. That after we thought Aron had been killed and before Ileana and I found the twins, I had been ready to give myself up to the Darkness.
10. That I actually like doing housework.
It happened a long time ago, after Aron and Miranda had gotten married but before the twins were born. The war against the Darkness was still in its earliest stages so there was a lot of disagreement about how to battle against it. There had never been a threat of that magnitude in Coventry before, at least not in its recorded history. Personally Aron and I had many differences of opinion about the war.
Those differences reared their ugly heads one afternoon, a couple days after the Darkness destroyed an entire farming village. Aron was advocating a frontal assault against the Darkness while I was trying to convince him of the foolishness of such a decision. After seeing just what sort of destruction the Darkness was capable of I had calculated the probabilities of Aron surviving such an attack as astronomical. But nothing I said could make Aron change his mind, not even reminding him that he had a wife and an unborn child who still needed him.
It was the wrong thing to say. Aron ordered me out of his office, and told me not to bother showing up for the council meeting the next day as he no longer needed my services as an adviser. And I left, not only Aron's study but my apartment in the castle as well; if I was no longer welcome in Aron's court then I obviously wasn't welcome in his home either. With no place else to go I moved back into my parents' home and debated what to do next. I didn't tell very many people what had happened. It was embarrassing to admit that I had been fired by my best friend.
So I was surprised when, five days later, the Lord of Coventry showed up on my doorstep. Aron was contrite, apologizing for losing his temper and saying he knew that I had had his best interests in mind, and wanting to know if I would consider coming back and acting as his adviser again. He joked a little, saying that he couldn't handle Ileana and Miranda by himself.
I knew it wasn't a direct admission of being in the wrong on his part, but I also knew that it was as close as I would ever get from Aron. So I accepted his apology and agreed to return to the castle and to my post. I moved back that very day.
That's not to say that Aron and I never disagreed again; we did, trust me, several times. But we were careful afterward not to let it get to the point where it got in the way of our friendship.
Karsh looked over at Ileana, unsure of how to respond. What did he think? A loaded question if there ever was one.
It had begun with a visit that Ileana had paid to the palace healer earlier in the day. She hadn't been feeling well for the last week or so. But Karsh hadn't been too concerned, believing that it was probably just a bug that she had gotten the last time she was on Earth. Some medicine, perhaps a couple days' quarantine in their apartment and she'd be fine.
Then Ileana returned and gave Karsh the news. She wasn't sick.
She was pregnant.
Pregnant. Ileana was going to be a mother. Which meant, logically, that Karsh was going to be a father.
Fatherhood. Was he ready for that? Would he be a good father? He'd had no doubts that he and Ileana would be parents someday. But in the back of his mind he'd always thought that "someday" was still a long time off, that he would have time to prepare.
And what about the child? Would it be a boy or a girl? Would he have a son to carry on the Antayus line and name, perhaps serve the duBaer clan as he himself did? Or would it be a daughter, a little Daddy's Girl whom he would have to protect from potential suitors as she grew older? What if Ileana had twins as Miranda had? What if she didn't survive; would he be able to handle raising a child on his own?
"Karsh?"
Ileana's voice brought Karsh back to the present. He noticed that she was looking at him, her expression both hopeful and fearful. "Are you all right?" she asked. "What do you think?"
He blinked, and smiled. "I think it's wonderful news, Ileana. And I think you'd better tell Miranda and the girls before they have to hear about it through palace scuttlebutt."
Ileana's eyes watered. "Oh, Karsh..."
Karsh reached out and hugged her. "I love you, Ileana," he murmured in her ear.
2. A photo of Ileana, if bringing my wife along isn't an option.
3. My father's old journal.
4. A picture of the twins with their parents, both biological and adopted, that Camryn sent out in her Christmas cards last year.
5. A wallet that's tucked away in one of my dresser drawers. It has cash, a couple credit cards an a false ID card, enough so that I'll be able to get by if I have to flee to Earth again.
6. An old locket that belonged to my mother.
7. A couple stones from my collection.
8. A lock of my daughter's hair.
9. The key to the secret passage in my old home where I used to play as a kid.
10. A photograph of Sarah Fielding.
I was about...seven or eight years old at the time. My parents were thrilled, Mother especially because she was hoping for a daughter. Father, I remember, claimed that he would be happy with either a boy or a girl but I think privately he may have been hoping for a daughter as well, perhaps with dreams of a marriage to one of the duBaer princes.
And me? I was confused. All I knew was that soon my whole world was going to be turned upside-down, and I was going to have to share it - and my parents - with this tiny stranger. I received plenty of sage advice on how to be a big brother from Aron, who in my opinion was the Voice of Experience in the matter of all things sibling-related. After all, he was already a big brother twice over. So, I went along for the ride. I waited, and I watched as Mother and Father prepared our home for a baby once again. I participated when they decided on names, and I remember feeling proud when Mother decided to use my choice, "Maia", if the baby turned out to be a girl.
But sometime during Mother's seventh month, something went wrong. Father got Mother to the healer as quickly as she could but it was too late. The baby had died while still in the womb, and had to be delivered dead.
It was a girl. I would have had a sister.
We had a brief, private funeral service for her, and she was cremated afterwards. For years I thought that Mother and Father had scattered my sister's ashes somewhere in the countryside, but when cleaning out my father's study recently I came across a small, enameled box. Inside of it were Maia's ashes. I suppose...that he wanted her near him. So I went out, and I scattered her ashes on both Mother and Father's graves.
Like an older brother should.
2. The parties my mother used to throw, and how she used to parade me in front of the guests dressed in the most uncomfortable and embarrassing outfits and coo over how much like a little gentleman I was.
3. Meeting the duBaer brothers during one of those parties and winding up in a bit of trouble by the end of the night; most of the memory is fuzzy, but I'm fairly certain there was mud and the dessert for that night involved.
4. Seeing Aron a couple of years later when I started school. Thus began one my longest and most treasured friendships.
5. The first time I was invited to hang out with Aron and his brothers at LunaSoleil palace.
6. Briefly meeting one of Aron's cousins during a birthday party; I believe her name was Ileana...
7. The Halloween night that Aron, Thantos and I snuck to Earth and decided to tour a haunted house.
8. Attending my first royal ball and dancing with Eupheme Hazlitt.
9. The death of my grandfather, Aristotle Antayus.
10. My mother's miscarriage.
Ileana adopted Boris about five years ago. According to her, she had been hanging out at an animal shelter where Camryn was volunteering and to avoid detection had turned around and pretended to look at the cats. Unfortunately Ileana's always been a cat person, so what started as feigned interest turned out to be real. To make a long story short, she fell in love with this orange butterball of a cat that the shelter people had dubbed "Boris". The next thing I know, I come home to our apartment after keeping an eye on Alex all day and see that Ileana had brought home a new roommate.
I swear that that cat hates me. Ileana can pet him all day long, but the minute I reach out a hand to even try to touch him, Boris bares his fangs and I get hissed at. I can't begin to count the number of times I've almost tripped over him, which I swear he does on purpose. And let's not forget the times I've woken up in the middle of the night to find Boris either wedged between Ileana and myself in our bed, or laying on my chest and staring at me.
Maybe I should look into getting a dog...
2. Everything about the war against Thantos/The Darkness.
3. How to successfully blend in on Earth without looking like an idiot.
4. How to use magic.
5. That people from the Earth realm are just as good as those from Coventry, even though they don't have magic.
6. About Sarah Fielding, one of the strongest mortals I've ever known.
7. That everyone is deserving of the gifts they have, and that those gifts should never be taken away because someone else says you can't be "trusted".
8. (to his sons) How to properly treat a woman.
9. (to his daughters) How to protect themselves from a young man who doesn't treat them properly.
10. What family really means, not just as it pertains to bloodlines.
Okay, in hindsight maybe it wasn't the best idea. After all, he was just one warlock against the Darkness, a warlock whose powers were very limited due to the sun being down. But Camryn needed every chance she could get in order to make it to safety in Coventry.
But when Ileana gave him that kiss and encouraged him to "be strong", Karsh knew he was in trouble.
The Darkness crashed through the front door just as the girls were rounding the corner at the top of the stairs, heading for Cam's bedroom. Even though it was a futile effort at best, that didn't stop Karsh from attempting to lob a ball of magic in its direction. When that didn't work, as he knew it wouldn't, Karsh turned and tried to run up the stairs. Maybe if he was lucky, he'd make it up to where he'd opened the portal.
He'd just made it to the landing when the Darkness reached out and grabbed him around the waist.
It was the strangest feeling, really; like all of a sudden his legs and lower torso didn't exist anymore. Frantically he tried to grab at the railings, trying to find something to hold onto to pull himself out. But it was useless. As the Darkness dragged him, screaming, down the stairs he realized that it was over for him.
It's up to you, Ileana, he thought as the Darkness' cold brimstone closed over him. Coventry's last chance rests in your hands.
2. Come up with an idea for Ileana's Valentine's gift.
3. Start coming up with ideas for Ileana's birthday present.
4. Get an update on the search for Minerva for Aron and Miranda.
5. Organize my journals.
6. Go through Mom and Dad's belongings - I've put that off way too long.
7. Water and trim my bonsai tree.
8. Find that sock I lost last Thursday.
9. Explain the concept of the "Super Bowl" to Aron before David's party on Sunday.
10. Finish that budget report.
Profile
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
coventrykarsh- Karsh Antayus
- Website
Syndicate
