Three days after the Blood Moon festival, Xenia finally felt sane enough to return to society.

Honestly, she’d rather stay in isolation longer, perhaps even Sleep, but she wasn’t going to abandon a child.

So she returned to Hestia, heading straight to the Singing Bird.

Iskra met her at the door, lines of strain on her face.

“What’s going on?” Xenia asked, walking up the stairs.

“The albino and his ward got an urgent message from an eagle. There’s no way he’s just a merchant—“

“I know he isn’t.”

“Xenia.” Xenia turned at the solemn tone of her friend’s voice.

“Yes?”

“You’re being too trusting of strangers and not trusting us, me, enough. You need to tell us these things.” Iskra sighed. “So, who are they?”

“Mary is just a child.” There was warning in Xenia’s voice.

“Alright.”

“Rian and Mary both hail from the Sidhe.”

Iskra pinched the bridge of her nose. “Goddess below, Xea! They were at war with the Akuma ten years ago.”

“Everyone was at war with everyone ten years ago.” That was why Hestia had a population boom a decade ago.

“Yeah, well, not everyone sent an assassin after the fucking head of the Akuma clan five years after they lost. Let me remind you, the baby Warlord’s father?”

Xenia frowned. “Really?”

“Really— how do you not know this?!”

“Forgive me for being out of the loop, I’ve been too busy living my best life in my very nice Forest.”

Iskra made some wordless sound of rage and wrung her hands, as if she wanted to strangle Xenia. “You are the most infuriating—“

“The assassin. It wouldn’t happen to be the Ghost, would it?”

“What other assassin would I be fucking talking about?”

Good point. It was not the way of Monsters to assassinate. You took your grievances to war to prove yourself, and the Bloodlines followed their ancestors customs loyally.

“Ah… perhaps this will be a problem.”

Iskra stared blankly at her for a few seconds before realization hit her.

“You’re joking.”

“No.”

“No, you actually must be fucking joking.”

“I am not.”

Iskra buried her face in her hands. “Oh my gods,” she moaned. Then her head snapped up. “Wait, how the hell do you even know that?”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

There wasn’t a way to respond I can smell the blood of everyone that man has killed on him without getting bombarded with questions so instead Xenia said the first thing that came to mind.

“Because my luck is so good that’s exactly what would wind up happening.”

Iskra barked out a mirthless laugh. “Okay, so you were fucking with me.” She turned on her heel. “Don’t say you were telling the truth about your luck. I’m choosing to bury my head in the sand. Fuck. Just fuck me, honestly.”

----------------------------------------

“I’m going to place my hand around your neck now, alright Hanabi? If you feel uncomfortable, just tap me and I’ll let go immediately.”

Hanabi nodded.

Xenia glanced at her mother, who was stone faced behind her daughter on the bed.

“Tell me your relation to Katsurou,” she asked as she sent her magic into Hanabi’s carotid artery, closing her eyes and visualizing the blood and oxygen flow.

“I married his father when he was fifteen and I was nineteen. Kaji-sama himself was around 34 at the time.”

“Try and say ‘ah’ for me, Hanabi?”

The girl opened her mouth. Only a sliver of air wheezed through.

“Can you whistle?”

She could. Quite loudly.

Xenia pulled away.

“Your husband is quite old compared to you. Was, I apologize.”

“He was.”

There was a beat of silence.

“Well?” Karina asked.

“Was it a love match?”

“What this have to do with anything?”

Xenia sighed and rubbed at her forehead. “I’m not sure if this is meant for young ears—“

Hanabi sighed and left the room.

Karina winced.

“She’s quite used to that, unfortunately.”

“I can see that.”

“So, explain.”

“The fact that it wasn’t rape is the only reason you three lived.” Xenia said, point blank. “You, Kaji, and Hanabi.”

Karina blinked slowly. “Elaborate.”

“This is a simplification, and one no official doctor will believe, but when there is a rape between Bloodlines, any child born from it is highly unlikely to survive because the Bloodlines fight for dominance. Occasionally, one will win, but it takes such a toll on the mother that the whole point is moot. As for the father, if he was the one who was the assaulter…”

“The Mother Goddess’s curse will take care of that.”

“Exactly. However, should the match be a love match, there is no need for the ‘fight.’ The Bloodlines will collaborate, even resonate off of each other to make a more powerful, hybrid Bloodline.”

“…Ours was a contract match,” Karina allowed after a moment of thought. “The Bloodline elders were pressuring him to find a new wife to make a new child, one that wasn’t Katsurou, I needed protection and didn’t hate him, and he… had a type.”

Xenia took the woman in. Pale skin, dark hair in large, perfect ringlets, big purple eyes, lush lips. “You look like Katsurou’s mother, don’t you?”

Karina fiddled with one of those ringlets. “I’m a dead ringer for her, apparently, aside from the color of my skin and eyes. He mostly cared about the hair, though.” She shrugged. “He mostly just wanted someone to hold him, to take care of. The only reason why we… did anything was because the elders were putting pressure on him for a new heir. I might’ve even grown to love him, if given more time.”

“Which is why Hanabi is fully healthy and mostly functioning. But it wasn’t a love match, not yet, which caused a deformity. Of sorts.”

“Of sorts?”

“Her vocal chords. They’re not deformed, they’re just not there. She was born without them.” Xenia shrugged as Karina gasped. “It’s a miracle, really, if they had been there and been deformed, they would have to be removed anyways because it would block air flow.”

“Is there anything you could do?”

“I can try to make and repair them from scratch, but most likely I’d need another set of vocal chords,” Xenia said bluntly. “You’d need to find another person who was half Akuma and half Arachne and let me study their vocal chords to either replicate or take.”

“Replicate? You could do that?”

Oops. She wasn’t supposed to say that. “I’m assuming you won’t find another person with Hanabi’s genetic makeup?”

“No,” Karina shook her head, forgetting the replication remark, “the reason why I needed protection… I was the only one left and I was being hunted.”

“…you and Hanabi will be safe in Hestia, should you need it—“

“Oh, don’t worry,” a sharp grin appeared on the woman’s face as she waved a hand. “Kaji brought him to me as a wedding gift. I had a poison made just for that man.”

----------------------------------------

A month later finds Xenia sitting in front of Rian Sidhe in a room at the Singing Bird.

“I’m going to touch your chest now.”

He nodded.

“Remember to breathe.”

He nodded again.

“You’re not breathing right now.” She told him dryly.

He let out a big exhale, then coughed. She placed one hand over his heart, the other on the right side of his back.

“Breathe when you can.”

When he managed to breathe, crackling vibrations ran down Xenia’s palms. She frowned.

“You have scarring in your lungs.”

“Can you fix it?”

“I can, but it’s going to take repeat visits to me. I can’t get rid of it all at once.”

Rian stood up.

“That’s fine. I can do that.”

“At least once a month,” she warned.

“Got it.”