"I don’t want you touching my Raffy or Nicky without my permission,” Stavros demands of his older self, both of them tucked away into a private restaurant room. The décor is sleek, dark and pricy, the wine open and set in a glass ice bucket decorated with creeping roses in blush pink.

Christos rolls his eyes. “Let’s not start this. We’d have to fight to the death.”

Stavros leans forward, planting elbows on the table. “I have no problem with you because I’m absolutely certain we have the same goals, but those two? They’re having a rough time of it. You ambushing Raffy is not the best way to ease them into it.”

“There is no easy way,” Christos points out carelessly. “Besides, he could never resist our charms for long.”

“He said you offered to kill his mum.”

“Nothing we haven’t discussed before.”

Stavros stares. “Is this what talking to me is like?” He sits back and pours himself wine until the glass is nearly overflowing.

Christos slides his glass over to be filled. “So, you called me over just to complain I made Raffy breakfast in bed?”

Stavros finishes pouring the second glass and dumps the wine back in the bucket. “Nicky said you’re hunting down people who did something to Raffy, and did something to us. He wasn’t clear on it and I think you didn’t tell him on purpose.”

“Yep.”

“Do you need anything? Money? Information?”

Christos sips his wine and thinks. “Not right now. Start tucking away money though, you’re going to do something you won’t regret soon.”

Stavros blinks but otherwise doesn’t move a muscle. “I leave the Lambros?”

“Leave is a nice way to put it,” Christos admits.

“Huh,” is all Stavros says and they both understand what that means. Stavros takes a few big gulps of wine. “Alright, anything else you’re doing?”

“Mainly focused on the whole revenge thing for Raffy,” Christos admits. “The creature reform centres are run by a merchant called Vasundhara Bhale but it’s backed by the power of Niaa.”

“The high mage?” Stavros clarifies and frowns at the nod Christos gives him. “What’s the current plan?”

“We pulled down the centre that had Raffy a while ago. That was the easy part. Bhale is a normal mage, he’d go down easy, we just have to stage it properly and make sure someone else doesn’t step into his position and make our effort worthless. Niaa is…” Christos sighs. “High mages are so fucking annoying to deal with. It’s a slog through changing public opinion. If we can pin them both, restrict their movements, then they can die without people just smoothing it over and reopening the centres.”

“So the plan is to…what, try and turn the public against them to then influence the Confederacy about-“ Stavros laughs, incredulous. “-how bad using creatures is? As if anyone cares? You’re up shit creek.”

“Luca just made contact with a few people who were in the resistance against Xia once upon a time, we’re hoping they’re already high up enough that Luca can ask them for favours.” Christos shrugs. “But I think I’m going to have to go behind his back and contact Vinaya who can match Bhale as an economic giant. Niaa isn’t strictly involved in sales, so he’d be useless if Bhale is stopped.”

“Is she going to want to help you after you kidnapped Nicky?”

“Well his parents have foisted him off on Xia so I don’t think they really care what happens as long as Nicky has a fun time,” Christos sneers.

“Fair,” Stavros admits, not exactly happy to see that it hasn’t changed in the future. The Ayads are good people but have a careless form of parenting. When they’re done loving Nicholas for the moment, he can go wherever he wants as long as he comes back for more love later. “Alright. If you’re playing around with that political nonsense, I can’t do much without the Lambros finding out.”

“That’s fine, if I need something special, I’ll ask.” Christos sips his wine but it’s sat too long in the air. He vanishes the liquid and pours himself some more. “Gods, I miss being filthy rich.” He sits back and drinks, savouring it this time. “So, have you gotten over the fact that Luca is Nicky’s new favourite yet?”

“Don’t do that,” Stavros warns. He clears his throat. “I’m trying and I could very easily stop trying, don’t push me.”

Christos sighs. “Okay, story time. When Mariana was pregnant, Nicky kept saying; oh it’s our baby, our son is going to be so cute, I can’t wait for our baby to come out. Me? I was fucking devastated. That was it, you know? I couldn’t compete with that. I knew Nicky would always love me, maybe more than the baby, but I wasn’t his first priority.”

“This better have a happy ending,” Stavros mutters, not exactly pleased at having that thrown into his face. Luca is different, is fully grown, but Nicholas still looks at him like Luca pulls the sun up in the morning. Stavros can’t imagine how happy Nicholas would be if he had a baby of his own.

“And then,” Chrisos sighs heavily. “Then the baby arrives -gods he was ugly- and Nicky wouldn’t put him down for the first like month of Luca’s life. It was ridiculous. When Nicky finally calms down, he turns to me and puts the weird potato in my arms and I’m so uncomfortable and…” Christos trails off, holding up his arms now like he’s carrying something precious. “And I realise; oh, it’s our baby.” He looks up at Stavros. “You need to have that moment and things will just click.”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

Luca, as a person, is someone Stavros likes. Their personalities don’t quite match but Luca has a firmness to him, a steady step but a kind soul. It must also be because of Christos but Luca understands Stavros and they can skip the awkward first stage, where people don’t know if Stavros is making a joke or just outright insulting them.

Luca gets bonus points for looking enough like Nicholas that Stavros automatically gets happy seeing his face, like a Pavlovian response.

“He’s really up there?” Stavros asks warily. “With Nicky and Raffy?”

“Yeah,” Christos chuckles. “I don’t how that happened either. He had an advantage, being Nicky’s son, but Luca made it up there on his own. Just a really good person and I’m so fucking proud.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Stavros murmurs but all this talk about emotions is taxing. What happens to him in the future that he can talk like that without any hesitation?

“You want me to change the topic because your shrivelled little heart can’t take it?” Christos drawls. “All that emotional abuse doesn’t go away even after our parents die, you have to push through it.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Stavros says instead of reminding Christos that his Nicholas is dead.

It’s a surprisingly mature decision from him and probably has something to do with how much that sentence hurts even just said in Stavros’ mind.

Stavros scowls at the reminder. “What did Adam do? Nicky wasn’t clear about it."

"He still thinks Adam had a reason."

"Was there a reason?"

"Not one that's good enough," Christos scoffs with a sneer.

"And what really happened?"

Christos throws his hands up and they come back down with a bang on the table as clenched fists. "Adam had a girlfriend, told her everything. She kept flirting with me, made snide jokes about Rafael, would ask if pretty please Nicholas could pay for everything when we met up."

"It was a shitty girlfriend?" Stavros laughs without any humour. "Are you kidding me?"

"And Adam just went with it," Christos mutters, eyes stormy. "I snapped one day, told her to fuck off -was ready to do worse- and she dared to threaten Raffy with telling the magpol and getting him locked up because Adam had told her he was a werewolf." He drags a hand through his curls, shakes his head. "Look, we both know Adam was never a good person, not like Nicky and Raffy, he just wanted a good time. We - you and I, at least we have loyalty, Adam always did chase after whatever the brightest thing was."

"So she was, what, working for Xia?" Stavros asks, still half disbelieving.

"She was a stupid, shallow son of a bitch. No, she ran her mouth about a resistance outpost Adam told her about and we lost a lot of ground that day. I gave Adam an ultimatum; either I erased her memory or I killed her. Adam knew he couldn’t stop me so he went to Xia himself but…Nicky and I swapped teams at the last second so he could get home quicker to Luca." Christos laughs, dark and mean. "Adam died regretting that decision..." He looks away, a scowl on his face. "But Nicky was gone and I lost myself in the fight. Got dragged into that gods forsaken joke of a research lab and Raffy...oh, Raffy."

"Is she dead here?" Stavros demands, no longer amused.

"Same day I took out Adam," Christos admits. "I mean the plan -if you can call it a plan- was to just take Nicky and Raffy but then I got the perfect chance that night and couldn't stop myself."

Stavros crosses his arms with a frown. "Gods, that’s so fucking stupid. Alright. I'll talk to Raffy, but stay away from Nicky, he's already feeling guilty enough that he doesn't hate you as much as he should."

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Luca is off talking to Christos and Nicholas’ parents are out too. Jordan is speaking at an international conference for spellcrafting and Haochen will be there as another speaker so Vinaya wants to go have a talk about taking her children to political playgrounds disguised as high-end parties.

Nicholas putters around his room a bit before he finally finds it in a desk drawer.

The paper is a bit crinkled but the ink bleeds across it smoothly when Nicholas pours it on. The black splays over the square of potion-soaked papyrus that’s still being upgraded whenever they have the time. They haven't perfected the communication device yet but apparently they do because Luca has an upgraded mirror version. They can just use a phone but Nicholas has never gotten the hang of using one and Stavros' family won't let him use mundane tech.

The ink has a purple sheen as it retracts, filling in a ritual circle. The ink wavers and then shifts again, bleeding across into Stavros’ face in line art. He was already waiting even though Nicholas is ten minutes early from their agreed time.

“I’m coming across clear?” Nicholas picks up the paper where he had it laid on his table and goes to sit cross-legged on his bed.

“Yeah, bit ugly but I guess that’s just your face,” Stavros scoffs.

“I have other things to be doing,” Nicholas says threateningly but rolls his eyes. He pauses. “You didn’t come to Morocco,” he says softly.

“You weren’t even participating,” Stavros dismisses.

“Luca was though! He was a machine. He kept running off to talk to people between fights and I think they were like scouting him or something. I don’t know, the conversations looked serious.”

“Does he know them? Like from before?”

Nicholas blinks. “Oh. Actually, I think he did. They all got pretty high on the leaderboard. Christos once mentioned activists they were working with or something?”

“Oh, you mean the ones who did nothing?” Stavros mocks. “High up on the leaderboard but hid behind Luca? Pretty fucking useless, aren’t they?”

“Come over,” Nicholas demands, dropping the nice topics. He wanted to ease into it but if Stavros is already like this, he needs a break.

Stavros sneers. "Go bother Luca if you want to baby someone. I don't need to be protected when I can take care of myself, I'm not - not weak!"

"That's not what I meant!"

"Then what did you mean?" Stavros barks out.

Nicholas pauses and then flops backwards onto the mattress, biting his bottom lip and fluttering his eyelashes exaggeratedly, letting go of the papyrus with one hand so he can hook a finger through his top collar and drag it down to reveal more skin. "What are you wearing right now, Ross?"

There's a pause before Stavros catches onto the joke and he can't stop the smile that creeps up.

"The bed is so cold without you," Nicholas simpers, running a finger back and forth along the jut of his collarbone.

Stavros huffs out a laugh. He looks up, off the page, and his smile falls for a moment. He's thinking, and that's dangerous.

"Come over, we’ll make cookies," Nicholas coaxes, rolling onto his side and gripping the page with both hands, digging creases into it, worried. "I'll call up Raffy since he should be off work, let's get a party started."

Stavros laughs, soft. He looks back down again and his eyes are shaded in with dark, thick black lines. "Say please," he demands but Nicholas has already broken him.

"Pretty please?" Nicholas begs with a laugh.

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Stavros arrives thirty minutes later and they bake triple choc chip cookies with Luca. Rafael arrives just in time to eat it all.