Page 94 of Joined By Magic

I swept Alice, our youngest, into my arms, giving the two-year-old a hug. The nanny poked her head out of the kitchen.

“Liv? Thank Zantus you’re home. They’re all crazy. Damien keeps taking his toothbrush out of his case and hiding it, and Serena says she’s not going because she’ll miss her dance show. She’s shut herself in her room.”

I smiled. Just a normal day. I disentangled Alice from my neck and headed for the stairs.

Twenty minutes later, the front door opened, admitting Leo. Late, as usual. “Sorry. I got stuck talking with that bore from the culture department. You know, the one with the weird hair? He cornered me about some art festival he wants to do. I couldn’t shake him.”

I opened my mouth to reply, but Serena ran past me before I could and planted herself in front of Leo. “Dad! It’s not fair. It’s my show this week, and I’ve worked so hard. I don’t want to miss it.”

Six years old and she had Leo wrapped around her little finger. He crouched down and spoke in a serious voice. “You’re right. It isn’t fair. Tell you what. I’ll speak to your teacher, and we’ll organize a second performance, here in the palace. Would you like that?”

She squealed and dived into his arms. He cuddled her and kissed her head as I raised my eyebrows at him. Serena attended a small dance school filled with average non-mages, at my insistence. A palace performance would panic her teacher so completely she might never recover. Leo smirked and gave Serena another kiss. He took every opportunity to spoil the kids.

I left him to it and collected the cases. A week. The longest we’d spent in Atar together as a family. I’d hated visiting at first and had taken any excuse to get out of it, but the bad memories of the place were fading, replaced by more pleasant ones.

Even though he’d given up the crown, Leo took his role as a prince of Atar seriously, attending all the important official functions. I’d begun to enjoy them too. The lavish, overdone ceremonies provided a fun contrast to my day-to-day life. And I’d grown to love Talia. We spoke regularly and saw each other as often as possible. She’d visited Dexia for a week, without Adante, and had seemed fascinated by everything, especially the forest. She’d traveled to more places than I could remember and had become an Ataran ambassador in her own right, as well as queen. Her stories kept me entertained for hours.

Hex arrived just as we were about to leave. She was cat-sitting. Roland, now seventeen years old, wouldn’t put up with anyone else. The kids swarmed her while Leo looked impatiently at his pocket watch. They still weren’t friends, but they respected each other, which would have to do. She’d gone into business with Peter and Atalie importing magical tech, and for months they’d cornered the brand-new market. They’d made enough to retire for life within their first year.

I hugged her goodbye, and we left. The trip to Atar was disorientingly fast. Between teleportation and the portal, we stood in the desert heat less than an hour later, with two out of three children wailing in hysterics. The welcome delegation waited with perfect, expressionless patience as we calmed the kids. If they found the sight of their prince rocking a screaming toddler unusual, they gave no sign.

Our rooms in the palace were pristine, as usual. I always felt vaguely guilty about the perfection we arrived at versus the destruction we left in our wake. Our Ataran nanny tempted the kids into the playroom with promises of vids and chocolate, and Leo and I had a moment to ourselves.

I leaned against him, my face pressed against his chest as his arms came around my back.

“This is fun already,” he sighed.

“Don’t complain. You wanted three.” A common joke. I’d been happy to stop at two but had been persuaded, in Leo’s very special way, that one more wouldn’t hurt.

“Will you ever let me forget that?”

“Nope.”

I lifted my face to his, and he bent his head for a kiss as his fingers trailed down my spine. My body responded to him as it always did, with instant heat and desire. How many couples married seven years could say that? If my friends were a good representation of the population, not a lot.

He released me with a sharp squeeze of my ass. “I’d better get into my royal gear.”

“Are you looking forward to seeing Adante?” They had an odd relationship, with periods where they approached closeness and times where they grew distant. The scars of what he’d done to us had never quite faded, though, as time moved on, they became less painful.

Leo’s lips curled into a half smile. “You know how it goes. He’ll spend an hour telling me about one of his new inventions, then offer me some fancy drink and get annoyed when I don’t faint with excitement. Did you know he’s become friendly with my dad? They send each other special bottles of wine and liquor. They probably get together to laugh about how uncultured I am.”

I grinned in response. “Good. You deserve it.”

Quick as lightning, Leo spun me around and folded me over the bed frame, ass in the air. “Don’t think you can be cheeky because we’re here. I can always shield the room.”

I stood on my tiptoes, lifting my ass up higher. “Well, in that case—”

“Dad! Damien said a bad word and laughed at me when I told him off!” The screech through the door shattered the moment.

Leo gave my ass a single slap and released me. “Back in a minute.”

Dressed, we kissed the kids goodbye, ignoring the barrage of complaints, and set out toward the royal hospital wing.

“I bet she looks immaculate, as though she’s just stepped out of a day spa,” I whispered as we approached the doors.

“And I bet he’s called the poor boy something ridiculous. Named him after an elemental metal or an energy wave.”

The baby boy who had replaced Leo as first in line to the Ataran throne was only three days old. He wasn’t just a baby but a medical marvel, the product of six years of research by Adante’s team. He wasn’t the first to be conceived using the new technique—far too risky for a royal—but still in the first hundred. A full mage born of mixed parents. A discovery with such culture-shattering potential it took my breath away.

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