Page 34 of The Aether

“Nate needs one, too, Papa.”

Hanging his head, Damian sighed heavily. “Of course you’re eavesdropping, Beastie. It was too much to ask that you’d do as you were told and play in your room while your mother rests.”

“Nate was calling me.” Sabrina crossed the room and climbed up on the mattress, leaning against Damian to gaze down at her baby brother. “He’s got a scrunchy face.”

A bark of laughter escaped him, and Vivian joined in. When she had her giggles under control, she held one arm wide for Sabrina to curl against her side.

“You had a scrunchy face, too, baby girl. All infants do.”

“All the girls will chase him when he is a grown-up,” Sabrina predicted.

“I’m sure they will.” Struggling not to laugh, Damian met Vivian’s dancing eyes. “Let’s get back to the puppy discussion.”

“Nate needs one, too, Papa.” Sabrina’s expression was serious and lacking any guile for a change. “The hellhounds will keep us safe when the bad people come.”

Heart thudding painfully in his chest, Damian forced himself to remain calm. Sabrina wouldn’t be sharing this if it wasn’t important, knowing his strict rule about revealing the future.

“Damian—”

He held up a hand to put a stop to Vivian’s panicked questions and remained focused on their daughter. “What bad people, Beastie, and when?”

With a deep frown drawing her brows together, Sabrina shrugged one shoulder. “The Arcane Devourer.”

A sickening dread soured Damian’s stomach, and he fought like hell to rein in his fear.

Vivian sucked in a breath and shot him a terrified look. “But Nathanial killed him.”

“Or who we thought was him. We had no proof the person posing as Evie and trying to retrieve the potion was Morcant,” he concluded.

Sabrina nodded as if she understood the thread of their conversation. Likely she did with her heightened abilities.

“I don’t know who his friends are, Papa, but one has a mark here.” She drew a line down the length of her face from the edge of her temple to the corner of her mouth. “He’s not very nice.”

“And the others?” he asked with a calm he didn’t feel, silently cursing the Fates for taking away his ability to see the future back when his mother was resurrected. “How many, and what do they look like?”

Sabrina relayed small details that Damian committed to memory.No onewould harm his family while he still drew a breath.

With a show of nonchalance, he said, “But the puppies will help, huh? Any idea what kind of hellhounds we’re talking about here? And why are we calling them that?”

Finally, a mischievous grin cracked Sabrina’s face. “Youare going to call them that, Papa. Uncle Baz knows what kind they are.”

“Uh-huh.” He chuckled and shook his head. “They wouldn’t happen to be the new Rottweiler pups his pooch had a few weeks back, would they?”

Sabrina had gone over every day since Sebastian Drake’s dog gave birth. Damian suspected that was what her black-and-tan leaf display was about earlier that day. His daughter had taken one look at those fluffy darlings and decided she wanted one for herself.

Eyes as wide and as innocent as his scheming daughter could manage, Sabrina said, “He said I had to ask you.”

Giving no sign that he’d already intended to give in, he met Vivian’s worried gaze. He winked, and his wife’s relief was palpable.

Turning back to Sabrina, he said, “We’ll talk to Baz tomorrow, my love. If they aren’t all spoken for, we’ll see about getting one for both of you, as a shared birthday present.”

Launching herself at him, she hugged him around the neck, squealing her delight and possibly deafening him in the process. “Thank you, Papa! You’re the best father in the whole wide world.”

“Don’t overplay your hand, you little minx.”

She giggled and climbed from the bed, dutifully giving first him, then Vivian, and finally Nate a kiss on the cheek. “Seven-thirty tomorrow morning,” she announced. “Any later, and Baz will give them all away.”

With a face-splitting grin, she skipped from the room.

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