Chapter 11 — Uninvited, Unplanned, Undeniable
The sound of the gate was enough.
It always was. Ten years of the same gate with the same particular sound and four daughters had developed a Pavlovian response to it that no amount of conscious awareness had managed to override. The creak of the latch, the specific weight of it closing — that was Father, home, and everything in the house oriented toward it like flowers toward sun whether they meant to or not.
Syla looked up from the kitchen table.
Ren’s humming stopped mid-note.
Vera’s footsteps on the stairs accelerated in the specific pattern of someone taking them two at a time.
Mira closed her book with a finger still marking the page.
"He’s back," Ren said, unnecessarily, to the kitchen.
"We know," the kitchen said back, from three different directions.
The back door opened.
"I’m home," Cidd said.
And all four of them moved at once —
Stopped.
Complete stop. Mid-motion. The specific freeze of people whose body had already committed to something that their eyes were now overriding with urgent new information.
Cidd was in the doorway.
There was a woman on his back.
White ears. White hair. Eyes closed. Arms around his neck with the loose quality of someone not fully in charge of their own arms. A tail — white, full, currently draped over his left shoulder in a way that seemed to have no awareness of whose shoulder it was on.
Behind him, in the doorway, another woman. Silver hair. Pointed ears. Barely upright. Holding the doorframe like it was the only thing that had agreed to help her today.
The kitchen was extremely quiet.
Cidd looked at his daughters.
His daughters looked at the woman on his back.
Then at the woman in the doorway.
Then back at him.
"She has a fever," he said, indicating the one on his back. "And her friend can barely walk. I need the back room."
Nobody moved.
"Girls."
Vera’s eyes moved from the white ears to his face. Back to the white ears. "Who," she said, in a tone that contained an entire conversation’s worth of subtext in one word.
"I’ll explain later. Back room, now."
Syla had gone very still in the way she went still when she was feeling something large and was managing it with both hands.
Ren had an expression that was cycling through things too fast to track and had not yet landed anywhere conclusive.
Mira was looking at the woman on his back with the specific focused attention of someone taking inventory.
"Vera," Cidd said.
Vera stepped aside.
The others stepped aside.
He carried the white fox woman through the kitchen with the careful economy of someone who had assessed the situation and was addressing the most urgent part of it first. The elf woman followed, holding the wall, making it to the doorway of the back room on what appeared to be determination alone before her knees made an executive decision.
Cidd caught her with his free arm without looking.
Got them both to the back room.
The door closed.
The kitchen held four daughters and a silence that had weight.
Then Ren said: "He carried her."
"I saw," Vera said.
"On his back."
"I saw."
"Her tail was on his —"
"I SAW."
Syla was looking at the closed door. "She had a fever," she said, quietly. "He said she had a fever."
"I know what he said," Vera said.
"So it’s not —"
"I know what it is and I know what it isn’t and I have feelings about both." Vera turned to face the closed door fully. Crossed her arms. "Who is she."
"We don’t know yet," Mira said. She had moved to the position she always took when she was thinking — slightly to the left of center, weight on one foot, looking at something that wasn’t in the room. "We know she’s a beastwoman. Fox type. She was hurt. She came from somewhere. He found her and he brought her here."
"He brought her here," Ren said.
"Yes."
"To our house."
"It is also his house," Mira said.
Ren pointed at her. "Don’t do that right now."
Mira didn’t do that right now.
Twenty minutes passed.
The back room door stayed closed.
The kitchen held four daughters doing various things that were all secretly the same thing — waiting.
Syla made tea. Not because anyone had asked. Because her hands needed to do something that wasn’t clench.
Vera had taken up a position near the back room door that could not technically be called standing guard because she wasn’t technically doing anything except standing. Near the door. With her arms crossed. In a manner that suggested opinions.
Ren had sat back down at the table and was now radiating a kind of thoughtful energy that was somehow more alarming than Vera’s obvious energy because at least Vera’s was visible.
Mira had a book open that she wasn’t reading.
Then the back room door opened and Cidd came out alone.
He looked at the kitchen.
The kitchen looked at him.
"She’s sleeping," he said. "The fever needs to come down. I’ve done what I can for now." He moved to wash his hands at the pump. "The other one is in there with her. She won’t leave her."
"The other one," Vera said.
"White ears. Fox. Her name is Rhea." He dried his hands. Looked at his daughters. "She’s going to be here tonight. Possibly longer depending on how her friend does."
The kitchen processed this.
"Where is she now," Mira said.
"Back room."
"You left her there alone."
"Her friend is unconscious. She’s not going anywhere."
Vera and Ren exchanged a look.
It was a very short look that communicated a significant amount of information.
Cidd saw it. "Whatever you’re thinking —"
"We’re not thinking anything," Ren said, with the serenity of someone thinking several things.
"We’re just going to go check on her," Vera said. "Make sure she’s comfortable. As hosts."
"Vera —"
But they were already moving.
Rhea was sitting in the corner of the back room.
This was a deliberate choice. The corner was the option that put the most walls at her back and the most room between her and everything else and the least amount of herself in anyone’s way. She had pulled her tail in close and her ears were angled back and she was looking at the unconscious elf on the bed with the focused attention of someone using someone else’s situation as a reason not to think about their own.
The door opened.
She looked up.
Four girls stood in the doorway.
She had known they existed — the man had said daughters, and there had been the sound of them through the wall, voices and footsteps and the particular sound of a house that had people in it who belonged there. But knowing and seeing were different things and seeing was four pairs of eyes looking at her with expressions she was trying to read and not entirely succeeding at.
The tallest one — the one with the straight posture and the eyes that assessed like a measuring instrument — came in first and sat down across from her.
Directly across. Pulled a chair and sat in it and looked at her.
"What’s your name," Vera said.
"Rhea," she said.
"Where are you from."
"A village. North of here. It’s —" She stopped. "It’s not there anymore."
Vera looked at her. "What happened to it."
"Monsters."
"What kind."
"Does it —" She looked at the girl. Ten years old, maybe. The question delivered with the directness of someone twice that age. "B tier. Several of them. We couldn’t —" She stopped again. "It was fast."
Vera nodded. Filing it. Moving on. "Why did you come here."
"We didn’t have anywhere else."
"Why not somewhere else. A city. A larger town."
Rhea looked at her ears. Then at the girl.
Vera’s expression didn’t change. "People gave you trouble."
"People usually do."
"Did they give you trouble in Ashfeld."
"They didn’t come near us." She said it without bitterness. It was just information. "Which is better than the alternative."
Vera was quiet for a moment. Still looking at her with that measuring look.
Then Ren sat down next to Rhea.
Not across from her. Next to her. Immediately, with no transition, in the specific way Ren occupied space — like the space had been waiting for her.
Rhea’s ears went up slightly in surprise before she could stop them.
"Hi," Ren said. "I’m Ren. Are you hungry."
"I —" The question landed wrong because her body answered it before her brain did and she was suddenly aware that she had not eaten anything substantial in approximately two days. "I’m fine."
"You’re not fine," Ren said pleasantly. "You look like you’ve been walking for a week and haven’t eaten for two days."
Rhea stared at her.
"How did you —"
"Your hands," Ren said. "And your eyes. And the way you sat down like you were making sure you’d remember how." She stood back up. "I’m going to make food. Don’t argue about it."
"I wasn’t going to —"
"People always argue about it," Ren said, already leaving. "It’s very unnecessary."
She was gone.
Rhea looked at the space she’d been in.
Then at the girl still sitting across from her.
Then at the one in the doorway who hadn’t come in yet — silver-brown hair, quiet eyes, holding a cup of something that steamed — who was looking at the unconscious elf on the bed and then at Rhea and then at the cup and then taking a small step into the room and setting the cup on the bedside table without saying anything.
Rhea looked at the tea.
"For when she wakes up," the quiet one said. To the floor. Approximately. In the direction of Rhea without quite being at Rhea. "It helps with fever."
"Thank you," Rhea said.
Syla looked at her for exactly one second. Then went back to looking at something that wasn’t Rhea. "You should have water," she said. "You’re dehydrated." She left.
Rhea sat in the corner and tried to understand what was happening.
Then the fourth one came in.
She sat at the desk — not at Rhea, not across from her, just at the desk, angled slightly, with a book that she opened but didn’t look at. She was the youngest looking but there was something in her stillness that was very old.
The silence lasted approximately one minute.
"How long were you outside the village," Mira said, not looking up.
"Since morning."
"Which means you arrived in the night."
"Yes."
"You chose to wait rather than approach in the dark."
"I —" Rhea looked at her. "Yes."
"Smart." She turned a page. "People are less afraid of things they can see clearly." A pause. "How is her fever."
"Getting worse before tonight. Better by morning I think. She’s strong."
Mira nodded. Wrote something in the margin of her book. "What’s her name."
"Sylvaine."
Something crossed Mira’s expression too quickly to track. "How long have you known her."
"Seven years."
"She stayed with you. Through everything."
It wasn’t quite a question.
"Yes," Rhea said.
Mira wrote something else. "She’ll be fine," she said. "Father knows what he’s doing."
Rhea looked at the girl. "Your father —"
"Knows what he’s doing," Mira said again, with the completeness of someone closing a topic. She turned a page. "You don’t have to sit in the corner."
Rhea looked at the corner she was sitting in.
"There’s a chair by the window," Mira said. "It’s more comfortable. And you can see the bed from it, so you’ll know immediately if she changes."
Rhea looked at the chair by the window.
Looked at the corner.
Moved to the chair by the window.
Something in Mira’s expression moved. She went back to her book.
Cidd came back an hour later and found the back room containing one unconscious elf, one white fox beastwoman in the chair by the window, and Mira at the desk with a book.
He looked at Mira.
She looked at him over the top of the page.
"She’s fine," Mira said. Which covered both of them and Cidd understood it that way.
He checked Sylvaine — temperature, breathing, the herbal compress Syla had apparently appeared and applied at some point without Rhea entirely noticing how or when. Better than an hour ago. Still not good, but better.
He stood up.
Looked at Rhea.
She was watching him with those golden eyes and that expression he still didn’t have a catalogue entry for.
"Come to the kitchen," he said. "Ren made food and you need to eat."
"I shouldn’t —"
"She’ll be fine for twenty minutes. Mira will stay."
Mira turned a page without looking up. Staying was confirmed.
Rhea looked at Sylvaine.
At Mira.
At Cidd.
She got up.
The kitchen was warm and bright and smelled like whatever Ren had made, which turned out to be a thick stew with the good bread and was exactly what someone who hadn’t eaten in two days needed it to be.
Rhea sat at the table.
She held the bowl with both hands for a moment before she ate, in the way of someone relearning that warmth was something that could be held.
Three of the four daughters were in the kitchen.
Vera was at the counter. Leaning on it. Arms crossed. Watching her with the expression she’d had in the back room — assessing, not hostile, just extremely present.
Ren was moving around the kitchen with her usual comfortable authority and had put food in front of Rhea with the matter-of-fact warmth of someone who had decided the relevant thing was that she was hungry and the solution was food.
Syla was at the table doing something with herbs that might have been productive or might have been an excuse to be in the room.
Cidd sat across from Rhea.
"Tell me what happened," he said.
So she did.
She kept it short. The village, the attack, the speed of it. The ones who ran. The ones who didn’t. Sylvaine who had come back for her when she shouldn’t have, who had found her in the wreckage and gotten her out and kept them both moving toward something even when neither of them knew what the something was.
The places that wouldn’t take them. The doors that stayed closed. The weeks of it.
She said it plainly, without performing it, the way you described things that had happened to you when you’d had enough time to stop being inside them and start being next to them.
The kitchen was quiet through all of it.
Cidd listened the way he listened to everything — completely, without interrupting, without the small sounds people made to show they were following. Just present.
When she finished he was quiet for a moment.
"The village that was attacked," he said. "North of here."
"Yes."
"Direction."
She told him.
He nodded. Filed it somewhere. "How many were lost."
She looked at the table. "Most."
He said nothing. The specific nothing of someone who understood that number.
Vera had uncrossed her arms at some point during the telling. She was still at the counter but the assessment in her expression had changed quality — still present, still measuring, but measuring something different now.
Syla had stopped pretending to do things with herbs.
Ren had sat down.
Then Cidd stood up to check on Sylvaine and the kitchen became a different room.
The change was instantaneous. The moment the door closed behind him the temperature dropped in the specific way it dropped when four daughters with opinions found themselves alone with a situation.
Rhea looked up.
Vera sat down across from her. In the same chair she’d used in the back room. With the same posture.
Ren was still beside her but the warmth had a different quality now — still there, but with something underneath it.
Syla was looking at her hands.
Mira had apparently returned from the back room at some point in the last thirty seconds and was standing near the doorway.
Rhea looked at them.
They looked at her.
"He’s going to let you stay," Vera said. Not a question. A statement of something she’d already determined. "That’s what he does. He finds people who have nowhere to go and he lets them stay."
"I’m not —" Rhea started.
"We’re not saying you did anything wrong," Ren said, in the warm tone that now had a very clear edge to it. "We’re just having a conversation. About expectations."
"Expectations," Rhea said carefully.
"About how things work here," Mira said from the doorway. "Specifically about Father."
Rhea looked at Mira.
"He’s kind," Vera said. "He’s very kind. And he doesn’t know how to not help people and he doesn’t know how to ask for anything for himself and he spent a long time completely alone before us and sometimes he still —" She stopped. Recalibrated. "He’s ours," she said, simply and completely. "Do you understand what I mean."
Rhea understood exactly what she meant.
The ears and the tail and the golden eyes were not things that came without instincts and her instincts had understood what was in this kitchen approximately five minutes after she arrived.
"He’s our father," Ren said, with a smile that was entirely genuine and also entirely serious at the same time, which was a combination Rhea was learning was specifically Ren. "And we love him very much. And we are going to marry him."
Rhea blinked.
"All of you," she said.
"All of us," Ren confirmed, pleasantly.
"That’s —"
"A decision we’ve made," Vera said. "Individually. And arrived at the same conclusion."
"Separately," Mira added. "Through independent reasoning."
Rhea looked at Syla.
Syla looked at the table. Then, very quietly, with the specific gravity of someone saying something they meant completely: "He has never had anyone. For a very long time he had no one at all." She looked up. Met Rhea’s eyes briefly and then looked away. "We are not going to let anyone hurt him. Or confuse him. Or take advantage of how kind he is." Back to the table. "That’s all."
The kitchen was quiet.
Rhea looked at all four of them.
She thought about the man who had crouched down to her level outside the village gate. Who had asked how long she’d been there. Who had said come on like she belonged somewhere he was going.
She understood, suddenly and completely, why these four girls were the way they were about him.
"I’m not going to hurt him," she said.
"You’d better not," Vera said.
"I mean it."
"So do we," Vera said.
"We like you," Ren said, brightly. "We genuinely do. You can stay as long as you need. We want you to stay." The smile stayed exactly as warm and exactly as serious. "Just —"
"Stay away from him," Vera said.
"We didn’t say that," Ren said.
"It’s implied."
"It’s not —"
"Don’t make any moves," Vera said, to Rhea directly. "Behind our backs or in front of them. He is taken. He just doesn’t know it yet."
"He’s not —" Syla started.
"He will be," Vera said.
Mira looked at Rhea. "What she means," she said, with the precision of someone translating Vera into something navigable, "is that this household has an existing dynamic and we would appreciate it if you respected that dynamic."
"The dynamic being," Rhea said carefully.
"That he’s ours," all four of them said.
At slightly different times. In slightly different tones. But the content was identical.
Rhea sat very still.
She was a fox. Foxes were perceptive by nature, by blood, by the particular inheritance of a species that had survived by reading situations faster than other things could act on them.
She read this situation.
She made a decision.
"Understood," she said.
Vera looked at her for a long moment.
Then nodded. Once. The specific nod of someone completing an assessment and filing the result.
"Good," she said.
The back door opened.
Cidd came back in.
He looked at the kitchen — at the particular quality of the silence, at the arrangement of his daughters around the table, at Rhea’s expression.
"What happened," he said.
"We had a conversation," Ren said.
"About what."
"Household expectations," Mira said.
He looked at Rhea.
She looked back at him with an expression that said she was fine and had learned several things and was still processing some of them.
He looked at his daughters.
They looked back at him with various expressions of complete innocence.
He sat down.
"Rhea," he said.
"Yes."
"You can stay. Both of you, until Sylvaine is well and you’ve both recovered properly." He looked at her directly in the way she was learning was just how he looked at things — straight, without hedging. "After that we’ll figure out the longer term. But for now — you’re here, you’re safe, and nobody is going to bother you." He paused. "You’ll help with the house when you’re able. I’m going to extend the building — there’s room on the eastern side. You’ll have your own space."
She stared at him.
"You don’t have to —" she started.
"I know," he said.
"We don’t have anything to offer —"
"You’ll help when you can. That’s enough." He said it with the completeness of someone for whom this was not a complicated equation. "You don’t have people?"
She looked at the table. "No."
"She doesn’t either?" Meaning Sylvaine.
"No."
He nodded.
That was all.
He nodded and picked up his tea and the matter was settled in the way matters were settled when he settled them — completely, without drama, with the quiet finality of someone who had made a decision and saw no reason to continue discussing it.
Rhea sat at the table in the warm kitchen of a house at the edge of a village that had let her through the gate and she looked at the ring on his finger and the four daughters around the table and the man who had crouched down to her level and asked how long she’d been there like the answer mattered to him.
Something moved in her chest.
She pressed it down immediately.
She pressed it down with both hands, internally, with the firm practicality of someone who had very good reasons to press things down and knew exactly what they were.
He had daughters.
Four of them.
Four daughters who had just informed her in four completely different and entirely sincere ways that they were going to marry him.
She pressed it down.
It moved anyway.
Just slightly.
She pressed harder.
Ren, beside her, was talking about something — the room extension, where it would go, whether the eastern wall would need reinforcing, did Rhea prefer morning light or evening light in a room — with the warm unstoppable energy of someone who had made a decision about a person and was now simply acting on it.
Rhea looked at her.
At all of them.
At him, listening to Ren with the patient expression he probably wore for everything Ren said.
She pressed the thing in her chest all the way down.
It settled.
Quiet.
But there.
That night he found her on the step.
Not his step — the front step, the one that faced the village. She was sitting with her tail curled around her feet and her ears angled toward Sylvaine’s window which she could see from this angle, and she looked up when she heard him and then looked back at the window.
He sat down next to her.
Not close. Appropriate distance. He was good at appropriate distance, she was noticing. He didn’t crowd. Didn’t assume. Just — existed in the vicinity of people with a quality of presence that was neither demanding nor absent.
"She’s breathing better," he said. "The fever broke an hour ago."
Rhea exhaled.
It came out longer than she’d intended.
"She’ll be weak for a few days," he said. "But she’ll be fine."
Rhea nodded.
Looked at the village. At the dark pine hills. At the stars beginning their thing above the treeline.
"Your daughters warned me," she said.
"I know."
"You knew they would."
"I suspected."
She looked at him sideways. "You’re not going to apologize for it."
"No." He looked at the village. "They meant it. But they also meant the part where you can stay." A pause. "Those aren’t contradictions, for them. They can mean both things completely at the same time."
Rhea thought about that.
"They love you," she said.
"Yes."
Just that. Like it was the simplest fact in the world. Which she supposed for him it was.
"You love them," she said.
He was quiet for a moment.
"Yes," he said. The same way. Simple. Complete.
She looked at the window where Sylvaine was sleeping.
"I don’t know how to thank you," she said.
"You don’t have to."
"I want to."
"Then help when you can." He stood up. "That’s all I need." He looked down at her. "Come inside when you’re ready. It’s getting cold."
He went in.
She sat on the step for a while longer.
The stars did their thing.
The pine hills were dark and quiet.
Somewhere inside the house she could hear the faint sound of daughters — a voice, a footstep, the particular sound of a house that had people in it who belonged there.
She pressed the thing in her chest down one more time.
It didn’t move as far as before.
She looked at the door he’d gone through.
Looked at her hands.
Looked at the stars.
Stayed on the step a little longer.