She stared up at him.

“We will abstain until I am certain you are well,” he announced.

“Have you gone mad?” she breathed.

“No,” he stated the obvious.

“Aramus.”

“Ha-Lah.”

“Aramus!”

“Ha-Lah.”

She frowned.

Then she grasped his head, pulled it down to her, and she kissed him.

She did things with her tongue and things with her hands that no man with an intent to abstain should have to endure.

Thus, he failed at enduring them.

Spectacularly.

Ha-Lah did not get ill during the festivities.

Though she stayed that way the first seven months of her pregnancy.

Two months later, she gave her king a boy.

The next two she gave him were girls.

Sisters of the Beast

THE ENCHANTMENTS

Black ringlets mixed with locks of honey and chestnut and ebony in the grass as the women lay on their backs forming a cross with their heads together, their eyes aimed through the leafy trees to the blue skies.

Each had a wee babe snuggled asleep on their chests.

“He’s ridiculous,” Ellie was saying.

Silence giggled.

“You are not unaware he spoils his girls,” Ha-Lah noted.

“Yes, well,” she gently patted the rounded bottom of the wee one on her chest, “this one only has to chirrup and he’s there, cooing at her and demanding an entire citadel meet her every whim, be it containing a draught or bringing a toy or changing a nappy.”

“King Cassius Laird of Airen doesn’t change nappies?” Farah asked.

“Hell no,” Ellie answered. “Though he does stand over the nursemaid, or, say, me, scowling as he inspects we’re doing it right.”

There were chuckles all around.

“Does King True Axelsson of Wodell do it?” Silence inquired.

“We get into our chambers and the world melts away,” Farah said serenely. “So yes, when it is us, our family alone together, and there is no one else to do it, for he allows no one there, my husband has no issue.”

“Mars doesn’t either,” Silence said.

“Aramus has gained the skill of a noble Mer and becomes invisible when this one,” she gave her son’s round tush a tender shake, “starts to get smelly.”

Low feminine laughter drifted into the skies.

Then they fell silent.

Silence broke it.

She did this with a whispered, “We did it.”

“We did it,” Farah whispered in return.

“We’re here, together,” Ellie said quietly.

“We’re always together,” Ha-Lah declared.

“Yes,” three other women agreed.

Brothers of the Beast

THE ENCHANTMENTS

They stood in the trees, tall, regal, shoulder to shoulder, and studied the women that lay on their backs in the grass, babes at their chests, eyes to the sky.

“Do we leave them be?” True queried.

“Fuck no, don’t you hear my wee darling?” Cassius asked.

None of the men heard a thing.

“She fusses,” Cass muttered. “She needs her father.”

And then he strode into the glade.

Mars looked to Aramus then to True.