Lucivar stepped into the sitting room and stopped. He’d expected to find his father waiting for him, but . . .

“What are you still doing here?” he asked Daemon as he approached a low table filled with different kinds of edibles.

“Waiting for you.” Daemon put a thin slice of cheese on top of a triangle of toast and added a spoonful of chopped spicy beef.

“Wine?” Saetan asked, indicating the open bottle.

“I’d rather have ale,” Lucivar said as he took the remaining seat around the table.

Saetan smiled dryly. “I thought as much. That’s why there’s some on the way.”

Lucivar filled a plate while he considered the other two men. Saetan was . . . Amused was the politest word that came to mind. Daemon was definitely grumpy.

“How was your day?” Lucivar asked, watching his brother.

“Fine.”

“And you’re still here because you were waiting for me?”

Daemon made an inarticulate sound.

Saetan said, “He’s trying to figure out how to explain a certain bit of Craft to his wife.”

“Oh?” Lucivar said.

Daemon was paying an awful lot of attention to making little sandwiches he wasn’t eating.

“Marian is pretty sure she can clean the paint off the floor,” Daemon muttered. “Eventually.”

“Oh?”

Daemon huffed out a sigh. “Doesn’t that little beast ever get tired?”

Saetan had an arm wrapped around his belly and his other fist pressed against his lips.

“Oh, shit, Bastard. What did you do?”

“He made the mistake of falling asleep,” Saetan said.

Daemon growled. “I just thought . . . Something quiet. Just for a little while. We were sitting on the floor with sheets of sketching paper. They were big sheets. Why couldn’t he keep the paint on the paper?”

“It would have been better if Daemon had thought to provide watercolors instead of a different kind of paint,” Saetan said.

“And who in the name of Hell taught that boy about shields at his age?” Daemon snarled.

Probably the wolf pups. “Wasn’t me.” Lucivar looked at both of them. “So Daemonar managed to put some kind of shield into the paint so the standard ways of removing it aren’t working? At least, not completely?”

Saetan was going to strain a muscle trying not to laugh, and Daemon . . .

“Besides the floor, what else did he paint?” Lucivar asked.

A beat of silence. Then Saetan said, “He painted Unka Daemon.”

Lucivar ended up on the floor, roaring with laughter, which might have pissed off his brother if their father hadn’t ended up on the floor too.

“Oh, my,” Lucivar said, crawling back up on the chair. He looked at Daemon’s face, which, outside of looking unnaturally flushed, didn’t seem any different. “Where?”

Saetan propped himself up against a chair. “Let’s just say Daemon needs to explain this to Jaenelle before he takes his shirt off.”

Oh, shit.