Secondly, when Pia had heard they would be staying in temporary housing until their permanent home was finished enough to occupy, she’d been picturing something primitive like an army-style tent with composting bucket toilets and camp showers out the back.

She couldn’t have been further from the truth. After feeding Niall on the beach, she and Eva returned to the house at an easy jog. Dragos and Skeeter had disappeared, no doubt so that Dragos could talk to the dozens of construction foremen and settlement officials who had gathered to clamor for his attention.

There was no lack of work to be done and, Eva told her, there were already close to twenty thousand souls present. Everything in the city was growing at once. There were representatives from mundane human governments and all the Elder Races present—Elves, Vampyres (currently at rest), other Nightkind, and witches, and Demonkind, and both Light and Dark Fae—from countries and demesnes all over the world.

Several embassies were already in the process of being built, and while each person present in Rhyacia had passed a rigorous security inspection, a Wyr police force maintained a smiling presence throughout the settlement. The citizens of the world continued to consider Dragos a premiere force to be reckoned with, no matter how remote his locale.

With Dragos gone, that left Pia to explore their temporary living quarters at her leisure. Their prefab house had been positioned in such a way that it was surrounded by other dwellings occupied by security and house staff, but the area had been landscaped to provide them with a screen of foliage for privacy. Eva’s cottage was tucked into one corner of the square.

The entire compound had been gated with a high privacy fence and felt like a small, self-contained village. Before he left, Dragos had told her that the compound even had a convenience store located inside the gate with fresh produce, a selection of cheeses, wines and other liquor, candies, baked goods, hot stir-fried foods, and other amenities. If she needed or wanted anything, all she had to do was send a request and it would be delivered.

Once inside, Pia discovered their house was an eighteen-hundred-square-foot living space with three bedrooms, vaulted ceilings, large windows, two fireplaces—one in the living room and another in the master bedroom—two and a half bathrooms, and a kitchen with soft-close drawers and polished granite countertops.

Comfortable, stylish furniture decorated the living room. There were hand-woven rugs. There were several bookshelves filled with Pia’s favorite genres of fiction and a carefully curated selection of nonfiction that neither she nor Dragos had yet read. The bedroom beside the master had been decorated and furnished with Niall’s things that she’d shipped ahead two weeks ago. Dressers and the closet in the master suite were filled with her and Dragos’s clothes, all clean and neatly pressed and folded.