ARTHUR

It’s nearly noon, and the air is thick with humidity as the sun beats down onto the patio. Nora wipes her face on a towel she picks up from a lawn chair before jogging back over to face Fukashi. She seems far more enthused to be training outdoors than she ever had to train in the apartment. She also seems to be in a better mood today, which Arthur is relieved to see.

Fukashi is still pissed at him, but he’s at least talking to him now. They’d had a harrowing conversation about Nora once Arthur had gone out and wiped the minds of any witnesses that had survived the apartment fire. Those in the neighboring buildings had been more challenging. In the end, he’d had to kill three of them.

And when he returned to the port, he’d dealt with Fukashi’s cold silence for three days before he couldn’t stand it anymore. He’d dragged his husband into their borrowed room for a private conversation--namely, so Fukashi could vent.

Tell me what you did to Nora, Fukashi had eventually demanded.

Back when he’d taken her in, Arthur had never anticipated that Fukashi would come to love Nora so much. Cel, too, is hopelessly attached. Arthur had promised himself back then that he wouldn’t get too fond of her, but she has wormed her way into his heart anyway, just not as deeply as she seems to have burrowed into Cel’s and Fukashi’s.

She’s family too, some small part of him knows, but this only makes his guilt more acute for what he did to the Busuruli. For Rajask he feels nothing, but for Nora’s people, he is ashamed. He sees her wearing that damn sand dollar so proudly, and somehow he doubts it’s just for home that she wears it. When she catches him looking at it, she grins so widely he wonders how her face doesn’t hurt.

So he’d told Fukashi the truth, the commands he’d forced upon Nora with his fire-tinged voice, back when she’d still been healing from her wound.

“You will not hurt my daughter, or me, or my husband. You will be loyal to us. You will not lie to us. You do not have to like us, but you are ours.”

This only seemed to infuriate Fukashi further.

“We don’t own her,” he’d snapped at Arthur, his eyes wet with tears. “You’ve made her love us against her will!”

“That’s not—”

“Forced loyalty? Arthur, she doesn’t have a choice! She doesn't even know that she doesn’t have a choice!”

Arthur had stared at his own hands. “I’m sorry.”

“Yes you are. You are a sorry, horrible human being!” Fukashi had started to storm out, but paused, gripping the door handle tightly. “And you will never teach Cel how to do this. Do you hear me, Arthur? There are lines, even for us. There must be a point where even we say no.”

“I won’t teach her,” Arthur had promised.

At least not that.

Today, he sits on the concrete across from Cel at the poolside. They’re barely a foot from the water, and she’s positioned next to the shallow end. She watches it out of the corners of her eyes as if the water will reach up and drag her in at any moment.

Arthur sits barely a foot from her. He reaches out and snags her fingers to get her attention. She meets his gaze, her eyes too wide and white around the edges. She’s afraid. He hates seeing her this way.

“Every day you will get in the pool for an hour,” he tells her reluctantly. “It doesn’t have to be now, but you can’t panic every time you touch the water. You shower every day. You don’t panic when it rains.”

“That’s different,” she snaps, then presses her lips together and flushes. She knows she’s spoken out of term, but he knows she’s spoken out of fear. He squeezes her hands reassuringly.

“There’s no chance of you drowning in a downpour,” he agrees, “but this is a weakness we cannot abide.”

She closes her eyes, nods, speaks in a small voice: “I know.”

“Good.” He doesn’t let go of her hands, instead readjusting to link their fingers. “For now, this is a precaution and incentive. If you turn into wildfire, I will have to throw you in the pool.”

Her throat rolls as she swallows. “Okay.”

He grits his teeth. He hates seeing her so submissive. “We’ll start small,” he tells her, summoning fire to his hands. Black flames curl up from his fingers. They swirl around Cel’s as well, and she sucks in a breath.

“Fire cannot hurt us, but it is drawn to us,” he explains as flames catch on her knuckles and dance. “If you light a candle or stand next to a campfire, the flames will lean toward you. It’s a tell, something you must always keep in mind near a fire. If someone sees the fire reach for you, they might guess what you are.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

Nora’s grunts and ragged breaths are strangely loud as she and Fukashi spar nearby. Of course Fukashi swoops in and out of shadows unfairly, but Nora never seems to get tired of trying to get a hit on him. It’s a game to her, as enjoyable as mental puzzles and board games are to Cel, but the sort of training Arthur is conducting is not a game at all.

It’s life or death.

“Try summoning fire again,” he tells Cel, whose face goes tight with tension. “I know it scares you, but you must figure this out.”

She pinches her eyes shut again and nods. A moment later, she bursts into flame, and Arthur shoves her into the pool without hesitation. He doesn’t even have a chance to follow before Nora has thrown herself in to save her.

She heaves a sputtering Cel onto the poolside a moment later, and Arthur can’t help the warmth blooming in him at the sight.

Nora is truly difficult not to love.

“What in Styx, Uncle Arthur!” she scolds, pounding her closed fist against the concrete.

“Calm down, Nora. This is why we got a house with a pool,” Fukashi says as he approaches them with a grim look. He casts a worried look at Cel as she heaves up a mouthful of water, but he doesn’t kneel down to help her. Arthur knows he must want to--he wants to as well--but they’d agreed on this point firmly: tough love was the best approach for teaching Cel how to mind her fire.

“A fireproof swimsuit might be a wise commission,” Fukashi says as he drapes a towel over Cel’s form. She sits up, looking faintly ill, and Arthur must stamp down the urge to pick her up and hold her to him. She hadn’t been aflame long enough to completely burn her clothing off, but her shorts and tank top aren’t exactly wearable anymore.

“Every day, we will do this for an hour,” he says, making Cel look at him with watery eyes, “and every day you will stay an hour in the pool. Understood?”

“Yes, Daddy,” she says on a sigh.

“I’ll do it, too,” Nora tells her, still in the water with her arm propped on the side.

Cel gives her a grateful look, which has Fukashi glaring daggers at Arthur.

He rubs at his temples. It’s going to be a long month.