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“You’re going on a what?!”
Luz laughs as King coughs his drink back into his water glass, choking and sputtering at Eda’s squawk of surprise. If titans could blush – and maybe they do, under all that flea ridden fur - Eda thinks that her son would be flushed a brilliant indigo right now. She jolts forward, her elbows slamming against the table as she stares King down with an incredulous stare. Even Raine leans in at the new development, watching King curiously over their dinner plate.
“It is not a date!” King yells indignantly, his voice breaking into a higher octave on the word date. It only makes everyone around the table laugh harder, and King’s squeak of rage broils in his cracked vocal chords, a whistle and rumble all at once as he pouts in his chair. Eda crosses her arms across her chest in faux affront.
“Have you been keeping secrets from me, young man?” When did her boy find himself a special someone?
“Luz is lying!” he cries again, and Raine has to put a hand on his shoulder to keep him from lunging over the table at his sister. The force of his frame almost knocks them off their seat. “She’s besmirching my good name with this – this slander!”
“Oh yeah? Then why have you been commenting hearts all over Valarine’s penstagram account?” Luz teases, and King’s already swatting her scroll away before she can unfurl it.
“Valarine?” Eda teases. “I haven’t heard of this Valarine before.” Eda turns to Luz, who nods with a smirk. “Kid, you’ve been holding out on me!”
“That’s because she doesn’t exist and Luz is lying!” King is almost standing on his chair now, eyes wide and buggy as he tries to keep Luz from spilling another secret. He points at her, accusing. “Bibi, ground her at once!”
“King, butt on the chair,” Raine reminds kindly. King concedes reluctantly, sinking almost halfway down in his seat, slouched over double. His brows knit together in fury and embarrassment, glaring at his half-eaten plate. “I’m sure whoever this Valarine is - even if she is fake - is a very nice person.”
“They’re in Potions together,” Luz coos, leaning forward to cup her cheeks in her hands, endeared to the way King hides his face. “He helps her with her homework.”
“Luz-!”
“Luz, stop teasing your brother,” Eda says, before her lips curl into her own impish grin. “He’s already nervous about it himself.”
“It is not-!” King starts again, before huffing and sinking down even further. “I’m just going to her house for dinner.”
“Oh wow!” Eda blinks, “you’re meeting the parents already? How long has this been going on?!”
“It’s not like that!”
“Even if it isn’t,” Raine interrupts emphatically, voice even and pointed, always the peacekeeper at the table, “it would still be nice of us to help King make a good impression. Right?”
“Yeah,” Eda replies. She eyes the eyebonera sauce matting the fur around his mouth. “We gotta work on his table manners.”
“Starting with that slouch, young man,” Raine lectures, pressing a palm between King’s shoulder blades. King pops up to his full height with only a grumble and a wince in response, rolling his eyes. Even with his shoulders still tilted inwards towards him, he’s only a few inches shorter than Eda, and almost as wide. “That bad posture isn’t going to fly”
“It’s not my fault chairs are so uncomfortable,” King complains, shifting. The curve of his spine is already slowly curling again. “My back hurts.”
“Because you’re slouching,” Raine retorts. “You’ll have scoliosis before you’re even half my age if you don’t try.”
“Well then I have ages before I have to worry about that,” King laughs, and Eda echoes Raine’s scoff as their kids giggle.
“It’s not like you have to be geriatric like these old folks to have scoliosis,” Luz adds, with a light slap on the shoulder from Eda. “Half of the kids from my high school had like, permanent damage from their textbooks.”
“See?” Eda says. “It’s so bad humans have the same name for it.”
“Well, it sure hurts,” King grumbles. He stretches, groaning as he tries to square his shoulders.
“When you’re my age, everything hurts,” Eda supplies in response. “Now sit up and show me how you’re going to behave in front of Valarine’s parents.”
“Ah, puppy love,” Eda says from her spot leaning against the doorframe, a mug of apple blood in hand as she admires the tableau of her family in the living room. “Isn’t it disgusting?”
“We were no better, Calamity,” Raine says from their awkward perch. They curl themselves into a half-kneeling position, too short to sit completely but too tall to not have to hunch over as they adjust the yellow bowtie around King’s neck. With a groan and a few ugly pops from their knees, they brush themselves off so they can admire their work.
“Can you guys relax?” King groans, tilting his head back to roll his eyes at the ceiling. “I told you, it’s not a big deal.”
He squirms when Eda steps forward, picking lint off the lapels of her borrowed jacket. She’d had a favour to cash in with Hunter, and he had willingly, if not totally happily, added her old suit to the pile of Hexside uniforms King needed the hem let out of. Luckily, it hadn’t needed a full overhaul, King only barely swimming in the thing as he complained his way through measurements and pinning.
“Yeah, but we were awesome,” Eda replies to Raine, ignoring the way King dodges her efforts to slick down his fur. He’s looks almost mature, if she ignored the way his tail flicked excitedly from underneath the jacket. “I still haven’t decided whether I like this new friend of yours or not.”
“If I had it my way, you’d never meet her and never have to decide.”
“Don’t talk to your mother like that,” Eda scolds, not unkindly. With a final tug on his collar, she sees him fit for the night. “Now, I didn’t raise a square, but you at least have to pretend to be one if you want to make a good impression. Now,” she says as she circles behind him, “you’re going to pull out her chair-”
“Yes, mom,” King grouses.
“And you’re not show them any of my dinner tricks,” she continues, “tonight.”
“Eda,” Raine warns.
“At all,” she corrects, with an ill-hidden wink at her son. She places a hand on King’s shoulder, physically pulling them back towards her. “And you’re going to stand up straight-”
“Ah, crap-” King hisses, flinching away from her, stiffening under her touch. She’s too surprised by the way his face crumples in sudden pain to chastise him for cursing, no matter how mildly.
“Whoa,” she says, yanking her hand away. “You okay buddy?”
“Yeah, just,” King grunts, rolling his shoulders awkwardly; Eda silently notes that he favours the left. “Back still hurts, is all.”
“Damn,” she mutters under her breath, and when she touches him again, it’s only to brush her palm up and down his back, in a way she can only hope is soothing. His hunch had always been bad, always worse as a teen punkiness slowly influenced his posture. But it had been most notable in the past few days, and Eda knew it was a way for him to compensate for the ache. Yes, he had woken up one morning and Eda swore he had grown an inch overnight, the leggings of his uniform ending halfway down his calves, and she had chalked it up to growing pains. Now, she wasn’t so sure. “That bad?”
“Did you want a potion to help?” Raine asks, already halfway to the kitchen. “I think we still have some Tylemaul in the cabinets.”
“No, no, I’m okay,” he assures, clearing his throat. He tries to square his shoulders again, but his head tilts downwards, watching his paws wring in front of him. “I guess I’m just kinda nervous.”
Anxiety still squirms under her sternum, but the sound of her son’s deepening tenor still cradles a youthful energy, boisterous and unsure of the world all at once, and damn if it doesn’t make her soft. She gives him a grin, pulling him close until the pricks of his paws start prying her off. His muzzle sits right at her shoulder, and he is barely on his tippy toes.
“Aw, kiddo,” she murmurs, and there’s that traitorous little tug on her heart, all sappy and maternal. It makes her feel icky. She lets him go after another second of squirming, if only to give him an extra big squeeze. Raine, King’s designated ride – and the parent that exuded a greater demeanour of calm and collection, and thus the chosen mediator between families for tonight – whistles for Fiddlesticks. “You’re a catch, they’ll have no choice but to love you.”
“Is he leaving already?” Luz hollers from upstairs. The sound of her feet pounding down the staircase echoes across the house, immediately followed by her bursting into the living room, almost faceplanting as she slides across the floor in her socks. “Aye, que precioso,” she coos, her voice up an octave as she smiles brighter than the sun. “You’re so handsome!”
“Get off me!” King demands before she’s even lunged at him, screaming as she lifts him off his feet with an oof of breath, the effort behind it apparent. Raine meets Eda’s eyes, only beaming, shaking their head fondly from the door where Hooty complains that they’re letting in the cold, and Eda can only wonder why the years are going by so fast.
He walks himself home, half an hour before the Raine expects to get the crow to pick him up. It’s still late in the evening, though – Eda doesn’t believe in curfews, as long as she knows her kids are safe – so when King trudges his way up the stairs with his usual slouch, obviously ready for bed, she shoves Luz to her room and doesn’t push for details.
“It went well,” he shrugs noncommittally, when Eda prods him during dinner the next day, Luz visibly deflating when she realizes she won’t get her brother to relinquish any more tidbits about his not-date so easily. “Her parents were nice.”
“That’s it?” Eda insists gently, raising an eyebrow as she gives King a scrutinous once over. He keeps his eyes on his plate, but not sheepishly, his brow furrowed in discomfort, his eyes wide and awake but dazed. And he’s practically inhaling his seconds, having already finished one serving – he was always a ravenous little beast, but recently he was even managing to eat their now two-income family out of house and home. Growing demons, she muses silently.
King just shrugs at her again. “Yeah,” he supplies, even as Luz pouts at him. He’d been tight-lipped since about his mysterious Valarine since Luz outed her existence just a week ago, even if they all could tell that the mention of her put a woozy pep in his step. “Talked about how school is going. That kinda stuff.” Eda is content to let go of the matter after that.
It’s a few days after that she finally gets a chance at the gossip she’s been looking for. It’s the Owl House’s turn to host the monthly Clawthorne family dinner, and her home is a bustling mess of chaos, her mother and sister chattering away at her stovetop, three different mystery sauces staining its surface – and Eda will not be cleaning up the mess they made, thank you very much – while Hunter chops vegetables, quiet and content and the only one she trusts with a knife, at the unset table. Her dad and Raine fall into easy conversation in the den, and she can feel wood shavings under her socked feet when she walks across the carpet to call Luz and King from upstairs. She won’t be cleaning that up, either.
After two attempts with no answer, she uses the excuse to tromp up the stairs to get away from her mother’s fretful questions and prying suggestions. She’s already planning to have her sit next to King to see if her endless inquiries into her family’s wellbeing will get him to spill, only to realize as she catches her breath at the top of the stairs that she might not need to.
“- was just, weird, y’know?” King’s voice drifts down the corridor towards her. She stops short of his bedroom door, back to the wall so she isn’t spotted. “Like, you want to make a good impression, but you can’t because they already have this idea of you.”
“But you said they were nice to you,” Luz’ voice ponders, an opening for King to explain himself. Not for the last time, Eda is fascinated, warmed, by the knowledge they have each other to confide in.
“Yeah, too nice!” King exclaims. “Like – her mom was fine, I guess, but her dads kind of lost it when Raine finally left. They were fluffing up the pillows before I even sat down, they were constantly asking what I wanted to eat. And her papa-“
“You said he was a clergyman?”
“Yeah, oh my Dad, he just kept asking about weird spiritual stuff as if I’m supposed to know anything about it – he asked me what offerings I would like.”
“So, you have loyal subjects,” Luz laughs. That gets a snort out of Eda. “I don’t see why you of all people are complaining about that.”
“Huh,” King muses. “I never thought of it that way.” A pregnant pause, where Eda thinks of interrupting before she hears him mumble, the words small. “But I don’t know, Luz-“
“Eda? What’s going-?” Raine begins as they step up onto the landing, and Eda immediately shoots out an arm to keep them from advancing, their words dying on their tongue. Their ears flick as they unquestioningly join her, their face evolving from confusion, to surprise, to a quirked eyebrow and pointed stare that says really? And yeah, eavesdropping might not be winning her a mother of the year award, but sue her for being curious.
“- were anyone else, sure,” King’s voice draws Eda’s ear again, the uncharacteristic trepidation in his voice pulling at something in her chest. He grunts, and there’s the shift of bedsheets. “But Val’s my friend – I want her to be my friend, at least. But it seems like everywhere I go people can’t stop worshipping me, or trying to get close to me because everyone knows who we are, or because I’m a titan. Which is awesome, but sometimes I just – OW!”
Eda is so intent on her son’s speech that the interruption makes her jump, Raine putting out their hands to catch her from slamming against the wall.
“Sorry, sorry!” she hears Luz cry. “Did that hurt?”
“Yes it hurt, do it again,” King grunts, slowly letting out a long, muffled groan. “Oh yeah, that’s the spot-”
Okay, that’s weirder than usual, Eda thinks, her confusion mirrored in Raine’s puzzled expression. She makes a show of knocking on the door, swinging it open.
“Hey, you two, everyone’s waiting at the table,” she announces, before stopping on the threshold. She’s met with the sight of King sprawled out on his stomach, while Luz digs her knuckles hard into his back. “What are you doing?”
“It’s called a Shiatsu massage,” King declares cheerfully, his face twisting into a grimace of pain as Luz puts her full body weight into the next move. “I wanted to see if it would help with the backache.”
“We don’t use that language in the house,” Eda says, hands on her hips. She doesn’t comment on the way King’s backache has turned into “the” backache, only noting that troubling detail for later consideration.
“Oh no, it’s not a curse word, it’s a human thing,” Raine corrects. “Like, the dog, right?”
“Sure,” Luz nods emphatically, “exactly.” She starts to make her way out of the room, and Raine smiles proudly as they follow her, the way they did back at Hexside when they got a hard question right. Nerd. “Now, let’s see what I can’t digest today.”
“Ugh, fine,” King gripes, his bed groaning as his weight shifts, and he pulls himself up to his not-full-height. That slouch is starting to concern her more than annoy.
Eda sticks out her hook, barring the door before King can get past her. “Hey,” she says, waiting for him to meet her gaze. She doesn’t know if she’s just referring to the physical pain when she asks, “you okay?”
“Fine,” King says simply, looking away. He ducks under her arm, and with nothing more than a sigh and a knot in her stomach, Eda trails behind.
“Should we make an appointment with a healer?” Eda asks later that night. She’s in her boxers and a stolen shirt that reads no, it’s not a violin, and Raine has to blink back to attention from their spot beside her at the bathroom counter. “For King.”
“I’unno,” they gurgle, before leaning forward to spit toothpaste into the sink. “Do you think it’s getting that bad?”
“Well, it’s not getting better,” she sighs. Raine takes her hand where her nails are tapping impatiently against the granite, squeezing her knuckles.
“Knowing your unconditional affinity for healers,” they rib, “I won’t be the one to deter you, if you think that’s what King needs. If you think it would help-?”
“That’s the problem,” Eda sighs, groaning as she stretches her hand behind her head, sloppily tying her hair up for the night. Raine knew there was a greater chance of getting more questions than answers. They had come with them, to witness the disaster that was the last and only time she had brought King to see a healer. King was already taking after her, with his disdain and distrust for healing magics, but their visit had only fortified his worldview as the predatortrician fumbled his way through a checkup, jabbing him with needles that found no veins where they should be, prodding at a furry face and torso to find landmarks for a demon he had no reference for.
“We can think about it in the morning,” Raine assures her. “Call the office once they’re open for the day.” They give her a small smile. It doesn’t take away her worry – but it feels lighter, to have someone to share it with.
“Okay,” she nods, hugging them close. “Okay.”
It takes a bit of back-and-forth, and Eda has to get some of King’s – and Luz’, and her own, being a law-abiding citizen took a lot of paperwork – documents renewed, but Raine books him an appointment for a week later. She isn’t sure whether to be annoyed that they won’t take him sooner, or to be relieved she doesn’t have to walk her and her son into a clinic so soon. No one believes the situation is so urgent that King needs immediate care, and Eda begrudgingly accepts the wait, if only because Raine tells her how much the healthcare system is still strained, even years after the Day of Unity.
Apocalypses will do that.
The pain ebbs and flows. One day King is racing through the house, his lanky arms and legs and tail knocking over everything in his warpath, only to suddenly wince when he twisted a certain way; another, he downs an Advile the second he wakes up, crashes for a nap the minute he comes back from school. One day there’s no pain at all. Every day, Eda watches him like a hawk, her ear perking up at every potential hiss of pain, eyeing every time he pouts with the attempt straighten his back. She keeps herself from reaching out to scratch his chin the way he likes, unsure of whether she’s overstimulating or overbearing or just an annoying mom watching her son grow up, and that’s what she tries to reassure herself with – it’s growing pains, she tells herself, for her own peace of mind. Nothing more.
That thought immediately wipes itself from her head only a day before they’re meant to see a healer, her anxiety and her curse a fretful bird zipping in her ribcage when she wakes King for school. She doesn’t notice immediately – King sleeps through his alarms, and she needs to turn on the lamps and yank his bedsheets off if he ever plans to make it to class on time – but when she sees he hasn’t even bothered to pull his duvet back up, something sinks in her stomach.
“Hey, Sleeping Brutey,” Eda tries to be cheery, flickering the lamp on and off, trying to convince herself that he just fell back asleep. “What’s going on with you?”
King blinks at her slowly, his eyes glassy as he turns over to face her. All his limbs drag, his movements sluggish. Eda steps forward, kneeling to meet his eyes when he murmurs, “can I stay home today?”
“If you want,” Eda says. She presses the back of her hand to his forehead, the bone smooth and cool. No fever. “If you’re good with Luz keeping an eye on you.” It’s her final test, again, more for her own nerves than her judgement, to convince herself that her kid just wanted to play hooky.
Not that she would mind. She never needed the excuse of an illness for either of them to skip class, if they felt they needed a leisure day to get away from the stress. But offering a little inconvenience – a chore, a babysitter - always seemed to wiggle the truth of the matter out of them. As long as they were honest, they could do anything that didn’t get them killed or take bail money out of her savings.
She hopes painfully for a groan of disappointment, but King only nods lethargically, leaning into her touch. “That’d be nice.”
Eda sighs. “Is it the pain?”
“A bit,” he admits. “I don’t know. I just feel weird today.”
“We all have weird days,” Eda agrees. “Did you want bibi to call the healer’s office? We could go in today, see what’s going on.”
“We can wait ‘til tomorrow,” he says. “They won’t do anything, anyways.”
That makes a little piece of her heart crack, hearing him so resigned to the pain, to its inevitably. Her kid shouldn’t have to be in pain – shouldn’t feel like there was no one who could help him take it away. A younger self claws at her insides, the scared and scarred and difficult woman from a decade ago, raging for not knowing how to care for the little demon she brought home on a whim.
“Hey, we’ll figure something out,” she says, brushing her knuckles against his skull in soothing strokes. She takes a deep breath, wills the prickle under her skin to ease. “Just – try and get some rest in the meantime. Did you want me or Raine to stay home?”
"No, it’s fine,” he whispers, and curls into himself, his breath small and even. Eda tucks him in, steps out quietly.
“Where’s King?” Luz asks as Eda makes her way into the kitchen, flecks of griffon eggs flying from her lips as she scarfs down her breakfast. Raine sits across from her, trying and failing to hide their queasiness.
“He’s staying home today,” she tells her. She heads to the cabinet for a vial of Tylemaul, and an elixir of her own. “You don’t have class today, right? I’d like it if someone could keep an eye on him.”
“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Luz says, already sitting at attention. “Viney might come over to study, but that’s it. Is he okay?”
“I don’t know,” Eda grumbles. Saying it scares her. “His back again. Just make sure he’s okay.”
Luz nods solemnly, and it’s almost amusing, how comforted she is by her utter commitment to the task, to her brother. Raine stands, escaping her line of fire, offering to take the pain potion upstairs for Eda. Even with worry gnawing at her, she lets herself be shielded by the knowledge that her son is in good hands.
Hooty tells her at the door that King’s sleeping peacefully, but it’s still agony, tearing herself away from home knowing her son isn’t well. But a commitment to her family is also a commitment to bringing home the snails, so she plops herself down in her office for a gruelling morning.
She cancels her afternoon meeting, already deciding on giving herself a half day. Still, the teachers’ conference drags, the rest of the table casting odd glances at her as she bounces her leg hard enough to shake the table. Every document on her desk is nothing more than a blur of paper and ink, and she gives up on the proposal for new healing magic manikins when she rereads a line in the introduction for the fourth time without actually parsing the information. She’s almost relieved for a distraction, when her crystal ball chimes, before her stomach roils and drops. Luz is on the other end.
“It’s King,” she says the second Eda connects the call, and she’s already out of her chair, reaching for Owlbert. “I don’t know what happened – one second he was just sleeping – and, and now –“
“Girl, breathe,” Eda says, interrupting her own string of whispered curses. “Tell me what’s happening as best you can.”
“He’s in pain,” Luz cries. Her view of Luz is askew, the fish-eye lens of the ball contorting her features so that they fill out the screen in a caricature of her terrified face. When she shifts enough to let the background in, Eda can see she’s in King’s bedroom, see in the distant fuzziness the movement of a dark blur collapsed on the mattress. “He can’t move, I’m trying to calm him down, but-”
There’s a strangled cry from behind Luz, desperate and scared, and Eda can feel a line of feathers erupt up her spine. Fuck, fuck that’s her son, something is wrong with her son –
“Call for an emergency healer,” Eda tells her. “Don’t – hang up on me if you have to, just get a healer, I’m coming over right now.”
The ball chips when Eda places it in its base wrong; she’s already out the door and halfway across the main foyer by the time it rolls off her desk and clunks to the floor. Students part for her unquestioningly when they see her tearing down the hallway, a few professors immediately thinking better of getting her attention before she’s finally in open air, cold wind stinging at her cheeks, her wings aching from the resistance.
Hooty has the door open for her when she gets there, a healer’s white and red broomstick parked in the yard. She barely hears the house demon as she sprints through the door, taking the stairs up to King’s room two at a time.
“What’s going on?” she pants, taking in the room before her. It’s almost too normal – she expects broken drywall and shattered glass, a scene of crisis, but it’s still just King’s room, his bed unmade where he curls up onto himself, his stuffed animals littering the floor.
King rocks back and forth on his hands and knees, his fur raised in a spiky arc along the curve of his backbone. His groans, guttural, are muffled where he presses his face into Luz’s shirt, the young woman holding onto his horns so he doesn’t thrash away from the healer pressing their hands to his back. The healer shuffles through their bag, Luz close to tears as she tries to soothe him.
“What’s wrong?” Eda begs. She’s on her knees beside the bed, her arm coming around King’s back. The skin under his fur is straining, the muscles and bone underneath a hard, shifting gnarl contorting under her palm. She catches a glimpse of his face as he lets out a keening cry towards a ceiling, tear tracks streaming down his snout, muzzle twisted as he pants through his teeth. Specks of snot and vomit matt the fur around his mouth, and Eda pulls her sleeve up to wipe it away. “Baby, what’s wrong – tell me what hurts.”
“Everything!” he sobs, his voice loud and broken. Eda has to physically count her breaths, rubbing her hand up and down his back in rhythm. He arches into the touch, seeking its grounding counterpressure. Luz takes him by the front paws, letting him grip tight.
“I’ve called for transport, we need to bring him to a hospital,” says the healer, their voice miraculously steady. “Does he have any allergies to medications? We can provide him some relief on the way there.”
“I – I don’t know,” Eda says, trying to keep her voice even. “He never – he’s never needed-”
King screams, almost folding onto himself as he tries to writhe away from the surge of pain wracking his body. There’s a horrid pop-tear, the sound of a leather hide pulled taut until it rips suddenly and violent, and something gives under Eda’s hand, a gruesome slipping of flesh and sinew. She doesn’t get the chance to stare as the ragged fissure opens up in his back, a splitting of skin parallel to his spine that showers her clothes and face in a vicious burst of blue blood. She flinches back with the shock, and in the shortest moment between her fear and her recomposure, a split second she regrets for the rest of her life, she screams.
“Oh fuck!” Luz tumbles backwards, falling off the mattress with a thud, her hands covering her mouth. Eda will regret this too, later, for not scooping her daughter off the floor, for being too scared to do anything but stare helplessly at the nausea and panic in her face. For now, she only looks back at King as his body struggles, his limbs trembling, and his eyes – his eyes wide and fearful, but clear. Revelatory.
The healer is quick, already pressing large pads of gauze against the wound; they lean down to King’s face, their face kind as they try to reassure her son in his agony, until they peek up again in confusion. The dressings shift, folding away with the movement, and the room seems to gasp.
There’s noise downstairs, confusion and Hooty’s high pitched voice and the sound of boots tracking dirt onto her carpet, clomping up the stairs, all of it muffled by the ringing in Eda’s ears as she watches, velveteen tissue unfurling, the snap of bones, the grinding of joints popping into place. Extending from King’s back like a veil, threads of blood clots and oozing lymph stretching along it’s span, is one beautiful, terrible wing.
“Ms. Clawthorne, do you understand what I’m telling you?”
Eda nods mechanically, an automatic response that lets her slip further into her daze. Eyes hazy, locked on the second button of the healer’s powder blue coat, her mind buzzes in anxious circles, wondering, worrying, panicking before calming herself down again, the cycle repeating. Her ears twitch at footsteps echoing against the stone walls, eyes aching against the shining brightness of the hallway.
What of her brain isn’t occupied by a dissociative fog is busied with shoving her curse back. The Owl Beast is rampaging underneath her skin, making her muscles twitch and her bones ache from the effort of restraint, screaming to get her and her children out of this hell, or to just disappear from the nightmare she tripped her way into.
“You want to – do surgery,” she mutters around the nail she’s biting, her words slow, lethargic. She’s barely registering what she’s saying, let alone the spiel the healer had given her.
And his legion of powder blue coats with him, apparently. They stand like buttresses behind their leader, blocking the way to the room where they’ve put King while he’s being assessed. They had asked her to step out to discuss next steps, only for her to be assaulted by kind, clinical voices with uncaring, impassive faces, all of their eyes glinting with a familiar curiosity that makes Eda sick to her stomach. They do nothing but ogle and murmur amongst themselves, and it threatens to tip her over the edge she’s already so precariously perched on.
“Yes, yes of course, we’ll take care of releasing the second wing,” the healer says, waving his hand dismissively, a footnote in his thoughts. Something about the way he says it make her eyes flick up, the Owl Beast rearing, and she has to rub her palm up and down her arm to shed the feathers sprouting there. “What we wanted to discuss, of course, was taking a deeper look into the titan’s anatomy – not invasively of course, not at first.”
“The – Titan?” she asks. She can understand that there’s a disconnect between ideas in her head but can’t think clearly enough to know what they are. Or why they make her so fucking angry. “What does the Titan have to with this?”
“Well, yes, ma’am - you brought him in,” the healer says, as if reminding a child of a simple fact. “We will take care of his needs, and you see, we have an opportunity here – that could further our knowledge-”
“What are you talking about?” she growls – fully growls, voice deepening, her body shaking. Her teeth hurt where they want to sprout out of her gums, or from grinding her teeth, she can’t tell.
“You must understand, we know so little,” the healer insists, even as the edges of Eda’s vision starts to blur with furious tears, the darkness of owlish sclera. “And it would benefit the titan’s health and wellbeing, if we were able to predict-”
“His name is King,” declares a voice, calm and daunting in its resonance as it fills the hall, “and you will refer to him as such.”
The healers jump collectively, and it would be funny to Eda if she weren’t whirling around to find its source. Seeing Raine come down the hall is like watching a ship part the waves, each step a slice through the fog in her mind. Their face is stony, a diplomatic expression hiding their anger well, each stride accompanied with an authoritative sweep of their cape. Their grip on their staff is pale-knuckled.
“Raine,” Eda sighs in relief, and immediately leans into the steadying hand on the small of her back.
“I came as soon as Luz called,” they say, before turning back to the healer – they square their shoulders, and when they speak next their voice is vibrant, almost liltingly hypnotic. “May I ask what this conversation is about?”
“Councillor Whispers,” the healer acknowledges with a slight bow, before dusting off his robes. “I was just speaking to your partner here about the chance to get some, say, samples, for the benefit of the hospital’s daemonology research-”
“Do they directly influence King’s care?”
“Not directly-”
“Then we do not consent at this time,” they state. “That is all.”
“Y-yes, Mx. Whispers,” the healers stutter dully. The one leading the pack shuffles awkwardly in front of them, before busying himself with the files on the wall with a frown, while the others drift dully off in different directions. When they’ve gone, Raine slumps, blinking rapidly.
“Thank you,” Eda whimpers. She wraps her arms over their shoulders, taking a deep breath of their rosin and oak scent to ground herself. “I know you hate doing that.”
“It is technically a form of magical assault,” they state against her shoulder – she’s only ever seen them do it a few times, once to convince a coven scout to loosen her cuffs enough to work her magic. “But I can see you were losing the plot a bit, and they seemed – annoyingly persistent.”
“Yeah,” she nods. “The way they were talking about King…”
“Where is he?” Raine asks. They step away so Eda can show them through the door into a ward, beds empty except for the one shrouded by thin curtains, shadows darting across their surface from the other side.
The room is a shuffle of feet and frantic murmurs, blurs of healers’ scrubs flitting around a children’s cot, its occupant is once again obscured by a wall of powder blue. Luz sits on the edge of a chair on the outskirts of the pack, one arm reaching through a gap in the fortress of bodies, maintaining a desperate grasp around a little grey paw.
“May I ask who is directly involved in my son’s care,” Raine announces to the room again, all eyes on them. When all but two of them, who sit huddled with stained gauze and antiseptic by the beside, show no indication of a role, Raine nods.
“Good. The rest of you may leave,” and it’s a demand, not a suggestion. Raine steps forward as the extra bodies file out of the room, getting down on their knees beside Luz’s chair, both of them scooting forward until they can lean on mattress.
King lies on his side, his body curled in a gentle moon’s crescent underneath the thin sheets. Eyes closed, a line of discomfort in his furrowed brow, he hugs a pillow to his chest as he trembles, flinching at every touch before settling again, a lank. His new wing – Eda can hear Raine choke down a gasp as their eyes trace its form – extends over the edge of the bed, a velvety layer of downy hair across its piebald surface sticking up in the tiniest of spikes, moist with dried indigo blood and soapy water. Eda is gifted with a small breeze when it twitches, the sound like a laundry line whipping in the wind. Later, when its twin is released under a heaping of sedation, she’ll think it beautiful, the whole of her son astounding. For now, it makes her sick.
“Hey, buddy,” Raine coos, voice barely a breath. Their hand reaches out towards his skull, their thumb brushing oh so softly against the bone. The gesture makes Eda whimper; they’re so tender with him, so much love in such a simple motion that she could cry with her son on the receiving end of it.
“Mm,” King grunts. He can barely blink his eyes open, his head making it less than an inch off his pillow before it flops back down, leaden. The lines and wires reaching from the walls pump him with medication, fluids, things Eda can’t pronounce that make him sluggish, drowsy. “Bibi?”
“You betcha,” Raine whispers, giving King a soft, sweet smile. “How’re you holding up?”
“M’good,” King slurs. His paw – the one not sitting in Luz’s palm – picks gently at the pillow against his stomach, his claws pulling at the threads. “They gave me this fluffy bunny to pet.”
Raine chuckles, such a lovely sound to hear with King’s screams still echoing in Eda’s brain. “They’re giving you the good stuff, huh.”
“Mm,” King agrees, “goooood stuff, good shtuff, shuff, shit,” he laughs. “Shorry. ‘S rude.”
“I think you’ve earned it, pal,” Luz laughs, her giggles wet with snot and tears. The tendons in her hand flex as she squeezes his paw.
“Wh’they doing?” he asks. His head lolls as he tries to look over his shoulder, craning to get a glimpse at the healer’s hands. At the same time, his wing flaps, sending a surgical sponge into the air before it plops wetly against the tile floor. “Whoa.”
“Easy buddy,” Raine comforts. “I bet you’re still pretty sore.”
“S’better,” King continues. “N’more – preshure. S’lighter. Feels good.”
“It must feel better, now that you can move it around freely,” says the healer behind him. “But we’re still trying to clean up the skin around it, so we need you to keep it still, okay?”
“Mhm,” King nods. “Shshouldn’t there be a second one?” he asks. “Only have one r’now.”
“You’ll have your second one soon, King,” the healer assures, lightly draping the wing against the mattress.
“Will it hurt?” he asks, voice small, eyes full of fear as he tries to grasp onto the events that brought him here, the blur of agony and relief, of terror and sudden understanding all in one. Eda aches to scoop him up in her arms.
“We’re going to make it hurt as little as we possibly can,” the healer assures. She turns to Raine, to Luz, and finally to Eda, a promise in the form of a nod and a smile. “We’ll figure it out.”
To her credit, and the rest of the hospital’s, Eda must admit – they not only figure it out, but they make it jarringly uneventful.
The only time she steps foot outside, those first few days, is when Raine sends her and Luz home in a scab, too worried about the dazed look in their eyes to let either of them fly by themselves. It gives her a chance to pack her things, down a few elixirs and wash the dried flecks of Titan’s blood off her skin. The chance to hug her daughter close. To take a breath, knowing Raine promised over and over to not let King out of their sight, let alone under any healer’s knife, without Eda’s presence. When she comes back, she falls asleep in a waiting room chair, halfway on Raine’s lap with Luz on her other side, and in a blink her son is out of surgery, drowsy and barfing from the drugs onto an unfortunate healer’s shoe, but otherwise completely intact.
They spend a week in a children’s ward, after that. King is not the oldest one there, but the few teens on the floor are far outnumbered by a bunch of coughing, sneezing gremlins below the age of ten. They like to follow Eda around as she and King pace the hallways, tucking her shed feathers behind their ears and asking if she’s a pirate.
She says yes, of course, fabricating tales of selkidomuses biting her hand off in bloody detail until the whole ward is a riot of screaming children.
She sits vigil at the foot of King’s bed for three nights before Raine shoos her home again. It almost turns into an argument, one that makes tears prick behind her eyes to have her realize that, yeah, maybe she isn’t getting much sleep twisting herself into the hard-backed hospital armchair every night. So, for King’s comfort and her own mental state, she goes home. She doesn’t get much sleep in her nest either, but she concedes that it is easier on her joints.
She only does it because Raine takes her place, the fourth night. They run their fingers through his fur when he wakes up groaning in pain, and lulls him back asleep with the gentle strumming of a mandolin.
The fifth night, Luz replaces Raine – the kid next door had heard Raine playing, and by lunch they needed to escape their brutal audience of tiny cretins – and Eda is told the two were scolded twice by the night healers, for giggling with each other well into the night. The sixth, Lilith, who Eda finds slumped over a historical transcript in the morning. The seventh, her dad, perched peaceful and still on the edge of the chair even with his lumbago. There is no eighth night, but when Camila comes through that day with well wishes, Luz in tow to clean up the Owl House for their return, she makes a joke about getting bloodstains out of King’s sheets and how puberty is the same across species, apparently, and Eda howls with laughter as Raine chokes on their drink.
Every night, Eda and Luz swap out King’s sentinel of stuffed animals, a rotating guard on the foot of his cot to maximize efficiency and readiness in the case of ambush. And every day, Eda is there to link arms with her son as they walk the halls, watching as he stretches his wings out little by little, as the first of the bandages fall away.
“Offerings!” King cheers every morning, when another tray of baked goods and get-well cards find themselves wheeled to his room. He isn’t the most popular kid at school, but word gets around quick, and soon they have to sort through his gifts to consider what to take home or what to put in the bin.
(There’s one card signed by someone named “Val,” two uneven arches connecting the points of the capital V to make a heart. Eda wordlessly tucks it into the for-keeps pile before Luz spots it. Pandemonium ensues)
They get their own card, to thank the healers on the ward, and Luz and King work for days on the glyph inside. When the staff open it, the foyer is lit up by sparkling lights and the sound of firecracker fizzle, the healers laughing and screaming, the kids going nuts, and their family gets to leave the hospital like they seem to leave anywhere else - in a scene of cheerful chaos.
Eda holds out for an hour of tossing and turning before surrendering to the reality of a sleepless night. Toeing into her tattered slippers, an extra blanket around her shoulders to keep out the knife season chill, she kisses Raine’s hair and sneaks out of the nest.
It must be close to morning at least, she thinks. Stars still litter the sky outside the kitchen window, but a thin strip of rich, inky blue lining the horizon promises the eventual arrival of the golden tones of sunrise. The house is still, distant snoring the only sound that taints the silence. Tired but content, she pours some apple blood into its designated kettle, catching it before it whistles, sighing with the chance to warm her palm against a steaming mug. She’s about to step through the backdoor for some fresh air, oh so carefully turning the latch as to not wake Hooty, that her ears catch the sound of creaking floorboards above her.
King’s shadow precedes him, a looming ghost that lumbers down the stairs with his slow, heavy footfalls. It’s a familiar scene, and his body is dwarfed by its precedence, but Eda can’t help but note how his frame fills out the doorway now. Soon, he’ll be as tall as his sister.
“Can’t sleep?” Eda whispers, watching him fondly as he yawns wide, his teeth vicious but his squeak adorable. He nods, squinting into the dim orange light of the kitchen lamp.
“Wh’ time is it?” he slurs, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He sighs each time he lurches forward, his brow furrowed. “Can I take another dose?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Eda says, and she’s already turning to the kitchen cabinet. King had been sent home with three different potions, but once his pain reached a more than manageable stage, he was happy to wean himself onto a rotating schedule of Tylemaul and Advile. It was easier on the stomach. “Want something to wash it down with?”
“Apple blood?” he asks hopefully.
“No,” and they both laugh. “But there’s still some shockolate cake and smilk left,” and that makes King’s eyes crinkle with a smile, his tail a slow, lazy wag. “Go to the living room, I’ll bring it to you.”
She makes two trips, first their drinks of choice, then balancing two plates, careful not to drop lest she wake the rest of the house. Her own serving ends up by her feet in favour of snuggling up next to King on the sofa, wrapping her arm around his shoulders as he chugs his glass, crumbs flying as he digs in.
“You’re going to choke,” Eda quips. King doesn’t hear her, only leans in closer as he scrapes shockolate icing off the plate with his fork. Eda gives him a squeeze, fingers running through his bedhead. “What’s got you up at this hour, huh?”
“Couldn’t sleep,” he shrugs. Her question had made him slow down, his fork twirling between his fingers, his gaze eyeing his warped reflection in the tarnished metal.
“Pain getting to you again?” Eda offers, an easy out. She dislodges herself from their embrace only to reach down, wordlessly taking her own untouched slice and handing it to him. When he remains silent, she continues. “Or is there something else?”
“I dunno,” he sighs. Eda doesn’t urge him, lets him get lost in thought until he stumbles somewhere interesting. She’s happy under the pleasant pressure of his body against her, the warm shift of his breathing. “I just – it’s all so fucked up.”
“Hey,” Eda warns, but there’s no venom in it. “I know, kiddo. You’ve been through a lot, in just the last few weeks.”
“It’s just,” he starts again, “so much to get in so little time, y’know? And now I have to get used to this.”
Eda lets out a little oof as she’s shoved halfway forward on the loveseat, his wing stretching out behind her, strong and limber. To say it was an adjustment was an understatement of vast proportion – from figuring out how to tailor his uniform to remembering to tuck them close enough to his body before walking through a doorway. He had knocked over more than three pieces of glassware already, her and Raine still finding potential victims within the range of his wingspan, and usually only once they’ve quite literally fallen casualty to a topple.
And yet, even with all the drama it took for them to realize what was happening, Eda still thought they were handsome. They filled out his frame, blended with his fur, a counterweight that kept him in balance as he ran through the house, his energy slowly returning. A new realization of his titanic nature, it makes her appreciate the son she was so lucky to have.
That didn’t make King’s own conflict any less relevant, though. “I hear ya,” she says, and nudges him, a little encouragement, to reassure him that she was listening.
“It’s been – overwhelming, you know? I have this whole new part of me I get to figure out how to live with. And it’s so cool that I get to figure it out with you and Raine and Luz, that I get a whole family to help me out. I was so scared being in that hospital, but – you three made me feel like I was safe.”
“Oh, King,” Eda breathes, afraid that if she speaks any louder he’ll hear the lump lodged in her throat.
“But… I also wish someone had warned me. Someone who could’ve told me what was happening to me. It was scary, and I felt so wrong and I felt like all that pain would’ve been worth it, to go through, if I knew what was happening and how I’d come out the other side. Even with everyone there, I was still missing – someone, to guide me through it.” He looks up at Eda, his eyes glassy with tears. In the silence of his stare – of the unspoken knowledge of that someone - he begs her for a forgiveness she would never, ever ask of him. “Is that bad?”
“Of course not,” she insists. “It must be so hard, not having anyone who can relate to that. I’m sorry we can’t help you with that.”
“It’s not your fault,” King says.
“I won’t pretend that I’ll ever fully understand what you have to go through,” Eda says, once King’s been quiet for a while. Her words are careful, tentative. Still, King stays attentive, looking up at her with admiration, and it’s almost harder to find the words to express herself properly in the tangled monster of her own decades-long turmoil of emotions, than to make sure she doesn’t tread on his. “But, I felt a similar way, when I was young, and the curse took me for the first time. I was scared, and in pain.” She softens the edges of it; she remembers the agony, the unbearable grind of her bones shifting, the horror of being hunted in her own mind. The first time, she had thought she was dying.
She tries not to dwell on the thought that maybe, when his wing burst from him, King was thinking the same thing.
“When I woke up,” she continues, “I didn’t realize what had happened to me. I felt like my mind and my body was betraying me, and for years I didn’t know how to control myself. But I managed. Or tried to, at least. I learned new things, as the years went by. What triggered it. What kept it at bay. And then you and Luz came into my life, and I had two new reasons to finally confront myself, all the – the fear, and the uncertainty. And even after that, there’s still things I’ll never get to know, and I’ll just have to accept that.”
“And that’s okay,” King responds, “because what we do know, we figure out together, as a family. No matter what.” His tired eyes looking up at her with a small smile. “And that’s what matters. To me, at least.”
“When did you get so wise?” Eda teases, hoisting the upper half of his body onto her lap and getting an indignant yelp in response.
“Because I had the Owl Lady for a mother,” he teases back, before grumbling, slighted by the way she peppers kisses against his skull. It hides the way her chin trembles, but she holds him to her chest long after her tears have dried.
“BEHOLD!” King declares to his audience. Arms out in triumph, his unfurled wings spanning the length of the living room, he turns to let its occupants see him from every angle.
“No wayyyy,” Gus teases, enthused, circling King with the endless energy of a veritable hype-man. He holds a fist to his mouth as he scrutinizes, nodding his head, impressed. Behind his sarcasm oozes the genuine admiration that shines in his eyes. “How’d you get an illusion stone to do all that?”
“Do not insult me!” King shouts triumphantly. He puts his hands on his hips, tilting his head up to the sky. “This is the candid visage of a true, exulted demon!”
“Oh great,” Eda mutters to Raine, tucked against her side. “He’s going to go on like this for the rest of the night.”
Eda watches with a wry smile at the tableau in front of her, a get together after a gruelling set of midterms. The crowd of young adults in her already cramped living room crammed up against the walls to avoid the eventual thwap of a wing in their face. Hunter and Willow, on the other side of the sofa, sit together, leaning backwards every time King tries to look over his shoulder to gauge their reaction – they smile tentatively, nodding, before leaning back again, inches from another strike. Luz and Amity sprawl half on top of each other on the floor, ducking when they need.
“Let him have his fun,” Raine says, kissing her on the cheek in consolation. “He’s earned it.”
“I guess,” Eda rolls her eyes, but even she can’t help the lopsided grin pulling at her cheeks. King had been so animated since the last of his bandages finally came off, the paling scar tissue on his back disappearing under the growth of new fur. The new wings were unwieldy, sure, but Eda can tell he’s starting to love them. She can’t help but be grateful, if heartsick at her boy growing up, to have the chance to watch him grow into them fully.
“WE HAVE A VISITOR!” Hooty shrieks cheerfully, knocking Gus over as he tangles himself around King’s body, and in fact keeping said demon from being able to answer the door. “IT’S FOR YOOOUUUU.”
“Blegh, Hooty, get off!” King yells, trying and failing to wiggle himself free. Eda can see the beginnings of a scuffle evolving, so, groaning, she excuses herself from the Raine’s embrace to make her way to the door. They take it as their own signal to head to the kitchen – a good call, she thinks as she eyes the clock, late enough to excuse themselves to start prepping the table for dinner – resigned to the fact that it was easier to clean up the aftermath of such skirmishes than risk a tussle that would injure old bones.
It’s a little odd, she thinks. They’re not expecting anyone else at this hour. It could be one of King’s friends from Hexside – a rotating cast of dorks delivering him homework while he was still healing, a reduced workload Eda was sure to fenagle out of the new principal with a mixture of pity and celebrity status – but they came by often enough to know to leave his books at the door for Hooty, or come through the backdoor to avoid him entirely. It makes sense, then, when she finally swats Hooty away, that she doesn’t recognize the little demon on her doorstep.
She’s dorkier than a typical Hexside student, Eda muses silently. She stands stock straight – her height still unimpressive – staring at her shoes through a pair of thick lenses that throw her already wide, colourful eyes into an exaggerated magnificence. Web-like frills twitch nervously at the sides of her head, her fingers picking at the sleeves of her Oracle purples.
“Ms – Ms. Clawthorne?” she asks sheepishly. She extends her thick arms towards Eda, handing her the stack of books she had been clutching close to her chest. She doesn’t meet Eda’s eyes. “I brought King’s homework.”
“Eda’s fine, kid. None of that “Ms.” nonsense outside of school hours,” she says, hoisting the proffered items under her arm. “I don’t think we’ve met before.”
“Thank you, Ms – Ms. Eda.” Eh, close enough. “I’m Valarine. Me and King share a Potions class.”
Oh?
“Valarine, huh?” Eda says, louder than necessary, and King goes silent behind her. She shifts so that she can lean on her stump in the doorway, and she can feel the rest of the living room tilting the other way, so they can catch a glimpse through the gap Eda leaves them. “Yeah, I think King’s mentioned you a couple times.”
“Really?” Valarine asks, a purplish hue rising in her cheeks. She leans forward on her tiptoes, gasping when her and King catch each other’s gaze over Eda’s shoulder. “Ah -! King! You look -!”
“Weh -?! Val-!?” King stutters, laughing nervously to himself. He snaps his wings against his back. “Uh – hi.”
“Hi.”
“Uh,” King’s claws twiddle nervously at his sides, as he steps away from the pack of barely adults now staring at him. Luz’s once wide, surprised eyes have shrunk into a squint, her face twisting into something impish as she looks between the two young demons. “Hey.”
Oh, this is brutal. Eda turns back to Valarine. “Did you want to stay for dinner?”
“I thought King couldn’t have friends over until he cleaned up the stuffies in him room,” Luz pipes up from the floor, an outright evil smile on her face. Amity swats her, but joins in the little chorus of giggles that erupt from the group.
“LIES! SLANDER!” King shrieks, his voice shrill, pointing an accusatory claw at Luz. When his sister scuttles away from under his impassioned defense, he whirls back around to see Valarine smiling sweetly. The tips of his wings flush a light blue – that’s new. “I DON’T KNOW WHAT SHE’S TALKING ABOUT!” he screams, and then darts up the stairs to his room, Luz racing after him, laughing
Hopeless sap that he is, he leeaves poor Valarine with Eda on the doorstep. “Ya gonna come in, kid?” Eda asks, quirking an eyebrow at her. “You’re letting the cold in.”
Valarine jumps before nodding wordlessly, scurrying in hurriedly and tripping over Hooty’s enthusiastic raveling around her ankles. Eda shakes her head, laughing to herself as she heads to the kitchen, hearing yelling and thumping from her kids upstairs. “Rainestorm,” she calls, winking at the little demon as she leads her inside. “Put another table setting down. King has a guest!”