Chapter Text
There’s a man at the breakfast table.
He’s very pretty. Annoyingly pretty. The sort of pretty that threatens to twist Inge’s stomach up and make her look away. And really, he’s not a man-man like Ari from the docks or Magnus from the library or even Pabbi back when he had still been around. He’s young, like Kyrie, only six or so years older than Rós, so only twelve or so years older than Inge and Marta. Barely a man.
But that doesn’t mean he’s supposed to be there. Inge narrows her eyes, her hand reaching out to grab Marta’s, tugging her twin behind her slightly.
The man-barely-man in question is talking with a very soft voice to Amma, a steaming cup of coffee in front of him. Kyrie is sitting next to him, hand intertwined with his, side pressed up against his, looking happier than Inge has seen her since… well, since ever.
Rós looks at him like he’s one of those actors in those magazines she swears she doesn’t read, all wide-eyed and looking like drool is about to drip out of her mouth any second.
Gross.
“Amma,” Inge calls, all three adults turning to look at her as she does. (Rós keeps staring at the man-not-man all mushy. Seriously gross.) “Hver er þetta?” Who is this?
Amma smiles at her, gesturing her over. Her bracelets jingle as she does. Inge thinks about staying back, suspicious, but Marta eagerly bounces right up, her hand slipping loose from hers.
“Ég er Marta,” I’m Marta, she cheerfully says, sticking her hand out.
The man-not-man shakes it without hesitation, smiling at her. He doesn’t drop Kyrie’s hand so he’s awkwardly holding both their hands. It doesn’t seem to bother him, though, and it definitely doesn’t bother Kyrie, who doesn’t even try to hide her smile when she notices.
“I’m Dave,” the man says, replying in English. “Nice to meet you.”
Amma clears her throat. “English, girls, please. It is important to practice.”
It is important to practice. It’s why Inge is the best in the playschool at speaking English (Marta is close, but Inge actually likes studying, so that’s why she’s first). Sure, the other kids say it’s because her Amma was an English teacher years ago, but still.
Amma, it seems, isn’t close to being done with dispensing her words of wisdom. She also turns to Dave, holding her hand up. “And you will learn Icelandic,” she says with a wry smile, leaning over to pat him on the hand. “You’ll pick up fast.”
“Took Kyrie for-everrrr,” Marta interjects, grinning when the girl in question scoffs at her. Kyrie leans past Dave, grabbing Marta by the waist to haul her up on her lap, tickling her on the sides as she does. “But she’s not bad at it!”
Kyrie sniffs. “Thank you, Marta. I had really good teachers helping me.”
Rós clears her throat. When everyone turns to look at her, she flushes pink as if she hadn’t expected everyone to give her attention, which, Inge thinks, is so dumb.
“I can help teach you,” she says in a quiet voice, looking literally anywhere but at them, her face becoming progressively redder and redder until she’s just a tomato with brown hair.
Inge rolls her eyes. Seriously embarrassing. She debates telling her that, but decides against it. Rós didn’t need her help to be embarrassed.
Dave smiles at her encouragingly, looking slightly caught off guard. “Um, yeah, that would be great. Thank you.”
Marta reaches over to grab his arm, shaking him to grab his attention. “I can help too! I taught Kyrie!”
Dave laughs, agreeing, even as Kyrie drops her head down to rest on Marta’s. Inge has never seen Kyrie like this, all smiley and happy. She smiles, yeah, at her and her sisters, at Nanna, at Amma, but not like this. Her smiles are always so… hesitant, nervous. It reminds Inge of when her Pabbi left, how Amma had smiled at them as if she didn’t know what else to do but smile, but she didn’t really mean it. Kyrie smiles like that all the time - smiling because it’s what she’s supposed to do, not because she actually wants to.
She smiles now, though. It lights her face up, wide and bright and sunny. Her smile means it now. Her smile is beautiful, Inge thinks, a warm feeling in her chest. Kyrie has always been pretty, but now she glows, shining bright.
She glances at Dave. He’s smiling at Kyrie, too. His smile is almost too big for his face, making him look even more boyish than he already did, and he looks nearly deliriously happy even though all he’s doing is sitting at the kitchen table.
Huh.
That, more than anything, makes her sit at the breakfast table, looking at the pair of them with interest. Marta is talking a mile a minute, excitedly telling Dave and Kyrie about her VHS of Nonni and Manni and how, if they watch it with her, she promises to explain any ‘confusing’ parts, while Rós gets pinker and pinker by the second, the longer she looks at Dave.
Amma just looks like she wants to laugh.
“Do you tell stories?” Inge asks, loud enough to be heard over Marta’s motor mouth. Everyone turns to look at her. Unlike Rós, she doesn’t get flustered and just leans over the table to peer at Dave. “Kyrie always tells us stories. Can you?”
Kyrie giggles, sounding utterly delighted. “He tells better stories than me, Inge,” she tells her, her eyes twinkling. “I learned from him.”
Inge frowns. “But you tell the best stories, Kyrie.”
Marta makes a noise. “Yeah! There’s no way. I bet his stories don’t have Prince Michael.”
“Prince Michael?” Dave asks, his voice pitching high, his eyes practically sparkling as he looks at Kyrie with a massive grin. He pulls her closer by her hand, leaning towards her, his shoulder knocking into hers. Marta looks like she’s going to explode from excitement from her spot smooshed between them. “There’s a Prince Michael in your stories?”
Now it's Kyrie’s turn to flush pink.
Inge’s frown grows deeper. Why is everyone blushing? Are her and Marta the only immune ones? Should they blush too?
Amma laughs. When she glances over at her, thankfully, Amma is not blushing too. She just looks like she wants to keep laughing and laughing. “Oh yes, Dave. There is a Prince Michael. He’s very handsome and brave and loyal like all good princes are. I’m sure Kyrie would love to tell you all about him.”
Dave blushes.
Inge wonders if she should blush to fit in.
Marta nods her head eagerly, not at all concerned with the skin condition threatening to afflict them all. “He and his friends helped save the mage! They found her in the woods one day!”
“He’s a prince, sure, but he’s also a Pala… Pala…” Inge tries, her tongue tripping over the unfamiliar word. She huffs in frustration, feeling the back of her neck burn hot in embarrassment.
“Paladin,” Rós murmurs, her cheeks still flushed even as she shoots Inge a smug look. “He’s a paladin.”
“That’s like a knight,” Marta informs Dave, nodding solemnly as she leans over to pat him on the hand. Dave looks like if he smiles any bigger, his face is going to be permanently stuck like that. “But Pa- Pala… Pa - la - din is hard to say. So we made him a prince.”
Inge nods sharply. “The mage deserves a prince anyways! She’s so brave and smart and brave and smart girls get princes. That’s the rule.”
Dave laughs. “That’s a good rule. You’re smart for having that rule. You should get a prince too.”
Oh no.
Inge can feel her face warming up. Is she turning pink? Is it contagious?
Marta shoots her hand straight up in the air like she’s in class, nearly whacking Kyrie on the chin. “I want a prince too! I’m smart too!”
“Yeah, you are,” Dave says, quick to reassure her. “You’re my Icelandic teacher. You gotta be smart to do that.”
Marta cheers and Kyrie laughs. Kyrie’s laugh has always made Inge’s heart warm but now it sounds like bells in the wind, light and airy and pretty. Kyrie’s pretty and Dave is nice and oh no.
Her cheeks go pinker.
This is horrible.
She opens her mouth, ready to tell Dave to leave because this is humiliating, but, in the very next breath, she snaps her mouth shut.
Because Dave pulls Kyrie’s hand up to his mouth, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. His dark eyes are dancing up at her and Inge didn’t even know that eyes could shine like his are right now. Kyrie doesn’t stop laughing, not right away, her cheeks still flushed, but her face gets softer, her smile just that much more gentle. She’s smiling at him like it’s the easiest thing in the world.
And it isn’t. Inge knows that. When Pabbi had left and Amma had smiled at them like it had been okay, Inge had wondered how she could manage that when all Inge wanted to do was cry. Marta had cried. So had Rós. But Inge couldn’t even cry. She couldn’t even smile.
But things had gotten better. Playschool was fun, the kids not really caring that Inge and Marta don’t have a Mamma or a Pabbi. The farm was even more fun even if it was a lot of work that she didn’t really know how to do.
And then came Kyrie.
Inge still remembers how Kyrie had looked when Amma had first brought her home. She was quiet - not quiet-shy like Inge but quiet-sad like Rós had been after Pabbi - and her clothes were all covered in dirt like she had been sleeping outside. She had, Inge found out later, been sleeping outside - out by Kirkjufellsfoss.
Kyrie didn’t say much, not for a while, but that was okay because Marta said a lot. Marta was good like that. Kyrie eventually started talking again, first to Amma and then to Marta and then, finally, to Rós and Inge. She was really funny and nice, always willing to sit with Inge and Marta to read their books or go with them on all their chores. She worked hard on the farm, so natural that even mean old Nanna had taken to her like old friends. The chickens and goats always ran up to her like she was Snow White or something too.
And she did smile.
But not like this.
Inge sighs, settling back in her seat. Kyrie is lucky, she thinks, to have so much love. Inge loves Kyrie and so does Marta, and Rós, and Amma, and now, she realizes, Dave too. And Kyrie loves them all back too.
“Is he your prince?” Inge asks without thinking. Her question lands like a rock, and everyone freezes at it. Dave and Kyrie look at each other, talking without words or whatever it is that adults do with one another. The longer it goes on, though, the more Inge thinks that maybe they are talking without words.
“He is,” Kyrie says after a minute, a laugh hiding in her voice. “He’s my prince.”
“Prince Dave!” Marta cheers, clapping her hands. “Oh, you’re so lucky, Kyrie. He’s really pretty.”
“Handsome,” Rós interjects, her whole face still red. “Boys are handsome.”
Marta shakes her head, rolling her eyes. “Yeah, but some boys are pretty. Like in your magazines!”
“Handsome,” Rós insists, the pink in her face from annoyance now rather than from staring all moony-eyed at Dave. “They’re handsome.”
“Pretty!” Marta yells, leaning so far out of Kyrie’s lap to glare at Rós that Kyrie has to wrap her arm around her waist to keep her from falling. She points at a clearly very confused and flustered Dave. “He’s pretty!”
“Handsome!”
“PRETTY!”
“He is,” Inge butts in, wanting to get her piece in. “But Kyrie’s prettier.”
“Kyrie is prettier,” Dave agrees. “And, um, thank you for calling me pretty. It’s okay with me.”
“YOU’RE WELCOME!” Marta shouts, throwing herself back into her seat, which just means she cuddles up closer to Kyrie. She smiles all smugly at them as if she had just won a fight, which, Inge realizes, she kinda had.
Rós, to her credit, doesn’t say anything. She just rolls her eyes, says something under her breath that they’re definitely not allowed to say, and turns to stare out the window.
Amma sighs, but it’s one of those sighs that means she’s holding herself back from laughing. Inge can tell even as Amma starts to wag her finger at them all, her bracelets jingling as she does. “Girls, please, where are your manners? Dave will think I raised you in a barn.”
“You kinda did,” Rós says after a moment, still staring outside the window. They all follow her gaze. Nanna is in the field, Jóna and Njála grazing some distance away from her. Behind her, the barn in question stands proud.
Amma sighs again, except this time, it’s one of those sighs that means she’s losing her patience. “The goats have better manners than all of you. What do you girls want for breakfast?”
“Waffles,” Inge immediately says.
Amma shoots her a look.
“Please,” she tacks on.
Amma sighs, but when she gets up, she ruffles Inge’s hair as she moves towards the kitchen. Dave immediately gets up too, saying something about helping out, and, as he passes Kyrie, he drops a kiss to the top of her head. He does it without even thinking, as if his body won’t let him move without kissing her. Marta coos from her spot in Kyrie’s lap, immediately bursting into shrieking giggles when the older girl moves to tickle her relentlessly. Even Rós cracks a smile, finally turning away from the window to laugh at Marta under siege.
Inge grabs Dave’s wrist as he goes to walk past her. The older boy immediately slows to a stop, crouching down next to the chair so he can look Inge directly in the eye.
“You ok?” He asks, his eyes scanning her.
Inge looks him over. He is pretty, painfully so, but he’s kind, and he loves Kyrie, and that, Inge knows, is far more important. “You can stay.” She tells him, sighing, so he knows she’s making a sacrifice. “You make Kyrie happy.”
Dave smiles at her, his hand coming up to press over his heart. He bows his head as if taking a solemn vow before looking back up to meet her eyes. “Thank you, Inge. That’s all I want to do.”
“But,” Inge hisses, pointing her finger at him in a mild threat. To her great disappointment, he doesn’t flinch or anything, just meeting her eyes steadily. “You have to tell us stories too. Good stories. They probably won’t be as good as Kyrie’s though.”
“They definitely won’t be,” Dave says, nodding his head. “But I’ll try my best. Hopefully you’ll like mine too. I’ll tell you as many as you want.”
“You promise?” Inge asks, curling her fingers into a fist and sticking her pinkie out. “Promises are something you can’t break.”
She debates telling him that Kyrie told her that but, when his smile softens, she realizes she won’t have to.
He reaches over, locking his pinky with hers, and giving it a firm shake. “I promise.”
Inge finally smiles back at him.
Yeah, she guesses he can stay.