Chapter 897 - 896- Accepting the Second Iteration

Chapter 897: Chapter 896- Accepting the Second Iteration

Bella, three steps away, watched him vanish with Kaida in his arms, and her ears drooped all the way down. Her tail drooped too. ’He did it again. He took Kaida and abandoned me. Again. He always forgets the cat. He remembers the dragon, he remembers the elf, he remembers everyone, and the cat gets left on the lawn like a... ’

A hand landed on her rear, and a finger curled around the base of her tail, tugging gently, and Bella’s complaint dissolved into a long, shivering moan before she even knew it was leaving her mouth.

"Let’s go," his voice said from behind her, warm against her ear.

"Shouldn’t you both be playing with my children before giving birth to the other ones?"

And he was gone, with both of them, leaving only spinning air and scattered grass.

Mira laid back on the lawn where he had left her, gasping, one hand rubbing her rounded belly, the other drifting down between her own thighs to the wet mess he had made of her and never finished. She stared at her own pussy, glistening in the sun, clenching around nothing.

’Will I also have the bloated belly like the mistresses?’ she thought, dazed and unashamed. ’That... that does not sound like a punishment at all.’

The nursery at the top of the tower was a strange republic of books, chalkboards, and building blocks, and in the middle of it, seated in their diapers on a soft rug, were two boys.

The elder twin, spectacles on his tiny nose, was riding a wooden horse in slow, thoughtful intervals while reading a book wedged against its mane. Advanced Arithmetic for Young Minds. He had annotated it in pencil. In the margins. In two colors.

"Brother," said the younger twin, stacking a block labeled with a differential equation. "What do you think father would be doing right now?"

The elder twin did not look up from his book. His riding rhythm slowed while he processed.

"It is a very highly complex thing that we should not be pondering about. Mother warned us to separate our curiosity from father’s interests, or he would be angry."

"If he would be angry, then what could he even do?"

The elder twin considered this with the gravity of a philosopher. "He would just leave us alone. Like every time he does."

A silence. Blocks were placed. A horse was ridden.

"Indeed," the younger twin said at last. "You are right. Even if we were to ponder about his matters, he would most probably leave us. So it does not have any consequences. Indeed."

"Indeed."

They returned to their mathematics, one month old and fluent, two small engines of curiosity running on their mothers’ teaching and their own bottomless appetite for the next fact. The younger twin was in the middle of proving, with blocks, why his brother’s pencil margin-note on page forty was slightly wrong, when the voice came from the doorway.

"I see. So that is what my children think about me?"

Both boys flinched. It was a small, total flinch, the full-body startle of small creatures caught by a large predator, and then they turned, and their father stood in the doorway in a towel, arms folded, with Kaida and Bella beside him, held against his sides like trophies he had collected on the way up the stairs.

The twins rose. Even in diapers, even at a month old, they stood, straightened their spines, and bowed in unison, precisely thirty degrees.

"Hello, father."

"Apologies. Apologies for this and that."

The delivery was immaculate. Synchronized. Heartbreaking.

Viktor stared at them for a long moment. Then he crossed the room and scooped both boys up in his arms, and both little bodies trembled once at the sudden lift.

"What are you doing?" the elder twin asked, gripping his father’s shoulder for stability and hating that he needed to.

"Let’s go, little champs. Your mother is making you into machines. Let’s have some fun."

"No," the younger twin said firmly. "We cannot have it. It is something adults do."

Viktor halted. He looked at the boy. He looked at the doorway, where Kaida was making frantic throat-cutting gestures behind the children’s backs.

"Damn. Helena is teaching bad things to you."

"No, mother did not say anything," the elder twin corrected, adjusting his spectacles with one finger. "But she wants me to not ponder in the matters of the father. We inferred the rest from the library."

"You inferred. From the library."

"The section on court etiquette, primarily, father. We cross-referenced."

Viktor exhaled through his nose and sat down on the nursery rug with both boys in his lap, towel and all, trophy wives settling onto the cushions around him. If the children noticed the absurdity of the tableau, they were polite enough not to record it.

"Alright, champs. Have you ever tried something fun? Flying on a dragon?"

"Indeed, we did," the elder twin said. "Actually, Rusty made us do it. He said, and I quote, ’you are the only two creatures smaller than me who are not afraid of heights.’ It was exhilarating. We measured the descent rate."

Viktor filed the name away. Rusty. The old lizard was making moves on his sons. Fine. Fine.

"Have you ever gone into that big tower?"

"Indeed, we did. With mother. She guided us regarding how the flowers grew there." The younger twin’s eyes brightened. "We also met our mother Vivian. She let us watch her whip a false duke. It was educational."

Viktor dragged a hand down his face. "Has anyone in this household left anything for me to do with my own children?"

The twins looked at each other. A whole silent conference happened between them in the space of a blink.

"Indeed," the elder twin said slowly. "There is one unit of information she has never provided us. She has never told us what is outside the town. Further out, I mean. We know about the kingdom, of course. Trade routes, factions, the war’s progress. But what is outside of the continent? What is across the sea? Mother Mira’s maps all terminate at the coastline with decorative sea serpents."

Viktor stopped.

He looked at his son, one month old, in a diaper, asking about oceanic cartography, and he did what no father should ever do in front of children who record everything.

He sighed honestly.

"That is something we will eventually know," he said, and smiled.

The truth was simpler than the boy would believe. He did not know either. He had lived in this world, this life, long enough to learn its continents were enormous, its races layered, its kingdoms stacked beyond the maps, and beyond all of it, past the sea serpents at the edge of the chart, was simply a question mark that he had not yet had time to devour.

’They do not know. I do not know. Well. At least there is one frontier in this house that belongs to both of us.’

"Have you both ever tried eating something delicious?" he tried instead.

"Mother cooked it. She cooks very delicious."

"Indeed, indeed. I also cook."

"The eggs," the younger twin told his brother solemnly. "You undercooked the eggs."

"I adjusted in the second iteration."

"Indeed. The second iteration was acceptable."