Chapter 1.27 - In which Percy brings Viv home, after all

Percy

Month 11, Day 28, Saturday 5:30 a.m.

They paid the driver and tiptoed through the front door. Mom was asleep on the couch, her head fallen back and to the side in an uncomfortable position.

Percy managed to creep all the way to her side and take her hand in his. He had hoped this would be a gentle awakening, but Mom shot upright at the touch, inhaled her own saliva with a gasp, and then crumpled over coughing.

When she recovered, Viv gave her a small wave and introduced herself with a deep bow.

His mother checked the time.

“I can explain,” Percy and Viv said simultaneously. And somehow, Viv’s presence and demeanor as they collaborated to give their modified version of events worked subtle magic on Mom, who didn’t even get angry.

“I did expect you to be out late working that party, just not this late,” Mom said. “If I hadn’t fallen asleep, I might have been worried and sent your dad to look for you… But I guess all that matters is you’re home safe.” She turned to Viv with a bright smile. “So, tell me more about yourself? How old are you?”

And somehow, ten minutes later, Viv had convinced Mom to sit at the kitchen table and relax while Viv and Percy cooked breakfast for the family. Or rather, Viv showed off her impressive skills, some probably learned at the Kaiseki Ryori, while Percy acted as an assistant and did his best not to ruin anything with clumsiness or bad luck.

Perhaps woken by the noise, Percy’s siblings came into the kitchen, with Gideon trailing in last, dragging Fiery behind him.

Lysander looked Viv up and down, then got a two-sentence explanation for her presence from Mom, who gestured for the others to take their seats around the table with a smile.

Instead of sitting, Lysander crossed her arms and thrust out her chin. “Percy, haven’t you listened to Dad about not letting some woman take advantage of you?” She sniffed loudly in Viv’s direction. “And she’s a drunkard, too. A bad influence. You know you can’t drink, Percy.”

Percy’s eyelids fluttered, and he almost wished he could simply pass out from embarrassment. If only men wore corsets, he could pretend to swoon from lack of air and thus distract everyone in the room.

Viv, eyes wide, looked first to Percy.

He shook his head mutely, trying to apologize with his expression alone.

Mom reached over and waved at the air as if trying to smack Lysander from a distance. “Don’t be rude to our guest, Lysander Irving,” she hissed.

“You’re letting the guest serve us, though?” Lysander muttered. “How is thatgood manners?”

Viv seemed to have recovered, and instead of acting awkward, she met Lysander’s gaze seriously. “While Percy is very pretty, and also very trustworthy and courageous, I’m not trying to take advantage of him.”

Lysander, for some reason, blushed and looked away. Without another word, she uncrossed her arms and took a seat at the table.

Gideon crawled up on Mom’s lap, holding Fiery in both arms. He looked from Viv to Percy, and then back again. “Why is your hair that color?”

Viv gave him a lopsided smile. “It just grew out of my head that way.”

Gideon’s eyes went wide. “Really?” He turned to Mom, then Percy, Lysander, and Aethelwulf. He reached up and ran his chubby fingers through his own loose, soft curls. “But why is my hair just…brown?” he asked Mom.

“Because that’s how it works when both of your parents have brown hair, and their parents had brown hair, too,” Mom said, bouncing him a little.

Gideon considered this for a moment, and then his face crumpled, bottom lip trembling as his eyebrows rose in a distressed swoop. “I don’t want to have brown hair,” he said. And then, his voice rising in a sorrowful wail, “It’s not pretty! It just looks like—like—like poop!” And as if he had horrified himself even further with this declaration, his eyes welled with tears.

“I love your hair!” Viv said. “I’m so jealous of your beautiful curls.”

This partially appeased Gideon, but his eyes remained teary.

“If you get a good job and can afford it, when you get older, you can buy a dye or potion that will turn your hair any color you want,” Percy offered.

Gideon sniffed. “Red?”

“Yes.”

“What about…green?”

Mom rolled her eyes to the heavens behind Gideon’s back.

“That, too,” Percy agreed.

“Or purple. Or green and purple tiger stripes?”

Percy cleared his throat nervously, but said, “Any color.”

Gideon turned to Mom. “How much coins do I need for hair that makes me look like a flower tree?”

“At least ten times ten coppers,” Aethelwulf said, doing the math on her fingers with a scowl of concentration.

“What? But that’s so much. I’ll be super old by the time I can get ten times ten coins. That’s like…eleventy coins.” This was the number that Gideon used to indicate “a lot,” which was any number above thirty.

Percy instinctively looked at Lysander, who would normally make some smug comment to send Gideon bursting into tears, but his sister was sitting nicely, silently, watching Viv cook with an eager expression and the faintest blush.

“It’s an entire gold,” Aethelwulf agreed seriously.

“Gold?” Gideon echoed solemnly. He shook his head, settling back against Mom. “No, that’s too expensive. I can’t afford to go to school and have pretty hair,” he said, as if the matter was settled.

Mom’s arms tightened around him, her head dipping to hide her expression, but she remained silent.

“So, how do you know Percy?” Lysander asked, smiling.

“I’m the one who hired him. Did he ever tell you about the first time we met?” Viv asked.

When Lysander leaned forward with interest, Viv launched into a story about that day, and how everything had been going wrong for her until Percy showed up. In this version of the story, however, the drunk waiter whose place Percy had taken was much more nefarious, actively trying to sabotage Viv.

And together, Viv and Percy beat him up, complete with perfectly timed witty quips. Then they saved the day at the Kaiseki Ryori by doing almost all the work alone. This evolved into stopping an attempted robbery. Then, they saved a lost little girl who belonged to the second Crown Family after she narrowly escaped a kidnapping and needed their help to find her way safely back to her mansion in the Lilies. The story continued until they were finished cooking breakfast, growing more outrageous with each embellishment.

Gideon and Aethelwulf were the only ones who actually believed everything she said, but Lysander and Mom seemed happy to pretend.

Dad poked his head around the corner, scratching the stubble at his chin and nodding seriously to Viv and Percy. “Yeah, I definitely heard about that from some of the customers at my shop. That was you two, huh? So noble, refusing that reward and everything.”

Viv rubbed the back of her neck with chagrin, but bowed and introduced herself again.

As they all settled down to eat, Lysander insisted that Viv sit between her and Aethelwulf.

“You’re so brave,” Aethelwulf gushed, bouncing in her seat as her feet swung underneath her chair. “Do you have any tattoos?”

Viv’s eyes flitted about the room over everyone’s heads. She cleared her throat. “Um.”

“Percy has a tattoo,” Aethelwulf confided, leaning in to speak more softly. “It’s very beautiful. Tattoos are permanent, though. They stay around forever. Did you know that? That’s why Mom won’t let me get a tattoo on my face. What do you think about that? Do you think young women should be able to make their own decisions?” she asked seriously, tilting her head to the side and folding her fingers together at the edge of the table as if she had just asked an important political question.

Viv looked from Aethelwulf to Mom, and then back again. “Um,” she repeated.

Percy looked down at his left wrist absently. He stared for a moment too long, keeping the frown from his face. Had the tattoo…changed shape?

It was still a moth inside of a circle. He hadn’t memorized every line of the decorative design, but he was pretty sure it had morphed slightly. And had the wings always been in that exact position?

Author Note: This is one of my favorite chapters. I love Gideon.