Dreams Made Flesh

simply too caught up in the celebration of Peyton's Birthright Ceremony to deal with "minor" gambling debts. He'd assured her father that those would be taken care of after the ceremonies.
    While they realized he might refuse to pay the gambling debts if Hekatah said something in haste at the ceremony, it never occurred to anyone in her family that his timing in paying off the debts that concerned them the most was as manipulative as their timing in asking for financial help.
    So his paternity of his younger son was granted, the debts were paid off… and he gave himself a few weeks to consider if, with his sons safely under his control, he wanted to remain married to a woman who expected absolute fidelity from her Warlord Prince husband while she indulged her taste for variety by having affairs with men from the minor branches of Hayll's aristo families.
    He'd almost accepted that his hopes for this marriage had been wishful thinking and the self-delusion of a lonely man who, while receiving plenty of bedroom invitations, had been craving love.
    Then Hekatah had told him she was pregnant again. And, once again, a child's life held his heart hostage. He didn't blame her for the pregnancy. He wanted another child, had willingly stopped doing anything to prevent conception, and had let her decide when she was ready.
    But the timing had just been a little too convenient to make him feel easy, just as this request for another loan coming so close to when Hekatah would be brought to childbed was a little too convenient.
    He sighed. Hekatah would punish him for not agreeing to provide the loan by staying with her family instead of being with him right now, and Zuulaman…
    He pushed away from the desk. Screw all of it. What was the point of being the most powerful male in Terreille and shouldering the responsibility for a land and its people if he couldn't indulge himself once in a while?
    Leaving the study and moving through the massive structure he'd built as a symbol of his power as well as a family home, he bounded up the stairs and headed for the family wing. He opened a door and his sons, Mephis and Peyton, the two joys of his marriage, rushed forward to greet him.
    "Papa!" Peyton said."Look what we helped Daemon Carpenter make for us!"
    "You helped him, did you?" Saetan said as he took a wooden ship from his younger son and gave it the careful inspection that was expected… and wondered if he should offer Daemon Carpenter hazard pay for whatever "help" had been given.
    "Well," Mephis said, "we didn't actually help him make the ships, but we did make the sails."
    Which explained the badly stitched canvas. But that was the difference between the two boys. Peyton tended to be fiery, dramatic, always leading with his heart, while Mephis thought things through as well as he could before acting, was a little less demonstrative, and more bitingly exact about details.
    "That's helping," Peyton protested, scowling at his older brother. "Are you going to read us a story?" he asked, turning back to his father.
    Saetan blew softly on the sail, using Craft to expand a puff of air into enough to fill the canvas. "No, I don't think so," he replied, handing the ship back to Peyton in order to inspect the one Mephis now held up for his approval.
    Peyton's lower lip pushed out in a pout, but before he could start wheedling, Mephis gave him a hard elbow jab in the ribs.
    "No," Saetan said slowly, "as commander of the fleet…"
    "How come you get to be commander?" Peyton demanded. "Ow!" That because Mephis's elbow caught him in the ribs again.
    "Because I'm bigger," Saetan replied. "As I was saying, as commander of the fleet, I think my stalwart captains should test their new ships on the Phantom Sea."
    "Where?" Peyton asked.
    "He means the pond," Mephis said out of the corner of his mouth. "Now, hush."
    "Dangerous place, the Phantom Sea," Saetan said, his deep voice dropping into a croon while he continued to inspect Mephis's ship.
    "Are there whirlpools, Commander?" Mephis asked.
    Peyton frowned at his brother, still young enough that he had to work to catch up.
    "Yes, Captain Mephis," Saetan crooned. "There are the Wailing Whirlpools and the Murky Mists. Challenges for even the most courageous sailors."
    "Are there sea dragons, too?" Peyton asked, his eyes wide.
    "What would the Phantom Sea be without sea dragons?" Saetan murmured.
    "How'd we get sea dragons in the pond?" Peyton whispered to Mephis.
    "Papa's going to make them for