Chapter 223: I'll Fix It
It took roughly twenty minutes, three cups of tea, and one very enthusiastic interruption from Alyssa demonstrating her new reach by retrieving a teapot from a shelf Eva couldn't reach without standing on a chair, before anyone actually sat down to hear the full story properly.
"Start from the beginning," Claire said, settling into the chair across from Aaron with the particular stillness she got when she intended to absorb every detail rather than just the highlights. "All of it. Don't summarize the parts you think don't matter."
"That's going to take a while."
"We have time."
Aaron exhaled slowly and started talking. The portal. The facility carved into the mountain, all metal and humming machinery. Ariana's transformation the moment her sunglasses went back on, the switch flipping between teasing sister and clinical researcher like two entirely different people sharing one body. The hidden cameras in his bathroom, the fingerprint scanner that took his blood without permission, the phone hidden behind a beaker as an elaborate test of his abilities.
Eva's expression cycled through several stages of outrage throughout the telling, occasionally interrupting with a sharp "she did what?" that Aaron answered honestly each time, mostly because lying about any of it felt like more effort than it was worth at this point.
Claire, by contrast, stayed quiet through most of it, her eyes narrowing slightly at the parts involving needles and surveillance, filing each detail away with the same careful attention she gave everything that might matter later.
"And the wings," she said, once Aaron reached that part of the story. "They actually tore through your shirt."
"Briefly. Ariana stopped it before it went further."
"How much further could it have gone?"
Aaron hesitated, which was answer enough on its own.
"That much further," Claire said flatly.
"She doesn't know exactly. Neither do I. That's sort of the whole problem." Aaron rubbed at his shoulder, the memory of the pressure still sitting uncomfortably close to the surface even now, hours and an entire portal-jump away from where it had happened. "Whatever's developing in me isn't slow and steady. It's responding to triggers, and apparently the triggers are easier to hit than any of us expected."
"And you agreed to go back."
"Three days. I agreed to a follow-up, not to moving in permanently." Aaron met her eyes steadily. "I'm not happy about any of how this started, Claire. But what she's finding isn't nothing. If there's something that explains what I'm turning into, I'd rather know before it happens without warning than be blindsided by it during a fight, or worse, in front of people who'd report it straight to whatever government office wants me in a lab of their own."
Claire was quiet for a moment, weighing that, her jaw tight in a way that told Aaron she didn't love the answer even if she couldn't entirely argue against the logic of it.
"Three days," she repeated eventually. "And then you come back here. No extensions, no 'just one more test,' no disappearing on us again without warning."
"No disappearing," Aaron agreed. "I promise."
"You'd better." She softened slightly, reaching across the small table to rest her hand over his. "I don't like the idea of you back in that place. But I trust that you wouldn't agree to it if you didn't think it mattered."
"It matters," Aaron said quietly. "I think it matters more than I want it to, honestly."
Eva, who had been mostly silent through this particular exchange, chose that moment to redirect the conversation entirely by turning a critical, assessing gaze on Alyssa, who was sitting on the floor near the fireplace, testing the new length of her legs by stretching them out as far as they'd go and admiring the result.
"Okay," Eva said. "Now explain the mushroom situation, because I have many questions, and most of them start with 'how.'"
"It's not that complicated," Aaron said. "She soaked in mana-rich water overnight. Apparently mushfolk absorb mana through submersion, and the water in that facility is significantly more potent than what she'd have access to anywhere else. Her body processed what was probably months of normal growth in a single night."
"In a bucket."
"In a bucket."
Eva stared at Alyssa for a long moment, then back at Aaron, then back at Alyssa again, clearly trying to reconcile the image of the thumb-sized creature who used to live in her cleavage with the considerably larger, more coordinated young woman currently testing whether she could touch her own toes without bending her knees.
"I want a bucket," Eva said finally.
"Absolutely not," Aaron and Claire said, almost simultaneously.
"I wasn't being serious! Mostly." Eva huffed, crossing her arms, though the offended posture didn't last long against the obvious curiosity still written across her face. "It's just— she looks so different now. Good different, I mean, she seems happy about it. I'm just trying to process the speed of it."
"Welcome to the last two days of my life," Aaron said.
Alyssa, apparently deciding she'd been quiet long enough, hopped up from her spot by the fireplace and crossed the room to plant herself directly between Eva and Claire, looking between them both with bright, hopeful eyes.
"Do I still look like me?" she asked. "Sir Aaron says I do. Ariana said I do too. But I want to know what you both think, because you knew me before I was big."
Claire's expression softened immediately, the protective sternness from a moment ago melting into something warmer as she studied Alyssa's face properly — the same fundamental cheerfulness underneath the new proportions, the same earnest, slightly indignant energy that had always defined her, regardless of size.
"You still look like you," Claire said. "Taller, but unmistakably you."
"I agree," Eva added, reaching out to gently pat the top of Alyssa's mushroom cap, the gesture now requiring her to reach up rather than down. "Though I'll admit the pocket living arrangement is probably over."
"It is," Alyssa said, with the particular gravity of someone announcing the end of an era. "I am sad about the pocket. But happy about everything else."
"That's a fair trade," Eva said.
The conversation drifted from there, the tension of the last twenty minutes gradually loosening into something closer to the easy familiarity Aaron had missed more than he'd realized over the past two days. Claire made more tea. Eva pestered Alyssa with an increasingly long list of questions about what else she could do now that she couldn't before, most of which Alyssa answered with enthusiastic, overly detailed demonstrations that knocked over at least one more piece of furniture before the night was through.
Aaron sat back, watching the three of them, and let himself actually relax for what felt like the first time in days.
It didn't last as long as he wanted.
"There's something else," he said eventually, once the conversation had settled into a lull, Eva and Alyssa deep in some side discussion about the merits of various teas. "Something Ariana found in my bloodwork. She thinks I'm not just one thing. Two bloodlines, maybe, layered on top of each other instead of blended into one."
Claire's attention snapped back to him immediately. "Two."
"She found a partial match for one of them. Something old, something rare — a race that mostly kept to itself, according to whatever records she has access to. The second pattern she couldn't match cleanly, but she thinks it falls under demonification, broadly."
"That's not a small thing to drop into the middle of a conversation about tea," Eva said, having clearly abandoned her side discussion the moment the word "demonification" entered the air.
"I know. I didn't want to lead with it." Aaron rubbed the back of his neck. "I don't have a clear answer for what it means yet. Neither does she. That's most of what these three days are supposed to be for — narrowing it down properly instead of guessing."
Claire's hand found his again, steadier this time than the earlier reassurance, more grounding.
"Whatever it turns out to be," she said, "it doesn't change who you are now. You said something like that to Alyssa, didn't you? About changes on the outside not changing who someone is underneath."
"I did say that."
"Then believe it about yourself too. Not just about her."
Aaron looked at her, something in his chest loosening slightly at the simple, direct honesty of it — the same reassurance he'd offered Alyssa over breakfast two days ago, handed back to him now exactly when he apparently needed to hear it himself.
"I'll try," he said.
"Good. Because we're not going anywhere, regardless of what your sister's research turns up. Layered bloodlines, demon ancestry, whatever it ends up being labeled as in some file in that mountain — none of that changes what's sitting right here, right now."
Eva, never one to let a tender moment pass without inserting herself into it, leaned over and wrapped both arms around Aaron's shoulders from behind, careful — surprisingly careful, given her usual enthusiasm — of the torn fabric still hanging loose where his wings had pressed through.
"Besides," she added, resting her chin on top of his head, "if you turn out to be some impressively rare ancient hybrid thing, that's honestly kind of attractive. Just saying."
"Eva."
"What? I'm allowed to find silver linings."
Claire rolled her eyes, though the corner of her mouth twitched upward despite herself, and Alyssa, watching the whole exchange from her spot on the floor, let out a small, satisfied hum.
"Everyone is happy again," she announced, as if confirming a hypothesis. "Good. I do not like it when everyone is worried at the same time. It makes the room feel heavy."
"Profound, for someone who was the size of my thumb three days ago," Aaron said.
"I am wise beyond my new size," Alyssa said primly, which earned a laugh from Eva loud enough that it startled the cat dozing near the fireplace into briefly opening one eye before deciding none of this was worth getting up for.
Outside, the night settled fully over the inn, quiet and undisturbed, three days standing between this moment and whatever waited back in that mountain facility. For now, that was enough — tea going cold in forgotten cups, a too-large mushroom girl recounting her bucket adventures for the third time with undiminished enthusiasm, and two women who'd refused, despite every reasonable opportunity to do otherwise, to let go of him while he figured out exactly what he was still becoming.