Chapter Thirty-One: Family
Briar did not want to go.
Even after all of Elias’s gentle coaxing, the little vine clung stubbornly to his arm, radiating reluctance down the bond, plainly unwilling to be parted from him so soon after being reunited. It took a good while of patient reassurance before it finally, sulkily relented and let itself be sent back into Elias’s own Beast Taming Space.
It couldn’t be helped. Out in the open, a brand-new species coiled around his arm would draw every eye in the city—and undo, in a single careless afternoon, all the painstaking work he’d done to keep his name hidden. The identity of the nameless breeder behind one new evolution remained a mystery. One walking around wearing a second new species like a scarf was a signpost. Briar would have to stay tucked safely away in his Beast Taming Space for now, however much it pouted about it.
“It’s only for a little while,” Elias promised the sulking presence in his soul. “You’ll have a whole world to stretch out in soon enough.”
Then he set about the move.
Back in his laboratory, Elias began organizing everything he owned—his belongings, his instruments, his plants, his hives, his countless bees—packing his entire operation down for transport. It was no small undertaking; he’d accumulated a great deal over these busy months. Eventually a van was hired, and one careful load at a time, it all went in.
The driver, it had to be said, kept sneaking glances at the cargo. Specifically at the Lifebloom Queens drifting in their shimmering green and gold among the crates—the most talked-about spirit beast in the world, several of them, riding along in the back of his van. The man clearly recognized them, and clearly had questions.
When he finally worked up the nerve to ask, Elias could only lie, smoothly and apologetically. He was simply a breeder, he explained, lucky enough to have bought up a good stock of Amberwing Bees ahead of time—before the evolution went public and the prices went mad. A fortunate bit of foresight, nothing more. The driver accepted it with an envious sigh, muttering about wishing he’d had the sense to do the same, and asked no more.
At the secret realm, Elias and the bees set to moving everything inside.
He stepped through from his laboratory and out into the open fields of flowers—and the sight of it never failed to stir him. The bees took to it instantly. They poured out into the vast new world in glittering streams, flying everywhere at once, investigating their surroundings with delighted, buzzing curiosity, already beginning to scout the land for the very best places to raise their hives. After the confines of a rented meadow, an entire private world to spread into was, for the colony, very nearly heaven.
It also threatened, very quickly, to become absolute chaos—which was where Holly, Honey, and Hope came in.
Faced with thousands of overexcited bees scattering giddily across an entire world, the three queens rose to the occasion with the air of seasoned generals surveying a battlefield. Holly took command at once, hovering high above the fields and issuing crisp, sweeping directives through the Hive Mind—organizing the giddy swarm into orderly survey parties, assigning each its own stretch of land, sending them out in disciplined waves rather than one delirious cloud. Where she pointed, the bees went, and slowly the frantic scatter resolved into something almost methodical.
Honey worked the gaps between them, smoothing the inevitable squabbles—two crews laying claim to the same promising flowerbed, a knot of workers bickering over which hollow made the better hive site—drifting from dispute to dispute and gently coaxing order out of every standoff before it could spiral. And Hope, naturally, kept zipping off ahead of everyone, scouting the farthest and strangest corners of the new world and returning with wildly ambitious proposals—a hive here, by the river; another there, atop that rise; what if they built around the fragrance fields entirely?—most of which Holly shot down on sight, and a few of which, grudgingly, she didn’t.
Elias watched the three of them wrangle a whole colony into shape across the rolling fields and couldn’t help but grin. Left to themselves, the bees would have spent a week blissfully lost. Under his three little ministers, the new world was surveyed, parceled, and half-settled before the day was out.
Then, with all that new space at his disposal, Elias called Holly, Honey, and Hope over to ask a small favor. The three queens arrived promptly—and brought with them ten Amberwing Bees, ordinary little things, carefully chosen as suitable for evolution. The ten settled onto Elias’s arms and shoulders, sticking close to his body, and he smiled at the small warm weight of them. There was always more work to be done, more humble creatures waiting for their chance to become something greater. But that was for later.
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For now, there was somewhere else he needed to be.
It was time to go home—because it was time, at last, to tell his family the good news. He now had a first contracted spirit beast, and they had yet to meet it.
The whole family was gathered when he arrived, and he wasted no time. He had news, he announced, grinning, savoring the small drama of it. He’d formed his first contract.
That alone was enough to bring the room to attention. A first contract was a milestone for any beast tamer—a real, lasting bond, the first of the precious few one could ever forge. Selena straightened, crimson eyes bright with interest; Kyle leaned forward eagerly; and Damien set down what he was holding, that quiet, proud warmth already gathering on his face.
“Well?” Selena demanded, never one for patience. “Don’t just stand there grinning like a fool. Show us!”
So Elias summoned Briar.
The little vine emerged from his Space in a curl of green and color—and immediately, overcome with shyness at the sudden roomful of strangers, slithered straight up Elias and wound itself tightly around him, coiling along his arm, looping his shoulders, twining up around his neck, until half-hiding behind its caregiver it peeked out at the gathered family through a veil of its own beautiful flowers.
There was a beat of stunned silence.
Elias stood there, his first contracted spirit beast—the rarest, most remarkable vine in the world, a creature of eight attributes and Lord-rank potential—draped over him in a fragrant tangle of blossoms like a particularly enthusiastic floral garland. He looked, in short, ridiculous. Wonderful, and deeply, deeply ridiculous.
Selena’s mouth twitched. Kyle made a sound like a strangled cough.
“Is—” Kyle started, and had to stop, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth. “Is my little brother wearing a plant?”
“He’s shy,” Elias said, with as much dignity as a man festooned in flowers could muster. “Give him a moment.”
That did it. Selena lost the battle entirely and burst out laughing, that wild bright laugh of hers, and Kyle went down right alongside her, the two silver-haired troublemakers howling with matching crimson-eyed glee at the sight of their son and brother thoroughly upholstered in greenery. “The great anonymous breeder!” Kyle wheezed. “Terror of the breeding world! Wearing a—” He couldn’t finish. He was laughing too hard.
Through it all, Briar coiled a little tighter, picking up on the commotion and clearly uncertain whether it was in trouble—and that was what finally moved Damien to step in.
“That is quite enough, you two,” he said, fixing his wife and eldest son with a look of mild, genuine reproach. He crossed the room and regarded Briar properly, taking in the delicate vine and its hundred mingled blossoms with a healer’s appreciative eye and a gardener’s love. “Don’t listen to them,” he told the little vine gently. “You are beautiful. Truly. The fragrance alone—” He breathed it in, and smiled. “Exquisite. You suit my son perfectly.”
Briar perked up at once, the warmth in Damien’s voice unmistakable even to a creature without words, and unwound just enough to bloom a little brighter.
Elias shot his father a grateful look. Selena, wiping her eyes, held up her hands in surrender. “All right, all right—it’s lovely, I’ll admit it. Once you get past the… wearing-it part.” She grinned. “Come here, then. Let’s have a proper look at the thing that’s been eating all my son’s time.”
And so, in true Arkwright fashion, a simple reveal turned into a celebration.
Damien outdid himself in the kitchen, the evening filling with the rich smell of a proper feast; the table groaned under more food than even Kyle could threaten; and one by one, the family’s own spirit beasts came out to meet the newest member. Amia, the Sparkling Jade Guppy who’d known Elias since before he could walk, regarded Briar with the dignified curiosity of an elder meeting a grandchild. Koda offered the little vine a solemn, surprisingly gentle handshake with one broad finger. Selena’s companions joined as well—Eiren, the majestic Snowfall Owl, studied Briar with quiet, ancient wisdom from her perch, her wingspan throwing a soft shadow across the table; and Rime, the Ice Sprite, drifted close in its flawless diamond-clear crystal form, scattering a delighted little flurry of snowflakes when Briar curiously brushed a vine-tip against its frost-patterned surface. Even Floria made an appearance, the matriarch queen inspecting her keeper’s newest companion with regal approval before settling, satisfied, at Damien’s side.
Briar, for its part, slowly came out of its shell as the evening wore on. The warmth of the room was impossible to resist—the easy laughter, the bottomless affection, the simple fact of being welcomed. It uncoiled from around Elias’s neck by degrees, venturing out to investigate this loud, loving family, accepting Kyle’s teasing finger-pokes with good grace and curling shyly toward Damien’s offered hand. By the end of the night, it had clearly decided these strange, warm creatures were good and that it liked them very much.
Elias sat in the middle of all of it—his family bickering and laughing, their beasts mingling, his own first contracted beast nestled content against his shoulder—and felt his chest go full and warm in that particular way only this house ever managed. He had built a great deal these past months. A new species, twice over. A world of his own. A name the whole field whispered about without ever knowing.
But this—this loud, warm, ridiculous, loving room—this was the thing he’d never want to trade for any of it. And now Briar was part of it, too.
Family, after all, had a way of simply making room for one more.