Ynda reclined in the backyard near one of the fountains that was closest to the house, wearing a bathing suit that left nearly nothing to the imagination. Her tanned skin glistened in the early afternoon heat, her long blonde hair splayed out around her shoulders as she faced the sun, her new belly button piercing catching the rays, large sunglasses protecting her eyes.

It had been three days since their trip to the old property and everyone was out doing their own thing. Toji had gone with Lukas to his family’s house in the city, Havik and the twins went to see a movie, Kayla and Ava were out with Finn at the mall, leaving Chloe and Ynda to sunbathe and enjoy some much needed quiet. In fact, she was still waiting on Chloe to finish getting changed and join her. Ynda wondered if it was because she was on the phone with Peter again.

I swear, those two can’t leave each other alone.

She sighed and readjusted in her lounge chair, getting more comfortable as she closed her eyes. Her personal maids had been given the afternoon off, something they tried to fight because they enjoyed spending time with their mistress. Ynda had insisted, giving them money and sending them on their way. She knew giving them money was pointless, they’d just take it back to her room, but it was still a nice thought.

From where she was, she could smell the sweet and tangy scents of Gabby’s homemade marinade. Her mouth watered as she thought of the dinner that was being prepared, hoping Natsu got the recipe right. She refused to eat chicken smothered in anyone else’s marinade so he better deliver. From the way it smelled, she was optimistic.

She frowned as a shadow fell over her. She opened her eyes to see Chloe standing over her.

“Tsh, bitch,” she mumbled.

“Bitch back,” Chloe replied, spreading her towel out on the grass next to her twin. She reclined on her stomach, her own bikini hugging her curves and showing off her smooth, lightly scarred skin, the one she had pointed out to Peter being the biggest. She rested her head on her folded hands and sighed contentedly.

“How’s Peter?” Ynda asked after a few minutes of comfortable silence. 

Chloe smiled. “He’s fine, thank you. He says hi.”

“Hi, Peter.” They chuckled together before lapsing into another silence. Finally, Ynda said, “Gonna go out with him?”

Chloe said nothing for a moment, staring off over the large yard. “Probably not,” she admitted softly, almost sadly. “What would be the point? I’ll outlive him a thousand times over.”

“Doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy some time with him now.”

“I don’t have flings, Yin.”

“I didn’t say fuck the boy, I said have some fun. Besides,” she turned her head to smile at her. “You’re over here a lot more than the rest of us. You could get to know him a lot better, develop a really good friendship at the very least. Like Toji and Natsu have. I know Lukas and Kayla have other human friends in town.”

“The twins and Ava don’t though,” Chloe said, rising to her elbows. “I think they’re far more wary of humans than they really should be.”

“I don’t know,” Ynda said, facing the sky. “They get told of so many angels that get captured and their wings torn off, they may have more of a negative view of humans than the rest of us.”

“You’d think they would feel the same way towards demons, too. They keep the wings as trophies.”

“That’s true,” she nodded. “Though it’s not unheard of for angels to do the same thing. Still, you make an excellent point. With the logic that humans are scary, they would fear demons for the same reasons. Yet they don’t.”

“Humans aren’t all good, just like demons aren’t all bad.”

“Not all angels are good, either.”

“Intent is everything,” Chloe said, laying back down on her hands. “If you intend harm, race is irrelevant.”

“Too true, twin, too true.” 

Another space of time passed with them lounging silently together, their minds calm for the first time since they had arrived. They wouldn’t admit it, but the reports they had received on the first day about the attacks on the settlements, and these ridiculous rumors about the Divine Realms being sealed off from Earth, had all been on everyone’s minds. A couple of times, they had all been caught in separate groups discussing the matter. It had taken someone else to walk in on the conversation to put a stop to it, usually Toji. The reminder that they were on vacation apparently had to be reiterated more than once.

“Do you think they’re together?” Chloe asked out of the blue. 

“Who?” Ynda replied, her voice drowsy and relaxed.

“You know who.”

Ynda hesitated before she answered honestly, “Yeah, I think so.”

“What do you think of it?”

“Toji hasn’t smiled and been this annoying since we went home after last summer’s trip. If Natsu is the reason for it, then so be it.”

“I don’t know why they’re going to such lengths to hide it.”

Ynda sat up and looked at her, eyes wide as she made sure her door was shut to the rest of her family. They had all agreed that it would be okay to close the link to their parents, but to stay connected to at least one of their siblings. However, when secret conversations were concerned, they couldn’t complain if one of them were completely shut off from the rest. They were on vacation and that meant they could do whatever they wanted separate from each other. This was a time when keeping her mind to herself was imperative.

“You really don’t know why?” she asked, astounded Chloe had to even ask.

Chloe shook her head. 

Ynda sighed and leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes. “Natsu is a human who works for the God Kings.”

“Uh huh?”

“Toji is a God Prince, as well as a Child of the Veil.”

“Okay?”

“Gods can’t be with humans. Outside of that, it is entirely forbidden for staff to date any member of the royal family and their associates.”

Chloe stared at her. “What would happen if they were caught?”

“If it was anyone else, the staff member would just be sent packing. Maybe they’d keep their memories, maybe not.”

“But it’s Toji.”

Ynda nodded. “It’s Toji.”

Chloe watched Ynda for a minute, knowing there was so much more to the story than she or anyone else had been told regarding the incident from last year. “What exactly happened?” She didn’t need to elaborate.

Ynda was silent for a moment. When she didn’t respond for a while, Chloe started to think maybe she had dozed off and began to lay her own head back down, moving her arms to her sides, her head turned away from Ynda.

“Uncle Alerik almost killed Toji.”

Chloe’s eyes snapped open.

After another moment, Ynda went on. “Toji had never wanted to be engaged to Ava. He didn’t love her, didn’t care for her the way she wanted or deserved and he knew that. The engagement was forced on him by my parents and hers. It was a political marriage, meant to signify an alliance between the Veil and the Heavenly Realms.”

“Why would it matter? With that logic, they could wed you off to a demon.”

“There had been some tension between the realm Uncle Alerik and Aunt Persephone live in and the Helman Kingdom. The archangel there wanted to break from us, saying we were too powerful and wanted to rule more than we should. No matter how my dads tried to convince him otherwise, the archangel wouldn’t be swayed. Eventually, Uncle Alerik proposed the idea that maybe a marriage between the two might be a show of alliance. It would bring the two Realms together as equals, instead of as rivals. For whatever reason, the archangel agreed.”

“Why Ava?”

“She’s the first born angel of the Veil. Like, actually born, not created like the rest of them, and a nobel. Since the archangel has no children of his own, and Ava’s significance in the Realm was known and established, she would be the one that would be married off. Toji was the unlucky one to get dragged into it.”

“The first born son of the Helman Kingdom,” Chloe sighed, shaking her head.

“Exactly. I’m not into girls and Havik is way too young. That left my poor big brother to be saddled with that responsibility. He absolutely hated the idea, fought with Daddy and Papa almost daily about it. But no matter what he did, even going so far as to try and run away back to Helman Hall and hide out here until the entire thing was called off, it didn’t work. The engagement was announced, and he was trapped. For six months, my usually loud and boisterous Neko was sullen, miserable, and quiet. He tried running away multiple times, in fact.”

“He should have been able to just escape through one of the doors easily enough, couldn’t he?”

Ynda frowned. “Daddy had eyes on him all the time. He couldn’t go anywhere without being spotted. He’d either be dragged back, or fight the scout until either Daddy, Papa, or Lukas arrived to take him back.” She swallowed. “I’d never seen him so angry in my life.”

She took a deep breath. “Anyway, the summer vacation comes up, we all get here, things are going along just fine, Toji seems a lot happier, and the world is a better place. But I could see he was wrestling with something and no matter how I tried, he wouldn’t tell me what it was. There was one day he was gone all day long, no one could find him and he’d completely closed off the link between all of us. What no one else noticed, or failed to, was that he wasn’t the only one missing. Natsu Kanaki was gone, too.”

Chloe stared at her.

“Everyone else chalked it up to it being his day off. Which makes sense, right?” She turned to look at Chloe. “Where does Natsu spend his time off?”

Chloe blinked. “With us.”

“Specifically?”

“Toji,” Chloe breathed the name.

“After he came home, Toji broke off the engagement. I don’t know what he said to her, all I know is that when she came out of that office, she was in tears and furious. She contacted Uncle Alerik and he came through that portal ready to rip Toji’s head off. They took the fight off the property and Alerik did almost kill Toji, he beat him that badly. Me and Lukas got to him and brought him home, locking him in his room so he could heal. He was in there for three days.”

Chloe nodded. “I remember that. I remember hearing him yelling at someone, too. Ava, I think.”

Ynda nodded. “He blamed her for Alerik coming after him, that she should have waited. That’s when she called him out, accusing Natsu of stealing him from her. It was the first time there had ever been any hint of there being anything between the two. Of course Toji denied it, but it was too late. Hell, she even went so far as to say he and Lukas were fucking.”

Chloe gagged.

“My sentiments exactly. She was that hurt, and she wanted him to hurt just as badly.” Ynda sat up, folding her hands in her lap. “Remember how she left before the rest of us did?”

“Yeah?”

Ynda turned to her. “She told Daddy.”

Chloe put her hands over her mouth. It was no secret Toji and Hero didn’t always get along, that Hero expected a great deal and had been the one to push back against Toji’s pleas to deny the engagement. 

“I don’t know the details, Toji never told me, and nothing was ever shared through the link. What I do know is that Daddy places nearly all of the blame on Natsu, and that the fight the two had gotten into was so bad, neither of them spoke to each other for months.” She kept her eyes on her hands. “Toji doesn’t know this but…I heard him sobbing nearly every night. A few times I sat outside his door and just sent him my waves, trying to calm him. At first he pushed back but eventually he accepted them. This went on for months and months. It’s only been recently that he’s started to recover a lot of his former self, and I think it’s because of this trip.”

“The announcement at Gods Hall,” Chloe said. “I heard that’s where he—”

“Came out,” Ynda nodded. “No one knew before then, not even me. Ava had thrown accusations at him blindly, trying to pin it on the two people she knew he cared about the most outside of his family. Lukas and Natsu are his best friends, they do everything together. It may have been jealousy, it may have been out of anger and spite, whatever it was, she went to Daddy and told him that Toji broke off the engagement because he had feelings for Natsu. She called him nasty names which Daddy did not appreciate, but understood why she would be angry. I mean, wouldn’t you be if you found out the man you loved preferred men over you?”

“But she really didn’t believe he was when she accused him, right?”

“She suspected, but no, she didn’t believe it.”

Chloe tilted her head thoughtfully. “That’s why he was never intimate with her in any way. He barely even held her hand.”

“She only ever had her hand on his arm for appearances. He ran off the second he got the chance.” 

Chloe lay back down, her hands behind her head. “Damn.”

Ynda copied her movements. “Yep.”

“So if Toji and Natsu were ever caught…”

“Natsu would be lucky to get away with only a pink slip and a ‘fare thee well.’”

“And Toji?”

“Would never be allowed to see him again. Ever.”

Chloe was silent, taking in everything she had learned. So much she never even knew, including the fight with Alerik and Toji. She wondered how many more were ignorant to that event.

“I would never tell,” she said quietly.

“I know.” Ynda said. She reached down and Chloe took her hand. “Neither would I.”

-*-